Schwärmerei

 

Well, probably not...

The birds shall prophecy

The Seventh Day Adventist-related channel Scriptures Illustrator really goes out on a limb here, relating a strange miracle story about an Inuit prophet in Alaska during the 19th century, a certain Maniilaq, who became a "Christian" after a divine prophecy given to him by a bird?! 

The Adventists seem interested in him since he supposedly kept the Saturday Sabbath. According to ChatGPT, Maniilaq was a real person - probably a syncretistic visionary and healer. Even the Adventist video linked above describe practices which sound magical or shamanistic. ChatGPT also claims that the Sabbatarian claims are very late (20th century).

The idea that various Native tribes heard about the Bible or Jesus already before the arrival of Christian missionaries does exist among some...Christian missionaries themselves. Which is actually pretty strange. This is evidently another example.   

Is the Inuit prophet Maniilaq a real person? Supposedly a Inuit 200 years ago who knew about Christianity and predicted the future without knowing the Bible, etc.

Yes — Maniilaq is regarded as a real historical person in Iñupiat (Inuit) oral tradition.

However, the more dramatic claims about him (detailed Christian-style prophecy, specific predictions of modern technology, etc.) are debated and often come from later retellings rather than early documentation.

Here’s a careful breakdown.

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1. Was Maniilaq a real person?

Most scholars and Alaska Native historians accept that:

• Maniilaq was an Iñupiat spiritual figure.

• He likely lived in the early–mid 19th century (often dated roughly 1800–1850).

• He was known as a healer and prophet among the Iñupiat of northwest Alaska.

He appears in missionary-era reports and Indigenous oral histories.

So: Yes, probably historical.

---

2. The Christianity Question

The more controversial claim is that:

• He predicted the arrival of Christianity before missionaries arrived.

• He knew about a single creator God.

• He anticipated moral teachings similar to the Bible.

However:

• Russian Orthodox missionaries were active in Alaska from the late 1700s onward.

• Trade networks spread ideas long before permanent missionary presence.

• Cultural contact may have preceded written records.

So it is entirely possible he had indirect exposure to Christian ideas, even if no missionary was stationed directly in his village.

There is no strong historical evidence that he developed detailed Christian theology independently and in isolation.

---

3. The Prophecy Claims

Modern retellings sometimes claim that Maniilaq predicted:

• The coming of white people.

• The coming of Christianity.

• The collapse of traditional ways.

• Modern technologies.

• A final moral reckoning.

However, these claims mostly come from:

• Later oral traditions recorded in the 20th century.

• Christian missionary interpretations.

• Modern Indigenous reinterpretations.

We do not have contemporary 19th-century written records documenting detailed prophecies in real time.

---

4. The “Prophet Without the Bible” Narrative

The idea that he:

• Predicted Christianity without ever encountering it,

• Or anticipated biblical teachings in detail,

is usually framed in apologetic or spiritual narratives rather than academic historical work.

From a scholarly perspective:

• It’s more plausible that he integrated new religious ideas into existing spiritual frameworks.

• Indigenous prophets frequently reinterpret outside influences in culturally meaningful ways.

That pattern is common globally.

---

5. Indigenous Prophetic Movements

Similar prophetic figures emerged in many Indigenous societies under colonial pressure.

They often:

• Combined traditional spirituality with incoming religious elements.

• Foretold social upheaval.

• Called for moral reform.

Maniilaq fits that broader anthropological pattern.

---

6. Scholarly Position

Most historians would say:

• He was likely a real spiritual leader.

• The details of his prophecies are difficult to verify.

• Some elements may have been shaped by later Christian influence.

• Oral traditions evolve over time.

This does not mean the tradition is false — only that it cannot be verified in the way modern historiography requires.

---

7. Bottom Line

Is Maniilaq real?
→ Probably yes.

Did he independently predict Christianity without exposure?
→ Historically uncertain and unlikely in the strong form sometimes claimed.

Are the dramatic prophecy narratives historically documented from his own time?
→ No, they appear in later accounts.

---

If you’d like, I can also compare Maniilaq to other Indigenous prophetic movements (like the Ghost Dance or cargo cults) to show the broader pattern.

Hedgehog bear

 

Some really tall tales in this one, including a bear which looks like a gigantic hedgehog (?!). Or what about a bizarre ursid from North Carolina with antlers? Or was it a fashion-conscious Devil Monkey spouting false such? Not much is said about the Giant Polar Bear lost in the London metro, which certainly disappointed my pelt! Another classic is a hyena in Algeria misidentified as an extinct Atlas bear. I originally assumed the hyaenine was somewhat misplaced too, but nah, these bizarre carnivors actually live in North Africa... 

Might make your day if your into some kind of crypto-crypto-crypto-zoology. Or bardic songs on shrooms (more like it)!

Really tall tales

 

Some entertaining tall tales about surviving Tyrannosaurs in various remote parts of the world: Kamchatka, Alaska, the Congo rainforests, the Australian outback. The stories are *very* hard to believe, indeed, there´s less "evidence" than usual even compared to other cryptids. The T-Rex sighted in Belgian Congo was originally not even claimed to be a dinosaur, but a large lizard...hoaxed by a Swedish explorer?! The story (and the faked photos) didn´t lose anything in retelling.

How´s this for Saturday morning fun?

Rubicon?

 

Det här måste vara den mest korkade rubrik som någonsin figurerat på en vänsterblogg. Eller också har Tobias Hübinette nu definitivt gått över till västimperialismens läger. Detta är hans Rubicon. Hade jag väl sagt om jag varit marxist. Vilket jag inte är. 

Eller snarare västimperialismen *av igår*...

Gårdagens toppmöte i Alaska mellan Trump och Putin symboliserar att den nya multipolära världsordningen är här nu och nävrätten har ersatt folkrätten

Ja, men whatever. Även denna kan vara av intresse:

80 år sedan andra världskrigets slut

Trump´s McKinley moment

 

I also suspect that the sudden renaming of Denali to Mount McKinley (the old "colonialist" name) has some kind of symbolic significance that goes beyond the merely anti-Woke. After all, Trump didn´t bother renaming the mountain last time he was POTUS. 

During his first term, Trump tried to align himself with some purported ideological legacy of Andrew Jackson. At least in US political mythology, "anti-imperialist" Bourbon Democrat Grover Cleveland is seen as a Jackson-style character. William McKinley, by contrast, is more to the liking of the Neo-Conservatives and other imperialists.

Before he took office, Trump triggered diplomatic conflicts with about five nations (even threatening to militarily attack Panama). I presume this is supposed to be some kind of "McKinley moment". So far, it mostly sounds like Nixon´s madman strategy...

Why does Trump like William McKinley so much?

A voice crying in the wilderness

 

Joe Rogan talks to outdoorsman Steven Rinella who cracks a tale (or tall tale) about a crazy Canadian hippie in Alaska who claimed to be the Biblical character John the Baptist?! The hippie turned out to be a parasite and petty thief, but ultimately met his doom in a small cabin during the unforbidding Arctic winter. Apparently, he lacked the proper Essene survival skills. Anyhow...

Rinella´s friend evidently gave the hippie a classical "sky burial". He just threw his corpse outside and the next day it was gone, presumably consumed by some hungry denizen of the Alaskan hinterland.

I admit that this story didn´t move me as much as I expected, but perhaps I´ve been hardened by too much consumption of Tantric material from the happy generations of Tibet...

Tigers in the snow

 

Can´t Americans ever stop mystery-mongering? LOL. Here is a "cryptid" I never heard about before: tigers in Alaska. Yes, Alaska. Or rather no, not really. There are apparently some Siberian tigers in an Alaskan zoo (see the funny comments in the commentary section), but what about the wild expanses of the Last Frontier? It seems the "reports" are a collection of hoaxes, April Fool´s jokes and fakelore. Yes, we´re talking about the pseudo-reality series "Alaska Monsters" and its tall tale about the White Death, a super-sized tiger supposedly stalking the so-called Alaskan Triangle (compare Bermuda Triangle). 

There are tigers in the Russian Far East - the previously mentioned Siberian tiger - but for various reasons, it´s highly unlikely that they could have wandered all the way to Alaska. Nor is it likely that an undetected relict population could have survived from some time before the Ice Age. One interesting fact is that tigers in Russia were detected by scientists using helicopters from which they spotted their footprints. Which by implication means that a "cryptid" can´t really hide from humans, if said humans decide to find it...

But if nobody is looking, who knows?

Still, it seems we can put at least this little mystery to rest.  

  

Of course!

 

I suppose it was inevitable that some conspiracy theorists (or "Truthers" as bro Sheridan calls them) would start blaming the LA fires on...Project Bluebeam! Soon, they will start harping about HAARP, as well. 

The fake alien invasion didn´t happen during the drone scare in the Garden State, so here we go again. Anything but acknowledging, you know, the climate crisis... 

Is God a space alien?

 

Atheists sometimes ask Christians how they can know that Jesus wasn´t a space alien. This content-creator, Jay from the YouTube channel Faith Evolved, turned the question around and asked the atheists how *they* can know that God isn´t a space alien! 

In the clip above, Jay expands on the topic. What if both Jesus, Gabriel or Moroni were aliens? Indeed, what if all "gods" are really aliens? Maybe they are superior intelligences trying to communicate with primitive humanity, using word-symbols we can understand. And that´s apparently alright. Jay is inspired by the peculiar Urantia Book, a channeled scripture first published in 1955 by renegade Adventist William Sadler. The conflation between Ascended Masters and space aliens presumably comes from Theosophy originally. 

Make of this content what you wish.  

Cylons over Yukon

 

An intriguing postscript to the Chinese spy balloon scare of 2023. A photo of one of the objects shot down by the US Air Force over Yukon in Canada has finally been declassified. Now, we are supposed to think it may have been an UFO instead! Could there be a connection to the recent disclosure hearings in Washington DC? 

My guess is that the objects of course were Chinese (or even Andamanese) and that the USAF for some reason are trying to get the public to think that they were alien space craft. To avoid an embarrasing "Sputnik moment"?

Some quotes from the first article linked below:   

>>>What makes the incidents of February 2023 particularly intriguing is the lack of concrete details about the objects themselves. While the Chinese balloon was clearly identified as a surveillance device, the other three objects remain largely mysterious. The fact that no debris has been recovered has only fueled speculation about their nature. U.S. President Joe Biden suggested that the objects were likely benign, potentially private or research balloons, but the absence of detailed imagery or wreckage has left room for alternative theories.

>>>The limited information provided by the military has also stoked conspiracy theories, with some speculating that these objects could be of extraterrestrial origin or advanced surveillance technology deployed by rival states. Experts, however, caution against such conclusions.

>>>In the wake of these incidents, both the Pentagon and NASA have ramped up their efforts to investigate UAPs, a term that has largely replaced the older “UFO” terminology in official discourse. Meanwhile, Canada’s Sky Canada Project, led by the Office of the Chief Science Advisor, is expected to release its own report on UAP sightings in 2024, potentially shedding more light on these mysterious encounters.

The second link goes to a blog post by ultra-alternative blogger Vox Day who says (seemingly un-ironically) that the UFO over Yukon must be a Cylon ship?! The Cylons are the bad guys in the Mormon-inspired science fiction franchise "Battlestar Galactica"...

First image of "UFO" shot down by US Air Force emerges 

Cylons are real

Operation Aurora

 

Credit: USAF 

Let me get this straight. Trump goes to Aurora. He announces Operation Aurora. Then, auroras happen all over the lower 48. 

WTF?! 

*Is* he the God-Emperor? Or has his faction just taken over HAARP?  

The island of Doctor Moreau

 

This will never happen and is probably just another scam to part rich people and governments with their money. But nice try! 

"Closer than people think": De-extinction 

The minds of killer whales

A highly disturbing look at the ocean´s smartest animal: the killer whale a.k.a. orca. They seem to be using their intelligence to really weird ends, such as killing substantially larger blue whales only to feast on their tongues, leaving the rest of the carcass to rot. Or killing sharks (including whale sharks) with the sole purpose of extracting their livers?! 

But sure, I suppose the rest of the dead whales or sharks become food for other scavengers. And the reason the orca´s behavior looks disturbing to us, is presumably that *we* are the only animal who has the right to help itself to delikatessen. Or so we imagined. 

Other orca behaviors are too bizarre to mention here. 

It´s not clear whether the orcas are *really* getting smarter, but they are certainly changing their behaviors through social learning. For instance, the population off the Iberian coast that rams and sinks boats. New hunting techniques could have been developed in response to changes in the fauna due to climate change.

Still, it seems humans may yet have the last word. Off the coast of Washington State, overfishing has led to the dissolution of orca groups and hence their social bonds, as individual orcas strike out on their own in desperate search for food. But this also makes it more difficult to learn and pass on new hunting techniques. 

Perhaps the killer whales aren´t really getting smarter at all. They are getting dumber! Something tells me many Homo wouldn´t mind... 

Are orcas getting smarter?

Warm-blooded in Alaska

 

"Alaskan Dinosaurs" is a 2022 documentary distributed by both NOVA, National Geographic and the BBC. I recently watched it on Swedish TV, assuming it was a peculiar rerun of an earlier NOVA docu, "Arctic Dinosaur" (which I really liked).  However, it seems the very concept of dinos in northern Alaska 70 million years ago has morphed into a virtual TV cottage industry lately! 

The basic plot is the same, though: a team of paleontologists roam Alaska in the dead of winter, looking for ancient dinosaur bones in the Prince Creek formation. Another location scanned is Denali (Mount McKinley). During the Cretaceous, Alaska was even further north than today, and the constant question is how cold-blooded reptiles could have survived there at all. Although the global temperature was much higher during the Age of Dinosaurs, it would have dropped below zero during the polar night, which lasted for four months at the place later known as Prince Creek. For various reasons, scientists don´t believe that the dinosaurs could have migrated further south. They seem to have stay put all year long. The fauna was also incredibly diverse, featuring both fairly large herbivorous dinosaurs and various predators, including tyrannosaurids. Pterodactyls were another staple. 

"The dog that didn´t bark" is the total absence of fossils from reptiles we know for sure were cold-blooded, such as lizards, snakes or tortoises. Instead, birds and mammals have been excavated! They are, of course, warm-blooded. This suggests that dinosaurs may have been warm-blooded, too. It´s relatively well established that some dinosaurs were feathered (including tyrannosaurids). Further research also shows that they might have feasted upon decaying wood filled with insects and other critters, thereby surviving the winter months. 

All that being said, I still found "Alaskan Dinosaurs" more boring than "Arctic Dinosaurs", but perhaps that´s subjective. Also, the macho angle from the old documentary is gone, replaced by more "Woke" angles, including paleontologists who look slightly trans, and one who says that tyrannosaurids were cute! I suppose that, too, is a bit subjective...

Still, might be worth watching and pondering on a cold polar night, but preferrably indoors. 

The Aviary

 

A somewhat peculiar episode of The Why Files. It deals with remote viewing and its connection to the CIA and the Cold War, but ends inconclusively (unlike many other episodes of this show). 

It seems that AJ (the moderator) believes in UFOs and government cover-ups. That´s pretty far out. Does he really think aliens use mountains on Earth to stash their flying saucers? Here´s a more likely explanation: while remote viewing might work on some level, the entire UFO-alien thing is in itself a government conspiracy. 

Small wonder Richard Doty was involved in all this! He must be the most accomplished disinfo agent out there. Birds of a feather stick together...  

Northern Lights go south

Credit: NWS Anchorage 

Some are from Alaska, but others are from the Lower 48, as low as Phoenix, Arizona! Phoenix Lights, anyone? Pictures from March this year. 

Northern Lights in the United States

Nice try, general

Credit: Michael Pinczolits

Nice try, gringos. Maybe you are lying *now* for some reason? 

The bizarre secret behind the Chinese spy balloon

Picky grizzlies on an untamed planet

 

Credit: Henryhartley

"Eden: Untamed Planet" is a seven-part BBC documentary released in 2021. I just watched the sixth episode, titled "Alaska: Last American Frontier". It took me some time to find the correct English title (I watched it on a Swedish channel), and I´m beginning to suspect that all of these Alaskan wildlife documentaries were really taped at the same time in exactly the same spots! Then, they are edited and marketed as a dozen different docus...

The last American frontier turns out to be the good ol´ Alaskan Panhandle, more specifically the Alexander Archipelago (actually named after Russian Czar Alexander II). I admit that I wasn´t *that* touched by it, but then, legends about Sasquatch *are* more interesting, let´s be honest! 

"Grizzly" bears (I assume they are really mainline brown bears), moose, bald-headed eagles and grey whales are some of the pretty inevitable animals showed. For some reason, the Alexander Archipelago wolf is only featured for a couple of seconds, apparently eating a moose carcass. We also get to meet flying squirrels, beetles and fungi. 

I was surprised to learn that bears only eat a smaller part of the salmons they catch, leaving the rest to rot in the forest. This has the intriguing consequence of making the trees grow taller and stronger. The rotting fish contain nutrients the trees need. Well, thank god somebody else takes care of the delikatessen spurned by the grizzlies!

The production ends with the usual moral preaching about taking care of Nature, blah blah, as if Nature couldn´t take care of itself just fine. We´re the real endangered species here. I´m pretty sure the carrion beetles will still be around in 1,000 years...  

Jewels of Jericho

An old classic, apparently still going strong. The article is from 2012, but there is more recent content pro or con on YouTube. The Why Files has covered it, too. 

I don´t remember where I first heard about the "Siberian hell sounds", but it was absolutely during the 1990´s. Strange Magazine? 

The Siberian Hell Sounds