I’m recovering from a bad case of flu (most likely of some covid variety); nothing terrible, but not great either. I’m still not able to perform physical activities anywhere near the level prior to the disease, because I’m running out of oxygen on physical exertion. It’s getting better, but I have to give it time.

I’ve been thinking about many different things during this period, so I’ll summarize.

The price of precious metals is showing interesting signs; of course it’s controlled, but since the price has been moving within a very narrow band, and the prices of other commodities have been showing signs of significant inflation, the result is that the precious metals have been “on sale” recently, with the result that the central banks, and possibly other large entities, have been buying up physical metal at those discounted prices, and the divergence between the paper market and the physical market is increasing. The controlled paper market is showing no interest in gold and silver, while the physical market is showing large demand by the big players. The expected result is that the big players will completely exhaust supply in the short term, and this is without the general population even registering what is going on.

The pictures from Ukraine are increasingly showing snow and frosted ground, but this varies regionally, and some places are still a muddy quagmire. One of the worst places is Kherson, apparently, which seems to be one of the reasons why the Russians abandoned it – it’s an indefensible mud pit. The other reason is something I can only guess, but it seems that a significant percentage of the population there, around 20% or so, are aggressively pro-Ukrainian, and this could be seen in the referendum results too, because the Ukrops didn’t go out to vote. It seems that the Russians concluded that they can’t defend Kherson city with that much of a fifth column behind their backs, and they withdrew most of the pro-Russian populace and left the others to experience the joy of what is Ukraine at the moment – meaning, no electricity, no water, no heating, but plenty of vicious hatred. They also recently banned the Orthodox Church, because it was deemed pro-Russian. Of course it’s pro-Russian; it’s the Church. You can’t but be pro-Russian in these circumstances, unless you hate God really badly.

The Russians are routinely running out of missiles every Monday. The Ukrainians, on the other hand, seem to be running out of men to throw into the meat grinder, but that doesn’t seem to matter to anyone. Ten killed Ukrainians for each killed Russian seems to be a price America and the EU are willing to pay. The EU is running out of resources, energy, and time, but don’t worry, if your high-tech job is terminated, you can always go to America, like people did after WW2. Also, since there no longer is any availability of Russian gas, the American freedom gas will now cost much more than it was advertised for prior to this entire artificial crisis, but that’s free market for you, and it’s the best thing, right? The fact that this entire thing benefits America greatly is of course accidental. Just kidding.

Another interesting thing is that nobody seems to be thinking about God. That is quite weird, because in the past, during the hard times of this kind people tried to invoke memories of transcendence, but now there’s nothing. Only low-energy symptoms like anger, rage, hatred, schadenfreude, desire to harm the physical bodies of others, thinking this is the worst one can do, and the end to all. The old maxim that there are no atheists in the trenches apparently needs to be corrected – there are now. I’ve seen many terrible things during my life, but this one is among the worst.

Godlessness is the greatest sin, both in the sense that all other sins derive therefrom, and by definition, where sin is the state of separation from God’s will and presence. It’s the state of spiritual emptiness, devoid of God’s energy that by its nature seeks more God, and wishes to praise Him. I think this is why “хамство”, which the Orthodox Church sees as the greatestt spiritual problem, crosses my mind recently as the closest description of what I seem to perceive – arrogance, rudeness and sarcastic glee with which evil people seem to be compelled to communicate, or they just can’t manage anything better. It is, of course, a symptom of life devoid of God’s light. When all you see is darkness, misery, weakness, evil, lies, blood and dirt, your mind and behavior reflect that, because that’s what they do – reflect that upon which they dwell. Lack of God is an emptiness that devours itself in darkness, and screams viciously at others, that they are worthless and it is so great and enlightened. I’ve seen much of this lately, and I instinctively turn my eyes from it in disgust. All of this experimentation along the thesis of how great things can be and how great souls can be if only they didn’t know about God and didn’t perceive Him in any way, produced a terrible, abominable disaster, of a very predictable kind. There is an alternative to God, and it looks like Ukraine. It’s also known as hell. Хамство, hatred, schadenfreude, vindictive and sarcastic glee, desire for murder, desire to reduce others to mere flesh and laugh insanely as it is all mixed with mud in death, that is the alternative to God. People are somehow convinced that “sin” is fun, that it’s about doing all the fun forbidden things that boring people and boring God don’t allow them to, but no – sin is Ukraine. Sin is an arrogant emptiness, where human flesh is interchangeable with money and mud, and everything is a hopeless, desperate darkness of spirit.