Inorganic Behavior – “Astroturfing”

I have noted for some time the inauthentic nature of many of the so-called movements and causes we see today. Unnaturally borne. Poorly thought out and, to me at least, so plainly manufactured. Inorganic I have called them, wondering why people are so easily persuaded and convinced. We find ourselves today in the midst of …

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The Brearley School Letter

The following letter was written by Andrew Gutmann, a father who was fed up with the obsessive focus on race by the elite Manhattan prep school his daughter attended. He accused the school of trying to “brainwash” the kids with ‘woke’ philosophies instead of simply teaching them how to think for themselves. He will not …

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You Can’t Forget the Past

The following is from the movie The Two Jakes. It was the sequel to Chinatown (1974), and was released in 1990. Actor/director Jack Nicholson reprises his role as J.J. “Jake” Gittes, a private investigator in post-war (late 40’s) Los Angeles. In the following ‘scene’ he is on his way out to see a client in …

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Invictus – by William Ernest Henley

Invictus Out of the night that covers me, Black as the Pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed. Beyond this place of wrath …

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A Quote from Wendell Berry

A Warning To My Readers Do not think me gentle because I speak in praise of gentleness, or elegant because I honor the grace that keeps this world. I am a man crude as any, gross of speech, intolerant, stubborn, angry, full of fits and furies. That I may have spoken well at times, is …

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Mistaking Indoctrination for Awareness

Today’s food for thought… I have friends and family members who look forward to becoming digitized zombies in the New World Order, and that’s great. “The world will always need ditch-diggers,” a friend of mine’s father once said, not necessarily as advice. Society will always need order-followers, those who do not spend too much time …

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Manipulation of the American Mind: E. Bernays

Courtesy of Richard Gunderman – 9 July 2015 “The most interesting man in the world.” “Reach out and touch someone.” “Finger-lickin’ good.” Such advertising slogans have become fixtures of American culture, and each year millions now tune into the Super Bowl as much for the ads as for the football. While no single person can …

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Civil Society – Following the Amenities

An impromptu post to spacebook last week, copied here. Not particularly deep, just food for thought… There was a saying years ago that if you were not important enough to miss a phone call then you were really not very important. I have thought of this every time the last twenty years that I have …

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A New Paradigm – Look Forward

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” — Buckminster Fuller Those who traffic in force will often try to make this difficult, but the paradigm still stands. Keep moving forward. Keep your eyes on the prize. And remember, the means …

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KS-19 – Includes Everything but the Kitchen Sink

I make chili pretty often. I use beans in my recipe, and onions, garlic, garden tomatoes, peppers, et cetera. Sometimes I add other stuff like the half can of corn that’s in the fridge, or the last quarter cup of oat groats in the cupboard that I just want to get used up. Before you …

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The Most Important Sentence

I have always loved language and languages. “He who does not know another language does not know his own,” said Goethe, and it is so true. Nothing else expands our minds the same way. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis claims in fact that the language we use to speak (and think) actually affects the way we perceive …

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Eaten by Bears

The Apostate Prophet talks about how cringeworthy – and stupid – it is when those caught up in their own virtue-signalling try to show Muslims how supportive they are of them during Ramadan. There is a German word that comes to my own mind when I see stuff like this: Fremdschämen (definition below). I thought …

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Delibes: Lakme – Duo des Fleurs

The “Flower Duet” is a famous duet for soprano and mezzo-soprano from Leo Delibes’ opera Lakmé, first performed in Paris in 1883. The duet takes place in Act 1 of the three-act opera, between characters Lakmé, the daughter of a Brahmin priest, and her servant Mallika, as they go to gather flowers by a river. …

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How language shapes the way we think

There are many ways to transfer to our fellow humans the things that occur in our minds, whether these are things we think, or things we feel… or, most likely, some combination of both. These occurrences may only appear to emanate from within ourselves and language may take many forms, but these discussions are beyond …

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The Mysterious Letters in the Quran

An ex-Muslim who refers to himself as The Apostate Prophet offers interesting insights into Islam. He notes in his description: Alif Lam Meem, no one knows what these letters mean. The Quran has numerous “openers”, letter combination that interpreters of the Quran argued about for over 1000 years. But why is there such an inconclusive …

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All the World’s a Stage

“All the world’s a stage” is the phrase that begins a monologue from William Shakespeare’s As You Like It, spoken by the melancholy Jaques in Act II Scene VII Line 138. The speech compares the world to a stage and life to a play. It catalogues the seven stages of a man’s life, sometimes referred …

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thoughts on mindful anonymity…

When I first started thinking about this site I assumed it would be mostly anonymous. Not so that people could hide behind some facade (people including myself), but so that we might speak freely without fear of repercussions by some real-life whack-job. Using pseudonyms has been done throughout the ages. That being said, I have …

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Satyagraha

Satyagraha is a Sanskrit word that was coined by Mahatma Gandhi. It translates loosely as “insistence on truth,” “loyalty to truth,” or simply “Truth-force.” (satya “truth”; agraha “insistence” or “holding firmly to”). The theory of satyagraha is timeless, and sees means and ends as inseparable. The means used to obtain an end are wrapped up …

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