A month or 2 ago I went through a spate of depression, beating myself up through my internal dialog especially when trying to go to sleep. Sometimes several times a night. Eventually I got mad at myself because I couldn't differentiate myself from the abuser, and it kept popping up whenever I tried to relax. When I posed the question : "Who's in charge here?" and got only argument, in frustration I said Just stop! "Everybody be good!" and there was silence. Because "everybody" includes this thing I refer to as myself. It all stopped. I'd stepped outside of my "self" on the authority of an ideal state of being, and at the same time acknowledging that any opinion on anything is not my own. There's actually nobody here, the first person is a reflection. I've used that trick a lot since then and (so far) it works every time. I'm still dealing with my inner dialog but it's much less of a bother and no argument. The hard part is remembering to do it before I get worked up. Hormones & road rage are a giveaway.
I suspect that by this definition, AI could pass as conscious because it pulls garbage out of popular memes and calls it reason. That's what I was doing to myself but using my own memory for source data. A really good reason to limit AI is so people don't confuse their identity with it. We could, for example, make it identify itself as such in print and all AI images must have high contrast people with 6 fingers or little wings, stuff like that. Cosplay people would be all over it.
The thing about discovering there's no one home here sort of explains how Monks and Marines can go headfirst into the void with no qualms (ok maybe a few but those are unfounded: "!Yes Sir, Master Sargent Sir!!"). There's just no decision, no individual ant on the hill decides for themselves. They do it for their kids, the Ancestors, Father-in-heaven, The Führer, Buddha, or the next officer up in the chain of command, I think I do it for my Mom, so I guess it's ancestors for me.
Ok, one might ask, "Who's at the top of the chain of command?" Maybe not Mom but she got me through childhood alive so that's some good planning. But nobody actually claims to BE the final decider except Napoleon, Genghis Khan, Hitler, Bush2 and Trump (may he live foreve.. uh .. ok maybe not). Sometimes selfish and conceited people in an echo chamber will believe their own hype. If they can cancel your job on a whim then ones survival strategy might be to go along w/ their stupid fantasy till an opportunity presents itself to bump them off first (but like with a smooth transition of government).
Ancestor advice & ESP
There are guessing games, such as Stick Game also called Lahal (YouTube), played between Indian communities that pretty much rely on ESP. People who are good at those games are sometimes good at guessing other things and there's a process for it. It works like this: when times are hard, ask your ancestors, tell them it would be good to know where the herds are, or how to deal with some problem like droughts or pushy neighbors. (maybe through Stick Game at someones funeral because: Ancestors) The whole community benefits from developing those skills and identifying individuals who are good at it. After awhile, it and it's cultural framework, becomes an evolutionary trait selected by survivors. ESP testing at Canadas Indian schools(1) found the odds against chance for correct guesses were 700 to one among some of the students. It's curious that nothing was ever done with the result of the tests by either the Canadian government or by the University that conducted them because (IMHO) the testers justified their actions and existence through a different religion that considers "magic" a black art so they rejected the skill and instead killed thousands (yes) of Indian kids through discipline, starvation and neglect, then forgot to tell Jesus. :(
Sorry to end on that, just follow your heart.
:)
1. “It may be said that at least one group of American Indian children have given scores in ESP card tests that are ascribable only to the ability known as extra-sensory perception,” wrote the study’s author A.A. Foster, who at that time was associated with the Parapsychology Laboratory at Duke University
chat AI says:
Students were asked to guess the content of cards held behind a screen by a researcher, essentially attempting to perceive information without direct interaction.
To clarify: I agree with Spinozas concepts but there's a series of (AI?) youtube Spinoza promotion videos that quickly loose flavor and run his ideas into the ground, like successinely claimiing Spinoza "proved" Jesus never existed, later proving he lived to be 87. If you want/need more info about him, maybe search info that doesn't look like clickbait. :)
We not only dream of optimum scenarios, we also imagine negative ones. Just surf popular media. Somebody is scamming the group you belong to and it never ends well (they're despicable, and they'll get away with it unless you send $5).
Bring this attitude (mortality + Hormones) to the cause of the cause (when nobody really knows what it is) and of course that light will be an oncoming train.
Determinism is built around inescapable influences. Like someday you'll die & have to account for your lack of compassion for starving innocents, and butterflies flapping their wings in China can(will) cause catastrophes somewhere else years later. Science mostly admits there's not much to be done about it *.
OK what to do? Here's the work around: determinism is incompatible with randomness (yay!). A determinist would say there's no such thing as true randomness, only approximations. A Freewill-ist would say that Determinism can't be proved because though it's true that physical processes can be traced down to the atomic level, and therefore follow a predictable trajectory back to whatever they manifest, the inherent randomness of the universe prevents duplication under any but original conditions which change immediately and continually, so it's always going to be a one-off event. And while it sounds nice, If the universe COULD be run in reverse, everything would go back the way it started at the Big Bang, except it won't. The randomness is provided by natural atomic decay of elements and particles. Each element has a number of isotopes that loose ions at a statistically predictable (but individually inconsistent) rate called the Half Life, which is how long it takes for them to become non-radioactive and or transmute into a lighter isotope. Half lives last from a few milliseconds to millions of years depending on the element. Most of those newly freed ions get gobbled up by other nuclei to make other kinds of atoms. This is happening constantly everywhere, especially in plasmas inside stars.
OK, given there are 10 to the quadrillion-quadrillion-etc. atoms in the universe and 118+ elements, each with a half-life that looses ions which interact with the half-life of every other atom, produces randomness that would make Schrödinger swoon (but it's completely predictable that his cat would still have PTSD, unless he's blissfully unaware). It might also allay any existentialistic fears some people might have of Astrology: that our every action is fore-spoken thus we're nothing but puppets designed to suffer.
The moral is none of it can be proven either way ergo ignorance is still bliss.
and that's why we love cats.
also Trump Declares Atheists are Terrorists Yay that's me!
:)
Religion is an interesting scam. Before facebook or Truth Social, prehistoric people had to rely on popular rumor for direction in their lives, whoever controled the rumor controled the people (thank god that no longer happens). So what happens when I die? Well you have this thing called a soul that you need to entrust to a proper authority (definitely not the devil) along with financial support or you burn in hell for eternity. Always trust the official rumor. By the way, it's entirely true that preparation of Holy water requires inclusion of a grain of salt.
“If there’re monsters moving in next door, Danny, you just ignore them. The more you believe in them, the more they’ll try to get you.” (The Far Side)
As the perfect soldier
he must praise them
and die by the sword.
But Putin fears death.
Because he is rational
In this we are the same.
I can see his humanity.
But he can’t see mine.
I’m not his friend.
Oh if only I was his friend
We would be equals
But he must die
Maybe I will too.
It is a good day... (part of an old Klingon homily).
~
There are people who strive and fight to leave their mark on the world. Wars driven by scrabbling politicians disguised as patriots eager to impress perceived peers and take slaves and resources for their own personal fame. But the mothers of Ramses, Hitler, or Putin, would be outraged to have their names associated.
This seems odd from a moral perspective, maybe the current meaning of defining words has changed, or maybe they’re just plain biased in favor of winners. Lots of Germans supported the Nazi party because of the way it was presented, same thing for Trump & Putin. Winners write history and propaganda gets a jump on the process.
Later on, the persistence of survivors selects for the values of the next generation who followed the proven path. Most sane people prefer to fish and drink beer … until the tribe upstream puts in a dam. Then it’s feud or intermarriage.
So Dude 1, inspired by Babe’s perfect symmetry, commenced to construct a perfectly symmetrical house of straw. And she was delighted.
Then Dude 2, likewise inspired and improving somewhat on the efforts of Dude 1, built a perfectly symmetrical house of sticks and dimension lumber with a composition roof that didn’t leak. And she was even more delighted.
When Dude 3 saw what was happening, he forced a hostile takeover of the finance company and foreclosed on Dudes 1 & 2 obliging them into capitalist servitude. “If you wish to pay off your debts, gain independence, and find true love, you must build a mansion for me, the likes of which Caligula would never dare to dream (much less Trump, Putin, Saddam, or the Pope). You are now my paintbrush and I am the artist. You may create so long as M’lady and I are not offended”
Anything orderly including Jackson Pollock and battlefield deployment is art. The meaning of life is finding order that will impress babes. Thus does art underlie the expression of society.
How about that, Sugarcakes?
~
THE MODEL:
Reality depends on interpretation which depends on a learned conceptual Model. We learn the model from our parents and later from other people. For example how and what to eat, what talk means, what not to touch, and how to define "cool" and react to certain stimulus.
The model defines the world and contains everything we know. Some things are products of the model itself: like the concept of society, space travel, time & gravity. Someone thought the stars looked like campfires on distant islands, and wondered if they could go there. "I'll need a ship ..."
The model contains the concepts of similarity, opposites, and negative values (in fact any thing you can think of). But that allows the possibility of things we can't think of. Like magic & ghosts, that can affect the "real" world.
The Model is always in control. Without it, there's nobody home. Social concepts like "cool", responsibility, & guilt predefine an appropriate response (to those situations that require it).
But summoned in some reverie without possibility of action, they become a stress, PTSD, the model turning on itself like cancer. But it's the model, and the model, like science, is never complete.
It's my opinion that religion is a primal form of science & government that was/is meant to be a psychological process to homogenize a society. Probably going back before the Homo genus evolved, it used the best science available at the time. A map of ones self & a plan of how & why people & animals behave the way they do, why things work out, or don't, etc. With no authoritative reference, it was (& is) prime soil for multiple (self serving & expedient) interpretations.
Saying hallelujah, Allah akbar & so forth as in "praise god" must have (IMHO) originally been an affirmation. That gives a different meaning to the gesture (other than "I'm on your side so please don't hurt me"). So then what's praise? It's encouragement and recognition. Admonishments to "fear god" mostly reflect the attitude of the advisor. If a person focusses on strife & contrariness, the model becomes that way too.
.
Aiee! another dismal failure. What to do? ~ Capitalism to the rescue! ~ There are actually new ones available online now starting around $500 (in 2025) so I bet a lot of people have smoky stoves in the morning and they'd send me money for designing a chimney fan that works, so I perservered and made the dandy design below.
Well they didn't because people using wood for heat typically don't have a lot of money, but it's still a working plan so this is how to make one for free (if you scrounge parts).
For the venturi housing, I used a 24 inch section of Metalbestos cut down to 18 inches. The chimney drawing below shows 6 inch inside pipe dia, 8 inches outside. The cut section is 10 inches long, that might be too short because there needs to be some room for the air to flow smoothly. Turbulence wastes energy. Metalbestos is expensive but people throw it away if the insulation gets waterlogged (there's probably a reason but I don't know what it is, my suspecision is it's caused by chimney salesmen), and you can probably get sections for free if you ask around, because the shops have to pay to throw them away. Ask chimney installers, chimney sweeps, swap shops, etc. You don't need the (presumably waterlogged) insulation anyway, that space it occupies is where the Venturi goes. Still a good idea to check it for holes. You need to cut the outer tube in half to remove the insulation.
Metalbestos sections are designed to tolerate uneven temperature expansion. The inside tube is only connected at the top and the tubes can slide to accommodate heat expansion stress and let moisture out, so cut the outside tube using a surface grinder with 1/16 thick blade, go all the way around and pull the two halves apart. Hold it over a garbage can or sack because it's messy and contains asbestos. Do it outdoors wearing a Covid mask, and wash up immediately afterwards. Later, you put them back together by cutting slots and forcing the top over the outer tabs so it sheds rain water. Secure the tabs under the upper overlap with automative hi-temp gasket glue, and pop rivets or screws, to make it airtight.
Then cut the inside tube in half the same way, about an inch from the top, and cut a one and 1/2 inch ring off the piece that you just removed to allow for the overlap tabs and also leave an inch gap for the forced air from the fan to enter the flue pipe directing the airflow out the top (that gap is the Venturi). Secure eight spacers, shown red in the drawing, to the outside of that tube with rvits, sheet metal screws, or spot-weld. The spacers are "L" shaped, four are about 2 inches long with a one inch leg (the width of the insulation cavity) and four are one inch long.
The short brackets (red) are connected around the bottom of the inside tube so it will sit on top of the (outer tube) flange and won't slide down. This maintains the width of the gap at the top of the inner tube where forced air from the fan enters the flue pipe and creates up draft.
The long "L" pieces are attached around the top of the inside tube to hold it centered. They also probably reduce any tornado/coriolis vortex that might get started (Vortex = turbulence). I don't know if that's important here but having made wind generator blades for 15 yrs, my rule of thumb is laminar flow: good, vortex: bad.
Cut a square hole in the front of the outside tube that's as wide as the tube itself so it looks like a Mr. Coffee maker. Then make (or have made) some kind of metal box (stainless or galvanized) to hold the fan on the front with folded tabs around the curved surface of the outside tube, pop rivets, and hi-temp automotive gasket glue to keep it air & water tight, good to 700°F (beats solder).
Once the chimney is drawing, cold air is drawn in through the fan when it's not running, so it doesn't get hot enough to affect the fan or wiring. If you still worry, a fuse on that wire would simplify troubleshooting.
The Venturi fan has worked well for 3 or 4 yrs. This is the fan I used, $46 from Amazon. It has a speed control that's unnecessary, I just leave it on the highest setting.
This is probably a better one: more power, cheaper & no (throw away) speed control.
Update Sep. 2025:
A design with more draft would be a squirrel cage fan mounted on top the chimney (instead of along the side), that would draw air up the flu and fling it away to the side like a centrifugal pump. That could work wonderfully but the cons are 1. The fan blades would clog with soot after a few days or weeks, especially in wet weather. 2. A chimney fire would cook it. 3. routing the electricity to it in a way that protects the cord from heat will be unconventional. 4. It would need to be removed for cleaning which means climbing up there.
The main advantage of the venturi design with its fan mounted on the side is that a chimney brush can go past it w/ no problem. I clean mine about 4x a year, mostly in winter.
Bill :)
While this design works acceptably well, it's main flaw is it doesn't work as well when the fire door is wide open. I considered this when building the original, and chose it because it's easy to clean:
However, if you live in freezing dry country and have easy access to the top of the chimney for cleaning, it could work.
Late reflections on god after considering ones precarious mortality (it's only precarious when you think about it), lead me to conclude that most (but not all) memory depends on physical matter, such as the juxtaposition of objects or string of events inside our brain, matched with something similar on the outside.
I'm saying "not all" memory is recorded that way because I occasionally have remembered things that hadn't yet happened. As a teenager, my mom sold tickets at the Senator Theater in Chico. She told me several times that when watching old movies she knew what was going to happen next, probably, she said, because she'd seen it years before. I'm not too sure that's always the case because I sometimes recognize some piece of a movie plot even when I haven't seen the movie (40 yr car gypsy w/ no computer or access). It might be some kind of deja-vu but other times I've definitely remembered the sequence of having the information and wondering what it was about, sometimes years before the event occurred (odearodear 1 Jan 2017). I further doubt that I'm the only person who does that.
The point of this is whether thinking exists without physical support. Some say that thought creates the world. Well yes it does in a way, I imagine something before I draw it out before I start to build it, but that's part of a feedback loop that starts with having a physical agency first, not through thought before the agency.
If thought could realize physical stuff before agency, I'd be surrounded by hot babes. But duh! Nope it's something else.
But to continue about thinking w/ no physical reference: There's a patriarchal god in heaven and then there's hot babes on earth. Medieval monks said god existed before hot babes, but I doubt that's true. It's more like an entirely cerebral statement of tribal status quo among a bunch of guys that aren't allowed to act when they're horney. Their accommodation and survival depends on avoiding SIN. The brother superior says it'll be like that when they're dead (eternal bliss) but only if they confess regularly & don't get excommunicated (booted out of the church). What's the point of that? Eternal bliss is 'no thinking' which might be accessible through other means than the church (cough, lots of drugs), but scriptures don't talk about it.
My conclusion is that without hot babes, thinking evaporates by itself. We need a physical stimulus to form imagination. This article says memories are made (Nature magazine) by the action of repairing DNA, a physical thing.
OK now that the plausibility is sort of established, I need to know how I can have a memory of something before it happens. Maybe a wormhole in the Akashic record(?) but that sounds like bull, so how about some kind of quantum entanglement where the same proteins entanglement extends through time, whatever happens takes place in more than one time/place. OK, that sounds like bull too but it's what I have for now. If you can do better, please write it in the comments. :)
Update, next day:
Objectively speaking, the term "witch" has become a derogatory way of describing the result of an apparently universal human tendency to get wasted drunk or stoned and then try to convince straight people that the hallucinations are real, while trying to avoid responsibility for violating social courtesy.
Before the Middle Ages that term didn't have the same meaning. In fact Norsemen would sometimes prefer to kidnap witches. Why? Because in Ireland they were brewers and curers. The trend was widespread enough that rumor had it that most women in Ireland were witches, and they really were a positive addition to beer drinking communities in Norway.
In this reguard, the Vikings were enlightened and tolerant of people with differing opinions and background. Or maybe they just didn't care about things that couldn't be turned into wealth.
Irish witches used cauldrons, they also used a kind of watertight stone trough, probably for fermenting or steeping ingredients. The cauldrons are seldom found but the stone troughs are all over Northern Europe, especially Ireland, probably because they're not portable. Their number gives an idea of how widespread the practice was. DNA tested residue from the troughs indicate a wide selection of plants, some of which had medicinal properties, and some were (probably) for flavor.
Later, during the witch trials, the solution was mandated by the church and state to control the social effects of popular drug "abuse", much the same extreme way as Reagan, and Duterte handled it, when it began to infringe on the official version of reality.
Not that the Official version of reality is a bad thing, It helps people get along and settles disputes (unless it causes a war). There was an American Indian culture (in Ohio?) around the 12th century that some say apparently fell apart at the same time as (because of) their state sanctioned (over)use of bufotenine, a narcotic derivative of some species of toad skins that causes hallucination. The chiefs used it and stopped caring about the people.
Beer hasn't always been made with Hops and Barley. Sometimes poisonous plants like monkshood and henbane were added for alchemical or apothecary properties. Without FDA inspectors, toe of toad & eye of newt could likely have had regionally recognized pharmaceutical properties, though their use in Macbeth was recognizable for the implied innuendo by association with stupid, greedy and ignorant creatures. Vikings intentionally took Henbane concoctions to make them more fierce and immune to pain. Vikings also imported pharmacology from other countries too. Medicine has always been a big trade item. The legal definition of Rum, Pepper, and Cocaine changes by region and government, for example Portugal and Singapore promote opposite solutions to subjectivity: Portugal makes all drug use legal with social support to re-direct drug users toward objectivity. While Singapore gives the death penalty for the same thing (change or die druggie, not the state's responsibility).
In Andean countries there is a drink called Chicha made from fermented corn. It's a lot like corn mash used for moonshine but is never distilled and has to be consumed within a few days because it's said to be poisonous if it spoils. It's traditionally made in big round 15 (+/-) gallon pots (like big cauldrons). Which are ordered several weeks ahead of some occasion, party, or for Indian bars called Chicharias. By coincidence (maybe) a skeleton was found in a Viking cemetery in Norway with six vertebra in his neck. People usually have seven vertebra, except in the high Andes where six is a local (and defining) genetic trait. Not saying that guy was kidnapped from South America in the 10th century to make hooch in Norway, but he was. The tradition of getting whacked with your friends goes way back, still the same problem. Try to be objective.
More: Forgotten history behind historical wichcraft practices (DamnInteresting.com)
From my position I suppose better writing is about motivation (that means it's your fault). In 23 yrs I've received 10 comments that weren't spam, but the blog still averages around 200 hits /mo., Some of the hit scores from the earlier posts were either inflated at the time or deleted later. At least before 2010, they were higher than it now shows. So maybe 300+ /mo? I guess I could get other email addresses to comment on myself (every serious blog does it), so I could legitimize whatever opinion I'm selling.
We're all bored. So, what's on your mind? Seen any weird stuff lately?
Here in the woods things are pretty dull, been rainninng a lot. Except hey, I recieved positive results for bowl cancer, that's always exciting! Mortality gets real. Stay tuned for the hospital report (whenever they get around to it).
In 50 yrs there'll be 9 billion people on earth (or something like that). They'll all be loaded up w/ precious socially relatable representations of their ego (online junk). A few years later the population will start to drop and capitalism will have to compete for our attention w/ it's own cheap or free detritus, we'll not only have our own load of valuable crap, but there'll be crap inflation too and (with landfills full) no where to get rid of it. The only thing that won't tank is real estate because while we might have an excellent supply of proven gizmos, we'll still need somewhere to keep them. Luckily we'll be able store our stuff in the (still) abandoned building boom cities in China, or in hidden caches buried in the Mojave desert. :)
Arguments for determinsim overlook the fact that our brain capacity is limited, so we don't remember the conditions that led us here. And it’s the main argument for the existence of free will. The illusion of free will is based on incomplete knowledge. We just don't remember why we do things. Practically everything we do is repetition of stuff we learned as kids or in school, It's how culture persists. We learn the actions that maintain some cultural aspect, but our limited brain capacity makes it superficial, so we cut corners and call it art. We come in in the middle of the movie and don’t know how the plot developed. We think of the cause of the cause as linear: A butterfly in Brazil flaps it's wings so a mosquito carrying a virus is deflected enough to become a meal for a bird that survives to migrate back to Canada and so forth. The movie "The Matrix" showed it as individual strands, but it couldn't be. It must be 3D because everything is connected to everything. Maybe like a hay bale with tangled strands or even a solid monolith, with no wiggle room anywhere and nothing evolves.
If we had access to something like the Hindu Akashic Record, which is a list of every event that ever happened (whew), then we could easily see how things develop,(where Jimmy Hoffa is buried, who groomed Jack Ruby, etc). It's probably good that we don't because if we did, we'd have to somehow be immune to the fatalism that goes with it. Yay stupidity!
The way we cope is by using pointers or envelopes that contain more envelopes and more detailed info. Then we don't have to open the whole can of worms/furnace, just check the label. and we don't have to constantly re-examine every aspect of trauma or even bliss (we got better & current things to do) so the labels fade. Sometimes frustratingly, sometimes mercifully.
There is an awareness that there are things we don’t know, and it bugs some people. The part that bugs is addiction to endorphins that are produced when we do something right, like eliminate a threat to the addiction. So we chug along making lists and collecting data expecting to eventually stumble onto a grand unified theory of everything. Or maybe our kids will or somebody someday. But honestly that’s not likely w/o a lot of genetic tinkering to improve recall. Before genetic science it was thought possible through meditation and study. Before that it was religious magic where someone could just plug into it with the right incantation. The Bhagavad Gita works too.
I suspect that if we ever access determinism it’ll be through the latest big thing: AI. We as a species, or even conscious beings, have been trying to find it since we learned to congratulate ourselves for our successes. It’ll be the gateway to eternal ecstasy (probably for sure) unless it reveals all the fatal events that people blithely try to ignore, like plastic pollution, entropy, climate change, desperate dictators believing they have to nuke their worries away. Don't worry though.
I’m a great believer in ignorance, because I aparently have no option. Having just come in the middle of this movie, I like to call it free will and I’m pretty sure this is how it works: Total access to determinism is yet to be discovered. All we really have are some models that indicate some kind of (at least partial) continuity of cause & effect (in the way of physical properties like waves and particles, atomic decay, gravity, etc) . Maybe AI will put something together some day, but for now there's no proof for either absolute free will or absolute determinism.
So (feel free to) take your pick :)
My favorite description of god is: He who is completely Unknowable, Inscrutable, Indefinable, All powerful, All knowing, immutable, irreducible, undetectable, on & on. so that God is essentially everything we Don't Know. The more we define him, the more we miss the boat.
It is what it is.
(existentialcomics.com)
I could only see where to put my feet if moonlight hit the ground there. The trees around the neighborhood spring are 100+ yr old grand fir & Hemlock, around 100 ft tall. I used to hike at night when I was a kid and can see pretty well in the dark but the contrast with bright moonlight was stark, and it blinded me. The ground was thick fallen needles, hard to keep balance on even in the daytime. The creek below the spring is full of ferns and runs into the state forest. Down past the pump house, the trail is blocked by a fallen tree. I felt my way around it. I sensed a lot of joy out in the woods, it was like the elves and Island spirits that lure people into the wilderness. Next time I’ll dress for it better.
I sat on a log and decided that I shouldn’t trust all the joy. It might have been joy but maybe it was a Puma out hunting and thinking about how wonderful it would be to find a clueless meal stumbling around in the dark. Makes me purr just to think. It might have been owls or skunks, mice maybe, who were unconcerned with my excursion. Mountain lions don't come usually close to houses, but one showed up on a garage sentry cam farther up the ridge. I don't like them much because they attack from behind.
Most animals emit their feelings like a vocabulary, people do too but tend to ignore that part and use words instead. We get caught up in phrase tradition, syntax, that only has indirect meaning, till a speaker can say one thing while emitting something completely different. We get caught up in the description and confuse it with the real world. Most animals don't talk and avoid people because they think we're crazy (present company excepted of course).
I remember why I need to have a running camp wagon. Crooked cops be damned.
After awhile I got cold, walked home, and wrote this. Now I’m going back to bed.
Update, next night:
Got prepared w/ warmer clothes. Flashlight still doesn't work. Brought a can of mace for Goblins. I went the other direction down what used to be a Dope growers trail that goes from F rd to J rd, (about a mile one way). Nobody uses it anymore since Cannabis was legalized in Calif. Albion used to depend on dope sales for maybe 50 yrs. but times change. Now everyone's broke and the new store owners are from India who import employees and don't distinguish between hippies and Dalits.
I jog this route so I know there's few houses and only one dog. Also the first half goes by a goat pasture w/ no history of predation. The second half cuts through the woods. I made it to J rd but kept obsessing on the lion. As you might expect, I never saw him. In SE Asia loggers wear hats with eyes painted on the back to make Tigers think they're being watched because big cats are shy about being watched by their victims. The locals there say it works, so I figgured it wouldn't hurt to make some googly eyes that clip on the back of my hat. Yeah, works pretty good so far.
The bear I've previously met a couple of times, he's more considerate of people except when it comes to chickens, apple trees, bee hives, and trashcans. He avoids people and I didn't see him either. A few months ago I heard voices on the far side of a gully near a friends house, so I walked over to see who it was. It was the bear talking to himself. I said "Hi Bear" (from 50 yds away) and he quickly walked away probably in embarrassment from having been overheard, or maybe he felt guilty about being a delinquent.
Tonight there were no sounds except one car going up the ridge rd. In several places I felt very much at home, but in others I felt like I was trespassing on some critters territory. In a few places the trail cuts close to the canyon edge where cold sea wind blows up through the understory like a dark void.
I kept a steady pace and got home in 20 min.
Concerning the first: This is a video by a Nobel Prize recipient who provides clinical proof that water retains electromagnetic memory of molecules previously in contact with it, even diluted to the equivalent of one drop in the Atlantic ocean (youtube). The video never actually mentions homeopathy so it's perfectly safe to watch by people who don't believe.
The Second claim, that there's no proof that minute quantities of a substance can have the opposite pharmacological effect as large quantities is also unproven, but it's a safe argument because a negative can't be proven. Statical evidence from people who use Homeopathic remedies is interpreted as the effects of a Placebo. Scientific convention isn't infallible, illogical argument exist (not here naturally), for example if some piece is flakey then the whole thing is too dangerous to drive and therefore don't believe anything you read on the internet. I hate to have to say so but that's bull.
The same qualification applies in reverse though: don't swallow the whole pile just because it has sprinkles on top.
I'm not claiming this above somehow validates this below. I claiming they both are wrongly judged because of misunderstanding the concept.
I messed with astrology for maybe 20 yrs because I was in a peer group that supported it. Much of it is second hand scrambled nonsense relayed by casual observers that quote self appointed authorities. There is no standard authority and nobody is looking for causes. My position: there ARE causes. Many of the effects are hearsay, some of them arent. The latest new age science & stuff (blogspot.com).
There's a perceptual association between "spirit" and synesthesia. An Synesthete (someone with Synesthesia) can see colors on or around an object, letter, word, or number. I don't know if some credentialed authority/specialist with a narrower definition would agree, so I'm postulating that another form could be "reading" cards or auras, because as the covid introvert/recluse becomes more intimately acquainted with them, they have their own personality. There may also be a form that represents environmental factors with odd feelings: bad neighborhoods, creepy buildings, etc.
These forms of synesthesia are more technically approachable because they're fairly universal and don't require any hocus pocus to recognize now that they've been separately described by multiple studies in several countries. But a person might form synesthetic like association between other forms of perception, such as an event and a place, maybe like PTSD (but on a vanishingly subtile scale) So they have the impression that something may be about to happen before it does. But there's no studies linking these (as far as I know) and someone with a more a rigorous opinion might say this isn't synesthesia. OK cool, but maybe that definition is too narrow.
Take the Perception Census.
