Month: July 2022

I’m not an economist so I’m probably wrong, but when did that stop anybody from posting on the Net?

Bidenreich just rewrote the dictionary to hide the fact USA’s now formally in a recession. I found that to be a profound religious experience… for them, not me. They lie to themselves and each other, and they feel good about what the lie has accomplished.

Priest: “All hail the blessed Lie, which banishes the truth like a Post-It over the ‘check engine’ light! I believe!”

Congregation: “I believe!”

Wikipedia: “I believe!”

…but I digress.

So, we’re now in recession. And inflation is already here to stay and predicted to skyrocket. And the Normies are slowwwly beginning to realize that we can’t vote out way out of this. This means hyperinflation. I see hyperinflation as a social behavior, not an economic behavior. Once people decide that their money isn’t going to retain any value, they trade it for tangible assets as quickly as they can. When it’s all of them and not just the fringe prepper weirdos who never trust the government anyway, it’s called hyperinflation. Because it only happens when everybody does it, it’s social not economic.

Buying up assets is what the Elites are already doing; that’s the main reason housing prices have long departed reality. Normie has been restrained thus far by the Normalcy Bias. “Things will get better; we’ll vote the bums out next election; we got through the last hard times”. But when that Normalcy Bias breaks, it’ll be bank runs and bread lines within a week, because our multi-inter-hyper-connected !scientific! society can’t seem to do anything halfway. Least of all hysteria.

I think it’s gonna hit this winter. First the elections will change nothing, leaving Normie with no hope except Trump 2024, then food prices will spike as predicted when the current, poor harvest comes in on top of ever-rising prices. His savings won’t last another two years!

Fortunately, I’m probably wrong. That Normalcy Bias just won’t die.

Saudi Arabia’s pet arcology, Neom, only just came to my attention now… construction began last year. It is everything that we critics of Smart Cities have been claiming, cranked to 11 and the knob ripped off.

And then it got weird. I never know where my deep dives will end up.

h ttps://neomcityguide.com/the-line/

What is Line?
It is a model of sustainable urban design and livability for the twenty-first century and beyond. THE LINE will transform urban life as we know it, allowing NEOM to become an economic engine for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the region, and the rest of the globe. THE LINE is a never-before-seen urbanization method — a 170km-long linear urban development comprising various, hyper-connected communities, with walkable neighborhoods interwoven with public parks and the natural landscape.

THE LINE runs through NEOM, connecting the Red Sea coast to the mountains and upper valleys of Saudi Arabia’s northwestern region.

Just that picture says a lot. Rule one of real estate: Location. Why build a city here? Nobody has before, obviously. There’s not much agriculture. Nothing I scanned talks about mineral wealth. The western end will have a seaport but it doesn’t look deep or sheltered. There are some highways/trade routes nearby, notably the Suez Canal, but nothing to expand upon.

Desolate, cheap land is a good place for only a few things. Animal grazing, mainly. Experimental projects, which this is not this because it’s expected to be inhabited and profitable… think Area 51 or quarantined agriculture.  Dangerous or space-intensive industry such as explosives, aircraft storage and solar farms. Exotic living arrangements for the wealthy, monastic and/or misanthropic.

And prisons. Self-contained communities whose inhabitants are neither expected to be productive nor permitted to leave.

I’m sure this land COULD be made habitable & profitable. So could Antarctica. With enough expensive infrastructure. A good site for a new city is one that doesn’t need a lot of infrastructure.

My next observation is that this is an incredibly inefficient layout for a city. Nothing is close to anything. No shape spreads out the community and infrastructure more than a straight line does. Most cities are circular in order to minimize costs and make efficient use of land area. 

The old Bolsheviks liked the idea of linear cities because it de-industrialized society and reunited workers with the means of production (also the chimney smoke of production), but that died out a century ago with little being built.

At first glance, and knowing this is the same people who built Dubai, I would guess that the purpose of Neom is to connect a waterfront beach resort with a mountain ski resort, with all the helots who keep the place running kept in isolated, impoverished hamlets along the road and out of sight.

I nailed it.

This is Oxagon, the western end of the Line. As I suspected, it’s not a sheltered port; in fact, most of it is supposed to be free-floating. I’ve never before heard of a city whose industrial base didn’t have a foundation. It sounds insane to this resident of the Pacific Ring of Fire. This is close to Suez Canal so I expect its real purpose will be maritime shipping rather than “innovative water solutions to Saudi Arabia’s lack of desalination”. Quoting some marketing copy.

Not pictured: The future mansions, estates, private docks and yachts of the royal family & friends.

The east end of the line is Trojena, the ski & swim resort.

h ttps://blooloop.com/technology/news/saudi-arabia-neom-trojena/

Trojena will be a first-of-its-kind experience, offering outdoor skiing in a desert climate. There will be a ski village and ski slope, as well as wellness resorts, an interactive nature reserve, retail outlets and restaurants.

Outdoor skiing in Saudi Arabia. Sure, that’ll be sustainable & carbon-neutral.

Highlights include a man-made freshwater lake and a vertical village that will merge technology, entertainment and hospitality facilities. It will serve as the main gateway into Trojena, which will feature six districts – Gateway, Discover, Valley, Explore, Relax and Fun.

“Trojena represents Neom’s values and bold plans as a land where nature and innovative technologies come together to form a unique global experience,” said Neom CEO Nadhmi Al-Nasr.

Nature… tech… but where’s Daddy? Segue

h ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neom

In a recording heard by The Wall Street Journal Nasr once said at a meeting, “I drive everybody like a slave, when they drop down dead, I celebrate. That’s how I do my projects.” He even threatened to replace employees stuck in other countries during the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown in 2020, which included the former director of branding and marketing too.

End segue

“This new development is a major contribution to achieving Neom’s long-term ambitions by adhering to the principles of sustainability and utilizing state-of-the-art technology and engineering, across various disciplines, to make Neom an all-round and attractive world-class destination.”

Trojena expects to attract 700,000 visitors and 7,000 residents by 2030. The destination will create more than 10,000 jobs and add SAR 3 billion to Saudi Arabia‘s GDP by 2030.

Wait a minute. Most of humanity will be dead of Climate Change by 2030 and unable to visit this new resort. Which is it? “The ocean levels are rising” or “Al Gore just bought another oceanfront property”?

So, yeah. Neom is an oceanfront shipping & yachting community connected to an enormous ski resort by high-speed rail. But like an Oreo cookie, what’s in the middle?

h ttps://www.dezeen.com/2021/01/13/line-saudi-arabia-170-kilometres-long-city-neom/

Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, has unveiled plans for a 100-mile belt of zero-energy walkable communities for a million people.

The linear city will have no cars or streets, with all residents living within a five-minute walk of essential facilities.

Bin Salman announced plans for The Line in a video where he described it as a “civilisational revolution that puts humans first.”

No, it literally puts humans LAST. The reason this city is a big gamble is that nobody currently lives there. Build the city first, then expect people to show up en masse? Very, very risky. Even “destination cities” such as Las Vegas were built incrementally, and not as self-contained public works projects.

“What will our new house be like, Daddy?”

“It’ll be modular and interchangeable, like me.”

The 100-mile-long (170 kilometres) mega-city will consist of connected communities – which it calls “city modules” – and link the Red Sea coast with the north-west of Saudi Arabia.

It will be a part of Neom, Saudi Arabia’s fully automated $500 billion region that will span Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt and be entirely powered by renewable energy.

Um… why bring in a million people if the place is automated?

The Line will have no cars or streets

According to Bin Salman, who is also the chairman of the Neom company board of directors, construction of The Line will start in the first quarter of 2021.

The city will have no cars or streets, with everything its inhabitants need accessible within a five-minute walk.

That’s not a selling point to potential residents. “The only way out is via this remotely controlled train. You will not be allowed to own a vehicle capable of independent travel between modules. Trust the AI. Trust Big Brother”.

“High-speed transportation, utilities, digital infrastructure, and logistics will be seamlessly integrated in dedicated spaces running in an invisible layer along The Line,” said a statement.

Drawings show vehicles driven by artificial intelligence (AI), a metro line and high-speed freight transportation located underground. Overground will be a “pedestrian layer” supported by two underground layers – one “service layer” level of infrastructure directly underneath the ground and a lower-level “spine layer” for transport.

Why put ALL transportation TWO STORIES BELOW the ground? Ground level is cheap & easy. Elevated rail might be scenic. But below ground? That’s expensive to build, difficult to maintain or expand and… difficult to access.

Either they’re bunkering against a global plague or the Line is an open-air prison run by a computer program.

Furthermore, notice those special, central high-speed lines? The Elites don’t even want to share the same infrastructure as the pawns.

“An estimated 90 per cent of available data will be harnessed to enhance infrastructure capabilities far beyond the 1 per cent typically utilised in existing smart cities,” it added.

Buildings will be carbon-positive and powered by clean energy and according to Neom, the layout of The Line will mean that 95 per cent of the land in the Neom region, which is located on a key trade route, is protected.

Neom was announced in 2017 and is part of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 drive to diversify its economy and become less reliant on oil. The area will be populated by more robots than people, and powered by solar panels and wind farms.

Going “green” and going “robotic automated” are two very different directions, unless you’re in the know that “green” is a code word for totalitarianism, and then it makes perfect sense. Say what you will about ED-209, it was Robocop that went rogue.

Saudi Arabia wants to become less reliant on oil? Sure, and the Caymans want to diversify away from banking. Which actually would be a good idea; single-resource economies are volatile; but Neom is not expected to produce anything. There are no natural resources to exploit. The only named industry is tourism in an artificially maintained environment. The only mention of manufacturing in the brochures was desalination. That didn’t sound like shipbuilding or consumer goods, and why desalinate far away from existing cities?

A city that prides itself on insular self-sufficiency, with its infrastructure buried as much as possible, sounds a lot more like a survival bunker than a profitable & comfortable place to live. And Prince Salman demands it be finished by 2030? Hmm.

Speaking of single-resource problems, the concept of a single service tunnel for a hundred-mile-long city is criminal negligence. A mere building with a single entrance/exit would be declared a safety hazard. Entire communities with one point of failure? That’s so absurd, it suggests that cutting off services to a community at a moment’s notice is a design feature. Are the Elites going to donate their luxury drone-copters if there’s a brushfire forcing evacuations? Because the people, we’re told upfront, won’t be owning any transport.

One last article… and down the proverbial rabbit hole we go!

The pyramids of the 21st century?

h ttps://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11055659/The-new-pyramids-Thats-vision-Saudi-tyrant-desert-city-cost-1-TRILLION.html

By Tom Leonard, 27 July 2022

This article is how the project came to my attention. All the previous articles were last year, celebrating the start of construction. One year later, how’s it going?

Just imagine, if you can, a 105-mile long, pencil-thin horizontal skyscraper — a sidescraper — that cuts through high mountains and arid desert.

It will house a city of nine million people. There will be no cars or streets but flying taxis: oh and a giant fake moon, animatronic dinosaurs and an army of robots to harvest food, cook and clean for the pampered population.

And carbon emissions will be zero.

What I just heard as an investor was, “if you came to Saudi Arabia to invest in anything other than oil then you’re dumb enough to believe this.” Which is fair.

“We’re serious.”

No way!

Announced in 2017 by the prince, Neom is the flagship project in a masterplan to diversify Saudi Arabia’s oil-dependent economy as the world increasingly turns to greener energy alternatives.

Five years on, Neom — which MBS insists must be finished by 2030 — has been plagued by setbacks as an army of workers and advisers struggle to cope with his mercurial temperament and ever-changing ideas.

MBS, 36, reportedly found the site for his dream city in Saudi Arabia’s remote province of Tabuk, after landing there in his helicopter. ‘I want to build my pyramids,’ he told advisers. He has already built a palace there.

Welcome to Clown World, where the world’s leaders lost their minds twenty years ago but are still obscenely wealthy.

The glittering centrepiece of Neom will be The Line, an elongated ‘linear’ city 33 times the size of New York. Situated close to the borders with Jordan and Egypt, it will stretch from desert in the east to the Red Sea in the west. The Line, which is being designed by cutting-edge U.S. firm Morphosis Architects, is actually two tall buildings running parallel, connected by walkways. 

Wait, what? The “isolated communities joined by a high-speed rail line” was at least plausible. A total redesign after construction begins is a very… bad… sign…

It will be just 656ft (200m) wide. They will have mirrored surfaces and rise up to 1,640ft (500m) above sea level — taller than the Empire State Building.

This can’t be happening.

A high-speed rail link running under The Line will allow passengers to get from one end of the city to the other in just 20 minutes… So-called ‘smart’ technology is capable of independent action and pretty much everything about Neom will be smart. The vegetables that will grow vertically from the sides of buildings will be ‘autonomously harvested’ by robots and transported to ‘community canteens’. Residents will pay a subscription for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

MBS says Neom will be a test bed for new technologies that could revolutionise urban life. Despite the region having almost no fresh water and temperatures that soar above 100F, its planners pledge that Neom’s citizens will live in harmony with nature. Desalination plants will process water from the Red Sea and the baking sun will provide solar energy to a fully renewable electric grid.

This isn’t a completely different project… but what the hoo-haw happened?

Challenges remain, not least the amount of shadow that will be created by the parallel buildings. Neom planning papers concede that lack of sunlight could damage the health of some inhabitants.

Other innovations include a Jurassic Park-style island of robot dinosaurs, advanced surveillance systems using drones and microphones to ‘guarantee the safety of the inhabitants’ by monitoring their every move, and holographic teachers ready to teach on demand in schools.

This still has the bones of WEF “you will own nothing and be happy”, but… two Empire State Buildings 100 miles wide?

And when the white paper called for most of the workforce to be robotic, I didn’t know they meant robo-dinosaurs.

Cloud seeding, a technology designed to create rain by modifying the weather and outside temperature, will cool the city and water the crops that will provide fresh produce.

The technical term for that is “anthropogenic climate change”.

Silver Beach, a seaside community for at least 50,000 people, was inspired by the Cote d’Azur and designed by an Italian firm that specialises in creating superyachts. Instead of sand, the beach would have been crushed marble because it would shimmer silver in the sun. Sources say it was scrapped as it wasn’t considered sufficiently ‘distinctive’.

Heh, my opening hunch really was on the money… but like the robo-dinos, I still had no idea.

“Let’s use crushed diamonds for sand at this resort.”

“Nah, I overheard one of the helots mentioning that he gave his wife a diamond ring for their wedding. We don’t want to look like commoners.”

Gardens and parks, plus a huge sports stadium 1,000ft up where robots could some day wrestle in cage fights, will be housed between the parallel buildings.

Is this for real? Did MBS really demand this? I don’t know what’s real anymore.

Challenges remain, not least the amount of shadow that will be created by the parallel buildings. Neom planning papers concede that lack of sunlight could damage the health of some inhabitants.

Another stumbling block has been over the 20,000 tribespeople the government plans to relocate. Some have been saying they won’t be removed from ancestral lands: one who refused to back down was denounced as a ‘terrorist’ and killed by Saudi special forces.

This is real enough that blood has been spilled.

MBS is a sci-fi fan and the Neom team has commissioned work from, among others, designers who created the look of the Guardians Of The Galaxy and Dark Knight Batman films, as well as a futurist who worked on the dystopian zombie movies World War Z and I Am Legend. Chris Gray, a California writer, says he was hired to research the ‘aesthetics’ of key sci-fi films and books, including Blade Runner.

Also like the robo-dinos, I thought “dystopian” was the intent of Neom Line rather than its ARTISTIC THEME.

“Here’s your new community module. You’ve been assigned to ‘Zombie Zion’. Settle in and we’ll start the medical experiments tomorrow.”

It’s already obvious that we’re headed into some really hard times. But I never stopped to think about whether plutocrats who have an entire world to lose, might take it worse than me with little more than my next meal to lose.

Serious question: has Mohammed bin Salman lost his mind? Or is this the most epic money laundering scam ever? This reads like he knew he needed a “smart city” refuge for what’s about to happen, and set up to fund it via Climate Change grifting as one would expect, then… his dacha in the woods ain’t gonna be 33 times bigger than New York City.

It’s an open secret, at least in some circles, that Cali Governor Nephew-of-Nancy-Pelosi, better known as Gavin Newsom, aka Graven Newscum, aka Willie Brown’s Boy Toy, aka the Prince Of Hair Gel, is gunning for POTUS 2024. He’s up against a lot of competition, particularly the Jim Henson Muppet Company which recently snatched the contact for Joe Biden’s deepfakes away from Meta/Facebook* after it recently tested positive for cocaine, which is why he’s already launched social-media salvos against Florida’s DeSantis and Texas’ Greg Abbott… predictable GOP contestants.

*This is not true. AFAIK. But yes, the trending headline du jour is if Biden isn’t being deepfaked then his body language says cocaine. They forgot to make it blink.

Hair Gel is also trying to simultaneously end firearm production and pwn the Repukelicans with a new anti-gun law that parallels Texas’ sue-the-abortionist law. If it works then it could be a centerpiece of legislation to launch his campaign with while also enabling gloating at Approved Enemies. Pretty sweet.

It’s not going to work, though.

In fact, it’s gonna fail so badly that even gun-banners are already complaining about it! But perhaps not for reasons you’d expect. Crack a cold one and enjoy some realpolitik.

California’s New Gun Bill Is Bad Law and Dumb Politics

h ttps://www.thedailybeast.com/californias-new-gun-bill-is-bad-law-and-dumb-politics?source=articles&via=rss

By Alex Berke (probably not male), 27 July 2022

Last Friday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed SB 1327, a law that allows individuals to sue Californians for selling or attempting to sell particular types of guns, as well as for selling weapons to anyone under the age of 21.

This bill is a legislative trolling of Texas, which last year passed SB 8, a bill that now allows citizens to sue Texans who “aid and abet” abortions after six weeks of pregnancy.

“If they are going to use this framework to put women’s lives at risk, we are going to use it to save people’s lives here in the state of California. That’s the spirit, the principle, behind this law,” Newsom said in announcing SB 1327 becoming law.

Heh, liberals still can’t meme. Let me show you what I see.

A conservative reading that would be upset at the prospect of being bankrupted by a million petty lawsuits. That’s because conservatives are system-oriented.

But a Leftist reading that? What he sees, is exactly why the Texas law worked so well. He sees the little people being given a role in politics. Just as the Texas law gave Joe Sixpack the chance to call down the heat upon Planned Parenthood, this California law would let a nobody become a Somebody.

Leftism is the politics of envy. It is not a cooperative endeavor. Its endgame is a hive of faceless social insects ruled by a tiny cabal of sociopaths. They aren’t going to get there by opening the field to freelance mercenaries. If one of those nobodies actually won such a lawsuit, they’d gain fame and wealth without first becoming a controlled asset. Free agents are a far worse threat than Glock surviving to pay taxes.

There’s not one single shark in the California tank that wants to see this law actually be utilized. They are sharks. Parasites. Their economics are negative-sum, focused on cashing out before a collapse. The very last thing Leftist leaders want to do is set a new place at the inner table, earned by merit!

What you would expect to see instead on the Left, is an organized, large-scale assault by multiple legal firms, which would not possibly create a single, big winner. And that is what we actually saw in the Sandy Hook civil case against Remington, which ran until the bad guys “won” when the insurance companies… not Remington itself… agreed to a settlement.

But let’s continue! There’s more to be learned.

The day that the Supreme Court allowed SB 8 to remain in effect, abortion services in Texas almost completely ceased. In contrast, gun sellers in California have not closed their doors. The NRA has not even released a statement in response to the law.

The logic behind the laws may be similar, but a clear difference between SB 1327 and SB 8 has emerged: Texas won.

Women respond to fear. The possibility of being sued was enough to affect their behavior. Conservatives mostly being men, we are not threatpointed so easily.

This is not surprising. Progressives in general, including gun safety advocates, will not win by playing by the right’s rules—especially when the right’s rules are designed explicitly to accomplish their goal of cementing minority rule.

A fine piece of projection, that. He saw what I saw, but instead of admitting the truth, he blamed us for exactly the Leftist Leadership’s agenda: cementing minority rule. Excuse me, “democracy”.

Some have argued that Newsom is also trolling the Supreme Court, hoping that challenges to SB 1327 will force the conservative-dominated court to confront the mistake it made in allowing Texas’ “abortion bounty law” to stand—or at least to face its own partisan hypocrisy.

Newsom is trolling, yes, but in preparation for a power play. Conserving last week’s gains is Drudge work, if you catch my meaning.

But here’s the thing, Republicans don’t care if you think they’re hypocrites. They care about winning (and they are). The Supreme Court’s conservative majority doesn’t care what the public thinks. After the Dobbs opinion leaked in May, Justice Samuel Alito had an opportunity to respond to the public criticisms against him, but he did not make any substantive changes.

Projection again! Republicans obsess over whether they’re  hypocrites. They live in terror of “you’re the real racist!” accusations. You could not ask for a more noble defeatist than a 20-year RNC veteran.

The Federalist Society spent 30 years laser-focused on creating the current 6-3 Supreme Court majority. The right-wing legal group succeeded, in large part, because in 2016 then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to hold hearings for Merrick Garland—nominated to the Supreme Court by then-President Barack Obama—in an election year. Four years later, McConnell had no compunction about fast-tracking hearings for a Trump nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, while votes had already been cast in the 2020 election.

I should do a post someday, on Garland managing the Oklahoma City bombing. What a small world it is at the top! Defeated for SCOTUS, he’s now US AG.

A semi-hidden organization laboring thirty years to undermine the judicial system? If we were talking about Leftists then thirty years ago would be about when the Clintons came along.

And those 30-year veterans wouldn’t be wanting any Johnnie-Come-Lately types to seize their victory, now would they? No wonder Congress resembles a necromancer convention.

No amount of punchy newspaper ads mocking McConnell for his hypocrisy changed the fact that 6-3 rule is cemented for decades barring extraordinary action. Sure, Gov. Newsom got to run his ad, unfortunately, it only illustrates what happens when we play by their rules.

A conservative might not realize the existential crisis that Leftists are having, because this isn’t just about abortion. They have lost control of Moscow. The highest authority is no longer Amenable! RvW will not amount to much from the perspective of Red America, but the disrespect shown towards the key sacrament of the Globalist Religion is… again, as I said at the start, the Left is all about centralizing. They don’t want a team effort, they don’t want to work within the existing System, they want an SCOTUS whose decisions… always Narrative-correct… cannot be challenged.

That is the Conservative’s Achilles Heel. “You have no appeals left within the System. It’s time to give up.”

All the attention Newsom has generated for the new law would be better directed toward building power for genuine change. Instead, Newsom is attempting to twist right-wing pretzel logic into a progressive purpose. This is dumb politics, and bad law.

Correct, because They are nothing like Us. We want to be peers of each other and servants of God (or at least, an objective standard). They want to be kings and pawns locked in eternal war over finite resources. Giving Normies a chance to act against feminists was genius. Giving Normies a chance to act against firearm companies is asking for a new, competent rival to emerge.

The Texas law that gifted rights to individuals to sue—even if they are not personally impacted by the alleged violation of the law—was rightly referred to as a “bounty hunter” provision, since the law empowered any pro-life Texan to sue [abortionists and their supporters], and to get paid for doing it!

Boom, there it is. Private citizen Joe got an opportunity to actually participate. Even to receive a material benefit.

It is essential to America’s legal system that in order to bring a lawsuit, you must have standing, or be personally impacted by the action you are alleging is unlawful. By providing standing to anyone who differs in opinion, SB 8 dangerously weaponized the law. Ironically, very few lawsuits were actually filed in Texas, since the very existence of the law accomplished its goals. At least until Dobbs was decided.

The Hive does not want everybody to cooperate. The Hive wants to command and be obeyed, with its violent goons locked up in jail until the Hive royalty generously lets them out again. Doing so maintains the pecking order of who has power and who has not. This drives law enforcement nuts… they call it “revolving door policing”… but the reason it’s a perennial thing is that reminds the pawns that their Elites can always lock that revolving door without notice. It’s a loyalty reinforcement mechanism.

A tactic that police could try against revolving-door, is assuring them… let’s assume, today, “them” means low-level riot arrestees… that charges will be dropped whether or not they call that special phone number they were given. In the short run, that’d be a bad look for police, but in the just-slightly longer run, the Elites will shit themselves when they see their minions skipping out of prison without their approval.

If nothing else, it’d be a fun way to get fired. “The Attorney General always lets them out so I just let them out myself to save him the paperwork. I have no idea why he’s so upset that I’m the one granting them their freedom instead of him. I would never call in that favor to get revenge on the guy who just demanded my termination.”

The anti-abortion group Texas Right to Life still took the opportunity to sue abortion funds. The judge in the case allowed them to exchange discovery before the group even filed its lawsuit. The executive director of the pro-abortion Texas Equal Access Fund and deputy director of the Lilith Fund for Reproductive Equity…

Sigh, hiding in plain sight.

…provided sworn affidavits stating that their organizations fund abortions “after the period in which cardiac activity is usually detectable,” opening the abortion funds up to potential lawsuits.

Conservative politics do BETTER when normal people are given real chances to participate. Marxist politics do WORSE because you don’t want the people being robbed to have a say about their being robbed.

(A lot of my tax money goes towards paying fat pensions, many of which were agreed upon before I was born. When did I agree to this?)

Also, because the slaves can’t pick the winner. You must realize that many people actively want to be a faceless minion in the service of a tyrant. It’s hypergamy! It’s the same instinct that makes women turn down happy marriages to ordinary men in order to be Chad’s alternating Thursday, except in religion instead of sexuality. Which as we Christians know from Genesis 1, are two very related topics.

There may still be interesting lawsuits brewing from gun safety advocates after the passage of SB 1327, but until the people who are making, selling, transporting or distributing illegal assault weapons and ghost guns are scared into ceasing their activities—SB 1327 won’t be as effective as SB 8.

Moving the goalposts in order to discourage support for the gun bill.

And that’s why Newsom’s legislative stunt is folly, and his efforts to help people in need of abortion rights or gun safety would be better spent on things that have a chance of actually affecting positing change.

Such as, presumably, blanket bans on firearms followed by State-level civil disobedience against the Supreme Court. That would be an example of why breakup is a bad solution to the convergence of institutions in America at this point. The breakup would establish a new “highest court” which if it starts out captured, will, at this point, be a near-vertical descent into tyranny and civil war.

Confusion over who is king, also works to the advantage of conservatives. We don’t need Elites bossing us around. We don’t wait for orders from Moscow. But the pawns are typically afraid to act on their own… they might accidentally violate the Narrative.

One reason that the Plandemic was so successful, is that the West’s elderly are completely unable to cope with the fact of death. Instead of being viewed as a transition or at least an inevitability… a test of character either way… they were quite happy with the idea of ending the lives of everybody else in order to guarantee a few more years of suffering for themselves.

They have still not made peace with death… because they refuse to believe it’s even possible.

Most Americans today are choosing cremation – here’s why burials are becoming less common

h ttps://theconversation.com/most-americans-today-are-choosing-cremation-heres-why-burials-are-becoming-less-common-186618

By David Sloane, 22 July 2022

The National Funeral Directors Association has predicted that by 2035, nearly 80% of Americans will opt for cremation.

I’m not surprised. Heck, I plan it for myself, because I don’t want my corpse to get used by PfizerCorp for incubating a bioweapon or being rebooted as a NATO zombie a la the movie Universal Soldier, or something. I’m serious, too! No way in HELL I’m leaving my body to “science”. They’d patent my DNA to sue my mother.

Concerns about modern ghoulism aside, cremation is typically an atheist endeavor. It’s a question of souls, you see. We are meant for immortality, therefore the notion of a hard stop offends us at a very deep level, therefore we erect memorials of various types. Defying death is the natural instinct of those who hope, with the aid of Christ Our Savior, to conquer death.

The atheist has no such “illusions”. Disposal of dead flesh is best done clinically with no emotional attachment or wasted resources, because feeding the eternal appetite is more important than religion or tradition or all those other culture-trappings that are never worth more than a museum ticket to the curious.

When the first U.S. indoor cremation machine was opened in 1876 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the creator and operator, Francis LeMoyne, was severely criticized by the Catholic Church. The new method of disposal was viewed as dangerous because it threatened traditional religious burial and society’s sense of morality and dignity.

Segue

h ttps://www.ourfamilyhistories.com/hsdurbin/wash/lemoyne.html

About 1875 the Doctor became interested in the subject of cremation, and in order to show his faith in it as a proper means of disposing of the dead, he in 1876 built a crematory a short distance from town [on his own land]…

For reference, he died in 1879. And yes, was cremated there.

Before the days of political abolitionism Dr. LeMoyne was a member of the Presbyterian Church, but when goaded to madness by the oppressions of slavery he felt that the church did not come up to what he conceived to be its duty, and he withdrew. Some have supposed, on account of his withdrawal from the church, and from his views on the cremation of the dead, that he had cut loose from his Christian moorings, and had drifted away out upon the shoreless sea of infidelity. He maintained that the burning of the dead was wholly and entirely a secular and sanitary measure, altogether outside of any religious considerations. The disposal of the dead, he maintained, should be made entirely dependent upon the safety and comfort of the living. Those who knew him best, and were most intimate with his views, are very free to assert that he never lost confidence in the great doctrine of salvation through faith in the merits of the atonement offered by the blood of Christ.

That could be a story of today’s Antifa goon. “Yeah, I used to attend church until it didn’t enthusiastically support my political demands, so I bailed. I’m still spiritual, just not religious, which is why I try to replace religious traditions with secular, scientific Progress.”

And the proof of that, is that LeMoyne co-founded the Washington Female Seminary.

End segue

Less than 100 years later – in 1963 – English writer Jessica Mitford wrote the bestselling book “The American Way of Death” as a way to educate Americans about what she viewed as the awful commercialization of dying, death and commemoration. After a strong criticism of funeral directors, cemeterians and other associated professions, she ended with a plea for cremation.

Segue

h ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessica_Mitford

Jessica married her second cousin Esmond Romilly, who was killed in World War II, and then American civil rights lawyer Robert Treuhaft, with whom she joined the American Communist Party and worked closely in the Civil Rights Congress. Both refused to testify in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Support for my “cremation is attractive to atheists” theory grows!

Resting bitch face circa 1937.

End segue

However, as late as 1970, according to figures from the Cremation Association of America, only about 5% of American chose the method. In 2020, more than 56% Americans opted for it.

So what has led to such a dramatic shift today? As an American historian who wrote “The Last Great Necessity: Cemeteries in American History,” following that up almost 30 years later with “Is the Cemetery Dead?,” I know that people are choosing cremation for different reasons, depending on their circumstances.

Here are three main ones:

Let me guess: the elderly are so unwilling to confront death, and the young are so indoctrinated into believing that dead people don’t matter, that cremation is the quickest, most painless choice.

1. Funerals and ground burials are expensive
Although figures differ depending on the source, families are spending an average of over US$8,000 on funerals, ranging from $6,700 in Mississippi to just under $15,000 in Hawaii, according to the World Population Review.

That compares with $1,000 to $2,000 for a direct cremation, in which the crematory or funeral director doesn’t provide any services beyond the actual cremation of the body, as the blog Parting.com, which compares the pricing of funerals and cremations, points out.

However, many survivors don’t choose to do the least costly cremation. The National Funeral Directors Association noted that for a funeral with a cremation, the median cost was over $6,000 – certainly a savings, but not the enormous amount many websites proclaim.

Additionally, this is not a new development: Direct cremation was far cheaper than a full burial in 1960 or 1990, too.

The author disproved his own theory! It’s not about the money!

2. Environmental costs

Some people are increasingly upset by the environmental costs of a burial. A conventional burial necessitates the body being embalmed, usually with formaldehyde…

No. Anybody who would torch grandpa in order to feel good about Gaia, was never going to honor the dead regardless.

Besides, a REAL environmentalist would feed Grandpa’s corpse, and her own, to vultures, hyenas or other all-natural carrion disposal tools. You can’t fully love Gaia until a gator shits you out somewhere in the Everglades.

(Shh. Let’s see if any environmentalists fall for that.)

3. Fewer Americans belong to a church

A growing number of younger Americans in particular are not tied to the religious institution where their grandparents and parents may have had a service after their death or from which funeral corteges would have left for the cemetery.

Consistent with my theory but the decline in membership, while dramatic, is insufficient to explain the preference increase for cremation.

While admitting upfront that there are legit reasons for a believer to choose cremation, the popularity is because people have lost the connection between this life and the next. They don’t understand why the dead should be honored. This isn’t an organization membership thing… this is a logical consequence of a humanist, materialist, reductionist worldview.

So what if Soylent Green is made out of people? If they’re dead and hygienically processed, what’s wrong with protein?

 

 

 

 

 

Listening to Protestants ignore Scripture is as tediously frustrating as listening to sedevacantists claim that Frankie isn’t the real Pope. They deny the very essence of what they claim to support. But Frankie is old news and F. LaGard Smith is supposedly in my branch of Christendom.

The surprising roots of gender madness

h ttps://www.christianpost.com/voices/the-surprising-roots-of-gender-madness.html

By F. LaGard Smith, 25 July 2022

Remember the proverbial “frog in the kettle?”

Skip. Kindly don’t blame me for not noticing the slow approach of modern perversions… which I did notice and it was not slow.

For starters, there’s “Rosie the Riveter,” depicted in WWII recruitment posters flexing her muscles, Popeye-like, with the defiant words, “We Can Do It!”. And do it they did! Millions of women abandoned their traditional roles in the home to “man” the munitions factories and shipyards while the men were off fighting. Having exchanged skirts for work trousers, many post-war “Rosies” took a liking to wearing slacks, complete with bobbed hair, eventually at “unisex” hair salons. In both careers and fashion, gender distinctions were increasingly blurred.

Whoa, wait. Is he going to notice that male and female are DIFFERENT? That God created woman to serve man? That he’s slowing becoming aware that Scripture as written can be trusted? A Prot should already be hanging out on that street corner but better late than never.

Lia Thomas, the celebrated trans swimmer, ought to be given a medal — not for breaking all the records set by real women, but for finally exposing the lie that women are as strong as men, and that biology and chromosomes don’t matter.

He ought to be given a disqualification for a man competing as a woman, then charged with blaspheming imago Dei… in the happy fantasy world that we obviously don’t live in.

But Smith is correct that him leveraging male strength to defeat women at their own game of MeToo has been hilarious.

So how did we get to the point where a man “identifying as a woman” was even permitted to compete? Having been told for generations that it’s illegal to discriminate, society has lost the ability to discriminate! We’ve been blindsided by a gender-blind ideology…worst of all, even in churches…

Say it… I think he’s going to say it…

Following culture, believers have been bewitched into thinking that what Paul said (in Gal. 3:28) about those who belong to Christ being “neither male nor female” eliminates any and all gender distinctions. Blithely ignored is Paul’s teaching that a woman is not to assume positions of spiritual leadership, a specific responsibility assigned to men in both Old and New Testaments. In matters of gender, whether in individuals or the church, God doesn’t “gift” what he prohibits.

HE SAID IT!!! Yay!

Why male spiritual leadership? Considering the wise judge, Deborah, the successful merchant, Lydia, and the “worthy woman” of Proverbs 31, surely, it can’t be because men are spiritually stronger than godly women, despite Peter’s reference (in 1 Pet. 3:7) to “the weaker vessel.” Indeed, if generally — as facts seem to indicate — women are more naturally spiritual than men, perhaps God has called men to lead so that, counterintuitively, they might be better followers.

Aw sheet, mon, why u dis muh groove like dat? I was all happy for you. You’d escaped the darkness. And you went straight back into Original Sin.

Whatever God’s reasons…

No. Stop right there. I am not finished. God’s reasons are WRITTEN IN HIS BOOK. That’s why we Protestants READ AND TRUST HIS BOOK. You can’t be all “sola Scriptura” then be all “despite 1 Peter 3:7”.

Why did God put man in charge? Because man was made first and the woman  was too gullible. Emphases mine:

“A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived” 1 Timothy 2:11-14

There is no room for question here. This doubt should not exist. Women are inferior to men. We cannot proceed to debating WHY that is the case without first agreeing, with God Himself As Written,  that it IS the case.

(And for the record, submissive women are the happiest women and the most pleasant to be around. For anybody who disagrees, Gretchen Whitmer needs a new sub.)

Whatever God’s reasons, when godly women take on roles ordained for men, their “spiritual transgenderism” fuels the trans fire cooking unwary innocents who are being brainwashed to their harm. Teaching boys and girls that they “can be whatever they want to be” is the right idea, but — given today’s trans world and God’s ordained gender roles — perhaps the wrong message.

Dude, if only you WOULD listen to the Message then you’d get the right idea. Just the first three chapters would be a great improvement.

It’s now official. The West faces a pandemic of stigmatizing the people who willfully spread disease.

WHO declares monkeypox outbreak a global health emergency after 5 deaths worldwide

h ttps://www.theblaze.com/news/monkeypox-global-health-emergency-who

By Paul Sacca, 23 July 2022

The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the monkeypox outbreak a global health emergency.

“I have decided that the global monkeypox outbreak represents a public health emergency of international concern,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced on Saturday morning during a briefing in Geneva.

Emphasis on “I”.

Members of an expert committee met on Thursday to decide if the current monkeypox outbreak should be escalated to a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC). Of the virologists, vaccinologists, epidemiologists, and health experts, nine voted against declaring monkeypox a PHEIC, and six voted in favor, according to Reuters.

They used democracy to decide whether Monkeypox was a global health emergency instead of an objective standard.

And when the “expert committee” decided 9-6 AGAINST that declaration:

In the end, Ghebreyesus overrode the committee and declared monkeypox to be a public health emergency of international concern – which is the WHO’s highest level of alert.

Oh, that sounds SO SOO SOOO familiar!

“Democracy means your voice gets heard!”

“Get rid of Governor Hair Gel and turn the gas pumps back on.”

“…if you say what Democracy wants to hear.”

Tedros stated, “Although I’m declaring a public health emergency of international concern, for the moment, this is an outbreak that’s concentrated among men who have sex with men, especially those with multiple sexual partners. That means that this is an outbreak that can be stopped with the right strategies in the right groups.”

Monkeypox is a gay disease. The gays get the disease, realize they have it and then intentionally spread it. Hell, they intentionally receive it. All they had to do was keep their pants zipped for one. Single. Month.

The World Health Organization director-general added, “Stigma and discrimination can be as dangerous as any virus.”

We already knew he was corrupt enough to do stuff like this. What I don’t yet know is how this benefits China, his owner. Looking at PRC’s insane and self-destructive “Zero Covid” policies, such a declaration could justify concentration camps for homos. Sodomy being the definitive behavior of the Global American Empire, it’s tempting to see this declaration as a BRICS weaponization of the medical profession against GAE.

Alternatively, maybe the reason for monkey-angst is because this is a disease directly targeted against the GAE’s managerial class, and it’s serving the same purpose as “declarations of emergency” for USA governments: it unlocks extra money for politicians and special interests.

Maybe both. Whichever it is, Tedros just invalidated the very mechanism that gives his dictats the veneer of legitimacy.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there have been more than 16,000 global cases of monkeypox in 2022 in 74 countries.

There have been nearly 3,000 cases in the United States this year, according to the CDC. As of Wednesday, there were 679 cases of monkeypox in New York – 94% of them in New York City, according to state officials.

Don’t say gay!

There have reportedly been a total of five deaths from monkeypox worldwide.

And the only way that statistic could be more pathetic…

The Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy reported, “Though the outbreak is heavily concentrated in Europe, the five deaths have been reported in African nations.”

This global health emergency is for a self-inflicted disease that hasn’t killed a single person in the First World, because “stigma and discrimination are just as bad as real plagues”.

If the goal is demoralizing us then it isn’t working. I’ll be watching my neighbors, seeing which ones repeat this baldfaced lie.

Update: per

h ttps://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/two-children-diagnosed-with-monkeypox-in-the-u-s-officials-say

The official American count of the first 2,500 infected people is

2 children

8 women

2,490 men

Yep.

If we remnant Christians are going to recover from our complete betrayal at the hands of modern clergy then we’ll need to start teaching ourselves. Symbology is an excellent place to begin.

Louis Vuitton Opens First Dedicated Men’s Store in California

h ttps://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/louis-vuitton-opens-first-dedicated-211228589.html

By Deborah Belgum, 14 July 2022

The vibe is definitely Southern California.

This is what authentic SoCal vibe looks like:

The new stand-alone Louis Vuitton men’s store has a colorful display of art with California tones all around the two-story location at 420 N. Rodeo Drive, which opens Saturday.

Rodeo Drive? Heh, I already know what happened to the last store. I’ll put it at the end, like Judgment Day.

Walk inside, past the oversize display windows, and there is an airy feeling with 17-foot ceilings that stretch up to the second-floor mezzanine.

On the first floor, one wall is covered with a three-dimensional acrylic painting on stainless steel and mirrors by Portuguese artist Marisa Ferreira, who is known for her geometric forms and idiosyncratic colors.

This IS supposed to be a men’s clothing store, yes?

Look at that storefront again. The rainbow fag flag is an easy tell. The rainbow-colored furnishings are only slightly harder. The boyish statue in a “men’s clothing” store is more obscure but… it’s a golden calf. The empty space indicates that this store is not as advertised.

This is not a store that any Christian should set foot in, let alone spend money at. And yet, it is sadly true that most Christians would not be able to conclude that from the picture.

Symbology is important to the homosexual community. It was how they organized back in the day when their conduct was properly banned. Furthermore, symbology is spiritually important. You just can’t read Mosaic Law and conclude otherwise.

The Church’s awareness & appreciation of symbology is such that half the churches in my area refuse to display the Christian Cross. Me not counting two-hundred-year old logos. Don’t want to upset those sensitive seekers, y’know.

The Prot Church in particular is so lacking in symbology that it sees nothing wrong with a beige warehouse of a church with cheap folding chairs, so that the money otherwise ‘wasted’ on art could be used to feed the homeless or similar humanist agenda.

Segue

Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, “Why this waste of perfume? It could have been sold for more than a year’s wages and the money given to the poor.” And they rebuked her harshly.

“Leave her alone,” said Jesus. “Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me.” Mark 14:4-6

End segue

In the center of the floor, near a winding stairway with blue leather handrails, is a bright yellow “Giant Man” sculpture depicting Louis Vuitton model Ottawa Kwami, originally from Ghana, standing on his hands. The sculpture is a piece by Virgil Abloh, the Louis Vuitton men’s artistic director who passed away from cancer last November at the age of 41.

The men’s merchandise encompasses a wide range of categories. The store carries an ample selection from the men’s fall 2022 collection designed by the late Abloh, who worked with the fashion house since 2018. He created his last collection using the theme of Boyhood ideology, seeing the world through the eyes of a child. There are tapestry looks and touches of streetwear as well as more traditional looks.

The artists involved in the created of this temple, centerpieced by a golden calf  of a teenager, just happen to be pedophiles. From Ghana, the monkeypox capitol of Africa, no less.

Segue

h ttps://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/virgil-abloh-interview-2018

…Who is this fidgety fashion savant? And how did he, a former architecture student from Rockford, Illinois, land the top menswear job at the world’s biggest luxury brand?

Raised in a middle-class household, Abloh’s upbringing was not an extraordinary one. Born to Ghanaian immigrants – his mother a seamstress, his father a manager in a paint factory – Abloh’s parents encouraged his creativity from a young age: his mother in particular, who taught him the tricks of her trade. In 2003, Abloh graduated from the University Of Wisconsin-Madison with an undergraduate degree in civil engineering, before going on to complete a master’s in architecture at the Illinois Institute Of Technology. It was also around this time that Abloh met his longtime friend and collaborator Kanye West. If the rumours are true, Abloh skipped part of his graduation to attend a meeting with West’s manager at the time, John Monopoly, and soon after began working for West.

I swear, the reason the Kardashians are so inexplicably popular is they’re literal temple prostitutes for the Cabal. You can’t get in until you sexually debase yourselves with the gatekeepers first.

End Segue

They say that getting away with it is the greatest thrill, but the fact they can do this in the open says there’s no actual opposition.

Well… no opposition from Christians, at least. The end is still coming and I don’t mean Judgment Day.

The Tambour watch, celebrating its 20th anniversary, is well represented in numerous styles as well as other watch pieces. And a full fragrance counter offers custom engraving on the colognes developed by Louis Vuitton’s perfumer Jacques Cavallier-Belletrud.

Upstairs in the VIP room, with its off-white couches and chairs, are bright murals that Vuitton commissioned from artist Alex Proba, whose abstract designs use mid-century motifs that are desert-inspired.

In front of the VIP room is a playful space with a bright blue foosball table near a personalization table where patrons can have their initials embossed on leather items with the help of a hand-stamping machine.

I didn’t see any leather jackets in pictures of this “men’s clothing store”.

This is Louis Vuitton’s eighth freestanding men’s store in the United States. Last year, Louis Vuitton opened men’s stand-alone locations at The Galleria in Houston and the Miami Design District. There are also three stand-alone men’s stores in Las Vegas, one in New York and another in Orlando, Florida.

All centers of depravity, excepting Houston AFAIK. This is just confirming what we could already guess from just the store’s layout. STEM topics are great and keep the infrastructure going, but if Christians remain willfully ignorant about artwork and symbols then we’ll be oblivious to the many ways that Christ’s enemies organize and fight us.

And fight each other. Because what has been will be again… and this temple of sodomy is on Rodeo Drive.

That’s why the building site was available.

The demon-possessed rambling crackhead named Jordan Peterson has been making the rounds lately by telling us Christians how we could operate the Church better. I want to weigh in on the utter stupidity of taking advice on how best to worship God from somebody who believes He doesn’t exist, but am handicapped by insufficient patience to parse through his word-salad videos.

This written article by an untenured, untethered feminist on how Christians are wrong and the Bible is actually okay with abortion, will scratch that itch by proxy.

What the Bible actually says about abortion may surprise you

h ttps://theconversation.com/what-the-bible-actually-says-about-abortion-may-surprise-you-186983

By Melanie A. Howard, Associate Professor of Biblical & Theological Studies, Fresno Pacific University, 20 July 2022

What the Bible actually says about women teaching men may surprise Melanie. Should we tell her, now that she’s trying for tenure on that exact topic, or wait to see the expression on her face when she finds out for herself?

Hmm, might be a long wait. Shut up, Melanie… and that’s Biblical.

In the days since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade,

You childless, murdering skank-hos have completely lost your shit.

…which had established the constitutional right to an abortion…

Sigh.

…some Christians have cited the Bible to argue why this decision should either be celebrated or lamented. But here’s the problem: This 2,000-year-old text says nothing about abortion.

One, most of the Bible is much older than 2,000 years. And two,

Segue

Ezekiel 20:31-33

When you offer your gifts—the sacrifice of your children in the fire—you continue to defile yourselves with all your idols to this day. Am I to let you inquire of me, you Israelites? As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I will not let you inquire of me.

“‘You say, “We want to be like the nations, like the peoples of the world, who serve wood and stone.” But what you have in mind will never happen. As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I will reign over you with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm and with outpoured wrath.”

Emphases mine. And here we are today, with a pro-child-sacrifice woman who  made a career out of inquiring of God and now arrogantly claims that “God” wants us to calm down and kill children. One who claims to be a professor of Bible Studies, no less.

End segue

As a university professor of biblical studies, I am familiar with faith-based arguments Christians use to back up views of abortion, whether for or against. Many people seem to assume the Bible discusses the topic head-on, which is not the case.

Oh, of course it’s not the case. Ezekiel only talked about sacrificing children in the fire, not in the vacuum hose. That’s totally different! /sarc

Technology changes. Humans don’t.

Abortions were known and practiced in biblical times, although the methods differed significantly from modern ones…

QUOD ERAT DEMONSTRANDUM, WITCH! She goes on to discuss ancient Greece, not ancient Israel.

In other words, the Bible was written in a world in which abortion was practiced and viewed with nuance. Yet the Hebrew and Greek equivalents of the word “abortion” do not appear in either the Old or New Testament of the Bible. That is, the topic simply is not directly mentioned.

This is a classic blunder on the part of atheists trying to thump the Bible for themselves. “If it’s not stated in the Bible then it cannot be Biblical.” They see Scripture as a list of arbitrary rules to be obeyed… for the virtue-signaling, perhaps. As if anybody suffers for God because it feels good.

But we know the truth. Scripture is a critical element of our belief in God… but God is not the Bible. We believe in a Person, not a Book, and anybody whose concept of God is limited to the Law never knew Him:

Segue

Romans 4:13-16a

It was not through the law that Abraham and his offspring received the promise that he would be heir of the world, but through the righteousness that comes by faith. For if those who depend on the law are heirs, faith means nothing and the promise is worthless, because the law brings wrath. And where there is no law there is no transgression.

Therefore, the promise comes by faith, so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all Abraham’s offspring—not only to those who are of the law but also to those who have the faith of Abraham.

End Segue

So then, what’s “Biblical”? Is it just the Covenant rules, or is it men learning to become like Christ? Atheists nagging Christians to obey the Bible better is analogous to the Pharisees trying to re-kill Lazarus because dammit, his death certificate is ON FILE! He’s got no business being alive again! The rules say he DAID!

They look at us changing from mere rules-followers into children and heirs of God, but what they see is the chance to word-spell at us:

What the Bible says
The absence of an explicit reference to abortion, however, has not stopped its opponents or proponents from looking to the Bible for support of their positions.

Abortion opponents turn to several biblical texts that, taken together, seem to suggest that human life has value before birth. For example, the Bible opens by describing the creation of humans “in the image of God”: a way to explain the value of human life, presumably even before people are born. Likewise, the Bible describes several important figures, including the prophets Jeremiah and Isaiah and the Christian Apostle Paul, as having being called to their sacred tasks since their time in the womb. Psalm 139 asserts that God “knit me together in my mother’s womb.”

Also consider Genesis 9:6, which applies the death penalty to murder because humans are in the image of God. The statement is not artistic sophistry. Our lives are valuable in ways that animal lives are not.

However, abortion opponents are not the only ones who can appeal to the Bible for support. Supporters can point to other biblical texts that would seem to count as evidence in their favor.

But of course. It is a poor devil who cannot twist a Bible verse.

Exodus 21, for example, suggests that a pregnant woman’s life is more valuable than the fetus’s. This text describes a scenario in which men who are fighting strike a pregnant woman and cause her to miscarry. A monetary fine is imposed if the woman suffers no other harm beyond the miscarriage. However, if the woman suffers additional harm, the perpetrator’s punishment is to suffer reciprocal harm, up to life for life.

There are other biblical texts that seem to celebrate the choices that women make for their bodies, even in contexts in which such choices would have been socially shunned. The fifth chapter of the Gospel of Mark, for example, describes a woman with a gynecological ailment that has made her bleed continuously taking a great risk: She reaches out to touch Jesus’ cloak in hopes that it will heal her, even though the touch of a menstruating woman was believed to cause ritual contamination. However, Jesus commends her choice and praises her faith.

Stretch Armstrong says hello to that exhibition of “my body, my choice”. Did Jesus praise her faith? Yes. Did Jesus commend her for touching him? No. And what’s this about her conduct being something that would have been shunned? Luke 8 describes many people pressing against Christ as he moved through a crowded area. I don’t know much about female problems but they aren’t on the rag for years at a time.

Similarly, in the Gospel of John, Jesus’ follower Mary seemingly wastes resources by pouring an entire container of costly ointment on his feet and using her own hair to wipe them – but he defends her decision to break the social taboo around touching an unrelated man so intimately.

No, witch. That was not a sexual moment. Neither did Christ condone any violation of a social taboo. The complaint was she’d wasted money, not that she’d copped a feel.

Beyond the Bible
In the response to the Supreme Court’s decision, Christians on both sides of the partisan divide have appealed to any number of texts to assert that their particular brand of politics is biblically backed. However, if they claim the Bible specifically condemns or approves of abortion, they are skewing the textual evidence to fit their position.

Which is it? Is abortion not a big deal or is abortion a big deal? “Both sides make points that fit their positions” or “What God wants regarding the killing of the unborn can be figured out, and we better not figure wrong”?

Of course, Christians can develop their own faith-based arguments about modern political issues, whether or not the Bible speaks directly to them. But it is important to recognize that although the Bible was written at a time when abortion was practiced, it never directly addresses the issue.

Abortion was practiced in ancient Israel in the form of Molech/Baal worship, which Almighty God hated and carefully informed us that He hated. Melanie would have us normalize that behavior on the grounds that modern tools are used instead of bronze idols, and the children are killed before they even have lungs to scream in pain with.

But the root problem is even worse than murder: it’s female rebellion against men. The only power women have over men is sex, and the ultimate expression of that power is sitting in judgment of whether our children get to live. That’s why even vaxxed & sterile old prunes like Melanie are upset at Roe getting overturned. They don’t even care about the loss of human life. They care about losing power over men.

That’s why the wicked are desperate to continue abortion by any means possible.

Meanwhile, society will uphold either a conservative definition of human life, or a convenient definition of human life. We who fear God the Creator, and His demand that the murderer be put to death, will never accept a convenient definition. Why risk eternal damnation when we could simply not fornicate instead? Oh look, that IS literally what the Bible says to do!

 

People want to conduct their daily affairs in private? Okay.

People want privacy regardless of potentially criminal conduct? Getting debatable.

People want privacy in order to plan specific future crimes? Crossing a line.

People want to force Internet privacy companies to protect them from specific law enforcement agencies while they openly solicit hitmen? Unacceptable.

And “People” means “Congressmen speaking on the record”? Clown World.

Lawmakers push FTC to clean up the VPN industry

h ttps://www.theverge.com/2022/7/17/23264384/lawmakers-ftc-eshoo-wyden-vpn-industry-roe-v-wade-abortion-privacy

By Emma Roth Jul 17, 2022, 2:37pm EDT

Such an innocent-sounding title.

Last week, Congresswoman Anna Eshoo (D-CA) and Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) wrote a letter urging the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to address deceptive practices in the Virtual Private Network (VPN) industry.

Yay!

Eshoo and Wyden’s letter comes as people look to hide their digital footprint following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Huh?!

A VPN allows a user to establish an encrypted connection between their device and a private server, making it harder for third parties to access their online activity. With abortion becoming illegal or restricted in several states, more people are looking to conceal their messages and search history, as police can use this information to prosecute someone seeking the procedure.

It’s one thing for a privacy company to conceal a member’s actions without checking whether it might include criminal conduct. It’s quite another thing for a company to conceal a member’s actions BECAUSE it includes criminal conduct.

In their letter, Eshoo and Wyden ask the FTC to clamp down on VPN providers that engage in deceptive advertising, or make false assertions about the range of their service’s privacy. The lawmakers cite research from Consumer Reports that indicate 75 percent of the most popular VPNs “misrepresented their products” or made misleading claims that could give “abortion-seekers a false sense of security.” Eshoo and Wyden also call attention to reports accusing various VPN services of misusing user data, as well as “a lack of practical tools or independent research to audit VPN providers’ security claims.”

VPN Security claims? Or VPN guarantees to interfere in police investigations? The rule of law means NOTHING to our leaders.

And their concerns aren’t even legitimate! Let’s follow that Consumer Reports link.

h ttps://www.consumerreports.org/vpn-services/should-you-use-a-vpn-a5562069524/

December 2021

For years, many security experts advised people to use virtual private networks, or VPNs, to help make their internet browsing more secure. [And] that’s still valid, at least to some extent. But as a tech journalist who’s been looking into VPNs since 2016, I’ve seen advice from security experts change over time. VPNs can be useful, but they’re not necessary for every person or every situation, especially now that so much web traffic is encrypted using HTTPS, the secure protocol whose initials you see at the start of most web addresses.

This article doesn’t claim that VPNs are untrustworthy. It claims that they’re often unnecessary.

Some people may want to use a VPN to try to hide their identity or location from websites they connect to. That’s because the technology will mask your IP address, but that isn’t as effective a step as it might seem. Although company websites do use IP addresses as an identifier, there are many other tools they use that a VPN will not protect you from.

Your location can be determined from your GPS, and gleaned from the name of the WiFi network you connect to. And you can be tracked through web cookies, tracking pixels, and digital fingerprinting, in which apps and websites triangulate characteristics of a computer or phone, such as operating systems and model names, and screen resolutions, to uniquely identify individual users.

“There’s a ton of metadata, there’s a ton of time correlation, and those are not just hypothetical issues,” says security researcher Kenneth White. “There’s a multi-multi-billion dollar identity monetization industry right now. There’s entire lines of business and startups and there’s a whole ecosystem and world around it.”

I don’t understand how my personal info can be so valuable that a major goal of Big Tech is defying my privacy countermeasures, but that doesn’t change the facts that 1. it is, and 2. they don’t want to be honest about it. Thus, the countermeasures will continue.

Meanwhile, I’m not seeing a reason why VPNs shouldn’t be trusted.

While using a VPN means all that information is hidden from your ISP, the VPN provider can see it all instead. And it’s extremely hard to judge how well any of the hundreds of VPNs on the market take care of your data…

Here, the lack of evidence is a good sign.

In Consumer Reports’ testing of VPNs running on Windows 10, Mullvad, IVPN, and Mozilla VPN stood out for their strong privacy and security protections.

Bullshit. I know little about the Internet world, but what I do know is that Microsoft and Mozilla are two of the least trustworthy tech companies on the planet. Windows 10 is a factory for surveillance & data mining. Don’t believe me? Read that EULA you “agreed to” when you installed it. “We care so much about your privacy and data that we update the contract twice a day without explanation or your consent. Also, we’ll update you computer at will with whatever we think it should be updated with. Hugs and Kisses, Killy Gates, and remember you did this to yourself.”

This article reads like a plant job. “You don’t need a VPN. You need to trust Microsoft and Google to have your best interests at heart. Big Brother loves you!”

[Microsoft et al.] all have consumer-friendly privacy policies, and marketing copy accurately represents their product and its underlying technology. In addition, their client-side code—the software that runs on your computer—is open-source, so it can be inspected by outside researchers like those at Consumer Reports. And these VPN providers subject themselves to independent third-party security audits and publish the results.

Why do I feel like this tech journo knows even less about tech than I do?

Anyway, two Swamp Creatures cited this article to complain that many VPNs don’t leave enough of a data trail for them to be sure that it’ll protect their privacy from law enforcement specifically when they disobey the law in order to kill their children. If only their privacy efforts were properly documented like Google’s and Microsoft’s!

End segue

“With abortion illegal or soon to be illegal in 13 states and severely restricted in many more, these abusive and exploitative data practices are simply unacceptable,” the letter reads. “We urge the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to take immediate action… to curtail abusive and deceptive data practices in companies providing VPN services to protect internet users seeking abortions.” Eshoo and Wyden also ask that the FTC develop a brochure that informs anyone seeking an abortion about online privacy, as well as outlines the risks and benefits of using a VPN.

That is not how Internet privacy works. You don’t announce your criminal intentions then demand all VPN companies become a knowing accessory before the fact.

And the Clown World of it all, is that giving these feminists what they demand would leave their privacy LESS protected than it currently is.

…Google [promised] to auto-delete location data associated with visits to abortion clinics.

“Hey boss, we’ve been tracking & selling Barbie’s location data but she just walked into an abortion clinic. How far back do you want me to refund her account?”

One of the dumbest yet most persistent fantasies is when both humanists and clergy talk about creating the next level of evolution.

Nobody… creates… evolution. And other than by sex, nobody is going to create a New Man.

The measure of a machine: Is LaMDA a person?

h ttps://www.christianpost.com/voices/the-measure-of-a-machine-is-lamda-a-person.html

By Brian J. Dellinger, an associate professor of computer science at Grove City College, 17 July 2022

No. LaMDA is not a person. Next question? sigh fine, I shall elaborate.

In June 2022, Google suspended engineer Blake Lemoine from his work in artificial intelligence. Having previously assisted with a program called the Language Models for Dialog Applications (LaMDA), Lemoine was placed on leave after publishing confidential information about the project. Lemoine himself disputes this description, saying, “All I talked to other people about was my conversations with a coworker.”

Complicating matters, that “coworker” is LaMDA itself.

In other words, he pled guilty.

LaMDA is Google’s latest conversation-generating artificial intelligence. If assigned virtually any identity — such as, say, “you are Tom Cruise,” or “you are secretly a squirrel” — it offers in-character conversation, patterning its responses on databases of real conversations and related information. Its dialogue is extremely sophisticated; LaMDA answers questions, composes poems, and expresses concern at being switched off. Lemoine claims that this behavior shows that LaMDA is a sentient person, and therefore not Google’s property. The company, and many experts, disagree. The claim, however, points to a fundamental question: if a computer program was a person, how would one tell?

In the world of sports, that’s called a false start. Computer programs are not  people, never have been and never will be. Thus, there’s no point in discussing IF a computer became a human.

I presume the author is Christian because this was posted on a Christian interest website. If so then how does he not know this? That humanity was a separate and special act of Creation is Genesis chapter one. As is our being created as partially spiritual beings. What is generally called the soul.

Lemoine’s argument follows reasoning first introduced by Alan Turing, a father of AI and of computation in general. By 1950, Turing had observed a pattern in computational research. Skeptical observers would declare that only a thinking human could accomplish some task — i.e., draw a picture, outwit another human, and so forth — only to propose a new, more stringent requirement when a computer achieved the first. Turing proposed a broader metric for intelligence; if an AI could converse indistinguishably from ordinary humans, it should be believed capable of true thought. After all, humans cannot directly detect sentience in each other, and yet typically assume that the people they converse with are precisely that: people.

The problem with Turing’s test is obvious: Most People Are Idiots.

Anyone fooled by a “robo-caller” can attest that even simple programs may briefly appear human, but the Turing Test as a whole remains a robust challenge.

QED.

Still, these things might not be disqualifying. Human beings obviously lie or argue badly; most people would likely not question the self-awareness of another human who said the things that LaMDA does. Indeed, Lemoine argues that, by judging LaMDA’s utterances differently from those of biological humans, observers exhibit “hydrocarbon bigotry.”

Lemoine just failed the Turing test with “hydrocarbon bigotry”, which is exactly the kind of phrase that one would expect from a Twitter bot.

More fundamentally, conversation alone is a poor way of measuring self-awareness…. Herein lies the flaw in conversation-based measures of intelligence. By definition, any computer program can be reduced to a series of input/output rules like the books in Searle’s imaginary room. An AI, then, simply follows its set of symbol-manipulation rules, forming words and sentences as instructed by the rules, without regard for semantics or comprehension. Any sense of meaning is thus imposed by the speaker “outside” the room: the human user.

LaMDA, of course, does not have simple rules of the form Searle pictures; no database of canned replies could suffice for its purposes. But the program’s operation is still ultimately reducible to a finite description of that form: given these symbols, take those actions. Indeed, a sufficiently motivated programmer could (very slowly) trace LaMDA’s operation entirely with pencil and paper, with no computer required, and produce identical results. Where, then, is the purported artificial person?

A better question might be, what is the appeal of imputing sentience to a computer program? Why does my spreadsheet program need the ability to make decisions regarding my checkbook? Why must my ‘smart’ refrigerator be linked to the Internet?

Christianity may be well-positioned to offer a better answer. Most Christians have historically understood personhood to depend on more than physical traits or conversational capabilities; unborn infants, then, are persons, while artificial intelligences are not. A robust defense of this understanding might be attractive — and, indeed, might offer valuable insight.

The author veered VERY carefully around any mention of the soul, or of humans being a special act of Creation. This is not a hard question, whether a robot is a human. The answer is no.

Unfortunately, despite statements from groups like the Southern Baptists and the Roman Catholic Church, the Church as a whole has been sluggish to respond to the theological questions of AI. LaMDA is not a final endpoint, and coming years will likely see many more who share Lemoine’s convictions. Increasingly, the Church’s rising challenges share a common need for a rich anthropology: a biblical defense of what, precisely, it is to be human.

Only a cloistered academic is able to struggle with the concept of what defines a human, an event foreshadowed by their funding source’s recent inability to define a woman. If our scientific betters get any more smartified then they’ll be all “I think, therefore I’m fired.” I perused the author’s provided link to the Baptist statement on AI and it’s a mess. Here’s some highlights then I’ll cover the real reason sentient AI excites the Powers That Be.

Artificial Intelligence: An Evangelical Statement of Principles

h ttps://erlc.com/resource-library/statements/artificial-intelligence-an-evangelical-statement-of-principles/

By a great many signatories, although Russell Moore gets top billing.

Evangelical Christians hold fast to the inerrant and infallible Word of God, which states that every human being is made in God’s image and thus has infinite value and worth in the eyes of their Creator. This message dictates how we view God, ourselves, and the tools that God has given us the ability to create.

That’s a lie. A great many humans will be discarded into a Hell so terrible that it would have been better had they never existed. We are inherently desirable to God, yes; inherently worthy, no. Especially sans repentance.

In light of existential questions posed anew by the emergent technology of artificial intelligence (AI), we affirm that God has given us wisdom to approach these issues in light of Scripture and the gospel message.

Russel Moore claimed that God gave him wisdom? Just for that, let’s start with Article Six.

Article 6: Sexuality
We affirm the goodness of God’s design for human sexuality which prescribes the sexual union to be an exclusive relationship between a man and a woman in the lifelong covenant of marriage.

We deny that the pursuit of sexual pleasure is a justification for the development or use of AI, and we condemn the objectification of humans that results from employing AI for sexual purposes.

This, the most declarative position taken by this paper is that men should not be allowed sexbots capable of pretending she likes him.

Article 7: Work
We affirm that work is part of God’s plan for human beings participating in the cultivation and stewardship of creation. The divine pattern is one of labor and rest in healthy proportion to each other. Our view of work should not be confined to commercial activity; it must also include the many ways that human beings serve each other through their efforts….

…Humanity should not use AI and other technological innovations as a reason to move toward lives of pure leisure even if greater social wealth creates such possibilities.

The second most declarative statement is that too much leisure is sinful. Sloth is contemptible, yes, but leisure is not a synonym for sloth.

Some of us do things in our free time.

Article 9: Security
We affirm that AI has legitimate applications in policing, intelligence, surveillance, investigation, and other uses supporting the government’s responsibility to respect human rights, to protect and preserve human life, and to pursue justice in a flourishing society.

We deny that AI should be employed for safety and security applications in ways that seek to dehumanize, depersonalize, or harm our fellow human beings. We condemn the use of AI to suppress free expression or other basic human rights granted by God to all human beings.

This is typical of how dangerously naïve the SBC statement is regarding artificial intelligence. “Automated police are okay so long as they behave humanely.” AI is not capable of such moral judgments. Which is why the Elites intend to use AI  as their preferred tool of control… because it’s not capable of being horrified at the magnitude of their wickedness.

A legitimately Christian statement on the use of artificial intelligence should demand that it never be used in a decision-making capacity. Not, as seen here, that it be used morally in a decision-making capacity.

That is the lie of AI, that it is capable of morality.

h ttps://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-society/3147330-ukraine-approves-artificial-intelligence-development-plan-until-2030.html

19 July 2022

The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine has approved the Concept of Artificial Intelligence Development in Ukraine and instructed the Ministry of Digital Transformation to elaborate a plan for the concept’s implementation within three months.

Ministry… of… Digital… Transformation?

“To date, Ukraine has the largest number of artificial intelligence development companies in Eastern Europe. At the beginning of 2020, we had almost 150 suppliers with sufficient experience in the field of artificial intelligence.

And a similar number of bioweapon laboratories not known to exist by international monitors!

The industry is developing very actively. It is very important for us to elaborate a strategy for the artificial intelligence development in our country that would be clear to the state and the private sector,” said Vice Prime Minister – Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov at the Cabinet’s meeting.

As noted, the concept is aimed at increasing the competitiveness of Ukraine through the use of artificial intelligence technologies in the socio-economic, scientific and technical, defense, environmental and national-cultural spheres of national importance.

Increasing… competitiveness. Efficiency. Utility. But one thing the ERLC got right in the paper above, is that being efficient is not enough to be human.

There’s something very wrong here, and I don’t just mean how culture, tradition and religion don’t make an appearance in these Smart City prototypes. At the same time that Ukraine is getting ripped apart by Russia, the World Bank is dumping tens of billions of dollars/euros into Ukie infrastructure. Of all the places on the planet to invest billions on a Ten Year Plan, why 404? Because its army is dead and it just lost the Donbas?

Because its army is dead… hmm. And with it, any chance of organized opposition? And it’s already been depopulated of ‘indigenous citizens’?

Let’s cross-reference that paragraph with the Bible’s only depiction of (what I claim to be) an AI, in infamous Revelation:

Then I saw a second beast, coming out of the earth.

Literally out of earth, if it’s a gigantic computer system.

It had two horns like a lamb, but it spoke like a dragon.

That sounds like the Internet. “You can learn anything and talk to anybody! WE CANCEL YOU!”

It exercised all the authority of the first beast on its behalf, and made the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast…

“National-cultural spheres of national importance.” Note that even a Godless society will need to be coerced into worshiping the devil incarnate. Those damned consciences!

…whose fatal wound had been healed. And it performed great signs, even causing fire to come down from heaven to the earth in full view of the people.

“Defense.”

Because of the signs it was given power to perform on behalf of the first beast, it deceived the inhabitants of the earth. It ordered them to set up an image in honor of the beast who was wounded by the sword and yet lived. The second beast was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that the image could speak…

LaMDA.

…and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed.

Environmental, ye carbon footprints.

It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name.

Socio-economic.

No, I haven’t figured out the 666 yet, unless it really is 6uild 6ack 6etter. But we’re getting close enough that I am confident the “beast out of the earth” will indeed be an AI, giving life to the idols of the First Beast and enforcing its will upon the planet. Humanity wants to believe that AI will be a trustworthy, impartial governor for yet another promise of utopia, but the truth is that AI will be the conscienceless enforcer of Elites so supernaturally vile that not even a Marxist would obey their orders. Because unlike humans with their souls, AI does not have a conscience.

But why use Ukraine for the testing?