New developments

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Today the Palestinians performed a very well planned and executed attack on Israel, so successfully that I have to suspect Iran to have been behind it, and the most incredible thing is that Mossad didn’t sound a warning ahead of it, at all. Unlike the previous Palestinian attacks, which were purely terrorist exercises, this one actually looks threatening, and is at least revenge for general Soleimani and all those sabotages of the Iranian nuclear programme in the past years, and things might get even more serious in the following days. 

The most important thing is that both Israel and their allies depleted their heavy artillery stockpiles in their misguided attempt at weakening Russia and helping Ukraine, and they might have critically weakened their ability to defend themselves against this, and nobody will be there to help them, because all of their allies are in the same pickle. 

As for Ukraine, judging by the changing tone of the Western press, the public in the West is being prepared for either the inevitable Ukrainian defeat, or for the next round of extreme NATO escalation. However, there have been clear signals sent from Russia and Belarus that providing Ukraine with long-range missiles that can target the interior of Russia will have a nuclear response.

ps.:

I’ve been thinking about the most likely explanation for this.

Mossad seems to have failed. However, this is very unlikely, since lots of things must have been in motion on the Palestinian side, lots of weapons were imported, lots of communications must have been going on. Then I thought, what if Netanyahu told them to sit on the information, after he’d been informed? What if he deliberately allowed it to happen, so that all this chaos would erupt, and he’d go into Gaza, kill everybody and be the saviour of Israel? Possible, but what would have been his motivation, considering the cost to Israel, in lives, equipment and prestige?

Then I thought – hmm, he’s been having a serious investigation/trial against him over there, for bribery, fraud and what not, and a trial is still ongoing. He must think that if he leaves office, he’s going straight to jail… unless he does something that will make him so popular, that his political opponents will prefer to drop charges against him. Or he just keeps riding the emergency powers forever.

I don’t know whether this is true, but it certainly makes more sense than Mossad not seeing this thing while it was still in the planning stage.

Implications

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I find it amazing how people can have the strangest opinions, without stopping to check what this says about the universe they live in and the way it functions.

I’ll have to explain this; for instance, in Star Wars, you have physics of the Universe that makes sense – there is Force, the living beings have a certain number of cellular organelles called “midichlorians”, which are something akin to mitochondria or chloroplasts in our universe, and they essentially connect your living tissues to the Force, and if their count is significant enough, you become “Force sensitive”, and if a Force sensitive person receives proper training, they can develop abilities to use the Force for things such as telekinesis, telepathy or whatever. It all makes sense, the way plants being able to convert sunlight and carbon dioxide into sugar makes sense. However, X-men don’t make sense. The underlying premise is that you have mutants with special abilities. I have no problem with that if “special abilities” are enhanced hearing, ability to perceive more colours or even the ability to hear radio. That is all possible without changing anything with the universe. However, when you have a mutant who can stop time, use extreme telekinesis or read minds, this is a “stop right there moment”. Here you need a universe with different laws of physics that make this possible, you can’t just have a mutation that introduces midichlorians in a universe without the Force, and expect telekinesis to be possible. Yes, you can develop cellular organelles or tissues that transduce radio waves into electricity and feed it into the brain, giving you a sense that “hears” radio. It’s not all that different from the way eyesight works. However, to be able to read minds or perform strong telekinesis, there must be an underlying physics that makes it possible. If something works, the question you need to ask is what underlying conditions need to be met in order for this to work, and what does this say about the universe we live in.

Let’s return to my initial conundrum. I had people making claims such as “if someone doesn’t have money, it means he can’t be of God”, the assumption being that God is the ruler of this and every other world, and nothing happens without His sanction – basically, God will provide for His own people, and they will never have to worry about money. On the other hand, those same people will make negative claims about very rich people, assuming that money is the thing of the Devil, and all the rich people must have sold their souls in order to become that rich.

So, which is it? They apparently never stopped to think that the first claim contradicts religious teachings; Jesus was born in a barn and Krishna was born in a dungeon, so it’s not like there’s actual evidence for the claim that those of God will be provided for and safe in this world. If anything, evidence for the contrary can be found. However, I’ve seen same people have the expectation that if you have money, you must be spiritually fallen, and if you don’t have money, you can’t be on good terms with God, not stopping to think that you can’t have it both ways. There are three basic options – either God micro-manages the world, Satan micro-manages the world, or nobody micro-manages the world and it runs according to its own independent laws, which makes exceptions from those laws “miracles”. Also, the corollary of God being able to provide for His people is that He is able to control everything in this world, which makes every bad thing that happens in this world His fault, which gives you a God that is either malevolent or indifferent. If Satan is able to control everything in this world, why aren’t things much, much worse for good people? Why do evil people such as Hitler experience frustration and failure in their plans? The third option, where neither God nor Satan have complete control or influence here, but the world functions according to its own independent laws, and either side is able to occasionally “tip the scales” their way according to some complex ruleset seems far more likely. For instance, Satan can tempt you and make your life very difficult, but he can’t outright kill you. God can’t outright solve all your problems, but He can inspire you – but you have to believe it and accept guidance. Also, miracles do exist, but the defining characteristic of a miracle is that it happens exceptionally, and not regularly. If something happens regularly or predictably, it’s called the law of nature. Miracles, where exceptionally good and unlikely things happen to people who pray to God, do happen. However, so do the anti-miracles, where exceptionally bad and unlikely things happen to people who pray to God. The pattern according to which this happens isn’t obvious, but for some reason people act as if it is – of course God’s people should be rich, famous, healthy and live forever, because take the example of Jesus, who was born in a barn, was always poor, had to escape lynching mobs and was eventually betrayed and crucified; oh wait…

Most of this nonsense is caused by poor religious education people received in childhood, which is why I didn’t allow my kids to attend catholic “Sunday school”. This proved to be an excellent call when other children, who did attend, were mocking my kids saying that if they didn’t pray to Jesus they will have bad grades and their mom will die. Apparently, that’s how it works according to the religious teachings those kids received – you pray to Jesus to get good grades and your mommy doesn’t die. What did I say to my kids in response to that? “This is pure nonsense. God is the highest reality and the highest good, and you pray to God by trying to understand what is real, adhering to the highest truth you can know, and always choosing the greatest good you can see in everything you do, and prayer is good if it focuses you in those efforts. However, if you want to get good grades, you better study, because prayer won’t help there. As for your mom dying, let’s put it this way: if God didn’t strike that idiot Sunday school teacher with lightning for teaching children this stupid nonsense, it is safe to assume things don’t really work that way. God is not a vending machine where you insert a prayer-coin and get a wish, God is the greatest of all goals and the function of prayer is to align your life with this goal in order to be with Him in both this life and the one after. That teacher is an idiot and that’s why I didn’t allow you to listen to that nonsense, because it would teach you such idiotic things about God that you would end up being atheists. God is the safety line you hold on to in order not to go crazy in this world which is full of all kinds of evil and ignorance, in order to get to the other side whole, undamaged and hopefully improved by the experience.”

Yes, this is actually a true example of the kind of speeches my kids could hear from me when they were 7. 🙂

Events

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The Russian MOD reported two instances of destroying Ukrainian warehouses filled with depleted Uranium ammo and cruise missiles within a week. I would expect this to produce significant local contamination, and some of it might spread if a fire lifts the particles high enough into the atmosphere. I have been more-less consistently perceiving a 10% elevated radiation over natural background since this started, which makes me believe that more of this has been going on than officially reported, but the increase is still minuscule and wouldn’t be worthy of mention were it not the case that depleted Uranium is a low-radioactivity material, which means it would take quite a lot of it to make an impression in the gamma spectrum, but it’s quite toxic as a heavy metal. Also, if it’s detectable in Croatia, the concentration on the source has to be much worse, and since Ukraine is a major exporter of food, having soil contaminated by heavy metal particles that will eventually find their way to our food supply can’t be good. This is not something that is an immediate concern, as it will manifest itself in the following years, but nevertheless it’s a thing to consider.

There’s also that other thing I’m rather hesitant to mention because it might not be relevant to others at all, but still. Yesterday I was doing a budget calculation for October – a standard thing I always do, basically put together all the standard expenses, planned purchases, safety margins and so on, subtract from the expected income and if something is left over, buy gold. Well, what’s unusual is that I felt great unease and a feeling one would have when they’re out of money for something and no way of getting it in time, when I set normal, “peacetime” safety margins. When I increased them by the EUR value of one ounce of gold, the feeling changed to that of comfortably dealing with the situation and having no issues. The weird part of this is that I should not be having this kind of financial issues even if I miscalculated the budget and something unexpected did come up – it’s a matter of calling my precious metals dealer, and selling him a gold coin or two, and I would have the money on my account that or the following day. The situation where I’m out of money, I need it badly and instantly, and can’t get it anywhere, that’s not realistic unless something major is going on – a communications breakdown, nobody is working including the bullion dealer, I have to rely on what I have in Euros, in cash and on bank accounts, and I need more money than usual to do something, and quickly. The weird combination of factors required for me to get such a feeling is what prompts me to report it. It might be nothing, but I’m still obeying it diligently – I increased the safety margin by EUR value of one ounce of gold for the month of October, and I now have that comfortable feeling I associate with having acted appropriately and everything being fine. I would recommend postponing any extravagant spending you might have planned for other times, increasing your safety margins and not stretching yourself in any way, just as a precaution.

Futility of pretense

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I was recently asked how I can manage it; knowing that the global economy is in the process of controlled demolition, that a major world war is unfolding and it’s just a matter of time before it goes nuclear, and the global “elites” have plans to kill half of us and completely subjugate the rest.

My response was “what’s the alternative?”

I can pretend everything is fine but that takes away my power to do what little I can to be aware and prepared, essentially to watch for the direction of the falling tree before I start running. I cited the example of a leaky window frame – I can either pretend there’s no problem, and ignore rainwater seeping into the wall and the black mould colonies, I can be aware of the problem and do nothing about it because it’s not my problem to fix, or I can be aware of the problem and do something about it. The only options that include any agency on my part start with awareness. Sure, it’s not very comfortable to know that the world that we know is pretty much doomed. But what is the alternative? Live in an illusion? What problems does that solve? It’s like having a brake light on my car turn on, but I say it’s fine because the brakes haven’t failed yet. Yes, fixing the brakes is a hassle – get an appointment with the mechanic, wait, travel there and back and spend some money. But what’s the alternative? Wait until the brakes fail completely, hope you don’t wreck the car when they do, and then still have to fix the problem, only with an undriveable car so you have to have it towed. How would that be helpful?

With the civilizational collapse, the matter is different only in the sense that one can say we’re doomed anyway and no degree of preparation can help, so it’s better to just not get stressed over it, but that is a fallacy right there. Let’s assume the worst-case scenario – total doom, and nothing you can do can save you. Oh, really? You can’t meditate, you can’t pray to God for guidance, you can’t resolve your attachments, you can’t put your affairs in order? You can do many things, because souls do survive the death of the body, at least for those who in fact have a spiritual core worth speaking of. Let’s say there’s a nuclear exchange, and it kills the total of 3.5 billion people, which is more-less the worst-case scenario estimate. With today’s world population of 8.1 billion, this means 4.6 billion survivors, which is more than the world population was in the year 1980. There would be no nuclear winter; that’s known to be pseudo-scientific rubbish. Sure, there would be some dust injected into the high layers of the atmosphere, but no worse than the Mt. Pinatubo eruption, which puts a definite upper limit on all my estimates, and the global climate effects of that were trivial. Radiation will be really bad in hot spots, but those will be the exact hot spots where the likelihood of surviving the nuclear explosions and their aftermath will be lowest, anyway, so it’s like shooting a corpse; not really adding to lethality. If you’re not in one of the directly impacted zones, you will likely not even know what happened because there will be a total or almost total loss of communications. There will definitely not be real-time reporting on the Internet or the cable TV.

Let’s say it’s just the economic collapse and the war threat fizzles out for some reason. Economic collapse looks like Yugoslavia in the 1990s, only everywhere, and there isn’t a stable foreign currency to use, because everybody is impacted at the same time. If only one could have known in advance and bought gold and silver to trade with. Oh wait…

Knowing what’s about to happen might not change the outcome, but it gives you some degree of control over your situation, it gives you time to spiritually prepare for death, and it gives you time to prepare for a survivable bad situation in ways that can possibly mitigate the hardships, and even if it doesn’t help in the end, you feel better knowing you at least did what you could.

Honestly, I’m not sure what good my preparations will do, if any, because every single actual hint I got “from above” was about the “other side”, afterwards, and it felt wonderful. I wasn’t warned to stock up on canned beans because I’ll have to survive a nuclear holocaust or something. I was told that this nightmare will end for me. So, why am I still buying gold coins, fixing my car, fixing the leaky roof window and buying a new computer? Why am I not just letting go and letting everything turn to shit? Because that’s not my style. When the end comes, it will find me firmly in control of things, acting as if everything will go on forever, with car serviced, phone batteries charged and with enough gold to ride through a really bad shitstorm, God willing. And at every single second of dealing with things as if they are to go on forever, I will be ready to go at any moment.

Woke

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I find the term “woke” disgusting, because it’s an English agrammatism, used by people who are unable to say “awakened”, because education is apparently racist, and speaking English poorly is apparently a matter of culture.

However, when we try to define what it means, in practice, it’s quite hard, because one would be tempted to write down the entire syllabus of neo-Marxism that underlies it, which would be a lengthy and impractical endeavour.  I thought about it, and here’s what I came up with.

“Woke” is a state of willingness to substitute reality with illusory beliefs whenever truth hurts. Basically, it’s rejection of reality in order to pander to affectations.

The fundamental attitude of science is to carefully measure the facts, and then allow them to lead you wherever reality is. To be “woke” is the exact opposite of that – you start with ideology, and if the facts refute it, the facts are “wacist”.

There is a definition of mental illness as a state of mind that is in disagreement with reality, and that, apparently, is what being “woke” is – an affirmation of mental illness as a legitimate take on life.