Saturday, April 4, 2026

Friday, April 3, 2026

???!!!

From ChatGPT. Is this true? Today is Friday, April 3. Is the system kidding me?

>>>If Christ was crucified in 33 AD, the most likely date in our calendar is Friday, April 3, 33 AD, based on the alignment of Passover, lunar cycles, and Roman governance.

Yes, Gemini confirmed it. So today is the "anniversary" of the very first Good Friday?!

Wide awake

Overheard on the interwebs: "The universe is awake. Are you?"

Fact check: Mostly true

Overheard on the interwebs...

>>>Plot twist: J D Vance is the demon and the UFOs are angels.

Thursday, April 2, 2026

Great is the Diana of the Ephesians

Credit: Shonagon

LOL, I´m getting senile. I didn´t get the Artemis II - Apollo mission - Selene connection until now. Hail NASA! Great is the Diana of the Ephesians!!!

Men vem tänker hon rösta på?

Generation Gretas eponyma anmoder vill ha revansch...

Nu kliver hon in i valrörelsen

Bondi out

- Hello, dear Sir! Bondi...Bondi...Bondi!!!

Apparently, Pam Bondi has been fired by the Commander in Chief. Seriously, does anyone even care at this point?

Americans on the Moon

- Oh no, Prabhupada´s books aren´t working, the Yanks are back on the Moon?!

Pink moon

What did Artemis II really find on the Moon, huh? Come and see...

Ultimate Reality

U do research into metaphysix, do Zazen and vipassana, den dis happens. U realize dis Ultimate Reality. Wat u do?

Veckans Strasser?

Det finns ju vissa intressanta skillnader mellan dessa båda analyser. Läs och begrunda!

Åkesson står till höger om Orbán och Meloni

"Den klassbaserade höger-vänster-skalan går i graven för gott"

Den färgade qvinnans börda

Saxat från Aftonbladet. Men det är väl snarast Woke-vänstern som älskar döda vita män, eller? :P

Exact time

Apparently, now is the exact time of the full moon. The "pink moon", apparently. But I can´t see it from my house. But then, I probably can´t see the Goddess either, so there´s that...

Full moon

Bing AI´s fantasy picture of the Tantric goddess Tripura Sundari and a very flamboyant parakeet on her shoulder...

Reality the Beautiful

It´s Thursday, but I´m running out of Vishnu-related pics. Here is a Christmas card version (AI-generated of course), presumably from last December! I assume that´s Vishnu and Lakshmi.

Wednesday, April 1, 2026

Maybe Usha should have a little conversation with my man J D? A propos the veep´s recent speculative peregrinations concerning the phenomena previously known as UFOs. Here is some suggested reading (the link goes to another post on this blog).

Hare Krishna in outer space

Språkvård

Och alltså inte samma hund. Eller enbart hundar av samma ras. Kan ingen lära AB korrekt svenska? De menar förstås *flera* hundar (och inte bara en enda)...

Den förlegade friheten (Veckans Strasser)

Jag vet inte vem Payam Moula är, men varför gör Anders Lindberg reklam för honom? Är han desperat? Eller är det "click bait"? Fast det verkar också lite desperat...

Erkänn, Anders! Du vill ha min bloggs finaste och mest klassiska utmärkelse! :D

Payam Moula vill se en mindre frihetlig vänster

Oljehål och räntechock

Läs innan Aftonbladet låser artikeln...

"Oljehål" stort som hela Europa - galet att höja räntan

The abomination of desolation?

Me and another blogger have a kind of love-hate relation to this Adventist YouTube channel, called Scriptures Illustrator. Their anti-Jesuit conspiracist video is actually quite interesting (although I haven´t double-checked all its claims - at least not yet).

The Jesuit state in Paraguay seems to have been "progressive" since it protected the Natives from slave raiders, but according to the video, the Society of Jesus gladly participated in the slave trade elsewhere, including Japan.

Since the video was produced by an Adventist, the background theme is that the (Catholic) Jesuits were part of a kind of Anti-Christ system which works itself out, slowly but steadfastly, over the course of human history. Until Judgement Day, perhaps?

Make of this content whatever you wish.

But Iran are the crazy ones?

I don´t support the clerical-fascist regime in Iran, obviously, but I´m not the only one who noticed that their propaganda these days sounds almost "rational", while the mentality of the Trump/evangelo-con faithful comes across as much more religious and fundamentalist. A lot of talk about "the war of Gog and Magog" and what have you. J D Vance´s recent statements among UFOs fit the pattern, although they are probably also a diversion from the actual war (the one against the Iranian regime, remember?). And for the record: yes, I know that J D is a Catholic.

I originally assumed his statement about UFOs being demonic was an AI-generated hoax, but nah, it´s a real interview. Some links below. That being said...who knows? Maybe UFOs are strange somehow. I used to be very skeptical, but now I honestly don´t know. The "transients" seem to be confirmed. Which doesn´t rule out all kinds of deep state shenanigans backstage, of course.

Like this one?

J D Vance says aliens are "demons"

Facebook comment on J D Vance

Fatima pro and con (part 2)

ChatGPT continues its discussion on Fatima...

Is Fatima strong or weak evidence compared to other miracle claims?

Short answer: Fátima is usually considered one of the stronger miracle claims in Catholicism—but still contested and not decisive evidence outside that framework.
Where it lands depends a lot on what you think counts as “good evidence.”

Let’s break that down in a grounded, comparative way.

🏆 Why Fátima is often seen as strong evidence

🌞 1. Scale and publicity

Compared to most miracle claims, the Miracle of Fátima stands out because:

Tens of thousands were present
It was announced in advance
It was covered by secular media (e.g. O Século)

👉 This is unusual. Most miracles:

Happen to individuals or small groups
Aren’t publicly predicted
Lack independent documentation

Result: Fátima scores high on publicity and documentation.

🎯 2. The prediction factor

The children (especially Lúcia dos Santos) said a miracle would occur on a specific date.

👉 Compared to other miracles:

Lourdes healings → not predicted
Weeping statues → not predicted
Near-death experiences → not predicted

Prediction + apparent event = stronger evidential structure

👥 3. Mixed audience (not just believers)

Reports came from:

Devout Catholics
Skeptics and anticlericals
Journalists

👉 This matters because many miracle claims happen in:

Highly controlled religious environments
Expectation-heavy settings

Fátima still has expectation—but not uniform belief.

⚖️ Why it’s still considered weak or inconclusive by skeptics

🔬 1. No objective physical trace

Unlike some other claims:

No measurable change in the sun
No lasting physical anomaly
No independently verifiable physical evidence

👉 Compare with:

Eucharistic miracle of Lanciano → physical substance (claimed flesh/blood)
Lourdes → medically investigated healings

Fátima is purely experiential/visual.

👁️ 2. Inconsistent reports

Not everyone saw the same thing—or anything at all.

👉 Compared to stronger empirical cases:

Good evidence usually produces consistent observations across observers

Skeptics say Fátima looks more like:

A variable perceptual event than a stable external phenomenon

🧠 3. Competing natural explanations

Unlike some miracle claims that are harder to model, Fátima has multiple plausible explanations:

Optical effects from staring at the sun
Atmospheric distortions
Crowd psychology

👉 None alone explains everything—but together they form a plausible cumulative alternative.

⏳ 4. Vision reports developed over time

As we discussed:

The apparition descriptions (especially by Lúcia dos Santos) became more detailed later
Theological elements became clearer over time

👉 This weakens it slightly compared to cases where:

Documentation is immediate and stable

🆚 How Fátima compares to other miracle types

🥇 Stronger than most visionary experiences

Compared to:

Private visions
Dreams
Mystical experiences

👉 Fátima is much stronger because:

It’s public
It has many witnesses
It was predicted

🥈 Roughly comparable to Lourdes

Compared to Lourdes:

Fátima strength: public spectacle + prediction
Lourdes strength: medically investigated healings

👉 Philosophically:

Fátima = dramatic but ambiguous perception
Lourdes = less dramatic but more medically grounded claims

🥉 Weaker than the best medical miracles (arguably)

Some Catholic healings (at Lourdes or elsewhere) are:

Documented medically
Examined by skeptical doctors
Declared “inexplicable”

👉 These can be stronger empirically, because:

They involve objective bodily change, not perception

⚠️ Much stronger than folk miracles

Compared to:

Weeping statues
Viral “miracle” videos
Local supernatural claims

👉 Fátima is far more credible due to:

Historical documentation
Scale
Cross-checkable testimony

🧭 Bottom line

If you rank miracle claims broadly:

Weak tier: anecdotal, private, unverifiable
Middle tier: Fátima-type events (public, but perceptual)
Stronger tier: medically documented, physically testable cases

👉 So Fátima lands here:

Upper-middle tier: unusually strong for a visionary miracle, but not decisive evidence of the supernatural

🧠 The deeper philosophical divide

Fátima is almost a perfect test case for worldview differences:

If you’re open to divine action in history, it looks impressively structured
If you require controlled, repeatable, physical evidence, it falls short

Fatima pro and con (part 1)

ChatGPT on the pros and cons of Fatima.

What do skeptics say about Fatima (the Catholic miracle in Portugal)?

The Miracle of Fátima—especially the famous “Miracle of the Sun”—is one of the most discussed religious events of the 20th century. While many Catholics see it as strong evidence of divine intervention, skeptics have offered a range of alternative explanations.

🌞 What witnesses reported

On October 13, 1917, tens of thousands gathered near Fátima, Portugal. Many reported:

The sun appearing to spin, dance, or zigzag
Sudden color changes
The sun seeming to plunge toward Earth
Clothes and ground drying rapidly after rain

But not everyone present saw the same thing—and some saw nothing unusual at all.

🔍 Main skeptical explanations

1. Optical effects & eye damage

Skeptics often argue that people were staring directly at the sun, which can create:

Visual distortions (afterimages, movement illusions)
Color shifts due to retinal fatigue
Temporary blindness or shimmering effects

This can make the sun appear to “dance” without actually moving.

👉 This is one of the most widely accepted natural explanations.

2. Mass suggestion / expectation

The children (especially Lúcia dos Santos) had predicted a miracle at a specific time and place.

Skeptics say:

A large crowd gathered expecting something supernatural
Psychological factors (crowd dynamics, suggestion, excitement) influenced perception
People interpreted ambiguous visual experiences in line with religious expectations

This is sometimes compared to collective religious experiences elsewhere.

3. Atmospheric phenomena

Some propose unusual but natural sky effects:

Thin clouds or mist diffusing sunlight
Ice crystals causing halos or color effects
Rapidly moving cloud layers creating illusion of motion

These could produce strange solar visuals without violating physics.

4. Inconsistent testimony

A key skeptical point:

Reports varied widely (spinning, falling, color changes, or nothing at all)
The phenomenon was not observed universally, even nearby
No astronomical observatories recorded solar anomalies

If the sun had physically moved, it would have been seen globally—not just locally.

5. Post-event embellishment

Some historians argue:

Accounts became more dramatic over time
Early reports were less spectacular than later retellings
Memory and storytelling shaped the narrative

6. Drying clothes explanation

The claim that soaked clothes suddenly dried is sometimes explained by:

Wind + sunlight after rain
People overestimating how wet they were
Psychological exaggeration after a dramatic event

🧠 A more nuanced skeptical view

Not all skeptics dismiss everything outright. Some say:

People genuinely experienced something unusual
But the cause was likely natural + psychological, not supernatural

This approach tries to respect the sincerity of witnesses while rejecting miraculous explanations.

⚖️ The core disagreement

Believers: A divinely orchestrated public miracle confirming Marian apparitions
Skeptics: A mix of optics, psychology, and social context

If you want, I can also go into the strongest arguments defenders use against these skeptical explanations—that’s where the debate gets really interesting.

Yes, please.

Great—this is where the debate becomes much more interesting. Defenders of the Miracle of Fátima don’t just appeal to faith; they argue that the skeptical explanations fail to account for key features of what happened.

🌞 1. “Too many witnesses” for a simple illusion

Defenders emphasize:

Estimates of 30,000–70,000 people present
Witnesses included believers, skeptics, journalists, and anticlericals
Some reports came from miles away

👉 Their argument:
Mass optical illusions can happen—but it’s harder to explain huge, diverse crowds reporting structured, similar phenomena (spinning, descending sun, colors).

🧾 2. Contemporary secular reporting

A major point in favor is that non-religious sources documented the event.

For example:

The Lisbon newspaper O Século (anti-clerical at the time) described extraordinary solar behavior
Journalists reportedly expected nothing—and were surprised

👉 Defender claim:
This reduces the likelihood that the event was purely religious propaganda or group hallucination.

🎯 3. A specific, fulfilled prediction

Months before October 13, the children (especially Lúcia dos Santos) publicly announced:

A miracle would occur
At a specific time and place

👉 Defender argument:

If this were random atmospheric or psychological effects, why did it happen exactly when predicted?
The timing suggests intentionality, not coincidence

Skeptics respond that expectations shaped perception—but defenders say this doesn’t explain the precision and scale.

👀 4. Not everyone looked directly at the sun

To counter the “eye damage” theory:

Some witnesses claimed to see the phenomenon without staring directly at the sun
Others described the sun as not painfully bright, allowing prolonged viewing

👉 Defender argument:
If retinal damage were the cause, experiences should be:

Highly individual
Not coordinated or structured

But reports often describe organized movement (spinning, zigzagging).

🌍 5. Reports from a distance

Some testimonies claim:

The phenomenon was visible outside the immediate crowd
Observers miles away reported unusual solar behavior

👉 Defender argument:
This challenges the idea of localized crowd psychology.

(Skeptics question how strong or reliable these distant reports are.)

🔬 6. The “physical effects” problem

One of the hardest points for skeptics:

Wet ground and clothes reportedly became dry very quickly
Some described a sudden heat-like effect

👉 Defender claim:
Psychological explanations don’t easily account for physical environmental changes.

Skeptics reply with natural drying explanations—but defenders argue the speed and scale were unusual.

🧩 7. Consistent core pattern (despite variation)

Defenders admit testimonies differ—but argue:

Variations are expected in any large crowd
The core experience is consistent:
- Sun changes appearance
- Motion (spin/dance/zigzag)
- Color phenomena

👉 Their point:
Complete uniformity would actually be more suspicious.

🧠 8. “Hallucination doesn’t scale well”

A philosophical objection:

Hallucinations are typically private and idiosyncratic
Here we have a shared, structured experience across thousands

👉 Defender conclusion:
This looks less like hallucination and more like a real external phenomenon, even if its nature is debated.

⚖️ Where the debate really sits

The disagreement isn’t just about what happened—but about how to interpret unusual events:

Skeptics:
Combine smaller natural explanations (optics + expectation + atmosphere)
Defenders:
Argue that stacking explanations still fails to fully explain the convergence of:
- Prediction
- Scale
- Structure
- Physical effects

🧭 A deeper layer (often overlooked)

Some philosophers and historians take a middle path:

Something real and unusual likely occurred
But interpreting it as a Catholic Marian miracle is an additional step

This separates:

The event itself
The religious meaning assigned to it

If you want, I can go even deeper into:

How this compares to other mass religious phenomena (like Lourdes or modern apparitions), or
Whether Fátima is considered strong or weak evidence compared to other miracle claims.

Wisdom

Yes, it´s time for a rant about FC again!

I was genuinely shocked when doing on-line research about FC and its derivatives. The technique is *obviously* fake. Even pro-FC´s documentaries can´t hide the fact that the poor autists are being heavily prompted by the facilitators...and often get the wrong answers anyway. Yet, FC is a world-wide movemennt?! Or cult. The implications are staggering.

Your local unfriendly Skeptic association often says that people (ordinary plebs) simply aren´t good observers or reliable eye witnesses. The FC phenomenon confirms this thesis *in freakin´spades*. Thousands of people apparently think they can communicate with their severely autistic children on a daily basis with this technique. And yet it´s all a puppet show and a delusion. It´s not like seeing a Bigfoot in the forest just once.

This seems to have consequences for how we look at eye witness reports of the supernatural. For instance Fatima. Or the 500 brothers who supposedly saw the risen Christ all at once after his resurrection. Or...anything really.

But then it struck me. The FC cult is secular (there is a New Age version, too, but the mainline FCers seem to be secular). So we have a case where thousands of people see a *natural* phenomenon which simply isn´t there. Which reminds me of C S Lewis´ quip that while most reports of the supernatural are false, most reports about natural events are also false. Indeed! Most things we see are lies.

But if that´s the case, we can´t be sure that the supernatural isn´t real. Maybe it still lurks somewhere out there...

The quest continues.

Easter Bunny Ganapati???

LOL. It´s April Fool´s Day, so this picture of Ganesha seems appropriate. Note the two ghostly hares at his side. Sometimes Gemini is downright funny. And this was generated a few days ago!

Counterfeit

Hard to believe award? The Adventist channel Scriptures Illustrator claims that there is a Satanic Trinity made of Lucifer, Lilith and Asmodeus. The video (which gets tedious after a while) is about a young Christian man in Brazil who sold his soul to this legion of demons, et cetera. Even if taken at face value, very little in this story can´t be given a purely naturalist (psychological) explanation. And that´s that.

Sista dosan i Paris

"Sista dosan i Paris" låter ju som ett aprilskämt (eller en ovanligt hårdkokt deckare), men det verkar faktiskt vara sant. Frankrike har alltså förbjudit snus. Vitt snus, närmare bestämt. Brunt snus verkar vara i en legal gråzon sedan tidigare. Svenskar bosatta i Paris är lite irriterade...

Vitt snus förbjuds i Frankrike

Vitt snus förbjuds från 1 april

Världens största aprilskämt?

En moderat mås bland blåsipporna...

Världens största aprilskämt? Varför släpper de inte in SD i regeringen redan nu? Och Centerpartiet räknar kallt med att L och KD kommer att bryta med SD om Tidöpartierna förlorar valet. Vilket inte alls skulle förvåna mig. Undrar förresten hur många av de ombud som röstade mot Mohamsson på det där extrainkallade L-mötet som lämnat partiet? Juuust det...

Moderaterna har alltså lyckats krama ihjäl SD. Tror de, i vart fall. Och "mitten"partierna spelar dubbelt. Som vanligt. Hur det hela kommer att sluta är en öppen fråga. Eller kanske inte.

Det troligaste är att en neo-Tidöregering kommer att bedriva en nyliberal politik kombinerad med pseudo-nationalistisk retorik...och *inte* stoppa invandringen. Med andra ord: som de senaste fyra åren. Varför skulle det bli annorlunda?

Geezus, måste en viss "baserad" bloggare börja taktikrösta på Vänsterpartiet igen??? April, april. Eller...?

M släpper in SD i regering om de vinner valet

April Fool?

Credit: The Fourth Way

Trump says that NATO is a paper tiger and that Putin, too, knows it. LOL. Yeah, I wonder what could *possibly* have given him that idea...

Time for the Insiders to make their move?

Whatever

Trump says that the United States may leave NATO. Whatever. And now, sports...

Oh, and it´s April Fool´s day!

In the shadow

UAPs and transients are real. It´s peer reviewed at this point. Deal with it. And yes, scientists are afraid to speak out. Not because of MIBs or the CIA. The problem is ridicule from "the scientific community" (and the Skeptic movement). Boundary policing, as it were.

But don´t worry, Sabine has promised to keep us up-to-date on ongoing UAP research. Thanks for your attention to this matter.

Spy Wednesday

Mood change

OK, so maybe my mood changed a bit after a few hours of sleep. Look carefully at Guanyin´s crown, btw. What do you see?