The twilight zone

 

A short clip from some old episode of "The Twilight Zone". Interesting concept...

Inte Preussen 1931

 

Rubrik i Aftonbladet just nu. Låt mig gissa. Handlar inte om måndagens talmansval?

Masken av

 

Credit: Förmodligen inte Stanley Kubrick

TV4 kastar masken, eller vad? 

En DÖP:s klagan?

 

Skulle vara intressant att få veta vad skribenten anser om adoptioner. Fast strängt taget bryr jag mig inte. Jag är nämligen inte en DÖP (Dunham-överintresserad person). Har väl bara kommenterat henne typ två gånger tidigare på den här bloggen...

Lena Dunham har köpt ett barn på postorder

Den onödiga samtiden

 

Apropå en ny "reality"serie (som jag inte har sett). 

HBO spelar med i en kvinnohatande samtid 

Grand theft trolling

 

A lot of spam comments at the strangest of places (not here though) about GTA 6 the last couple of days. Apparently a new version of the classical video game "Grand Theft Auto". I admit I had no idea. OK, the extended look trailer has been released now, so please drop the attention trolling! 

Nertacklad?

 

Vilken sida står TH egentligen på? Finns det inget annat sätt att tackla den här frågan på...?

"Pernilla Wahlgren bryter mot riktlinjerna" etc etc

Polisanmäld av Centerpartiet

Pernilla Wahlgren rasar mot centerpartistens ord om pedofiler

Greenland oil crisis

 

Credit: Håvard Berland

This shit isn´t going away, is it? It would be ironic if the next world war would be fought between the US and the EU circa 2040 over oil on Greenland. Rather than between Russia and the EU over Svalbard, as predicted in some futuristic documentary I watched long ago...

Greenland issues "strong warning" as Trump-linked oil firm prepares to drill

Årets förvillare?

 

Credit: Blahaaaaaaaa69420 (sic)

Har inte läst deras bok, men okej, den kan ju vara intressant. Har ett ganska starkt minne av att Jutta Rabe blev inbjuden av den svenska regeringen att lägga fram sina bevis, men att hon drog sig ur i sista minuten. Vilket kan tolkas som att hon inte hade några...

HBO rekommenderar rysk konspiration

The long night has come

I never even heard of this scy fy TV series before. "Gene Roddenberry´s Andromeda" (or just "Andromeda") was originally aired over 20 years ago. Somebody (unclear who) has started to upload the old episodes on YouTube. The link above goes to episode three, "To loose the fateful lightning", which I have been hate watching a couple of times now. More on that later in this review!

"Andromeda" is apparently based on some old ideas by the late "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry. It was produced by his widow, actress Majel Barrett. Judging by the four episodes uploaded so far, the series is similar to "Star Trek" but mostly lacks its weird charm. The good guys are called the Systems Commonwealth, somewhat imprudently dubbed "the greatest civilization in history". Following a civil war, the Commonwealth is destroyed and replaced by a dark age in which humans are constantly attacked by various evil alien races. The main character, Dylan Hunt, is a High Guard officer from the Commonwealth who miraculously survived for 300 years at the event horizon of a black hole. His starship Andromeda Ascendant and a *very* motley crew roam the galaxy, trying to restore the old civilization. 

In the third episode, Hunt and his associates encounter a group of teenagers and children onboard an otherwise abandoned Commonwealth space station. The youngsters have formed a quasi-religious cult, awaiting the appearence of a Messiah-like figure who can save them from the Magog and the Nietzscheans (two alien races at war with humanity). It turns out that the cult´s expectations are very concrete: the children need the High Guard access codes to battle ships armed with planet-killing doomsday weapons. As the sole survivor of the old Commonwealth, Hunt does indeed have the codes. 

What happens next is...interesting. The stranded children clearly expect Hunt (their long awaited savior) to be a militarist who will lead them in battle and utterly destroy the aliens. Instead, Hunt turns out to be an idealist and near-pacifist. One of his associates is a full-pacifist Magog who sounds like a stereotypical Buddhist (or is it Quaker). He´s darn ugly, too. Like the Jews in the New Testament, the children are disappointed when the Messiah preaches peace instead of armed resistance. Their mentality is clearly that of religious fundamentalists. 

However...

What annoys me with this episode is that the "cult" is clearly right. With a few exceptions, the Magog are evil. Like parasitic wasps, they reproduce by laying their eggs inside humans. Why *not* nuke their planets sky high? Already in the first episode, we learn that the Systems Commonwealth preferred to negotiate with this bizarre race rather than resist them, handing over the Nietzschean home world to the intruders. At the time, the Nietzscheans were key *allies* of the Commonwealth. This triggered the civil war which brought down "the greatest civilization". Sounds like civilizational suicide. Yet, at least in this episode, we are somehow supposed to draw the conclusion that the children are crazy fanatics, while Hunt is the adult in the room?!

Frankly, I never seen more idiotic pacifist propaganda.  

"Star Trek" is mostly liberal, but during the 00´s, there was actually a series in the franchise that was more Neo-Conservative: "Star Trek: Enterprise". I wonder if "Andromeda" acted as the liberal counter-weight to that show? I suppose those of us who didn´t see the series when it was first aired will find it in 106 episodes. Assuming the YouTube channel Andromeda Official really has the rights to show them!

Shaolin Heroes

 

En kritisk recension av en AI-översatt bok om shaolin. Men har inte hela shaolin-grejen redan avslöjats som värsta bluffen?

Shaolinmästarens visdom urvattnas till ett lågvattenmärke

A propos some internet drama

 

Does Giorgio A Tsoukalos "want out"? 

Släktträff

 

Bilden har som vanligt ingen koppling till blogginlägget

Det är *något* konstigt med Hübinettes fixering vid dessa frågor, även om jag ärligt talat inte vet vad det kan vara. Han verkar i vart fall besatt av den "traditionella" överklassen. Vill han innerst inne bli en del av den? Men okej, det är såklart intressant att många vänsterprofiler kommer från *över*klassen, inte ens medelklassen! Slutsatser har dragits. 

Staffan Westerberg har gått bort

Än en gång om "släktrelationerna" mellan 70-talsvänstern och den gamla extremhögern

Om poeten Lars Forrsells högerradikale far

Psycho-the-rapist

 

Thomas Sheridan is...well, controversial. Often coded as Alt Right or even Satanist. But listen to this old video from 2009, which apparently got him banned from (Irish?) public access TV. He sounds like somebody who old fashioned feminists might want to take a bear with! 

What happened, Thomas me man? 

The dharma of Disclosure Day

 

Will religious people be shocked by UFO disclosure? Our man Brad believes that at least Buddhists won´t. For instance, there is an "alien" bodhisattva arriving on a "UFO" in the Lotus Sutra. Yes, that would be Gadgadasvara alias the Bodhisattva Wondrous Sound. Disclosure happened already 2000 years ago, it seems! So what seems to be the prob? See also link below. 

A description of an alien visit in the Lotus Sutra

Rich people´s problems

 

Ååååkej. Låter som en parodi...

Husdjurs skärmtid ökar

Sanningen är nog noir ändå

 

På förekommen anledning. 

Sanningen är noir

I samlarens spår

This is the Way

 

An analysis of the Star Wars-related TV series "The Mandalorian" from the viewpoint of anthropology and religious studies. 

OK, so I have a few objections...

I never watched "The Mandalorian", so I have zero opinions on that one, but what about the anthropology? It simply can´t be true that the strictest religions are the most succesful ones. The most extreme cults (say the Exclusive Brethren or Heaven´s Gate) are always much smaller than the less strict ones (say the Presbyterian Church USA or some New Age network). Or take the Catholic Church. Most Catholics aren´t monks or nuns, obviously. The strictest monastic orders are the smallest ones (the Carthusians). Maybe the *illusion* of strictness is more succesful than outright "liberalism", but that´s a different proposition entirely. The illusion of strictness is good for identity politics, just blending in with broader society isn´t. To maintain the illusion, some "creds" have to be thrown in, but not nearly as many as in a *really* and grimly strict group. "Fish on Friday" isn´t the same thing as veganism or fruitarianism. 

Or what about "the routinization of charisma"? The first generation of a religious group might be super-committed, but in order to survive beyond that initial charismatic push, it needs to create institutions which overtime will become bureaucratic, et cetera. It struck me when watching the video that some of the strict religious groups mentioned probably solve the problem by becoming free riders on the rest of society. How hard is it *really* to be an Orthodox Jew if you don´t have to do military service, get welfare money for your large family, and so on? I´m sure the Amish are free riding in some way, too. It´s just that US media are too uncritical and romantic in their attitudes towards them, so we haven´t heard anything about it. 

Finally, a complaint about "fictive kinship". Sociologists and anthropologists usually assume that this somehow overrides biology. But does it? First, most fictive kinship systems seem to be practiced within the same population, which means that there *is* a level of genetic kinship between the participants. Group selection could explain this. Second, even when "fictive kinship" is practiced more broadly (say in a missionary religion), the converts will tend to marry other people of the same faith, which means that the kinship ties will become genetical in the normal sense over time. Again, no mystery for evolutionary theory. 

In the science fiction TV series "The Mandalorian", one of the characters apparently adopts a baby of an *entirely different species*, treating him as his own son. Which is *highly* unlikely from an evolutionary viewpoint. Showing us that it´s indeed science *fiction*...

So nah, not convincing. 

Charlie och Lola

 

Låter ju som en pseudo-nyhet, men okej då, vi lägger ut! Verkar *inte* vara kopplat till situationen i Hormuz-sundet. 

Beskedet: Rosa mjölken slut "i princip överallt"

Mormons and Cylons

 

Some clips from the original (1978-79) "Battlestar Galactica" series. The Mormon influences are obvious in these three excerpts. Most clearly in the first one. But note that the evil guy is called Iblis, the Muslim name for Satan!