Running 'Cause I Can't Fly

Labor Day 2020

noreply@blogger.com (CoyotePrime) — Mon, 07 Sep 2020 07:39:00 +0000

Have a safe and peaceful holiday, folks!

Greg Hunter, "Violence Will Get Even Worse"

noreply@blogger.com (CoyotePrime) — Mon, 07 Sep 2020 01:44:00 +0000

"Violence Will Get Even Worse"

By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"Former CIA Officer and counter-terrorism expert Kevin Shipp says the violence you are seeing in American cities is not going to stop anytime soon. Is the violence going to get worse? Shipp contends, “It will get worse. We are going to see it amplified leading up to the election, and it’s going to get even worse after the election. These people see this as their moment to act. It’s a moment that they have been building for a couple of decades. We are going to see the attacks increase, especially by Black Lives Matter (BLM). People need to understand and be prepared for what is coming. They are desperate. They know the Democrat Party does not have a real candidate to offer. Donald Trump is extremely strong, and they also know that Trump has a support base that is larger than it was during the last election. They see this as their time. They are not going to give up, and they are not going to stop. They have been encouraged by Nancy Pelosi, Kamala Harris and others, such as Maxine Waters, to increase the violence. So, they are being encouraged by top Democrats, and they are not going to stop. This will escalate.”

Shipp says, “BLM and Antifa want a civil war.” Shipp explains, “That’s exactly what they want, a civil war, and they want to split America. They understand that the conservative people and the patriots out there have gained a lot of ground. They are intentionally starting a civil war to overturn our Constitutional system and our fundamental belief system. They are starting a civil war, and they are starting serious attacks. It’s not just Trump supporters, but Black Lives Matter has had attack after attack on white Americans simply because of their race. Anyone who resists this movement, they label them as a white supremacist with no facts and no evidence. They know exactly what they are doing. When they do this, and I am talking about the Democrat Party, it is a propaganda technique because it shuts down any discussion and any examination of the facts. People who are representing Trump at these ‘protests’ need to understand they are in danger. It’s clear they have an organized effort to attack Trump supporters and conservatives with violence. So, people need to be prepared and situationally aware of their surroundings. Look for somebody following them. Look for a brewing protest on the street and things like that. ”

After the election, Shipp predicts, “Trump is going to win, but when Trump wins these people are just going to go crazy and escalate the violence.”

As far as the cheat-by-mail campaign the Democrats have been pushing, Shipp thinks, “They are a little late in the game. So, I don’t think that’s going to work. What they may do if the ballots don’t come in until after the election, they will say we’ve got all these votes, and we want to count them. They will contest the election, and that’s already part of their plan. They know these mail-in votes are not going to work this late in the game. After the election, they are going to claim that this is reason to contest the election and not concede. Just watch it happen.”

Shipp also predicts, “I think Trump is going to have a wider margin of victory than he did in 2016. The Democrat Party has shot themselves in the foot, encouraging this violence, thinking it was going to make Trump look bad and make things look unstable. It has backfired on them. The Democrats already know they have lost, and Joe Biden sadly gets worse by the week in terms of his mental acuity, and they know it. It’s embarrassing and cruel for the Democrat Party to keep putting him in that position. The Democrats are terrified, and Donald Trump is going to decimate Joe Biden in the debates. Democrats are going to do everything they can to keep these debates from happening.”

- https://usawatchdog.com/

Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com as he goes

One-on-One with former CIA Officer Kevin Shipp.

Must Watch! “Economic Collapse Accelerates; Hotel Crisis; Wealth Transfer On Steroids; Homeless Epidemic”

noreply@blogger.com (CoyotePrime) — Mon, 07 Sep 2020 01:02:00 +0000

Jeremiah Babe,

“Economic Collapse Accelerates; Hotel Crisis;

Wealth Transfer On Steroids; Homeless Epidemic”

Musical Interlude: Vangelis, “Beautiful Planet Earth”

noreply@blogger.com (CoyotePrime) — Sun, 06 Sep 2020 19:54:00 +0000

Vangelis, “Beautiful Planet Earth”

"A Look to the Heavens"

noreply@blogger.com (CoyotePrime) — Sun, 06 Sep 2020 19:52:00 +0000

"Is this what will become of our Sun? Quite possibly. The bubble of expanding gas pictured below is the planetary nebula PK 164 +31.1, the remnants of the atmosphere of a Sun-like star expelled as its supply of fusion-able core hydrogen became depleted. Visible near the center of the nebula is what remains of the core itself- a blue-hot white dwarf star. This particularly photogenic planetary nebula shows intricate shells of gas likely expelled at different times toward the end the star's demise, and whose structure is not fully understood.

Click image for larger size.

This deep image of PK 164 +31.1 from the Calar Alto Observatory in Spain shows many other stars from our own Milky Way Galaxy as well as several galaxies far in the distance. PK 164 +31, also known as Jones-Emberson 1, lies about 1,600 light years away toward the constellation of the Wildcat (Lynx). Due to its faintness (magnitude 17) and low surface brightness, the object is only visible with a good-sized telescope. Although the expanding nebula will fade away over the next few thousand years, the central white dwarf may well survive for billions of years- to when our universe may be a very different place.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap121030.html

Chet Raymo, “The Journey”

noreply@blogger.com (CoyotePrime) — Sun, 06 Sep 2020 19:50:00 +0000

“The Journey”
by Chet Raymo

"Here's a deep-deep sky map of the universe from the March 9, 2006 issue of Nature. The horizontal scale is a 360 view right around the sky; the vertical gaps at 6 hours and 24 hours are the parts of the universe that are blocked to our view by the disk of our own Milky Way Galaxy. The vertical scale - distance from Earth - is logarithmic (10, 100, 1000, etc.) measured in megaparsecs (a parsec equals 3.26 light-years). Across the top is the Big Bang, and the oldest and most distant thing we can see, the cosmic microwave background, the radiation of the Big Bang itself. A few relatively nearby galaxies are designated at the bottom. All that stuff in the middle that looks like smoke or dusty cobwebs are quasars and galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

A smoke of galaxies! (2 trillion galaxies according to latest estimates.- CP) A universe cobwebbed with Milky Ways! Each galaxy itself a smoke of stars, hundreds of billions of stars, many or all of them with planets. My book, "Walking Zero," is about the human journey from the omphalos of our birth into the world of the galaxies, a journey many of us are disinclined to make. Here is how the Prologue to the book begins:

"Each of us is born at the center of the world. For nine months our physical selves are assembled molecule by molecule, cell by cell, in the dark covert of our mother's womb. A single fertilized egg cell splits into two. Then four. Eight. Sixteen. Thirty-two. Ultimately, 50 trillion cells or so. At first, our future self is a mere blob of protoplasm. But slowly, ever so slowly, the blob begins to differentiate under the direction of genes. A symmetry axis develops. A head, a tail, a spine. At this point, the embryo might be that of a human, or a chicken, or a marmoset. Limbs form. Digits, with tiny translucent nails. Eyes, with papery lids. Ears pressed like flowers against the head. Clearly now a human. A nose, nostrils. Downy hair. Genitals.

As the physical self develops, so too a mental self takes shape, not yet conscious, not yet self-aware, knitted together as webs of neurons in the brain, encapsulating in some respects the evolutionary experience of our species. Instincts impressed by the genes. The instinct to suck, for example. Already, in the womb, the fetus presses its tiny fist against its mouth in anticipation of the moment when the mouth will be offered the mother's breast. The child will not have to be taught to suck. Other inborn behaviors will express themselves later. Laughing. Crying. Striking out in anger. Loving.

What, if anything, goes on in the mind of the developing fetus we may never know. But this much seems certain: To the extent that the emerging self has any awareness of its surroundings, its world is coterminous with itself. We are not born with knowledge of the antipodes, the plains of Mars, or the far-flung realm of the galaxies. We are not born with knowledge of Precambrian seas, the supercontinent of Pangea, or the Age of Dinosaurs. We are born into a world scarcely older than ourselves and scarcely larger than ourselves. And we are at its center.

A human life is a journey into the grandeur of a universe that may contain more galaxies than there are cells in the human body, a universe in which the whole of a human lifetime is but a single tick of the cosmic clock. The journey can be disorienting; our first instincts are towards coziness, comfort, our mother's enclosing arms, her breast. The journey, therefore, requires courage - for each individual, and for our species.

Uniquely of all animals, humans have the capacity to let our minds expand into the space and time of the galaxies. No other creatures can number the cells in their bodies, as we can, or count the stars. No other creatures can imagine the explosive birth of the observable universe 14 billion years ago from an infinitely hot, infinitely small seed of energy. That we choose to make this journey - from the all-sustaining womb into the vertiginous spaces and abyss of time - is the glory of our species, and perhaps our most frightening challenge.”

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

Paulo Coelho, "The Mouse And The Books"

noreply@blogger.com (CoyotePrime) — Sun, 06 Sep 2020 19:49:00 +0000

"The Mouse And The Books"
by Paulo Coelho

"When I was interned in Dr. Eiras Hospital, I began to have panic crises. One day, I decided to consult the psychiatrist in charge of my case: “Doctor, I am overcome by fear; it takes from me the joy of living.” “Here in my office there is a mouse that eats my books”, said the doctor. “If I get desperate about this mouse, he will hide from me and I will do nothing else in life but hunt him. Therefore, I put the most important books in a safe place and let him gnaw some others. In this way, he is still a mouse and does not become a monster. Be afraid of some things and concentrate all your fear on them – so that you have courage in the rest.”

- http://paulocoelhoblog.com/

"Our Collective Fate..."

noreply@blogger.com (CoyotePrime) — Sun, 06 Sep 2020 19:47:00 +0000

"We live in radical times surrounded by tasks that seem impossible. It has become our collective fate to be alive in a time of great tragedies, to live in a period of overwhelming disasters and to stand at the edge of sweeping changes. The river of life is flooding before us, and a tide of poisons affect the air we breathe and the waters we drink and even tarnish the dreams of those who are young and as yet innocent. The snake-bitten condition has already spread throughout the collective body.

However, it is in troubled times that it becomes most important to remember that the wonder of life places the medicine of the self near where the poison dwells. The gifts always lie near the wounds, the remedies are often made from poisonous substances, and love often appears where deep losses become acknowledged. Along the arc of healing the wounds and the poisons of life are created the exact opportunities for bringing out all the medicines and making things whole again."

- Michael Meade, "Fate And Destiny"

“Hustled Through Life”

noreply@blogger.com (CoyotePrime) — Sun, 06 Sep 2020 19:42:00 +0000

“Hustled Through Life”

by Paul Rosenberg

“Most people, sad to say, are too rushed, frightened, and confused to think about what they really want out of life. They are hustled through school, forced into long-term decisions before they’re ready to face them, then held to those decisions by fear and shame. They choose from a limited set of options, and they know that change will be punished. Eventually they get old and find time to think, but by then they can’t bear to question too deeply; that would jeopardize their self-worth, and they haven’t time to rebuild it.

For an intelligent, creative, and expansive species like ours, this rush to nowhere is among the greatest of evils. And yet it continues, mostly unquestioned. At no point in the usual Western life do we stop, take some serious time for ourselves, and think about the overall:

• What’s life about anyway? What’s the point of what we do?

• What’s the purpose of a career? Why should I care about it above everything else?

• Why should I glorify the existing system? Why should I agree to support it?

• Who paid for everything I learned in school?

• Should I have a family? If so, why? If not, why not?

• What do I think is fun? Does it really coincide with the beer ads on TV?

• What’s the purpose of being like everyone else? Why am I so afraid to be different?

We don’t address such questions. Rather, we’re pushed past them. Even in a church or synagogue – places where larger questions are supposed to be addressed – the person in the pulpit wants us to become and/or remain a member of the congregation; their job depends upon it. There are true ministers and rabbis, but for most it’s all too easy to push their audience into what’s convenient. As a result, we see little motivation in the modern West, save for the basest of motivators: things that match a line from the Bible that says, “Whose god is their belly.”

Mind you, I’m not against wealth, good food, or sex. I think those are fine things. They are not, however, the whole of life. We are much bigger than that. We ought not be limited to belly-level aspirations. But when we’re rushed, that’s all we’re able to see.

Status and Fear: The two big motivators we face in this rush through life – fear and status – are both negative.

Fear is a manipulation technology; people who make you afraid are hacking your mind. They want you to ignore reason and obey them fast. (I wish I could cover this in depth here, but we haven’t space. Please see issue #54 of my subscription newsletter.) When we’re afraid, we make our worst choices. Put plainly, fear makes us stupid. But we encounter it on a daily basis… and it destroys us by inches.

Status is the compulsion to compare ourselves with others, and whether we’re looking for the ways we’re better than others or looking for our shortcomings, it is deeply destructive. It’s also irrational, but the advertising business would crash without it and advertisers currently own the collective eyeballs of humanity.

Fear and status are, in a broad sense, drugs, and if you had a choice between smoking pot every day or being on fear and status every day, I’d definitely recommend the pot.

Confusion: Let’s be clear on something: Nearly every adult in the West will agree that politicians are liars and thieves… and yet they obey them without question. Is there any possibility we’d do such things if we weren’t harried and confused? When we are confused, we pass over our own minds and their deliberations. There’s an old joke: “Who are you gonna believe, me or your lyin’ eyes?” But that’s precisely what confusion does to us, and under the pressures of confusion and authority, most people will ignore their own eyes.

Such things do not happen to people who are calm and confident. But the existing hierarchies of the West couldn’t function with a calm and confident populace; their operations require people to be frightened, confused, and blindly chasing status.

As a Result… As a result, most of us hurry through life, never knowing why. We live as others do, simply because that path is streamlined for us, exposing us to a minimal level of fear and shame. But that path does something else: It keeps us from experiencing ourselves. Seldom has this problem been put more succinctly than in this quote from Albert Einstein: "Small is the number of them who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts."

Stop following the crowd. Turn your back on the popular script. Stop feeding at the same trough as everyone else. Break away and learn to see with your own eyes, to feel with your own heart. Don’t conform. Let people criticize you. Decide for yourself what your life will be about. Make it matter.”

- https://www.freemansperspective.com/hustled-through-life/

Musical Interlude: Tyrone Wells, "Time of Our Lives"

noreply@blogger.com (CoyotePrime) — Sun, 06 Sep 2020 15:25:00 +0000

Tyrone Wells, "Time of Our Lives"

○

"Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened."
- Dr. Seuss

The Daily "Near You?"

noreply@blogger.com (CoyotePrime) — Sun, 06 Sep 2020 15:24:00 +0000

Demotte, Indiana, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"The Center Of The Universe..."

noreply@blogger.com (CoyotePrime) — Sun, 06 Sep 2020 15:17:00 +0000

“When science discovers the center of the universe,

a lot of people will be disappointed to find they are not it.”

- Bernard Baily

The Poet: Wendell Berry, "The Circles Of Our Lives"

noreply@blogger.com (CoyotePrime) — Sun, 06 Sep 2020 15:16:00 +0000

"The Circles Of Our Lives"

"Within the circles of our lives
we dance the circles of the years,
the circles of the seasons
within the circles of the years,
the cycles of the moon,
within the circles of the seasons,
the circles of our reasons
within the cycles of the moon.

Again, again we come and go,
changed, changing. Hands
join, unjoin in love and fear,
grief and joy. The circles turn,
each giving into each, into all.

Only music keeps us here,

each by all the others held.
In the hold of hands and eyes
we turn in pairs, that joining,
joining each to all again.

And then we turn aside, alone,
out of the sunlight gone
into the darker circles of return,
Within the circles of our lives..."

- Wendell Berry

"Truth Is Always Stranger..."

noreply@blogger.com (CoyotePrime) — Sun, 06 Sep 2020 15:13:00 +0000

"Truth is always stranger than fiction. We craft fiction to match our sense of how things ought to be, but truth cannot be crafted. Truth is, and truth has a way of astonishing us to our knees, reminding us that the universe does not exist to fulfill our expectations. Because we are imperfect beings who are self-blinded to the truth of the world's stunning complexity, we shave reality to paper thin theories and ideologies that we can easily grasp – and we call them truths. But the truth of a sea in all its immensity cannot be embodied in one tidewashed pebble."

- Dean Koontz

"Turn Off, Tune Out And Drop Out"

noreply@blogger.com (CoyotePrime) — Sun, 06 Sep 2020 15:04:00 +0000

"Turn Off, Tune Out And Drop Out"

by The Zman

"Television is the great propaganda weapon of the liberal democratic state, so it is a useful window into the thinking of the oligarchs. Movies and television shows still have to attract an audience, so they are usually the trailing edge of whatever the oligarchs are trying to impose on society, but the ads are a different matter. They are the leading edge of the latest Progressive fads. They know people will not abandon a show or movie just because the ads are offensive.

That’s what makes the ads a useful window into the black soul of our rulers. The ad makers are all from the ruling class. Look at the team photo of an ad agency and it looks like the faculty of an Ivy League college. There may be a little color in there for show, but otherwise it is all men with small hats and people who still write “Episcopalian” when asked about their religion. The advertising agencies that produce these ads are the special forces of the Judeo-Puritan ruling class.

This is why the ad makers were ready for the aggressive push to support the Black Lives Matter stuff after George Floyd died from an overdose. It is the thing that gets no attention, but should be the focus. Within days of the event, even before the rioters were in the streets, every global corporation was running diversity ads. The television services had all their blaxploitation films and shows ready. They even changed their graphical interfaces to feature black stuff.

It takes weeks and months to put together a simple ad. The concept has to be settled and the story boards created. Then there is filming, editing and final production. A corporate marketing program takes months to get ready. Changing the look and feel of the TV streaming service to feature blacks is no small feat. Creating a useful list of “black creators” should take a week or two, but they had it all ready to go. This pogrom was in the works for months.

In large part this is why Black Lives Matter initially had lots of white support, despite its record of murder and mayhem. Just four years ago BLM was executing cops, but thanks to a barrage of ads, most people forgot that and were initially inclined to support the cause. Then the black protesters reminded everyone why Africa is not the high point of human progress. The ad makers have now shifted the diversity message to feature homosexuals, deviants and girls playing male roles.

That’s really where you get a clear look into the mind of the oligarchs. This ad for the Marine Corp is getting revived in time for the election. When the ad was produced three years ago, the official line was that the Marines made the ad because they were facing pressure from women to let the girls go into combat units. That’s a lie, of course, as no women want to go into combat. Most men don’t want to see combat. Lying, however, is the core of advertising and the modern media.

The ad, of course, is disgusting. The thought of sending mothers and daughters into combat should make a decent person wretch. People at the edge of extinction turn their future into weapons of war. The ancients defined the barbarians, in part, by their habit of bringing their women and children to the battle. Of course, the absurdity of this little girl in combat is impossible to miss. Ad makers can normalize just about anything, but even they are bounded by reality.

You’ll note that the ad makers always use white women when they are trying to convince girls to be boys. Non-whites always get portrayed in traditional roles or they are cast as the natural leaders. The military ads always have the blacks in command positions or as the heroic example of the military code. That’s what they are selling to the non-whites they are targeting. Apparently, the oligarchs think they can patrol the empire with a Tinkerbell army run by 90-IQ officers.

Obviously, that will never happen. It does, however, reveal that these people are not geniuses who have carefully thought this through. They are caught up in nutty fads of their own creation, that sweep them along like flotsam. You see that with the response to the riots this summer. These idiot mayors, in places like Minneapolis and Portland, really thought they would be the heroes of these stories. They believed the agit-prop produced by the cult of social justice.

Even so, there are long term consequences to the culture war waged on the television screens of America. White males have been mostly removed from advertising, unless they are the fool or the supplicant. Blacks have been turned into objects of worship, largely due to television and advertising. This absurd sense of entitlement by blacks is one consequence. The negrophilia by many whites is another. It is not beyond the pale to use the term “ethnic cleansing” for what we are seeing.

At the peak of the 1960’s cultural revolution, Timothy Leary popularized the phrase, “Turn on, tune in, drop out” as a way to convince people to detach from the existing conventions and hierarchies in society. Of course, he was peddling degeneracy and self-abuse to whites, but the advice actually makes a lot of sense as an antidote to what the oligarchs are doing to us now. Disconnecting from the system as much as possible places you beyond the tractor beam of the propaganda organs.

This is the irony of this phase of the cultural revolution. What was initially pitched as a counter culture movement, was really a war on heritage America by the newly ascendant managerial class. The way to overthrow this decrepit and degenerate ruling class is to take their old advice. White people need to detach from the existing conventions and hierarchies that support the oligarchs. We need a counter culture that turns off, tunes out and eventually drops out.”

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

"How It Really Is"

noreply@blogger.com (CoyotePrime) — Sun, 06 Sep 2020 14:37:00 +0000

And how it REALLY is...

14 "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye

devour widows' houses, and for a pretense make long prayer:

therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation."

33 "Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers,
how can ye escape the damnation of hell?"

- Matthew 23, KJV

"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 9/6/20"

noreply@blogger.com (CoyotePrime) — Sun, 06 Sep 2020 10:58:00 +0000

"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 9/6/20"

- Frequently Updated
Please visit these sites often for the very latest information.

◆

By Remy Tumin and Elijah Walker

9/6/20

"The U.S. is averaging about 40,000 coronavirus cases a day, down from a startling peak in late July, but nearly twice the level at summer’s start, according to a Times database. Above, a testing site in Los Angeles this weekend. The failure to control the virus deepens the dangers heading into fall: the start of the school year, flu season and cooler temperatures that will drive more people indoors.

With President Trump pushing for a vaccine by Election Day, several drug companies are planning a joint pledge to adhere to rigorous safety standards meant to reassure the public that they will not rush to release any vaccines because of political pressure. Every major country’s spy service around the globe is trying to find out where everyone else is in the race for a vaccine. We’re tracking vaccine progress here."

• Here are the latest maps and tables tracking the virus in every U.S. state.

• Updated Sep 6, 2020, 1:33 AM E.T.

Coronavirus Map: Tracking the Global Outbreak

More than 26,858,900 people around the world have been infected with Covid-19;
6,260,993 of them are Americans. Here is the latest map/case count.

• The number of daily tests conducted in the U.S. is only 62 percent of the level considered necessary to mitigate the spread of the virus. See how your state’s testing compares to others.

◆

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

◆

The Covid Tracking Project

"The public deserves the most complete data available about COVID-19 in the US. No official source is providing it, so we are. Every day, our volunteers compile the latest numbers on tests, confirmed cases, hospitalizations, and patient outcomes from every US state and territory."

- https://covidtracking.com/

The COVID Racial Data Tracker

"COVID-19 is affecting people of color the most. We’re tracking the data in real time. The COVID Racial Data Tracker is a collaboration between the COVID Tracking Project and the Antiracist Research And Policy Center. Together, we’re gathering the most complete race and ethnicity data on COVID-19 in the United States."

- https://covidtracking.com/race

◆

Click image for larger size.

9/6/20, 3:28 AM

- https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

"Do Any Lives Actually Matter?"

noreply@blogger.com (CoyotePrime) — Sun, 06 Sep 2020 09:22:00 +0000

"Do Any Lives Actually Matter?"

by Tim Kirby

"If there is one expression that has defined the political arguments of 2020 it is Black Lives Matter and its many derivatives like All Lives Matter, Blue Lives Matter and so on. But why is this the case? There is something in these statements that is very powerful, political and deeply ideological. Something about this reasoning is very effective. So, let’s take a look at its internal mechanics.

When people scream Black Lives Matter what do they really mean and why this particular wording has dominated recent political discourse? Just what exactly would lives “mattering” look like?

A Utopian Statement and the Dangers of Utopian Thinking: The first question we should ask is at what point someone’s life begins to matter to us. What does this “mattering” amount to? For something to matter to someone it has to be of enough importance to dedicate time/action/resources to it. If someone owns a dog (a non-human thus neutral entity to discuss) then providing it with food, time for interaction, and some degree of medical care would show that this dog’s life matters to its owner. If someone just leaves their animal on a chain outside in winter, throwing it the occasional rotting loaf of bread, then it would seem to not matter very much. Then again perhaps compared to being abandoned in the woods life on the chain might not be so bad for it.

But if we look beyond the individual dog owner, then all the millions of dogs in far off lands that live very well or conversely are eaten for meat do not matter because there is no means by which one could possibly somehow be supportive of all canines around the globe.

The dog owner could delude himself into thinking that by sharing videos about the evils of that dog meat festival he is somehow caring for all of man’s best friends planetwide. Perhaps hitting “share” is more than doing nothing, but anything seems massive when compared to absolute zero. The dog owner can provide care for his dog which is within the scope of his direct influence, he simply cannot exert concerned action across the entire Earth’s dog population.

One could argue that the above example doesn’t apply because governments can have influence over the lives of their subjects universally. The State can and does have vastly more power, wealth, resources and the ability to change lives than any one individual. So can a massive entity like the U.S. government with its millions of employed minds in theory make every dog’s life matter?

Apparently not, because all the efforts made by the government to solve problems x, y, and z, although they may improve the situation, never truly solve them. There has never been a moment in human existence where the U.S. government was able to care for every member of a certain group to the extent that a pet owner looks after their furry friend. Governments try to solve problems with law, bureaucracy and some occasional carrots and sticks. These are Technocratic Approaches which on their surface show some level of concern for a specific issue. But has any law ever proven beyond a reasonable doubt that XXX Lives Matter?

It is impossible for all lives of any large group to matter, it is not the way our minds or government works. As the quantity of faces grows in any group their names start to fade and they blur into a statistical mass. This is where the whole “One man’s death is a tragedy…” logic comes from.

This means that the belief in XXX Lives Matter is a Utopian belief. It is impossible for all lives of a certain group to matter due to the massiveness of the scope and debatable nature of the definition of “matters” as stated above. Thus, to believe in this line of thinking means the believer is confident that either…

• 'Heaven on Earth' style Utopian goals are achievable via protesting - activism - government.

• The impossibility of this demand is a means of delegitimizing the regime in power.

Firstly, Utopian thinking sounds like another word for good-hearted optimism or hopefulness for the future, but it has a dark side. When one is sure that paradise can be achieved on Earth, then any barriers in the way of progress towards perfection can and must be crushed. You have to crack a few eggs to make a Utopian omelette. The French Revolutionaries were sure that if they just got rid of the nobility everything would work out, The Russian Revolutionaries were sure that if they deleted the Kulaks from history then a Communist Utopia would start, and we all know what Nazi Germany’s “Final Solution” entailed. When we believe in an impossibly idyllic state of existence we can often fall prey to Extremism as a means to achieve it.

Regarding the second point, if we look at the demands of Color Revolutionaries they are always vague. They usually revolve around freedom or ending repression or something else that is abstract and hard to measure. Somehow in the country that Washington does not like X situation is happening and must be resolved, the current regime is the cause of X or cannot stop it and must be removed so this X issue can be settled. The key to this equation is making X impossible like giving everyone freedom or convincing a group of millions that their lives will matter, all you need to do is get in a new leader by hook or by crook.

Street violence may determine whose lives actually matter.

Conflicting Statements vie for Dominance: If we shift away from Utopian thought to the perspective of straight bigotry then the picture looks very different. When one wears a T-shirt that says XXX Lives Matter, regardless of what is going on in the individual’s subconscious, what they are demanding is in effect preference for their favoured group. If a group is actually in danger or is repressed does not matter, the individual activist believes that this group’s plight deserves preferential attention in the media and government. This means that any of these sorts of statements could be an assertion of dominance. If XXX Lives Matter then YYY and ZZZ Lives are of less importance and do not need to be discussed or pandered to in Washington.

Furthermore, when one screams that certain lives matter they are trying to assert a dominant narrative. When someone says Black Lives Matter this ranges from a firm belief that Blacks in America are not living the American Dream on equal footing to a full-blown Cultural Marxist view that Blacks are inherently the victims of some sort of colonial racial hierarchy. When someone in their MAGA hat yells out that Blue Lives Matter they are basically saying that they are a Statist and the State is good. This person despite their “Don’t Tread on Me” and “Taxation is Theft” bumper stickers believes deep down that the authorities that rule over them are not only good but generally benevolent and that you should just submit to power like they do. These two examples are derived from very different narratives about what has and is happening in America.

It Cannot Be Denied: XXX Lives Matter also functions as an “if-then” statement. If Black Lives Matter then you must pursue some Radical Leftist agenda, hate Trump and knock over statues. If Blue Lives Matter then you must always stand for the national anthem, vote Trump and side with the police even when a Black man in handcuffs winds up bleeding out from bullet holes in the gutter.

Essentially, the conclusions that one should draw from these statements has already been worked out and is not up for discussion. Any form of rejection or questioning of the “then” part of this if-then statement means that you are against XXX group. It is the classic “if you don’t agree with me you’re a bad person” style reasoning which continues to win ideological battles deep into our 21st century.

As a lad of America’s Rust Belt I would argue that the death of decent paying medium-skilled jobs especially those at factories are a core issue for race relations in my hometown. It was a lot easier to get along when Blacks and Whites went to factory jobs together, got the same salaries, had face-to-face interactions and felt stability in their lives. If Black Lives Matter why does employment rarely come up as an issue and if it does it is only in terms of “Affirmative Action” which only furthers racial stress?

That is because reasoned debate is not part of XXX Lives Mattering. Any attempt to sway away from the preconceived mainstream conclusion of this given social problem is pure heresy. My desire to see Blacks and Whites have the value of their lives improved through labor is probably racist. XXX Lives Matter cannot be denied or debated.

And the Ideological Weapon of the Year Award goes to… Each type of XXX Lives Matter comes with it a deep seeded historical narrative and ideological worldview that is very often in conflict with one or more of its competitors and in many ways the street and political conflicts of America in 2020 will very much determine whose lives will actually matter in the upcoming decades. Whoever will scream the loudest will matter the most."

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

"How It Really Is"

noreply@blogger.com (CoyotePrime) — Sun, 06 Sep 2020 09:02:00 +0000

Joe B.

25th Amendment

President Kamala Harris

Let that sink in...

Musical Interlude: Little River Band, “Cool Change”

noreply@blogger.com (CoyotePrime) — Sat, 05 Sep 2020 23:11:00 +0000

Little River Band, “Cool Change”

"A Look to the Heavens"

noreply@blogger.com (CoyotePrime) — Sat, 05 Sep 2020 23:10:00 +0000

“The spiral arms of bright galaxy M106 sprawl through this remarkable multiframe portrait, composed of data from ground- and space-based telescopes. Also known as NGC 4258, M106 can be found toward the northern constellation Canes Venatici. The well-measured distance to M106 is 23.5 million light-years, making this cosmic scene about 80,000 light-years across.

Click image for larger size.

Typical in grand spiral galaxies, dark dust lanes, youthful blue star clusters, and pinkish star forming regions trace spiral arms that converge on the bright nucleus of older yellowish stars. But this detailed composite reveals hints of two anomalous arms that don't align with the more familiar tracers. Seen here in red hues, sweeping filaments of glowing hydrogen gas seem to rise from the central region of M106, evidence of energetic jets of material blasting into the galaxy's disk. The jets are likely powered by matter falling into a massive central black hole.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

Chet Raymo, “The Silence”

noreply@blogger.com (CoyotePrime) — Sat, 05 Sep 2020 23:09:00 +0000

“The Silence”

by Chet Raymo

“The hiding places of my power

Seem open; I approach, and then they close;

I see by glimpses now; when age comes on,

May scarcely see at all, and I would give,

While yet we may, as far as words can give,

A substance and a life to what I feel...”

"These few lines from Wordsworth's "The Prelude" leapt off the page at me. They capture well enough what my life has become. All those years of teaching, of writing in the Boston Globe, were years of sharing public knowledge, knowledge that had been vetted by the scientific community. The work was not about me. The teacher was me, the writer was me, but what I taught and wrote was reliable, consensus knowledge of the world. A student in my classes or a reader of my newspaper columns would have been hard pressed to know my politics or my religion or the nature of the questions that came in the darkest hours of the night. And that is the way it should have been; that was my homage to objectivity.

Those were valuable years, years of building up a sturdy polder in the sea of mystery, a place to stand with a firmness of foot. And now, in retirement, with time on my hands- and on my mind- I find myself more inclined to explore what Wordsworth called "the hiding places of my power." I approach. They close. I touch with my hand the surface of the pond that Pat wrote about the other day; my hand comes out of the depths to meet me. I see by glimpses. It is, I suppose, a kind of forgetting. With the forgetting comes a certain freshness. My fingertip touches the surface of the world from above and from below, and concentric circles spread outwards, rippling, like a soundless sound, and I struggle, in words, as best I can, to give a substance and a life to what I feel.

This does not mean, I trust, that I am going soft, finding supernaturalist religion or getting all New Age squishy as "age comes on." I keep my feet planted on solid fact and read my weekly "Science" and "Nature" along with my Wordsworth. No, it is rather a simple freedom to explore the hiding places, attending to private particulars as opposed to public universals, listening for the small voice that whispers from the nooks and crannies of yet unassimilated reality.

There is a passage in "The Prelude" where a young Boy (the poet?), standing in evening air by the glimmering lake, makes a mimic hooting with his hands to his mouth and the owls answer. Twooo-twooo. And the reply. Twooo-twooo. Then, unaccountably, the answers cease. And in the silence the boy becomes more keenly aware than ever of water, rocks, and woods, and mountain torrents, "that uncertain heaven, received into the bosom of the steady lake." Thoreau has something similar. He rejoiced in owls; their hoot, he said, was a sound well suited to swamps and twilight woods. The interval between the hoots was a deepened silence, suggesting, to Thoreau, "a vast and undeveloped nature which men have not recognized." It is that that I now attend: the deepened silence between the hoots.”

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

"Anyway..."

noreply@blogger.com (CoyotePrime) — Sat, 05 Sep 2020 23:06:00 +0000

"Bad things don't happen to people because they deserve for them to happen. It just doesn't work that way. It's just… life. And no matter who we are, we have to take the hand we're dealt, crappy though it may be, and try our very best to move forward anyway, to love anyway, to have hope anyway… to have faith that there's a purpose to the journey we're on."

- Mia Sheridan

"Fish Are the Last to Notice the Water"

noreply@blogger.com (CoyotePrime) — Sat, 05 Sep 2020 22:45:00 +0000

"Fish Are the Last to Notice the Water"

by Paul Rosenberg

"I ran into this phrase in a physics lecture, of all places, and knew it would be the title of my next article. And this is generally a true statement. Those who are immersed in something… who have always been immersed in it… are the last to see what it really is.

By now it should be obvious to the people of the West that they’re being held in a primitive bondage. And fortunately, more eyes are opening to this than ever before. But still, most people are so used to this particular “water” and have so long acclimated themselves to it, that they haven’t recognized it. There’s nothing inherently wrong with most of these people; they just haven’t stepped back far enough to see the obvious. So, let’s do that.

The Long View: A single model of human life has dominated the West for thousands of years. I can summarize by saying that this rulership model began to form in about 5400 BC, dominated Mesopotamia by about 4000 BC, took hold in Egypt by 3000 BC, and spread over the rest of the world from there. So, it has dominated for some 5,000 or 6,000 years, depending on which dates you prefer.

This model is so common that it’s hard to make out at first. Here are its parts:

• A small minority of men hold a monopoly on making rules everyone else will live by.

• This minority enforces these rules on everyone else.

• The minority extracts regular payments from everyone else. This is said to be necessary for protection and justice.

• The minority fails to provide justice on a daily basis and very often sends the children of the majority to fight in battles to the death.

• A minority-aligned intellectual class assures the majority that this is the best that can be had and that it has been sanctified by some higher power (gods, ancestors, tradition, reason, experience, progress, or whatever).

• No one is permitted to escape this model. Those who try are punished as traitors and heretics.

This is the primary model of human organization and has been for some 5,000 years. And aside from arguing over details (or fury over the audacity to say it), there is no real challenge to this statement. Moreover, this model has been an abject failure – a demonstrable failure:

• Wars have continued throughout its entire reign.

• Justice has never been achieved and generally came closest in places away from power centers.

• Human happiness has not noticeably increased.

• Even when science has broken out, it has been recaptured and forced to serve the model. (The internet, for example.)

On top of that, this model has to be maintained by force. As noted above, straying from it is harshly punished. If this system was truly superior, force wouldn’t be required. After all, we don’t have to force people to buy houses or cars. So, by any number of measurable standards, this model fails, and very, very badly. The best defense one might make for it is that something else could be worse. But since we’re not permitted to test that assertion, the word bondage is perfectly fitting.

At a bare minimum, we can say this: Any system with no major upgrade in 5,000 years must be considered hopelessly obsolete, moribund, and degenerate. This is where we stand today. And it is crucial that we help our fellows see it.

How Do We Do Make Them See? First off, we cannot make people see. And truthfully, they generally see it quite well on their own. What they lack is inner strength to acknowledge what they see. It is not intellectual strength that most people lack; it is emotional strength. And so, you’ll have to be slow and gentle if you want success. Rigorous intellectual arguments are not enough, and in many cases they’re counterproductive.

In the end, the way to help your friends and neighbors is downright biblical: Plant seeds, wait for them to germinate, water them. Show kindness, love them, shine light on their path. It doesn’t matter if this sounds hokey to you or if you’d rather engage in brilliant arguments. This is what works. So, decide what you really want: for your friends and neighbors to see, or for you to “win.” The fish need faith to imagine a dry shore, and they’re not going to get it from intellectual badgering.”

- www.freemansperspective.com

"Elizabeth Gilbert on Love, Loss, and How to Move Through Grief as Grief Moves Through You"

noreply@blogger.com (CoyotePrime) — Sat, 05 Sep 2020 22:41:00 +0000

"Elizabeth Gilbert on Love, Loss, and How to Move

Through Grief as Grief Moves Through You"

by Maria Popova

“Grief is a force of energy that cannot be controlled or predicted. It comes and goes on its own schedule. Grief does not obey your plans, or your wishes. Grief will do whatever it wants to you, whenever it wants to. In that regard, Grief has a lot in common with Love.”

“All your sorrows have been wasted on you if you have not yet learned how to be wretched,”Seneca told his mother in his extraordinary letter on resilience in the face of loss. One need not be a dry materialist to bow before the recognition that no heart goes through life unplundered by loss - all love presupposes it, be it in death or in heartbreak. Whether what is lost are feelings or atoms, grief comes, unforgiving and unpredictable in its myriad manifestations. Joan Didion observed this disorienting fact in her classic memoir of loss: “Grief, when it comes, is nothing like we expect it to be.”And when it does come, it unweaves the very fabric of our being. When love is lost, we lose the part of ourselves that did the loving - a part that, depending on the magnitude of the love, can come to approximate the whole of who we are. We lose what artist Anne Truitt so poetically termed “the lovely entire confidence that comes only from innumerable mutual confidences entrusted and examined… woven by four hands, now trembling, now intent, over and under into a pattern that can surprise both [partners].”

But we also gain something - out of the burning embers of the loss arises an ashen humility, true to its shared Latin root with the word humus. We are made “of the earth” - we bow down low, we become crust, and each breath seems to draw from the magmatic center of the planet that is our being. It is only when we give ourselves over to it completely that we can begin to take ourselves back, to rise, to live again.

How to move through this barely survivable experience is what author and altogether glorious human being Elizabeth Gilbert examines with uncommon insight and tenderness of heart in her conversation with TED curator Chris Anderson on the inaugural episode of the TED Interviews podcast.

Gilbert reflects on the death of her partner, Rayya Elias - her longtime best friend, whose sudden terminal cancer diagnosis unlatched a trapdoor, as Gilbert put it, into the realization that Rayya was the love of her life:

"Grief… happens upon you, it’s bigger than you. There is a humility that you have to step into, where you surrender to being moved through the landscape of grief by grief itself. And it has its own timeframe, it has its own itinerary with you, it has its own power over you, and it will come when it comes. And when it comes, it’s a bow-down. It’s a carve-out. And it comes when it wants to, and it carves you out - it comes in the middle of the night, comes in the middle of the day, comes in the middle of a meeting, comes in the middle of a meal. It arrives - it’s this tremendously forceful arrival and it cannot be resisted without you suffering more… The posture that you take is you hit your knees in absolute humility and you let it rock you until it is done with you. And it will be done with you, eventually. And when it is done, it will leave. But to stiffen, to resist, and to fight it is to hurt yourself."

With an eye to the intimate biological connection between the body and the mind (which is, of course, the seedbed of feeling), Gilbert adds: "There’s this tremendous psychological and spiritual challenge to relax in the awesome power of it until it has gone through you. Grief is a full-body experience. It takes over your entire body - it’s not a disease of the mind. It’s something that impacts you at the physical level… I feel that it has a tremendous relationship to love: First of all, as they say, it’s the price you pay for love. But, secondly, in the moments of my life when I have fallen in love, I have just as little power over it as I do in grief. There are certain things that happen to you as a human being that you cannot control or command, that will come to you at really inconvenient times, and where you have to bow in the human humility to the fact that there’s something running through you that’s bigger than you."

Gilbert goes on to read a short, stunning reflection on love and loss she had originally published on Instagram: "People keep asking me how I’m doing, and I’m not always sure how to answer that. It depends on the day. It depends on the minute. Right this moment, I’m OK. Yesterday, not so good. Tomorrow, we’ll see.

Here is what I have learned about Grief, though. I have learned that Grief is a force of energy that cannot be controlled or predicted. It comes and goes on its own schedule. Grief does not obey your plans, or your wishes. Grief will do whatever it wants to you, whenever it wants to. In that regard, Grief has a lot in common with Love. The only way that I can “handle” Grief, then, is the same way that I “handle” Love - by not “handling” it. By bowing down before its power, in complete humility.

When Grief comes to visit me, it’s like being visited by a tsunami. I am given just enough warning to say, “Oh my god, this is happening RIGHT NOW,” and then I drop to the floor on my knees and let it rock me. How do you survive the tsunami of Grief? By being willing to experience it, without resistance.

The conversation of Grief, then, is one of prayer-and-response. Grief says to me: “You will never love anyone the way you loved Rayya.” And I reply: “I am willing for that to be true.” Grief says: “She’s gone, and she’s never coming back.” I reply: “I am willing for that to be true.” Grief says: “You will never hear that laugh again.” I say: “I am willing.” Grief says, “You will never smell her skin again.” I get down on the floor on my knees, and - and through my sheets of tears - I say, “I AM WILLING.” This is the job of the living -to be willing to bow down before EVERYTHING that is bigger than you. And nearly everything in this world is bigger than you.

I don’t know where Rayya is now. It’s not mine to know. I only know that I will love her forever. And that I am willing. Onward."

Gilbert adds in the interview: "It’s an honor to be in grief. It’s an honor to feel that much, to have loved that much."

Complement with life-earned wisdom on how to live with loss from other great artists, writers, and scientists - including Alan Turing, Albert Einstein, Abraham Lincoln, Rachel Carson, Charles Darwin, Johannes Brahms, and Charles Dickens - and the Stoic cure for heartbreak from Epictetus, then revisit Gilbert on creative bravery and the art of living in a state of uninterrupted marvel.

- https://www.brainpickings.org/
○

"I believe...
love is stronger than death.”

- Robert Fulghum