Canada has killed a man whose only 'fatal' condition was treatable hearing loss. Killed him dead. The government did it to him. Nice, eh?

StillLessons · 2023-06-10T05:25:49+00:00

Our ruling classes in all countries, fucked in the head now after decades of education steeped in collectivist principles, has turned inhumanly, brutally, cruelly evil. They no longer have any human decency left. People are just chips to be eliminated in their push for some imagined ShangriLa. As with all tyrants throughout history, they are profoundly ignorant of the obvious evil of their policies. They see themselves as compassionate and wise saviors of planet earth. This is who Jesus was talking about when he said, "Forgive them, Lord, they know not what they do." They are slaughtering millions while entirely oblivious of the true effect of their "good intentions". What a horrific time to live on our planet.

StillLessons · 2023-06-01T22:01:22+00:00

Almost the textbook definition of:

Just following orders.

Totalitarianism marches on.

The brief head-fake toward even pretending free speech is a core value of western civilization was a very small speed bump. Back to full speed ahead.

StillLessons · 2023-06-01T19:23:18+00:00

Rejecting a paradigm held by more than 80% of any given population has never been easy. It's fascinating how throughout the time of human societies, profoundly incorrect ideas have gained popular acceptance. The force in particular working against gen Z is psychoactive drugs prescribed legally. This is in fact dangerous, because it dampens the ability of a mind to entertain uncomfortable thoughts/feelings. Given that unpopular truths (of which there have been countless examples throughout history) create exactly those feelings, we are medicating away the ability to perceive a lot of truth. It's rarely been comfortable being a truth-teller. By muting the ability to do this, our society is going to amplify a lot of stupidity that for which that discomfort was a natural counteragent.

StillLessons · 2023-06-01T15:26:07+00:00

The analogy to the end of the Roman empire is more obvious with each passing day.

StillLessons · 2023-06-01T15:21:43+00:00

'feral children'.

Yes, I like that. It gets at what has metastasized in our culture. What's alarming is to know that these 'children' are now present in all age-ranges. When you celebrate and publicize mob behavior (BLM, anyone?), the results are pre-determined. We are witnessing these results daily.

StillLessons · 2023-06-01T15:18:05+00:00

Enforcement is not the answer. Disengagement is. The number of people who still engage with that site gives me serious pause as to the potential for our species to survive.

StillLessons · 2023-06-01T15:10:24+00:00

Obsession with sex is unhealthy in both directions. It is not healthy simply to go wild and expect to find happiness fucking like a bunny; it doesn't work and people who try it end up --- you guessed it, depressed and suicidal. Simultaneously, it's not healthy to categorically reject all sexual activity and expect to find happiness living as a renunciate. People who do this are every bit as obsessed with sex as the bunny fuckers; they've just inverted their obsession into its mirror image.

The way to happiness is to release the obsession with sex in either direction. Sex is not the answer, no matter how it's approached (either "sex will save me!" or "sex will condemn me!"); it's just another area where we put way too much energy. Sex and romance addiction is a real thing. The key is to downsize its importance in our thought process.

There are 12-step groups for sex obsession just like there are for the more traditional addictions, and they realize this obsession can go both directions. It takes work and it takes time.

StillLessons · 2023-06-01T14:59:39+00:00

If there is one thing I have learned over the past 10 years, it is that physicians hold absolutely undeserved esteem for their position in society. Doctors are the priests of the new "$cientism" religion that is obliterating centuries of social norms because "they are smarter than us, right?" This is just like people thought the priests in the Middle Ages were "the smartest guys in the room." Belief in some special knowledge possessed by doctors which means we should accord their opinions "expert" status is the root of a tremendous proportion of the suffering in the world today.

StillLessons · 2023-06-01T14:54:18+00:00

Celebrating and "affirming" the mentally ill has consequences. Our society is very sick.

StillLessons · 2023-05-31T18:34:34+00:00

There is no free lunch.

In earlier eras, life was significantly more natural, without all these engineered materials present. Then again, in earlier eras, criminal and domestic violence was more common, and medicine was far less effective in limiting suffering than modern medicine is today. There was a lot of suffering.

Today, modern medicine and fantastic advances in sanitation have massively curtailed certain types of suffering. That said, just as the OP puts in their headline (not the headline of the attached article), we are only beginning to discover the many brand-new types of suffering being generated by our modern industrial societies. With autism and sexual dysfunction going through the roof, it's clear that there is a cost to this hyper-industrial environment.

For now, the best we can do as individuals is to try to find the best balance between the benefits of our new artificial world and the benefits of simpler systems that have been around for thousands of years. Newer is definitely NOT always better. Learning which new elements to ignore and which to adopt is the challenge each of us must face on our own. Advertising and marketing are sure as hell not going to help us in this endeavor.

StillLessons · 2023-05-31T16:45:11+00:00

As someone who grew up during the era of Soviet dissidents defecting to the west, watching the process in reverse is mind-bending. Defection is in many cases (as this one) a commentary on personal safety - the person defecting fears the authorities. Why would Tara Reade be afraid? The answer to that is beyond obvious. The question is do you believe her story? It's a shame more cannot see just what a massive wakeup call this represents regarding the true state of the government/regime in power in the collective west.

StillLessons · 2023-05-27T11:51:31+00:00

People fight in response to imagined outcomes. Even though what you say is the accurate picture of all warfare (wealthy interests ordering poor men to their deaths so that the wealthy can maintain their "interests"), people fight because their imagined alternative - which is being taken over by their enemies - is even scarier. For the history of humanity, soldiers have always fought in a permanent state of 'better the devil you know that that other devil'. For Ukrainians, the Russian devil is the current occupant of their nightmares. For Russians, the US/Davos devil is that occupant.

It takes a LOT of abuse from the current devil before that dynamic can be broken. It happens occasionally (1917 Russia, for example), but it's a remarkably consistent response. Human nature hasn't changed, just the technologies we use to slaughter each other.

StillLessons · 2023-05-25T14:47:24+00:00

This is a useful addition to the subject. Usually, the information we get from the pro-trans side regarding the issue of trans and particularly trans children is simply a series of slogans. These slogans are often yelled at high volume so as to prevent those who wish to discuss the question having the opportunity to disagree.

Here is a MtF trans actually in a conversation with an opponent. Owen Shroyer is an annoying interviewer, no doubt. He interrupts this person quite a bit and refuses to allow their statements regarding their own experience. That is rude, but it certainly does not rise to the level of the "hatred" usually declared by the trans community after this kind of interview. He does give them several 30-second blocks of time to expound their case.

I admit I watched only the first ~14 minutes, because more seems unnecessary. The different perspectives have already been outlined thoroughly in that time. If anyone watches further and sees something important that I missed by cutting out early, let me know.

I will give this person credit. They took the time to calmly disagree. This is seemingly rare in this community. This person didn't lose their cool and start ranting and throwing simplistic accusations of hatred at Shroyer. Good for them. It's nice finally to hear what they think (at least in this person's case). I still profoundly disagree, but it's a lot easier to disagree with someone than it is to be yelled at and cursed by them simply for the attempt to have the conversation that Shroyer manages to have here (at least for the first ~14 minutes).

StillLessons · 2023-05-25T14:14:25+00:00

Listening to drug advertisements is a pet peeve of mine. While showing people happy and joyful to be on the drug advertised, the list of nasty consequences of the drug of choice is given in the background. Modern medicine is a pretty brutal business where you open your risk to a set of pretty serious outcomes in order to treat the outcomes you're already dealing with. I realize we wouldn't do it if we weren't already sick and suffering, and that these drugs usually do provide more good than harm, but the harm side of that equation is so misrepresented by its placement in those advertisements, it gets under my skin.

StillLessons · 2023-05-25T14:00:57+00:00

It's the obvious question, but given the way the story was written, this sounds more like a drunk driver than a Tesla autopilot crash. Granted this is NBC, so it's as likely garbage as not, but the scenario rings of an impaired driver to me.

This is anything but a justification or an endorsement of Tesla's (or anybody else's) automated driving system. I think they should all be scrapped and banned yesterday. Automated driving is a really stupid idea, and there are plenty of examples where these systems are causing dangerous wrecks. This one, however, doesn't sound like one of them.

StillLessons · 2023-05-25T13:55:40+00:00

everyone and their mom was equally involved

Yes. The national governance structure and significant parts of the large-scale business, educational, and religious structures throughout the United States are compromised by this kind of sexual blackmail. It's bi-partisan and equal opportunity. This is what corruption means, and we live under a profoundly corrupt regime. Absolute power (the classic "unipolar moment") has corrupted absolutely. A story as old as large-scale human societies.

StillLessons · 2023-05-25T13:48:33+00:00

If enough pressure develops that consequences become realistic, what is written here is only one of the derivatives of the primary problem.

Fauci funded the lab creating the coronavirus that killed millions. He did so emphatically, making sure the creation of this virus continued in China when "research" in the US became problematic. He then proceeded to lie and tell people the virus was of natural origin. Let that sink in and the rest becomes secondary. Fauci and his lieutenants (along with the Chinese, who played their part and are co-conspirators for sure) created the disease that killed millions. They then - at every opportunity - made sure the response to the bug they had created was simultaneously ineffective and lined their pockets.

Everything else is a subset of this basic truth.

StillLessons · 2023-05-24T23:36:13+00:00

One of the roots of the trans explosion. Trans people hate their bodies. If a person is abused by people who claim to represent God, how do we expect them to turn out? Self-loathing is ubiquitous among victims of sexual abuse. We now have a generation demonstrating to us the results of this readily understood dynamic.

StillLessons · 2023-05-23T13:44:51+00:00

You know the answer to that question.

StillLessons · 2023-05-18T14:18:17+00:00

The mainstream press can't figure out why people don't pay attention to them the way that we used to. Perhaps - just perhaps - it's because in a story about a cluster of myocarditis, the condition with the best documented causality from Covid jabs, nowhere in this article did they even bring up the subject. At all. Every reader will have the question. Some will say in their mind "It's not the jab" and others will say "It is definitely the jab", but one way or another, the mental link between myocarditis and the Covid jabs is strong. The fact that this article doesn't even address a question we can be sure is the first question in readers' minds is so obviously intentional, suspicion is aroused 20x more than it would have been even if they had put in the usual tag, "It's definitely not the jabs." The amount of energy they are putting into brainwashing people about the normality of the mRNA juice is disgusting. This is why people now assume the mainstream sources are lying. They are making it crystal clear and obvious.

StillLessons · 2023-05-18T02:21:12+00:00

This has been going on since 2016 at least. I know this because I watched it live and in person during that year. It's remarkable that this it is taking a decade for people even to recognize that shit like this means the city is seriously sick.

StillLessons · 2023-05-17T17:04:53+00:00

Brings to mind "toilet training"...

StillLessons · 2023-05-17T16:48:14+00:00

there's really no such thing as mental illness as we understand it.

A very interesting statement, but difficult to analyze because of exactly the lack of precision you are pointing out: "as we understand it". "Mental illness" is a free-for-all term. I myself have been using it far too freely in my comments recently in just this fuzzy way that your comment is correctly skewering.

What I see in our society is the "educated" class throwing themselves headfirst - and hard - against the wall of reality on a range of issues. Their ideals are turning out not to be in alignment with human behavior, but rather than adjust their ideals accordingly, they double, triple, quadruple down on the mandates to conform to concepts that manifestly don't work. This is causing, no surprise, tremendous stress, especially among the younger generations, as they try to wrap their heads around the fact that everything they are being taught is "right" cannot actually happen because people are not who they think we are. They seek relief from this stress through medication, because that's also what their teaching is telling them: mental distress is caused by their own wiring; it cannot be that their ideals are wrong, so they must have something wrong with them. The chemical alteration then makes things even worse.

The "mental illness" crisis that so many are talking about (including, I am embarrassed to admit, me) is actually a behavioral culture crisis being amplified by poorly understood and utilized psychoactive medications. It doesn't help that the medical profession is one of the most profoundly affected communities when it comes to this mismatch of ideals versus the reality of human behavior.

Thanks for a great comment.

StillLessons · 2023-05-17T13:59:36+00:00

For Trump's enemies (both D and R), what they believe about him long ago became more important than anything proven about him with evidence. The second part of your title is the more scary part. Blatant election-affecting lies - rather than yielding punishment - continue to yield rewards for those responsible. As such, representative government is now 100% dead on arrival. If everything we hear is a lie (and the incentives are now dictating this will always be the case), then all that remains is totalitarian propaganda. Unless enough of the population recognizes this for what it is, down the drain we go, and it will become increasingly cruel and brutal with each step further we take. Think what the totalitarian regimes in the 20th century accomplished. We're now absolutely on that track. How many millions of us will be killed to satisfy the lies and delusions of the mentally-ill ruling class? Too many.

StillLessons · 2023-05-17T13:50:29+00:00

This is consistent with my day-to-day experience. These are also the most politically active people in our society. Putting those two elements together, western civilization is dissolving around us.

StillLessons · 2023-05-17T13:45:30+00:00

Three high-profile Democrats (Biden, Feinstein, Fetterman) are visibly unable to muster the cognitive function required for public discourse. It's quite remarkable. This could only happen in a society where mental illness is now a common (even dominant?) feature in the majority of the political class.

StillLessons · 2023-05-17T13:41:54+00:00

She and her allies also claim that White Supremacy is responsible for black-on-black murder rates in the large cities of the US. She can say whatever she pleases. Fortunately fewer and fewer people are taking statements like this seriously with each passing day. The trend is good.

StillLessons · 2023-05-17T13:36:13+00:00

You've missed an element of what Ritter said. It's not about the "skill of the pilot". He comments very positively on the skill of the Ukrainian pilots. But F-16s are extremely complex machines with a lot of elements in play simultaneously. Can the Ukrainians learn to use them? Of course. No question. But battle situations go beyond the basics of flying. In combat situations, the fractions of a second that differentiate a person who thinks about their next move versus the person who has used the equipment so long that muscle memory bypasses thought make the difference between kill or be killed. The Ukrainian pilots already have muscle memory on the airframes they have been trained on for decades. While they can learn to use the F-16, they will not be able to exploit its features quickly enough to use it effectively. That kind of training is done over years, not months.

The fact that Ukraine is asking for this equipment and that they assess they can take on the Russian fighters has no bearing on whether they are correct in that assessment. One of the Patriot batteries was already removed from action yesterday, now confirmed by the west.

This is not about whether the Ukrainians are skilled. They are. They have proven themselves a far more effective fighting force than many - myself included - expected them to be. But throwing advanced systems in as though it's just a matter of provide the systems and they will win is a dangerous oversimplification of the battlefield realities that a weapons system must include people fully trained in its use (not quick trained, fully trained) to yield the advertised results. The Russians they are up against are fully trained on their systems. That advantage should not be overlooked.

StillLessons · 2023-05-16T22:41:40+00:00

It was so easy screaming "Sanctuary City" before they actually needed to provide sanctuary for migrants. It was only a matter of time before their "sanctuaries" were put to the test.

StillLessons · 2023-05-16T02:23:23+00:00

We have reached late stage Roman Empire levels of moral depravity at this point. They want to fuck anything that moves, and they are arrogant enough based on their success thus far that they think they can train their people happily to say Thank You Sir, May I Have Another!

StillLessons · 2023-05-16T02:17:32+00:00

Scott Ritter is interesting on this topic. He points out that the airframe is secondary to the skill of the pilot on that airframe. He said the most powerful thing the west could offer the Ukrainian pilots would be the Soviet airframes, because their pilots are already very well trained on those and can use them to best advantage. Because they don't know the F-16, and it takes years to become muscle-memory good at learning to fly these things, they are actually creating flying death traps for these pilots, when they would be more likely to survive and be effective on their known hardware.

StillLessons · 2023-05-15T11:35:06+00:00

I'm in line with proc0 and x0x7. Covid didn't usher this in. Transgenderism was already firmly entrenched pre-Covid, with the concept that men ARE women if they just want to be already firmly established on the left. That is a counterfactual philosophy, representing psychotic thinking.

Covid accelerated these trends without a doubt and put them into overdrive, but the nucleus of the psychosis pre-dates it. Essentially, when the powerful decided to censor free speech rather than to give up power (2012 NDAA legalizing CIA running psyops within the US was a pretty major turning point), we were guaranteed to end up where we are. Covid was the explosive growth phase - which is important and shouldn't be ignored - but it was certainly not the beginning of this societal mental illness.

StillLessons · 2023-05-15T02:39:18+00:00

You get an award for finding the most twisted post I've seen in a while. This one would never have occurred to me.

StillLessons · 2023-05-15T02:15:10+00:00

"Mind control" suggests there are "controllers" and "controlled", and that these two categories are clearly delineated and consistent. That's not how society looks to me. Those who would be pointed at as being in the "controller" class are every bit as "controlled" as those they in theory are manipulating. The problem with our species is that only the tiniest fraction of the population has a consistent moral code by which they operate. Almost everybody uses "situational morals." It's not that the ruling class has the ability to see a goal and create the control mechanism to manipulate "the masses" into that goal. What we see as "results" are extremely messy, with weird cross-alliances developing on issues where we would expect the "controlling class" to unite, but then suddenly things go chaotic.

The result that you're attributing to mind control is social destruction and chaos. There are people feeding on that chaos, don't get me wrong, but the feeders aren't as coordinated as you make it sound. Each sociopath is running their own particular grift within this miasma of destruction, and on another issue, they might come out more rationally, as long as it doesn't affect their grift.

It's the very lack of moral code that is destroying us most rapidly. Pure corruption, with no unifying tendencies. This doesn't remotely excuse the people "running" the show. They are amoral and committing horrific evil, make no mistake. But the final result of this kind of behavior is not a mind-controlled mass of braindead zombies. No. We're heading more toward the next Dark Age, where there will be feudal lords fighting each other, using their subjects in the fights in the usual brutal and cruel ways we've seen countless times in history. The spikes in "excess deaths" are just the beginning of this process. We ain't seen nothing yet.

Each of us wanting to survive this needs to hunker down and figure out our local resource and protection base. It's the safest way forward in this environment of expanding chaos.

StillLessons · 2023-05-15T01:57:49+00:00

When you go into business intentionally looking to drive away people who might otherwise be customers, you pretty much deserve what happens when fails.

It's brutally hard work to keep a business (especially small non-funny-money-funded - i.e. Wall Street) viable in an open market. Now they add to that self-imposed limits on customer base? The witnessed result is the only one possible.

StillLessons · 2023-05-15T01:51:51+00:00

These are the people telling us that mental illness is not a causative factor in the spike in mass casualty attacks over the past 20 years. The particular issue is that the majority of people "treating" the mental illness have become among the most ill of the lot (with, as always, a minority of exceptions, still desperately fighting a tragic rearguard action). What a mess.

StillLessons · 2023-05-15T01:44:29+00:00

Joe Biden is far and again the most racist president the United States have had for 50 years. It's not even close.

StillLessons · 2023-05-13T17:28:25+00:00

Mental illness is very much not limited to those with few economic resources.

StillLessons · 2023-05-13T17:27:13+00:00

Heeerrre vagina, vagina, vagina...!

StillLessons · 2023-05-13T17:25:51+00:00

LOL.

The home of "sanctions, sanctions, sanctions!" wants to talk about economic coercion.

LOL.

StillLessons · 2023-05-13T17:19:30+00:00

The entire liberal social premise for 40 years minimum has been racism. Affirmative action is officially codified racism. These Yale researchers are being given yet another example of what has been obvious from the start. Treating a group of people explicitly according to their race IS racism. Whatever the good intentions behind that racism, the results will be the same: those who accept being lumped together by their race will lose true pride in themselves (which is always a function of merit and results attained through individual effort applied) and end up with pathological self-esteem issues. We now have several generations of the results of this philosophy, demonstrating how it plays out at different phases of life.

Human delusion is endless.

StillLessons · 2023-05-13T17:11:29+00:00

This is just about a perfect example of multiculturalism, eh? Multiple cultures existing side by side. The proponents of the philosophy should be thrilled.

StillLessons · 2023-05-13T17:09:21+00:00

Multinational totalitarianism. It's what's for dinner. The generations alive now are on as ugly a trajectory as humanity has ever known, and that's saying something.

StillLessons · 2023-05-13T17:05:21+00:00

There's a good movie from the 1980s called How To Get Ahead In Advertising. Unappreciated work to my mind. It speaks to this dynamic perfectly. In the movie, the ad executive is having trouble figuring out how to get an audience for his pimple cream. After sacrificing his soul to evil, he comes up with the solution: first you have to encourage pimples in the population. Then, having created your customer base, you sell them the product to cure the pimples you gave them.

It's a great metaphor for our society, and monkeypox is the perfect example. Monkeypox is a disease of casual gay sex. Stopping it is actually pretty simple (not easy, note the difference between simple and easy): discourage casual gay sex. Problem goes away. But you see, then you can't sell your "pimple cream" (the vaccine for monkeypox). Our society chooses every time to fuck people up royally so that we can then sell them technological "fixes" for the very problems we are encouraging.

It's a fun movie. I recommend it.

StillLessons · 2023-05-12T18:52:09+00:00

If they really don't want someone, they've got tool kits for that. Those kits were used with Ron Paul on the right in 2012 and with Bernie Sanders on the left in 2016. When things get extremely bad, they go the JFK route. When the deep state wants someone out, they are out. Be under no illusions as to their capabilities in this arena.

Trump is a special case. They've got this perfect boogeyman in him which allows them to keep us all focused on the "Pro Trump / Anti Trump" sideshow while the real battles against us roll along undisturbed. The greatest assault on liberty in the west for the past five years was the lockdowns / vaccine rollout. That moved pretty seamlessly from Trump's administration to Biden's. They screamed bloody murder when Trump was doing it, BUT critically, it moved forward. Then with Biden, they praised it to high heaven. Once again, it moved forward. Trump talks a lot of shit, but in the end, the effect of his presidency was simply that they did what they wanted anyway, while still making him "the bad guy" for doing precisely what they wanted done all along. That's not real power. He never had real power, and I don't think he would for a second go either.

StillLessons · 2023-05-12T17:02:53+00:00

The people with sufficient power to determine media coverage have goals they prioritize more highly than they do ratings. Otherwise, CNN wouldn't have chosen to trash their ratings in the first place, which was a calculated decision over a period of years. The current Tucker situation is the other tell. Ratings are very much a secondary concern stacked against propaganda flow. In a related vein, Anheiser Busch took a flamethrower to their brand, and the reasoning behind that was not market share, as the results demonstrate.

StillLessons · 2023-05-12T16:55:21+00:00

It does not occur to these people that WWIII is beyond unlikely to end as successfully for them as WWII did.

StillLessons · 2023-05-12T16:36:52+00:00

So EVs have a worse environmental footprint than do ICs, the construction of ocean wind farms is slaughtering sea life, lab-grown crap protein is worse for the environment than the meat we've eaten for literally thousands of years. Hm. There seems to be a trend here. The technologists are making the world worse in their endless quest to "improve" it. Maybe the philosophy is the problem? Just saying.

StillLessons · 2023-05-12T14:20:15+00:00

The Democrats have absolutely fucked over their most loyal constituency (urban/suburban alphabet people), and those supporters are only just beginning to recognize how badly they've been had.

StillLessons · 2023-05-12T14:03:43+00:00

The actual interview is secondary to the real story here.

The real story is the decision by CNN to give him airtime in the first place. There's a lot to unpack in that decision. Let your mind wander far enough, and we find Trump and Biden dancing together in a field of daisies laughing their asses off watching all of us taking sides with either of them, as though they're actually opposed...

Remember from 1984, the Party created Goldstein. He is an equally important tool for The Party as Big Brother.

StillLessons · 2023-05-12T14:00:49+00:00

StillLessons · 2023-05-12T13:49:58+00:00

The problem I see isn't lack of data; it's lack of unbiased data. A few clips from the brookings article suffice:

"Until Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2014..."

"Following the Maidan Revolution..."

"following a wholly sham referendum..."

"Most observers lay the bulk of the blame on the Russians and the separatist fighters."

Every one of those statements demonstrates a highly partisan perspective, and there are many - even among western observers - who disagree. This article purports to give poll data on Ukrainian attitudes. As anyone who follows polling knows, polls are at least as much a reflection on the people collecting it as on those being asked their opinion. Different wording on questions, for example, can give diametrically opposed results. Looking at the words with which these results are presented, the data presented tells me what brookings thinks and what they want us to think. Ukrainians? I'm not convinced. There can be many polls and much data, but the old phrase "garbage in -> garbage out" is universal.

Meanwhile, we have the multiple Russian referendums (in both Crimea and the Donbass). The Russians have their numbers too. Those numbers, just like brookings' numbers, represent what the Russian government thinks and what they want us to think.

We're back at square one.

Our modern era has become so partisan that I trust nobody's single set of numbers to tell an accurate story. Along with this problem, we are looking at an active warzone. How a person responds to a poll like this is going to be overwhelmingly influenced by the answer they believe themselves safe giving in the context of who is asking the question. The people on the street are going to tell the pollster the answer they feel will keep them out of trouble with the authorities. If you think the Ukrainian authorities are cuddly kittens, you're being naive.

So I'm still stuck, and I will stand by my statement. I have my bias and what I think people there believe (knowing just one Ukrainian here in the US), but I don't trust my view any more than anyone else's.

I'll speak for myself. No matter how much "data" I have seen, I remain with no confidence in any given perspective - from either side - about what Ukrainians on the ground truly believe.

StillLessons · 2023-05-11T21:43:01+00:00

Wow. Interesting datapoint.

Can anyone enlighten me on how these plants are so impossible to duplicate? Why are they so unique that they exist only in this one place, making their destruction strategically worthy of consideration? I'm asking honestly. Is the manufacturing of these components not spread across plants around the world, as happens with cars, for example? It seems surprising that such a tactic would make any sense whatsoever in a globalized context. Not that there will be much "globalization" at all if China is no longer acting as the low-quality high-volume manufacturing base. Is that the point? They're preparing for that eventuality? Thanks for any input.

StillLessons · 2023-05-11T21:33:56+00:00

Intra-governmental cold civil war...

StillLessons · 2023-05-11T21:32:21+00:00

Darwin Award.

StillLessons · 2023-05-11T21:13:32+00:00

The trouble with Ukraine is that because it is the posterchild for political corruption and has been for many decades, we have essentially no idea what ground-level Ukrainians actually want. For centuries, Russia called the shots there, and for the past many decades (until 2014), Ukrainian politics was a subsidiary of Russian (from 1917 to 1990, USSR) politics. Then in 2014, the CIA and Davos played a sleight-of-hand switcheroo and replaced the Russian corrupt puppets with CIA/Davos corrupt puppets. It is those puppets, aligned with the neo-Nazi movement native to the west of the country, now at war with Russia. Just because Russia is bad most certainly does not make this new crowd good. It's the perfect recipe for the obliteration of a culture with the vultures of profit feeding on the corpse. Hunter Biden was there literally from day one in 2014. There are no good guys active in this war, on either side. Indeed the two sides mirror each other perfectly, being far more similar the one to the other than they are different.

StillLessons · 2023-05-11T21:00:39+00:00

She and Joe Biden. The faces of the modern power structure. Any surprise the country is heading the direction it is?

(Not that either wields true power, both being puppets. The point is the same regardless.)

StillLessons · 2023-05-11T20:59:13+00:00

guaranteed

StillLessons · 2023-05-11T18:43:31+00:00

I'm no trained psychologist, but just on the face of it, these quotes are practically the definition of serious depression. This is not a happy well-adjusted person. Given that people like him are the role-models being presented to modern youth, the rapid dissolution of western civilization is hardly surprising.

StillLessons · 2023-05-05T17:45:32+00:00

I'm surprised you're writing this as though it's news. Only a few short years ago, it was common knowledge that Jackson was a pedo. Have we forgotten even history as recent as this?

StillLessons · 2023-05-05T17:38:44+00:00

Where we differ (style) is trivial relative to our fundamental agreement (this corporate system we are all contributing to - while simultaneously being exploited by - must be explicitly recognized and rejected). Keep on keeping on.

StillLessons · 2023-05-04T19:48:41+00:00

The basic idea (large soulless centralized organizations and those who hide behind them are the evil we face) is correct, but you're burying it in jargon. Jargon is a death tool, never leading to anything good.

It's very simple. When offered a national centralized brand (e.g. MacDonalds), reject it. Do not give them business. Instead find your random local guy burger and give them your business. Do this in all transactions where possible. Where not possible, we need to get creative and figure out how to re-take control from the national brands that have literally eliminated ALL local alternatives.

StillLessons · 2023-05-03T23:21:30+00:00

Totalitarianism is the logical endpoint of corporate dominance. Corporations are literally not human. Thus it is impossible that a system which elevates their priority - which is only and completely the acquisition of resources, with zero allowance for human factors such as compassion or decency to interfere with this priority - would create anything other than a totalitarian nightmare as its endpoint. What do we believe in? We need to start facing that question head-on, post haste.

StillLessons · 2023-05-01T16:09:29+00:00

The ones who are in, are in. The odds of getting them out are next to nil, just for the logistics of it. The only change which may come is shutting the door to the flow. Even that is way long-shot in our current environment, but it's about those who don't usually pay attention becoming sufficiently pissed off that they actually do start paying attention. Not impossible. People are getting pretty pissed off.

StillLessons · 2023-05-01T16:02:15+00:00

Slogans are poison on all sides. It is particularly obvious, however, when one side's slogans are celebrated while the other's are censored.

StillLessons · 2023-05-01T16:00:17+00:00

This trend has been clear as a bell since Assange. Anyone who thinks any corporate "news" outlet will permit the airing of information that provides an actual challenge to the status quo is dense. Sadly, I believe most of the population still thinks what these organizations put out represents reality.

StillLessons · 2023-05-01T15:50:30+00:00

I assume the same of much of saidit...

StillLessons · 2023-05-01T15:43:36+00:00

My predictions are no better than those of anyone else, in other words absolute crap. But history demonstrates that eventually powers do collapse. The details of how are particular, but the process has already begun. We can feel it around us. I've been thinking a lot lately about that famous quote from Hemingway (I think?): "Slowly, then all at once". We're in the slowly phase, and we're all awaiting the all at once moment. I don't know better than anyone else what will trigger it, but I sense the powder is dry and prepped. Slowly in fact doesn't feel so slow with each advancing day.

StillLessons · 2023-05-01T03:12:12+00:00

It’s crazy sitting around watching the collapse of society.

Unfortunately, societies do this. It's part of the cycle. The insanities which are there from the beginning can be kept in check during the growth phase, but once resource growth is no longer sufficient to distract people with shiny new widgets, we dive into the insanities full time and go nuts.

Our current iteration is being accelerated particularly badly because of the effects of modern bio-agents (including in our foods and most importantly our "medicines" - psychoactive particularly) literally destroying cognitive function. Our broader emotional landscape is a hot mess of confusion because our brains are being turned to jelly by the chemicals we are exposing ourselves to / being exposed to.

Doing our best within our own spheres and knowing that we're creating the best environment around ourself that we can, we have to form a thick skin and watch the rest of the insanity that we cannot control from a distance.

It is indeed crazy.

I don't subscribe to the idea that humans have meaningfully "progressed". We've created a lot of technologies which make things happen faster and accelerate material manipulation of our environment, but to call that progress is a logical link I don't accept.

StillLessons · 2023-05-01T02:34:10+00:00

Another critical premise of the "trans affirming" argument is that trans people commit suicide because society doesn't accept them. By not affirming trans, this theory says, we kill them when they commit suicide because of society's failure to accept them.

That premise is radically false. The truth is that any person commits suicide because he/she does not accept himself/herself. The universal root of suicide is self rejection.

Once you realize this fallacy, the implications are huge. By encouraging trans ideation, the mob is encouraging behavior which emphasizes self-rejection.

The suicide problem will not only not get better by normalizing trans, it will become exponentially worse. The more people you encourage to hate their natural form, the more suicides you are causing. The people affirming trans are motivating suicides, believing they are doing the opposite.

Satan hit the jackpot with this strategy.

StillLessons · 2023-05-01T02:23:24+00:00

Great point. Twitter is the perfect vehicle to ensure that debate is framed in terms of slogans and nothing but slogans. In a war of slogans, the controllers always win. It's only once one goes beyond the slogans that they can be exposed. You're absolutely right.

StillLessons · 2023-05-01T00:53:22+00:00

The owners of this bar were apparently isolated from the cultural leanings of their customers. A business owner opposed to the cultural sensitivities of his/her customers is treading on thin ice.

StillLessons · 2023-05-01T00:48:25+00:00

Twitter was censoring before Musk.

Twitter is censoring now.

The bias of the censors was clearer under the pre-Musk rules. Now it's muddier.

Censorship is censorship. A censored medium is always dangerous to truth. That is consistent at Twitter since 2016 at the latest, possibly before. I've never paid much attention to Twitter, but the only element that makes it remotely notable as a company is precisely as a barometer for censorship. Know what they're censoring, and you have a better idea of what they're actually doing that is important enough to them that they are willing to put the resources into quashing it. These are precisely the parts of the program which must be most consistently opposed.

StillLessons · 2023-04-30T23:55:17+00:00

Are we entertained yet?

When the power structure loses control, all names associated with Epstein will be generally available to any who choose to look. We would also be able, under that scenario, to find out quickly who the current "Epstein" is. Until then, this "a name here and a name there" shit demonstrates continued careful control and manipulation of the social sphere.

I'm not holding my breath.

StillLessons · 2023-04-29T17:03:58+00:00

"I am unhappy. I know that I am always right, because I have been taught all my life I am perfect just the way I am. Clearly something is wrong. Since I cannot be wrong, it must be [them]. When the world is perfect and runs according to my whims, only then will I cease being a victim."

StillLessons · 2023-04-29T00:55:15+00:00

This apology is meaningless regarding his true character or beliefs. These have not changed in the slightest.

The meaning in this "apology", however, lies in what it tells us about the political winds regarding public health messaging. Schwarzenegger remains a politician at his core.

StillLessons · 2023-04-29T00:46:30+00:00

Good to maintain skepticism always, especially with those appearing to be "on our side".

https://saidit.net/s/politics/comments/aqo7/the_strange_new_respect_for_authoritarian/

StillLessons · 2023-04-29T00:42:28+00:00

A good time for people to brush up on their Whitney Webb explaining the roots of the deep state. These tactics are absolutely unsurprising when you see who these people are and have been for the past century. Also important to note, however, this has zero to do with "Republican v Democrat". Both parties are entirely beholden to the same blackmail.

StillLessons · 2023-04-17T01:14:44+00:00

I feel bad for the African immigrants to the US. The people who are bright enough to escape the societies they were living in in Africa are their best and brightest. It makes sense they migrate to a more functional system. I'm sure it drives them insane watching the very-much-not-best-and-brightest blacks in the US education system given the bullhorn. There are many blacks in the US -- both African and native-born -- who are capable of living within our society and contributing great things, but they are currently in the minority, while the "waste-of-time-blacks" have the political backing of the NPC whites to monumentally fuck things up. Horrible to watch.

It's not skin color; it's culture. The worst of both cultures are currently calling the shots.

StillLessons · 2023-04-17T01:07:51+00:00

Universities have become the new orthodoxy to protect the quasi-religious beliefs of the masses, namely that anyone can be anything they want to be and through the rituals of public life we can achieve equity and freedom like some kind of unachievable state of nirvana.

Exactly. This would be amusing if it weren't so serious: they screech in a tone so shrill only the dogs can hear that they are anti-religion -- this is about Science™! But the claim that "a person is born in the wrong body" is a manifestly religious claim. This isn't arguable. The statement is a question of origin, creation, and the meaning of being human. It is nothing to do with the mechanics of the natural world, which is the purview of science. They have created a new state-sanctioned religion, thereby destroying the intent of the founders by claiming not to be a religion at all. It is a fascinating phenomenon to watch in real time, again if it weren't such a tragedy relative to where we were just a few decades ago.

StillLessons · 2023-04-17T00:48:08+00:00

This is what it looks like when a society commits suicide. The generational destruction these people are ensuring is remarkable. They are encoding clear consequences of higher death, reduced reproduction, and a measurable increase in misery among the next generation. A society that does this will not survive. Either they will change direction, or they will go extinct. One or the other.

StillLessons · 2023-04-17T00:40:05+00:00

The blowback on this is building, and it's going to be super ugly. Skim through the history of the French Revolution (the old history, no idea what the lunatics are teaching now) to see what must come eventually. The first group to claim the ring is in for a rude awakening when the counter-claim comes. The other element that is so predictable and infuriating is that the very same people who are now supporting this crap will be the ones executing their current "allies" in a time that is shorter than many recognize. This group will never take responsibility. No, they will say, "We tried to help them, and they betrayed us!" The same assholes currently in government will claim that we should follow them to eliminate the very threat they are now feeding and enabling. They go home, put on a new hat, and re-invent themselves as the enemies of that which they today are the creators of. Human nature has not changed. It's coming.

StillLessons · 2023-04-16T03:17:58+00:00

When "The lunatics are running the asylum" becomes the best way to describe our entire society, that can't be good...

StillLessons · 2023-04-16T03:04:13+00:00

"Living in the US is better than living in Africa."

This to me is the simple proof that the CRT arguments about the western black experience are bullshit. The basis of CRT in the US and Europe is that whites are responsible for black failure. In a nutshell, that's the thesis. The simple test for that is "Well, are there places where blacks are in control? Do blacks living in those places have a better standard of living than those in western societies?" It is obvious that in most of Africa, there are relatively pure black societies. For the true believer in CRT, the solution is absurdly simple: if whites are keeping you down, get away from whites. Go to Congo or the Central African Republic. It'll take some work, but freedom, man! You'll be free from the tyranny of the white man! It should be utopia if their theory is correct. How does it look in reality?

StillLessons · 2023-04-14T14:27:03+00:00

Thanks for the tip.

It looks like an interesting project. I hope it becomes what their ideals suggest. It's so hard to shepherd a project like this through to full-scale operation without corruption leaking in somewhere and derailing it.

I like your definition of currencies, btw. Succinct and complete. If only the centralizing forces acting on humanity didn't sit as the "currency" controllers between all transactions, we might be able to get somewhere...

StillLessons · 2023-04-13T17:55:11+00:00

People with doctorates do see it; they find it unimportant.

This is the basis of the classic quote by Keynes: "In the long run, we're all dead."

Economists understand the temporary nature of all financial arrangements, but they cannot find a more durable construction, so they work with what they've got. They know collapse happens periodically, and they figure the best anyone can do is to dance while the music plays.

StillLessons · 2023-04-13T17:49:21+00:00

I don't know what Qortal is, but beyond the stock market being a ponzi scheme, fiat currencies are also always large-scale ponzi schemes. They die in the end (as the dollar is currently dying) because regardless of scale, the same dynamic applies: when people no longer accept that they're worth anything, they revert to their true value: zero. Resources possess intrinsic value. Currencies do not.

StillLessons · 2023-04-13T17:16:39+00:00

You have two mistaken premises:

First mistake: not accepting trans people's claim to the experience of a sex they will never possess is bigotry. Actually, the bigots are the trans people themselves for demeaning, trivializing, and simplifying a field as wildly complex as human sexuality by believing that their preconceptions of "male" and "female" are adequate and complete descriptions of a field of reality WAY beyond their understanding. It's beyond my understanding as well, but I'm not claiming to "be" something other than a person born into a body I will never fully comprehend.

Second mistake: agreeing with the trans person's mistake is "acceptance". This is the basic, fundamental problem with this philosophy and the reason for all the violence. When you tell a trans person you are "accepting" them, you are "accepting" their statement that they were "born in the wrong body". Editing that down a bit, you are "accepting" that they were born "wrong". They believe that from the first instant of their existence, they were a mistake. There can be no more succinct and complete expression of self-hatred than this. By "accepting" this person's interior story, you are agreeing with them that THEIR LIFE FROM BIRTH WAS A MISTAKE. Even worse are the parents planting this idea in the heads of their children! That is so sick it disgusts me. Telling your child they were "born wrong". It's shocking to even consider passing such a notion to your child. I refuse to accept it for myself, and I absolutely refuse to accept it for "trans" people as well. Their existence is not and never has been a mistake. They are and have always been valid human beings by definition of existing. I refuse to accept their belief that self-rejection (up to and including self-mutilation) is somehow required to "validate" their existence. That is a radically cruel notion.

When adolescents "cut", we correctly view that as a desperate cry of unhappiness, and we work to help the person cutting to stop doing this to themselves. They are perfect as they are. Why should we do any differently when a surgeon is holding the blade with which they want to cut themselves or a doctor is holding the syringe to destroy their body, which is PERFECTLY ACCEPTABLE JUST AS IT IS.

THAT is acceptance. I accept them completely, and I will never support them in their self-destructive behaviors, knowing that ideology is far more plastic and changeable (and reversible) than are the PERMANENT changes being inflicted upon their bodies.

StillLessons · 2023-04-13T13:15:49+00:00

Pay attention to what enemies say about a country. In other words, China would never allow coverage of material like this IN CHINA. They censor it. Similarly, the Davos crew will not allow coverage of material like this in France or her western allies. They censor it. The only way to see the occurrence of events dangerous to the regime is through the places to whom those events are advantageous. It is to China's advantage to show chaos in the west; it is to the advantage of the US to show chaos in Russia; etc, etc. Always find as many perspectives as possible, but never forget who controls the medium you are viewing at a given moment. It's how to arrive at the closest possible approximation of "what is actually going on".

StillLessons · 2023-03-16T17:59:35+00:00

Mmm.

It's been said so many times before it's a cliche, but I'll repeat it anyway: that anger you're holding on to so desperately damages you more than those of us you attack. There are other centers around which to build an identity that don't have all the health problems associated with building your life around rage.

That said, I was going to offer you a second reply anyway, since you offered me two.

I realized that in my reply, I was missing an important point, to fill out my own position. In my above comment, I presented it as entirely neutral, but in full disclosure, I do have a preference for the Russian position. Forgetting all the propaganda on both sides, I look simply at a map. Based on the map and a little basic history, the land you guys are currently fighting in sits on Russia's borders and contains a population of largely ethnic Russians. The NBC reporter pointed out that in Crimea, people are quite happy living as Russians. This reporter is on "our" side, theoretically, though I doubt anyone will hire him again. The population in the Donbass also has a large proportion of ethnic Russians. As such, the Russians are fighting a fundamentally defensive war. They are fighting - in their view - to protect their own people. Can any of the countries of the west, pumping money into this war by the tens of billions, say the same? The motivation behind the west, as expressed most recently by the foreign minister of Canada, having been expressed by others as well:

“We’re able to see how much we’re isolating the Russian regime right now — because we need to do so economically, politically and diplomatically — and what are the impacts also on society, and how much we’re seeing potential regime change in Russia. The goal is definitely to do that, is to weaken Russia’s ability to launch very difficult attacks against Ukraine. We want also to make sure that Putin and his enablers are held to account.”

Ah, that wonderful phrase "regime change" pops its head up again. How many times has the west aimed for "regime change" in the past thirty years. Saddam is the bad guy! No, wait, it's Gaddafi! No, damn, it's Assad! The profound hubris of the collective west in their imposition through violence of their "western values" is frankly disgusting in its obvious nature. Said "western values" aren't looking so good in the middle east, the other place the collective west has stated with such confidence that their "just war" will solve the world's problems. The US occupies a large portion of Syrian territory. Was there ever ANY discussion of this move or even a justification? NONE. PURE LAW OF THE JUNGLE. THEY JUST TOOK IT. The region is in chaos, but who cares? There's another war to be fought! Now it's Putin's turn. This is cultural imperialism, it's the height of arrogance, and it's disgusting.

Has it dawned on you that the Russian population supports the war in Ukraine? Your belief that "Putin is Hitler" has you focused on "if we just get him and his cronies out, then puppies and kittens!" Sorry, with or without the propaganda that he and his government are pumping out (without a doubt), Russians are not going to tolerate western Ukrainians treating the Russian population in Ukraine as second-class citizens. I'm thinking particularly of the language laws put into place in early 2022 (https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/01/19/new-language-requirement-raises-concerns-ukraine), just before the Russians invaded. That part of the world has been culturally connected to Russia for centuries. The brute-force elimination of such cultural connections goes way over Putin's head to Russian general cultural sensitivity.

But the western elites think they know better than the Russian population who should lead Russia. MmHm. That sounds profoundly undemocratic to me, but these are "ruzzians" we are talking about here, so who cares what they think?

That's the other piece in your replies that gets my hackles up. You wear your anti-Russian racism with pride. It's all the rage these days, right? I have been struck by the radical blindness of the western elites in their messaging in the past few years. Racism is bad! Oh, except for anti-Russian racism. That's good! Guess what? Racism is racism. You've just found a new target to throw your bile at. 100 years ago, it was blacks who were "okay" to hate. Now it's Russians. Here's an idea: why not NOT HATE ANYONE? You think you can do that?

It doesn't look like it.

In summary, your side claims to be bringing more "enlightened values" to each conflict you're engaged in. I read in your tone lots and lots of raw hatred. Where's the enlightenment in that, and why on Earth would I have any desire to support you in such a violent, hateful project?

StillLessons · 2023-03-16T16:54:29+00:00

I'm fascinated that you sent this second reply. Given that nobody else is paying attention to this post, this is something that has really gotten under your skin personally. I've always treated you as a shill, but this is not shill behavior. So you're a real person. That's a big deal, and I am surprised. I admit my mistake in my misinterpretation of your character.

That said, the tenor of your replies - the reason I didn't reply to your first - has only proven my point. Your attack on me proves precisely what I was saying in my comment. The root of war is hatred. That feeling you are having as you write your replies - that increase in blood pressure, that rage, that emotional catharsis - that is what creates war. You feel it on your side; the Russian propagandists and those who believe them feel it on their side. Both of you - you and your Russian counterpart - are expressing the same element of human behavior.

So far you have missed my point entirely. I don't believe the Russian propaganda, and I have no need to defend it. What you find so hard to understand is that I don't believe either story. You are raging at me, assuming that I am your Russian counterpart. You assume this, because I see the stories you are telling as a series of half-truths yielding dead bodies when people orient their behavior around them. I see the Russian stories as exactly the same thing.

This is why those few of us who actually want peace are so hated by both you and by the Russians. For you guys, winning is the point. For me, there is no winning. There are hundreds of thousands of dead bodies and a wrecked environment left behind after the two of you are done expressing your personal rage. I want the violence to stop. The Russians say it will stop when you surrender. You say it will stop when the Russians surrender. I say it will stop when either or both of you decide it will stop. I encourage any who will listen to stop NOW.

Raging at me as a person precisely the opposite of who I actually am does not help your argument. Your rage only further demonstrates - the more you vent it - that you want war. You are finding meaning in this fighting. I'm genuinely sad about that, but the violent instincts you're indulging in have been with our species since the beginning, and those in my position have always been a tiny fraction.

We each play the role we play. What else can we do?

StillLessons · 2023-03-14T19:59:55+00:00

My confusion comes with the people who cannot see that Ukraine is just the next in this same series. The same people have been running these shows for thirty years. I have family who acknowledge the lies which got us into Iraq. Yet these same family members believe a story that rhymes completely with the propaganda from Iraq now that that story has the name "Russia" attached to it. I genuinely don't understand how they are squaring that circle.

What a strange world this is.

StillLessons · 2023-03-14T14:54:53+00:00

There are two sides to every story.

https://crimes-of-ukraine.ru/?ysclid=lf8d9bg4qe358554955

I don't claim to be an expert on the "truth" of the matter, but it's easy to smell the propaganda roots of the article you reference. The site I reference is equivalent propaganda from the Russian side. Do you want to argue that the soldiers tasked with the subjugation of Russian culture in Ukraine (which has been a dominant presence in the east of the country for centuries) have acted as angels? I find that beyond unlikely. War is hell. Always has been. Believing that your side are angels while all evil is contained with the "other" side is the dynamic on which war feeds. Articles like the one you reference - and the one I reference on the Russian side - are the very feedstock which makes war function. Your argument has been stated by many bureaucrats now in the west at various times: "Replacing Putin in Russia with a ruler more to our liking will lead to rainbows and kittens in the region." That is - put simply - simplistic bullshit, and only continues the war dynamic indefinitely. How about finding a way to end the bloodshed? That doesn't satisfy either yours or Putin's bloodlust. You don't want peace. That's the simple problem here.

As long as you want war, you will have it.

StillLessons · 2023-02-10T20:33:25+00:00

Good post. Thanks for this.

StillLessons · 2023-02-10T19:21:39+00:00

Darwin Award winner for the day.

StillLessons