No, it's not about that Indian b-word ruining Scooby Doo, this is far more interesting.

On 5 February 2018, the Chicago Board Options Exchange (Cboe) Volatility Index (VIX), after nearly a year of low market volatility, increased more than 100% in a single day—from 18.44 at open to 37.32 at close. This sudden spike led to sharp losses for short-term volatility investors who had bet that the VIX would remain low. Several high-profile exchange-traded products (ETPs) that deliver short volatility exposure destabilized or collapsed. Questions remain as to what may have led to the crash on a day that eventually came to be dubbed “Volmageddon”.

Short volatility ETPs had grown extremely popular in the preceding few years because they had profited from sustained low market volatility. Leveraged and inverse ETPs experienced rapid 30% annual growth over the previous decade, exceeding the 20% annual growth of the wider ETP space. The underlying VIX futures market for short volatility ETPs was very volatile. The average 90-day trailing volatility of the S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures Index was, on average, 64.0% between January 2007 and December 2017, compared with 17.4% for the S&P 500 Index. Also in late 2017, S&P 500 volatility reached historical lows, at approximately 6.8%.

The two most popular examples of inverse VIX ETPs at the time were the VelocityShares Daily Inverse VIX short-term exchange-traded note (XIV) and the ProShares Short VIX short-term futures exchangetraded fund (SVXY). Both ETPs tracked the inverse performance of the S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures Index (henceforth, “VIX Futures Index”).

Following particularly low volatility in 2017, the combined AUM of these funds had rapidly grown to $3.5 billion by early February 2018. In the 5th February price crash VIX rose by 102% and the VIX Futures Index rose by 72%. The two inverse ETPs that tracked the inverse performance of the VIX Futures Index (i.e., the XIV and SVXY) collapsed in the afternoon and suffered abrupt losses. Their prices crashed in the run-up to 4:15 p.m. Eastern time, the daily settlement time of the VIX futures market and the time when ETPs calculate their net asset values (NAVs). The ETP prices continued falling in the after-hours market. By the open of the next day, ETPs had fallen by 97%, according to Bloomberg data.

Many analysts had already argued that the rise of ETFs increased the volatility of the underlying assets as a result of noise. Crowded trades and volatility premium also played a part.

The Value Proposition of Inverse Volatility Products

The VIX approximately tracks the volatility implied by near-term options on the S&P 500 Index. Investing in VIX futures contracts enables investors to take a long or a short position on the future level of the VIX. The VIX Futures Index measures the returns of a portfolio of short-term VIX futures contracts with a weighted average maturity of one month to expiration. Inverse volatility ETPs offer investors the ability to take short positions against future values of the VIX by offering a return equal to the inverse return of the S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures Index. Investors in such ETPs profit from unexpected decreases in the VIX and lose from unexpected increases in it. Investors also typically profit in the absence of unexpected changes in the VIX. The reason is that the existence of a volatility risk premium, as well as the negative correlation between VIX movements and stock market movements, implies that futures are typically upwardly biased estimates of future VIX values.

Indeed, by January 2018, the two largest inverse volatility ETPs were the SVXY and the XIV, with total AUM of, respectively, $1.7 billion and $1.9 billion.

The SVXY was structured as an ETF, and the XIV, as an ETN. Both ETNs and ETFs sell shares to outside investors and promise the return performance of an index that they track. An ETF typically purchases and sells assets directly to track an index performance. In contrast, an ETN promises an index's return performance without the mandate to directly invest in assets that are related to the index it tracks. Thus, the ETN is more likely to offer a return profile without tracking error. As such, it relies on the issuer's ability to issue such returns and thus the issuer's creditworthiness. One of the main advantages of an ETN over an ETF for investors is, therefore, that an ETN typically pays out the exact index return rather than the return of the ETF's asset basket. One of its main disadvantages, in turn, is that the ETN is more vulnerable to the issuer's credit risk.

The popularity and interest in inverse and levered volatility ETPs may be surprising considering the view that these products are not well suited for buy-and-hold investors and hedging purposes. A key reason is that inverse ETFs and ETNs must maintain the same “–1×” exposure to their benchmarks every day. Analysts had also proved and showed that the associated daily rebalancing creates compounding mechanics that can lead to poor long-run performance. Accordingly, prospectuses of inverse ETPs specifically note that these products are not appropriate for providing the desired risk exposure for periods longer than a day.

However, these products may provide value to investors through strategies. Many noted that investors may invest in short volatility ETPs because they are seeking to diversify, are reaching for yield, or are chasing positive return performance.

The Ball Gets Rolling

A VIX ETP issuer who sells a short volatility product to investors will typically hedge by taking short posit ions in VIX futures contracts. Doing so ensures the issuer of a neutral position. Normally, the issuer will match the futures exposure with the cash received from investors (or its AUM). Because the fund seeks to deliver returns equal to –1× the benchmark index every day, the issuer needs to rebalance its position each day to ensure that the mark-to-market value of its short futures contracts matches the value of the fund's AUM.

The XIV ETN.

The XIV ETN sought to provide investors with a return mirroring the inverse performance of the S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures Index (VIX Futures Index).

In early February 2018, the value of the XIV's AUM stood at $1.86 billion. As a counterparty to buyers of the XIV, the XIV issuer effectively had a long exposure to volatility equivalent to a notional amount of $1.86 billion. To hedge the full exposure and remain neutral, the issuer took a short position in VIX futures with a total market value of $1.86 billion. This procedure would ensure that any change in the value of the liability to investors would be offset by markto-market changes in the value of the hedge position. Suppose, for example, that the VIX Futures Index rose by 10%. The value of the XIV's AUM would fall from $1.86 billion to $1.86 billion × (1 – 10%) = $1.674 billion, implying a reduced liability for the issuer. The issuer's short VIX futures position would also suffer mark-to-market losses and fall from $1.86 billion to $1.674 billion. Overall, the issuer's gain from a reduced XIV liability would be offset by an equivalent loss on its hedge position. Going forward, however, the issuer would not be neutral and would need to rebalance its hedge as specifically, the notional exposure of the issuer's short futures position increased from $1.86 billion to $1.86 billion × (1 + 10%) = $2.046 billion, and the issuer would need to reduce the exposure of the short position to $1.674 billion.

The issuer would need to buy futures because the value of its liability became $1.674 billion, not $2.046 billion. In the absence of trade, the issuer would have a mismatch on its balance sheet, with a short position in VIX futures that was too large relative to its XIV liability ($2.046 billion ≠ $1.674 billion).

As a result, the issuer would need to close out existing positions through the purchase of new VIX futures contracts to remain neutral. In our hypothetical scenario, the issuer would need to lower its short volatility exposure by buying VIX futures contracts for an amount of $2.046 billion – $1.674 billion = $372 million.

In case of a drop in volatility, the issuer would need to rebalance its hedged position by selling additional VIX futures contracts.

The SVXY ETF.

Like the XIV ETN, the SVXY ETF sought to provide investors with a return mirroring the inverse performance of the VIX Futures Index. To do so, the fund sold VIX futures with a notional exposure equal to the fund's AUM. For example, in early February 2018, the value of the SVXY's AUM stood at $1.7 billion and the fund was short VIX futures with a notional exposure of $1.7 billion. The value of the fund then fluctuated in line with the mark-to-market gains and losses on the short futures position.

A rise of 10% in the VIX Futures Index. The mark-to-market losses on the fund's short VIX futures positions would equal $1.7 billion × (–10%) = –$170 million, and the fund's NAV would accordingly fall to $1.53 billion. However, the notional exposure of the fund would have increased from $1.7 billion to $1.7 billion × (1 + 10%) = $1.87 billion.

Thus, even though the XIV and the SVXY differ in their structures—an ETN and ETF, respectively—both funds feature a need to rebalance their hedge posit ions each day. The fundamental reason is that both funds are leveraged, in the sense that the notional exposure of the fund does not fluctuate in line with the value of the fund. Ie like leverage from a bank and playing it in the markets your exposure and assets do not move in synchronicity. In this case it even diverges more and more 😴😴😴

Volmageddon

The disproportionately large market share in VIX futures contracts held by leveraged ETPs (e.g., XIV and SVXY) amplified the February 2018 volatility shock through their rebalancing mechanism and contributed to their collapse through a feedback loop,

On 5 February 2018, the VIX increased more than 100%, from 18.44 at open to 37.32 at close. This increase is one of the largest daily jumps in the history of the VIX and came after several years of low volatility.

Concurrently, the VIX Futures Index rose throughout the day.

As discussed in the previous wordsX3 sections, this increase in volatility led to a drop in the value of inverse volatility ETPs' AUM and a simultaneous increase in the notional exposure of their short VIX futures positions. To remain market neutral, the SVXY fund and XIV issuer needed to buy VIX futures contracts to match their short volatility exposure with the reduced value of their fund's AUM. In deep markets with sufficient investors, the purchases of VIX futures contracts by ETP issuers with similar rebalancing needs would have had a minimal impact on the prices of VIX futures.

However, in January 2018, the XIV, the SVXY, and other ETPs with similar rebalancing needs after market hours jointly held a significant portion of the market. The market concentration was so significant that the purchase of VIX futures contracts as a result of rebalancing created further upward pressure on VIX futures prices and a feedback loop that would ultimately reduce the value of the ETPs' AUM significantly. Specifically, the purchase of VIX futures would have significant positive effects on futures prices and lead to further drops in the SVXY's and the XIV's AUM. The result would be the need for more rebalancing that would lead to even further drops in AUM.

Lesson for r-slurs:

Why do they mean by rebalancing. 😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫

You have given me $10 (your net worth) to short shares. I short 10 shares of $1 and receive $10. My liability to you is $10, my assets under management/exposure (since I have to buy them back within a time frame) is $10.

Now let's suppose the share prices rise by 10%. So the 10 shares I have sold now would cost $11 to buy back. Accordingly I would exhaust the $10 I have got from short selling those shares and use $1 of your money. So your assets (my liability) take a hit of 10% (you're only left with $9) 😭😭😭 and my exposure increases to $11. This is why even though I haven't taken any loan, I am leveraged, since my AUM and exposure diverge more and more.

If you want to learn more, DM me, I'll send you some adderall

Anyway,

The ETPs traded from a 9:30 a.m. open to a 4:00 p.m. close, and by 4:00 p.m., the VIX Futures Index had increased by 39%. As noted previously, both ETPs tracked the inverse of the performance of the VIX Futures Index. Therefore, the increase in the VIX Futures Index increased the value of the combined short volatility exposure of the ETPs from $3.5 billion to $4.8 billion (+39%) by 4:00 p.m. At the same time, the AUM of the SVXY went down from $1.68 billion to $1.04 billion and the underlying value of the XIV went down from approximately $1.86 billion to $1.15 billion (–39%). The value of their combined AUM at 4:00 p.m. was, therefore, approximately $2.2 billion ($1.04 billion + $1.15 billion).

By this time, it was apparent that both ETPs would need to trade a significant number of contracts to remain hedged. Indeed, at 4:00 p.m. prices, the total short exposure in VIX futures contracts that the ETPs would need to close out amounted to $4.8 billion – $2.2 billion = $2.6 billion. In light of this, fund managers would have begun rebalancing before 4:15 p.m., the time when the funds calculate their NAVs and when the VIX futures market closes. This additional demand for futures contracts resulting from hedge and leverage rebalancing likely contributed to the significant increase in futures prices between 4:00 p.m., following the market close for the XIV and SVXY, and the close of the VIX futures market.

It didn't help that the needed number of contracts represented a significant fraction of open interest and volume. For example, in January 2018, the VIX futures market recorded a total open interest of 600,000 contracts, with an average daily trading volume of 400,000 contracts recorded over the five days preceding 5 February 2018 (Cboe 2020). Thus, the contracts needed for hedging and leverage rebalancing represented about 23% (93,000/400,000) of the average daily trading volume in volatility futures contracts and nearly 16% of every contract outstanding (93,000/600,000).

The rebalancing activities of other ETPs, such as 2× volatility futures funds, likely contributed additional upward pressure on VIX futures prices.

AI may also have kicked volatility dabblers in the nuts as High-frequency trading (HFT) also potentially contributed to the crash of short volatility ETPs, especially considering that the average holding period for short volatility ETPs is about 0.88 day.

Conclusion

In February 2018, a spike in market volatility led to a one-day loss of more than 90% for investors in inverse volatility ETPs. This even shows how leverage and hedge rebalancing, coupled with large market concentrations, can lead to sudden collapses of levered investment structures and significant losses for outside investors.

Post Script (Not my words)

Uninformed investors might assume that the leverage returns are generated on a continuous basis, so that if an underlying index is up 5% for a month, the double-leveraged ETF will be up 10% for the same month; if the index is up 10% for 6 months, the ETF will be up 20%, and so forth. That is absolutely not the case. The leverage is determined on a daily basis and the returns for any other period usually will not be double or triple the underlying index.

In order for the leveraged funds to achieve appropriate levels of assets so they can provide their implied leverage, they have to rebalance daily. In the case of an ETF providing long 2-times leveraged exposure, they would typically attain exposure to a notional set of assets equal to 2 times their NAV. An example would be an ETF that takes in 100 units in assets that does a swap with a counterparty to provide exposure to 200 units in performing assets. The rebalancing activity of these funds will almost always be in the same direction as the market.

In essence, a leveraged ETF is essentially marked to market every night. It starts with a clean slate the next day, almost as if the previous day had not existed. This process produces daily leverage results. However, over time, the compounding of this reset can potentially vary the performance of the fund versus its underlying benchmark. This can result in either greater or lesser degrees of final leverage over individual holding periods.

!math !r-slurs

“You'll be alright. Just stop squirming honey, lay still,” Orpah said.

Samson lay on his back on the hot rocks beside the rugged rock path of Sonder Mountain. The sun was flaming intensely, laying a blanket of heavy heat over them. His leg was bent awkwardly, unnaturally, so much so that a lick of the white of his bone could be seen through his shin.

“Calm down honey,” Orpah soothed him, leaning the water flask into his mouth.

The yelling had stopped. Samson had screamed and yelled in pain until his vocal cords were bloody. It was obvious that there was no one else on the path, and with nighttime fast approaching, unlikely it was that the situation would flip. Orpah took off her top, leaving her in just her skimpy white vest, before soaking it in water and laying it over Samson's forehead. The sky was a deep shade of orange. It would have been quite beautiful to look at if the situation was different, less dire perhaps. Orpah knew she would be able to find help at the bottom of Sonder Mountain. But that was easily a three-hour hike, and with night looming over them, she couldn't risk leaving Samson at the mercy of the coyotes. Not while his leg dripped blood and he dipped in out of consciousness, driven hysterical from pain. So she remained at his side, lovingly combing her fingers through his long hair as she tended to his needs.

“They'll notice we aren't there at dinner and come out looking for us. I'll start a small fire to make us a tad more visible,” Orpah said.

Samson gritted some form of acknowledgment through his gritted teeth. His face was almost as pale as his knuckles. Pain like this, it was nothing he ever felt before. It had him contemplating death, wondering whether a life with this amount of agony was one worth cherishing, worth fighting for. Was death not void of all such suffering? But he held on to life, if only for Orpah and her beautiful face, the love she evoked within him, and the tenderness of her touch.

“Go… find… help,” Samson managed to utter without opening his jaw.

Orpah looked up at him.

“Light the fire… and go find help… it'll keep the… coyotes away,” Samson explained.

“Are you sure?” Orpah asked.

Samson nodded. His leg had gone numb from the pain. The feeling of being stabbed over and over again was so consistent it had become a non-factor, like when noise is so ceaseless it becomes soothing or when you wear your glasses for so long you forget they're on. The first few stars twinkled in the sky which was slowly turning from orange to black. Orpah reached into her backpack and pulled out a box of long matchsticks. The trail was mostly stones and sand, but Orpah managed to gather enough sticks to start a sizeable flame. She cordoned it off with a few rocks, kissed Samson on the forehead, and headed down the trail.

“I'll be back as fast as I can,” Orpah said.

The smoke from the flame was serpent-like, the wisps slithering sinisterly. Every moment remaining in consciousness was a conscientious effort. He was glad for the flame. The air had suddenly gone from sweltering to chilly which only made the pain worse. Suddenly he felt the ground shake. He wasn't sure at first; it was as subtle as can be. But it grew and grew until it was an undeniable tremor, as if a giant was walking in the vicinity. Samson didn't have to wonder too much before the source made itself known. A kangaroo hopped out from behind a rock. It was purple and had a flame on the tip of its tail.

“What the everloving frick are you?” Samson said aloud in fear, “what in the frick is that?”

The kangaroo looked at him, tilted its head, and smiled. About twenty crabs crawled out its pouch and scattered all over. The kangaroo stretched in relief. Samson tried to crawl away but failed. The kangaroo was still towering over him.

“I done carried them from Jupiter. Nasty lil buggers, those claws are nothing to be ignorin',” the kangaroo said in a raspy voice.

“What the actual frick is going on?” was all Samson could manage.

“S'pose now is a good a time as any for an explanation. My name is, well I aint got a name. No need for those on the dimensional plane I'm from. I've taken this form because your puny mind would never understand my true form,” it continued raspily.

Samson blinked hard twice. He was convinced this was some kind of hallucination, his mind playing tricks on him, insanity brought on by dehydration and deliria.

“I am the bringer of the gift of death. You can do nothing to earn it, nothing to lose it but like any other gift, you may decline it,” the kangaroo continued, but this time in a different voice like a lady.

“How do I know you're real?” Samson managed to ask.

The kangaroo paused for a while, thought, and then answered.

“On the sixteenth of December your wife Orpah was asleep and you wanted a sandwich. You were too lazy to make it yourself so you opened a jar of Nutella and ate directly from it, you ate it all Samson, all. You got sick the next day and denied eating it. You told Orpah that from the bottom of your heart you didn't do it. But you did,” the kangaroo said in a different voice yet again.

It was as though the kangaroo was having great fun altering its voice each time. Perhaps more out of embarrassment than anything else Samson admitted to himself that indeed the kangaroo was not a figment of his imagination. The entire situation fell into the category of ‘too strange to be fiction'.

“So… am I dead?” Samson asked tentatively.

“Only if you want to be,” the kangaroo replied casually.

Samson lowered his eyebrow, his forehead creased. He was flummoxed.

“Death is a gift, as I have said. You can accept it or reject it,” the kangaroo explained.

He held his long tail in his hand, swinging it around casually.

“And, uhm, if I choose death? What would happen, I'm not saying that's what I want, but if I did choose death, what would happen next?” Samson asked, making very sure to emphasise that he wasn't asking for death.

“I don't know. I've never died. I'm only the collector of souls. I can tell what will happen if you choose life though,” the kangaroo said.

Samson shrugged.

“Oh c'mon, the same old,” said the kangaroo, “pain, misery, discontent, disappointment. Amidst it all a few moments of love and happiness. I've seen a lot of lives in my job. No matter where you are, how you live, it's always the same. Just a different variety of it.”

Samson paused for a while. He had forgotten about his broken leg, something that tends to happen when you have a kangaroo from the realm of death before you. A sly thought crept in his mind.

“You said that death is a gift, right?” Samson queried.

“Indeed.”

“Then, like any other gift, I could pass it on, couldn't I?”

“I s'pose.”

“Then I give my gift to Orpah,” Samson said resolutely.

The kangaroo looked at him, vexed.

“Your own wife? Well that's certainly a new one,” the kangaroo said.

“If death truly is a gift, I would not want my last action to be something as selfish as running away from the strife of the world. If my wife takes it, I will know she loved death more than I. If she rejects the gift, then this will be a life worth living. I don't know, it makes sense in my head,” explained Samson.

“Very well then.”

And the kangaroo stuck its purple hands out, waved them and uttered a magical spell. The sky lit up in a million colours. And then the kangaroo was gone. Samson lay there in the darkness of the night with only the flickering of the flames as his company. No one came until morning when the mountain ranger came around for his morning route. In a state of semi-consciousness, all Samson remembered was being lifted up and put into the back of a pickup truck. He swung in and out of consciousness and found himself on a soft bed, his leg raised in a cast in some sort of log cabin. The ranger and Orpah stood over him.

“He almost died,” he heard the ranger say.

“Oh my poor honey,” Orpah said, “I'm so grateful you saved him. How can I ever show my gratitude?”

“Well there is one way,” he heard the ranger say smugly.

A bit of whispering and a bit of giggling and Samson heard the sound of something oddly similar to the clank of a metal belt buckle hitting the ground. They left the room.

Samson wanted his gift back.

1. How to stoically forgive myself after a hanging attempt? 🥺🥺🥺

How to Stoically forgive myself for attempted suicide?

My health problems felt so hopeless that I believed I had no other option but to end my life.

So, I spent four nights trying to hang myself. (Partial suspension with foot/bum/knees always on the ground.)

It didn't work, and now I'm only in greater shame, self-hate, and health anxiety for what I did.

I'm paranoid that I have neck/brain damage. I went to the hospital (they did no scans) and then later got a carotid artery ultrasound from my GP - which came back perfect, yet I'm still in deep fear that the neck pain will never go away and will be a constant reminder of this shameful decision. What makes it worse is that I did this to myself. Suddenly, my other health problems don't feel so bad.

I'd love some help forgiving myself and believing the doctors that I will be okay and the pain will go away.

Since doing this four weeks ago, I'm terrified that this will define the rest of my life. Especially if the pain never goes away.

2. Is my neck okay after hanging attempts? 😰😰😰

Is my neck okay after hanging attempts?

I am deeply ashamed and won't try this again, but I tried to hang myself for several nights. I tried partial suspension hanging - meaning my feet, bum, or knees were always on the ground.

I went to the hospital, and they did no scans and said I was okay.

I also went to my GP who ordered a carotid artery ultrasound and that came back perfect.

Does this mean I escaped any long term neck or brain damage?

Or do I need to get an MRI or other tests?

As all I can think about is that I'll have to suffer the pain of this terrible mistake for life. Which is making life heck.

I'm terrified my neck will never be the same again.

3. Would a neck MRI clear me from hanging injuries? 😱🤔🤔

Male. 42. 85kg. 183cm.

Anxiety and depression.

Valium.

I'm in deep shame and paranoid that I've ruined my neck for life after attempting partial suspension hanging (I always had my feet, bum, or knees on the ground) over several nights. I never passed out.

I went to the hospital, and they did no scans or tests. But my GP did a carotid artery ultrasound, which came back clear.

But since then I still have neck pain (along with other symptoms like ear and swallowing pain) and extreme anxiety, so I'm wondering if a neck MRI is the best test to clear me of everything I'm worried about completely - so I can finally get back to living.

Thank you for your time. I've been living in pure fear and regret since. I'm very sorry.

4. How do you still enjoy life with Peyronie's Disease? 😞😞🍆❌

Since getting this disease I have not been able to enjoy a second of life. Having this disease with all the shame that goes with it has destroyed me. And now that I also have pain, I have no idea if having a life worth living is possible. I know I ask a lot of everybody on here, but I'd love to know how those who manage to still have a life worth living with Peyronie's Disease manage to do so. What are your secrets? As I keep seeing suicide being my best choice to be done with this cruel curse.

5. Psychologist said Peyronie's Disease is so bad that no therapy could help 🤒😮😮‍💨

I'm very much hoping she is wrong.

But as said in the title, my new psychologist said that she thought Peyronie's Disease was simply too devastating of a disease for any type of therapy to help men cope.

It made me feel ever more doomed - and basically confirmed it's all over, with suicide being the only medicine.

6. Best easy-to-understand Stoicism books on Audible? ☺️☺️🎧

I have a lot of Audible credits, so I'm looking to spend them on some great and easy-to-understand Stoicism books. Likely suited to a beginner.

I'm after guided books like How to Think Like a Roman Emperor rather than the straight texts.

As I need all the help I can get trying to understand all this!

7. Why has no cure been found for Peyronie's Disease? 😤😤😡

What makes this curse so darn impossible for medical science to treat? Also, are people currently working on new treatments? Or has the medical community given up all hope?

8. Need help coping with an extremely embarrassing disease 😭😭🏳️‍⚧️✅

Sorry to reach out like this, but my own reading and journaling doesn't seem to be working - so I'd love some advice from you lot on how to use Stoicism to cope with a disease that I feel has completely ruined my life.

It's called Peyronie's Disease, which has left my peepee bent and unusable. It's notoriously difficult to treat. And it's not something you can talk with anybody about.

My thinking problems are that I no longer feel like I'm a man, I feel like my life is completely ruined and is not worth living anymore, I feel that I'll be forever alone, and I worry that this will never be healed - and that I'm cursed for life and broken.

I also keep having thoughts that no man would carry on living with a disease like this.

Again, sorry for the rant, but I'm desperate to find some Stoic relief if that's possible.

9. Does caffeine tablets cause diarrhoea like coffee? 💩💩💩

Struggling with long-term carnivore diarrhoea so cut coffee. Wondering if I can take caffeine tablets, or they cause diarrhoea too?

10. Basic one I'm stuck on. How can I possibly be happy with horrible illnesses? 😞😞😞

I'm new here and have been reading “how to think like a Roman Emperor” as well as watching Einzelgänger on YouTube.

For a bit I thought I was making mild progress.

Perhaps I'm just tired, but today I was bombed by the thought that my chronic illnesses 100% prevent me from being happy, so I'm excluded from the benefits of Stoicism. I was stuck and couldn't seem to find anything that I've read so far to help me out.

However, I'm sure I'm missing something very basic here and I would love some help finding relief and getting back on track.

Thank you!

11. Sticky, dark poops. 🤣🤣🤣🤣 (I'm sorry but this is just too many emotions to put in 3 emojis)

I'm 34 days in.

I only pass scowtools every three days or so, but they are now dark and incredibly sticky/impossible to wipe, requiring a shower.

They are also soft, small little nuggets. Which I guess is better than the diarrhoea it's been since day one?

Wondering if this is okay/normal and I'm fine to keep up this WOE and things will right themselves eventually?

Thanks all.

12. Anyone treat Peyronie's disease with carnivore? 💪💪💪

I know this is a long shot, but I'm wondering if anybody had or has heard of people have any success treating Peyronie's disease with carnivore? As it does sound like the disease is from inflammation.

12 (Extended) Here's a short explanation of the disease:

What is going on? - If you have Peyronies, you have a condition that caused your body to replace normal elastic tissue in your peepee with non-elastic scar tissue called plaque. It has no association with plaque in your arteries or elsewhere in your body. You have Peyronies when your body forms scar tissue in the peepee in places where it is not needed to heal a wound. It replaces normal elastic tissue, often far from any injury, and it can cause deformity, much like putting a piece of Scotch tape on a balloon and then blowing it up. The resulting deformity can be a bend, narrowing or dent, or shortening of the peepee. If you have scar tissue at the site of real damage on the peepee that is NOT Peyronies Disease. That is a normal healing process as long as the scar tissue does not spread over healthy tissue. Be aware that most bends are just natural variations from one peepee to another and are not Peyronies Disease. A peepee is seldom perfectly round and straight any more than noses are all the same shape.

14. Can carnivore help fibrosis conditions? 😞😮☺️

I'm trying to treat Peyronie's Disease, and unfortunately there's VERY little treatment options.

So, I'm hoping going carnivore could be the silver bullet to treat fibrotic conditions like this.

15. Starter stack for treating peyronie's disease 🤣😂😆😄😃😊☺️🙂🤭🤨😒🤔🧐😐😑😕🫤🙁☹️😧😦😮😯😲🫨😵‍💫😵😰😨

I'm going to be proactive and get started on treatment while I wait to see a urologist.

Is there anything I'm missing? I would love your thoughts on my battle plan.

SUPPLEMENTS

CoQ10 – 400mg daily

L-Arginine – 3 grams daily

Acetyl L-Carnitine – 3 grams daily

Taurine – 1.5 grams a day?

K2 and D3 – once a day capsule.

DRUGS

(Also, I'll ask my GP for:)

5mg Cialis.

Pentox.

LIFESTYLE

Carnivore diet (zero carbs)

Daily walks.

No smoking.

No alcohol.

CONSIDERING

I'm now thinking of adding:

Ginkgo Biloba

Silymarin

Bilberry

Propolis

OTHER

I'll wait until I see the urologist before starting any traction/stretching/vacuum therapy.

!r-slurs our god has arrived

I was asked for a "Bitcoin Redpill."

Where to begin?

Money.

Money is fabricated by the State.

The State controls the supply of Money. This is true whether or not there is a bank managed directly by the United States Federal Government. (The Federal Reserve.)

Now there are people who are Bitcoin fanatics.

There are people who are Trump fanatics

There are people who are Yudkowsky fanatics.

A reputation doesn't have to be deserved. It generally is deserved, in fact. (Believe Women.) (Not All Women.)

Bitcoin's price can be manipulated by anyone with enough real money to buy a lot of it, driving up the price, or sell a lot of it, buying down the price.

At this moment the United States Government could sell its Bitcoin. In this way it has power over the market.

There are too many false beliefs in the dO - G - M A of Bitcoin. Bitcoin is intended to be a libertarian's escape from the state's control over money. Unregulated markets are worse than regulated markets. Even regulated markets can't avoid capitalism's boom-bust cycle which is essentially just a continuation of the logical exponential-rise exponential-fall dynamic of nature itself. (the problem with capitalism is Capitalism: the capitalist ideology which obscures the truth of our situation from one another as one of the Boomer Mind Fogs: confusion in our politics owing to the Boomer Ideological Apparatus continuing to operate far past its useful functioning. We can't keep relitigating Communism the straw man and Capitalism the straw man because that's Cold War thinking.)

(leftists who are capable of working within the system tend to be socialist at best: committed to a firm public good, the funding of a better and more aesthetic life for our children through taxation.)

(Rich people view the state as a competitor when they should look at it as prey to a predator. Oh. They do look at it with that fear, that's why they want their man or woman on the government face.)

Point is Bitcoin poses no threat to any sort of world order because at its _best_ it's just Money, again, but with significantly more weaknesses and the weird strength of being Internet Money which just makes it more easily communicated as a fanatic point.

See like many god-darn self-righteous leftists, the crusade of Bitcoin isn't objectionable by premise. "Trans people should be allowed to do what they like with their bodies" is reasonable to most reasonable Americans. It makes our society more cyberpunky that drug deals are done with online money. There is nothing stopping the US Government from subpoenaing Coinbase. If you're a suspect of interest they will find the transaction point at which you purchased the Bitcoin with USD because the US Government _created_ USD! In this occult sense the US Government will always be capable of _finding where it goes_ because... it has to turn up somewhere, right? Coinbase has to tax it, account for it, whatever.

In this regard, Bitcoin is credibly a success. Drug deals.

But the crusade is about overturning the financial system to establish a new financial world order, and this is an incoherent concept because money only exists to further the interests of the state which prints it. Duh. (Rich people are merely servitors of the State.)

No state controls Bitcoin, so it's a money that any government can control simply by buying and selling it with real money.

It's like if we allowed Russia to print or remove USD from our economy and had no choice over the matter!

This would make Bitcoin an interesting failure.

Bitcoin is a speculative asset. It compares, then, to the model of a stock market: it has a price, which fluxuates.

But a _stock_ has inherent value.

STOCKS

PRINT

DIVIDENDS

You get money from a stock, like a little trustworthy cow you can milk, and you are now, if you own a stock, an investor: on your way to financial stability.

THIS

IS

COMMUNISM

The good kind: collective ownership of the public corporation.

all corporations should be publicly owned. end private ownership of corporations.

(The problem we face right now is wealth inequality. To reduce wealth inequality, take away the money from the rich people because they failed and the money doesn't belong to them it belongs to the state.

so you watch as the cabinet is filled with rich people

and the "isolationists" immediately think of war in Mexico

everyone over 65 out of government

Bitcoin prints nothing. It's a speculative asset without any inherent value. Gold is beautiful. Bitcoin is interesting, but valueless.

Because what has happened is a stupid rich person decided to try to control Bitcoin's price and drive it up. Without his support, Bitcoin would likely have crashed already.

Because Bitcoin will only ever be a speculative asset, it will be perpetually captive to an especially harsh and voracious boom-bust cycle. Because it does not print dividends, it's strictly speaking worse than having your money in the Stock Market.

Because Bitcoin's price is tied to the flow of money into Bitcoin, it must follow normal market cycles. It can neither cause a bust or be busted by the market itself. It is simply part of the market, and rises and falls with the market.

The stockmarket is overvalued. Inflation will return with tariffs. We just decided to put an old man back into power despite the clear evidence that this is just a bad idea which will lead to more people in the United States dead, not because any of us want it, but because the violence spiral which has passed through Trump (and therefore must be stopped at Trump) is only intensifying.

Vance is a reasonable compromise but it should happen soon. After the market has crashed.

I hope to God Biden drops Bitcoin just to make a point. Did you hear about that? Bitcoin confiscated by the US Government has passed to a wallet which can sell on Coinbase.

At any point Biden himself can drop the price of Bitcoin. I hope he does it. I hope he pardons Luigi. The longer Trump is headed towards the presidency, the more dangerous it will become. Be peaceful! God loves you!

Khohols tried the whole day sell the story that they captured Sudzha

Because they entering 3rd day without progress

They selling 3 days ago pictures as they captured that town

They selling pictures inside Ukraine as they reached Kursk city.

https://x.com/julianroepcke/status/1821974765927854274

Jihad Julian had to double triple confirm that khohols didn't captured that town.

Why this town matters for Ukraine ? Because the road to north goes from that town so if they lose it gg and even if they also don't capture it is also gg since they have less resources than Russian

https://x.com/mylordbebo/status/1821890771563299029

That's the tactic Ukrainian used. Basically bypass any checkpoints and continue moving and that's why they post this map

They tried to do Kharkiv offensive but they pulled Russian 22 offensive in Kiev. Because this time Ukraine didn't had manpower advantage to pull this so all those heroes that moved to much got killed just like all the marines that are now dying in Kilburn

https://x.com/squatsons/status/1821898209943535898

Bypassing multiple checkpoints without behind you enemy groups being destroyed you just end up to far into enemy territory without any supply and retreat options so this is real front:

And as you see they getting pushed back slowly

Ukraine lost tho 4 villages today 2 in Sumy and 2 in Donetsk

Western media is now very excited

You see how they put Sudzha every where ?

This one is fresh just 30 minute old and as you see they still can't find explanation what Ukraine did

if we talk about territory they captured less than Russian Kharkiv offence in 24 hours but local homosexuals live in fantasy I don't want to point fingers but it's @Cobra_Commander. But Russian offensive in Kharkiv had goal to pull reserves so Ukrainian didn't attack Russian in Ovhayne so they could continue the push towards Pokrovsk. If that was Ukrainian goal than they failed since Russian had enough reserves to stop Ukrainian and didn't pulled out any from Donbas. It's basically 15k "elite Ukrainian" vs 45k Russian and unlimited non contractor forces they can use. So holding territory also won't work. Pushing towards NPP is also lost opportunity.

After capturing several small settlements the last few days, Ukraine was battling to take full control of a town near the border and sending small units to conduct raids farther into the southwestern Russian region of Kursk.

Kinda ironic that last 40 hours Ukraine lost 3 towns

Perhaps preparing for retaliation, Ukrainian authorities on Friday said they were evacuating 20,000 people from the Sumy region, which sits across the border from Kursk.

Around 4 villages already lost in Sumy last 40 hours and those that supposed to protect Sumy are now struggling in low land in Kursk

Because who thought that Russia would build its defence line 15km from border

But military analysts have questioned whether the operation is worth the risk, given that Ukrainian forces are already stretched.

The Ukrainian military has enforced a policy of silence about the operation, and it has not publicly acknowledged launching a cross-border attack.

Kyiv's allies in the past have been wary of Ukrainian incursions in Russia, fearing that it could escalate the war, but there have been no public indications from Western capitals that they oppose the assault. The United States has said that the Ukrainian incursion does not violate American guidance.

However, senior American officials have said privately that they did not get a heads-up about the operation and were still seeking clarity about its logic and rationale.

This was such an r-slur move that west had to let Ukraine use himars and shadow storm and even saying they can use f16 because if this genius move of Podolyak fails. Ukraine will be at its lowest point

The Ukrainian military has enforced a policy of silence about the operation, and it has not publicly acknowledged launching a cross-border attack.

Of course they do no public because a lot of military personal saying if this shit fails they want Sirsky head and that absolutely what I need because 2 weeks ago I made a bet with my khohol pal that Sirsky will be fired

I was right about Zaluzhnyy and seems I will be right about Sirsky tho Zelenskyy really likes Sirsky.

The officials said they understood Kyiv's need to change the optics and the narrative of the war, but that they were skeptical that Ukraine could hold the territory long enough to force Russia to divert significant forces from the offensives it is pressing in eastern and southern Ukraine.

"It's a gamble," said one senior administration official.

Still, Mykhailo Podolyak, a top presidential adviser, was upbeat about the international response. "Most quietly approve," he wrote on social media on Thursday evening, adding that a significant part of the world now considers Russia "a legitimate target for any operations and types of weapons."

Mr. Gady and other experts said the main question now is whether Ukraine can maintain the momentum and turn the success on Russian territory into useful gains. The Ukrainian Army has few reserves it can pour into the fight, and it continues to suffer from shortages of weapons and ammunition, analysts say.

It also remains unclear what Ukraine ultimately hopes to accomplish. A senior Ukrainian official who spoke the on condition of anonymity to discuss the operation said the goal was to draw Russian troops away from other parts of the front line where Ukrainian units are struggling. But military experts said that Russia would likely be able to respond with reserves who were not fighting in Ukraine.

"Does it really solve any of the larger military strategic problems that the other parts of the front line are suffering from?" Mr. Gady asked

Even when it was clear that spring counteroffensive was dead I didn't seen so much doubts from western media. Khohols for real did something magical

Mick Ryan, a retired Australian Army major general and a fellow at the Lowy Institute, a research group, said one objective may be to boost morale in the Ukrainian population. "Given the past eight months of defensive operations, constant aerial attacks on infrastructure and ongoing power shortages, the will of the people will be at the forefront of the Ukrainian government's considerations about the trajectory of the war," he said.

It absolutely didn't since soldiers that were bombed in Donbas are still getting their daily bombs and retreats while they were begging for months for reinforcements

In particular, the Ukrainian Army has entered Sudzha, a small town of about 6,000 people six miles from the Ukrainian-Russian border. On Friday, Ukrainian troops claimed in a video that the town was under their control. The claim could not be independently verified.

For frick sake when they stop mentioning Sudzha

Mr. Kastehelmi said Ukraine could not continue further north without widening its flanks and exposing itself to Russian counterattacks. "Time is also running against Ukrainians," he wrote. "Russians won't be disorganized forever."

Time already run out 2 days ago I already wrote if next day Ukraine doesn't gain something meaningful it's gg

But retrospectively it's interesting that they actually could had captured Sudzha if they didn't continued moving in every direction from that town without securing it. Like for real why didn't they thought they could pull Kharkiv offensive when they were outnumbered Russian by 4 and had solid foreign legions back then and first and only good branch of soldiers that completed training in the west. This time Russia also has drones advantage so that just not risky but R-slurred. They have around 4k more soldiers that they can drop in Kursk that mb help them capture Sudzha but it won't push Russian out by much and won't help them hold that territory for long.

Basically khohol IQ

Edit: since the day ain't over khohols continue post disinformation

Showing a woman saying she is from (for frick sake when does it stop…) Sudzha… And asking her what do she thinks about Ukrainian army liberating her she told she is supper glad. I kinda got confused since hold is clearly from somewhere where there is a sea.

She is Ukrainian living in Odessa

And whole fricking day khohols post shit like this

1. What is fueling this bull market

As far as for influence in the S&P 500, the stock markets and risky assets in the US there's no international factors that exist but for war. If war kicks in, as we've seen with Ukraine in terms of its impact on oil, oil price and various other things, if China gets scary in terms of Taiwan, yeah, it might have an impact (negligible).

But that's more of a function of the fiscal changes that the US has to put on its books in response to the national defense. But as far as any sort of monetary change, they just don't exist. You could actually say that if you identify that there's such a thing as a global liquidity, that's a spurious correlation.

If you search hard enough, you can find indexes after the fact, even after the fact might be five minutes. But after the fact, you can get all sorts of neat indexes, like what's the coffee price influence on steelmaking in the United States? Everything comes in and out.

But the thing is, is what's the Federal Reserve up to in terms of its actual cash flow? There's no such a thing as a fed induced liquidity (no matter what wingcucks on either end of the political spectrum neolibs vs AnCaps tell you). The Fed and if you just deal with just the United States, the Fed, not since World War II (and they didn't even do it during this COVID period), has actually put money into the country.”

Regarding what they have put in, they're mostly a very small trim tab, which because of the law that divides mandatory discretionary spend from Congress does have influence. They can tighten, they can ease, but it's a small fraction of what the actual innate US economy is doing

Now, if Congress, like the Soviet Politburo, is tied up in a five-year forward plan of what they can spend and not spend, you can have some forward look in terms of what that's going to be, then yeah, the Fed matters.”

They can have an influence. Volcker proved it with what he did, but by the way, that's the only time the Fed's ever proven that they can handle inflation More on that below). They thereafter acted like a trim tab, where they just did a very small amount of tightening or easing, which influenced the market that gave the forward expectations thesis, that's the New Keynesian thesis, which has actually just gotten out of hand totally, which is that the forward expectations of what the Fed's going to do is all that counts.

It's the federal government's bank is what the Fed is. It was never a policy maker. What's happened is that given what happened with the GFC and the Fed moved to a completely, radically new way of operating, which is called Neo-Wixel-Woodford, or whatever you might want to call it, and there's a lot of material that started with Woodford's 2012 presentation at Jackson Hole, where the Fed just shifted to forward markets. (Attached - Michael Woodford's paper on Forward Guidance, presented at the Kansas City Fed Meet, 2012 in Jackson Hole. Read it if you want; I glossed over and rolled my eyes so many times within the first 10 pages I have no interest in going through the whole thing: https://www.kansascityfed.org/Jackson%20Hole/documents/6930/Woodford_JH2012.pdf ).

They can just set down the framing of what they can do. And that's supposed to be monetary policy. Well, that, from any rational point of view, means that the Fed has just given up and left the play field.

That, especially when there's an exogenous shock like COVID looming over and the Fed's not evolved, signals what their power truly is. They're always just a small trip tap, so if they actually expect that forward expectation management is all they have to do, well, sooner or later, people start to poke at it. And then more and more poke at it, and they say, okay, things are great two years from now or a year from now.

Yet sentiment matters, and the Fed is the principal definer of sentiment right now. And last week (after the markets held steady even after rates were not cut and there was an indication that it might even go up) was the start of the end of that grip on the market. It was almost like a near panic among Fixed Income hustle and bustle cels.

Yet everything the Fed did was clearly orchestrated. Everyone had like six talking points in front of them before they go out. There is no independence with all the FOMC and the regional Fed governors.

Unless there's like a two to three trillion dollar tightening that comes from, and at this point, only Congress can deliver that, the stock market has only one way to go. Now, it might be that the nominal growth might be inflationary, it might not, but the stock market is going to continue to go up.

2. But what is the Fed then?

What happened in the 70s, this is the fundamental object lesson of monetary policy is every time there was the slightest hint that the economy could be turning down, the Fed lowered rates and then inflation came back up and then they increased rates. And the issue is when the Fed doesn't look like it's resolute on inflation, inflation doesn't come back to where it was before, it comes to higher than it was before, which means that every time to fight it, you've got to take rates even higher, which means that the damage you do to the economy is even more. And so letting it, expectations spiral out of control, I think is just a very risky thing for the economy.

And that's not some theoretical model. People actually lived through in the 70s. Volcker buck broke the economy under Carter and Ford but neither of the trio get the recognition they deserve. 😞

The overall story that inflation is moderating is still the right story. But the not dumb people have long been of the view that inflation has been, and will be more stubborn to come back to 2% than everyone would like. And in particular, in the last half of last year, part of the reason the numbers came back so nicely was that goods turned deflationary and that offset still higher than normal levels of inflation on services and shelter.

Now, in the 2000s, there was healthcare inflation that was quite significant and much more than it was in the 90s. But goods price deflation came down. So the basket does shift and it's fine if it shifts, it just needs to get to 2% overall. Frick it, we ballin on averages, cuz.

And so that makes policy pretty straightforward with today's world, which is, you have restrictive rates and you want to be restrictive and bring inflation down.

Thus there would also seem to be a disconnect between a certain number of Fed officials who will say policy is restrictive versus looking at something like that financial conditions index, or even the amount of refinancing being undertaken by like the corporate bond market or the loan market recently. So there are many financial conditions indices. Some of them show looser than others. As it should. It's miscalculation and hand waving from them, it's almost a schizophrenia inducing cognitive dissonance among ABS/MBS and bond traders. They have no clue wtf is going on and how to interpret yield curves anymore.

3. WTF is a housing market bubble (Section only for zoomers and below 60 IQ) !r-slurs

But how much a restrictive policy today restrain the housing supply of tomorrow; whether it's like a multifamily house, where there has been recent data that new multifamily development has really fallen off quite a bit. And in theory, that means housing becoming more scarce in 2026

And when fed started raising rates, the country was in the middle of as frothy a period in the housing market as it could have gotten. On an average, 12 bids per house. Houses going for $40,000 over listed price.

As of late, single family starts are quite strong and much stronger than normal in this cycle, in part because I think availability of existing homes has been so low. And multifamily starts have come down a bunch, but that was from a very, very high peak.

And so they're not that far off today where they were before the pandemic.

If the economy continues to be as robust it is with rates where they are, that'll tell you something. (Spoiler - Housing will not come down)

A. Productivity would be a very simple way to explain the change. A higher productivity economy is a higher trend growth economy, which would do it. Something something solow model or sumthn.

But coming back to inflation. Why is it set around 2% by the Fed?

First: IDK.

Second: It has worked for 30 years

Third: It's a good number to measure deflation

A good example would be encyclopedias. I used to buy encyclopedias, so did you. (Pre 2000s born). No one buys an encyclopedia today. It's on your phone. And so it's out of the index. And so it's gone from being whatever it's price was, say $399 to zero. That's deflation, but it's out of the index. And so speaking more about tech, actually, you're not buying a camera anymore or film. It's taken a set of things out of the index, deflationary.”

If you set a target at zero and you don't hit it exactly, you're in deflationary territory. And deflation is where everything tomorrow costs less than it does today. So the incentive to buy today goes down, which means an economy tends to stagnate.

Really the major tool the Fed has is credibility.

Tl;dr - DUMBFRICKS STOP LOOKING AT THE FED NEWS AND RATES TO REBALANCE YOUR PORTFOLIO

!metashit !math

They lost 250.000 troops, and 900 tanks for this village thats not even important.

— Phillip Hansen (@PhillipHansenS) January 12, 2025

Triple cope

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2025/01/12/7493165/index

Khohols reached such point that even republicans asking them to throw the 18 year olds.

Mike Waltz, Donald Trump's incoming National Security Adviser, believes that Ukraine should lower the draft age to attract hundreds of thousands of new troops and stabilise the frontline.

Their draft age right now is 26 years old [it is in reality 25 - ed.], not 18. I don't think a lot of people realise that they could generate hundreds of thousands of new soldiers.

He is coping a bit since most 18 year olds were 15 when it all started so they runaway already and who is left also running away

🇺🇦🇪🇺‼️🚨 Ukranian boys aged 16 - 20 are leaving Ukraine in masses, buses full drive to Europe daily!

There are even organized tours for the boys to leave!

The upcoming lowering of the mobilization age to 18 scared people! pic.twitter.com/ut97L1DfXW

— Lord Bebo (@MyLordBebo) January 11, 2025

On top of unreal high desertion

Ukrainian soldier that was busified run away from army base to capture that guy that busified him to bussyfie that guy

A story of "figurative and literal"

Republicans need to stop Russian progress because otherwise there won't be an argument for Russian to stop and Russian now attacking at angles that Ukraine didn't expected

The Ukr. army remains unable to stop the Russian advance on the western riverside of the Oskil in Kharkiv oblast, despite Russians needing to cross the river with every soldier, weapon, ammunition and piece of equipment.
Simply not understandable to me. Thought it was a priority. pic.twitter.com/17eluyoJ76

— Julian Röpcke🇺🇦 (@JulianRoepcke) January 10, 2025

This mb looks like nothing but it gives Russian opportunity to take this all

And neutralise Ukrainian only success in this conflict the "Kharkov counteroffensive 2022"

Not counting Vovchansk that place has around 9k people so barely nothing at such massive territory. It's around 4700km.

If Russian reaches Burluck Ukraine will lose possibility support that area and we will finally understand why Russian attacked Kharkiv.

This bridge also doesn't look impressive but it gives Russian opportunity to strike the choke point Zarizhne from back and directly strike Lyman

That will give them opportunity to easily bomb Sloviansk

Russian are also almost done with Chasiv Yar and they decided to not go after Konstiantynivka but after Mikiolaivka and Sloviansk, because they now don't have to worry that Ukrainian will attack their flanks (Chasiv Yar and then Ivaniske) since if Ukrainian in Konstiantynivka try it Russian will attack that city from Toretsk.

Russian also will enter Dniper oblast soon.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/01/11/ukraine-russia-kursk-counterattack/

Ukrainian troops launched a counterattack in the region last weekend, attempting to retake some of the territory it first seized last summer and then lost — with the head of President Volodymyr Zelensky's office boasting on social media that Russia was "getting what it deserves."

But almost a week into the new operation in Kursk, little progress appears to have been made

There is big difference between "little progress" and not progress and decline. Because the conclusion of that offensive was a decline.

Fights now at outskirts of Sudzha and Ukrainian launching offensive east out of Sudzha with goal of capturing a town 80km from Sudzha that is connected with only one road that goes from Sudzha. Also Zelenskyy was claiming Ukraine controlled like 1500km^2 in Kursk and now official Ukrainian army map says 424km

Ukraine's continued focus on Kursk indicates how important Kyiv believes it is to hold on to the territory, especially as Trump's impending arrival could increase pressure for both sides to come to the negotiating table. Ukrainian officials have also warned that if their troops were to retreat back across the border, the 60,000 troops Kyiv says Russia has deployed would follow them into Ukraine and occupy more land.

It's a war of attrition, Ukraine the side that barely has AD and artillery moves into Russian rural area with no fortifications. So they picked enemy turf to do there defence

Russia, meanwhile, is eager to retake the territory, but has still maintained much of its military might in Ukraine's east, where Russian forces said they captured the Ukrainian town of Kurakhove this week. Ukrainian officials denied those accounts and described the battle as ongoing.

As Trump's inauguration approaches, Moscow, which has the upper hand in manpower and resources, has fewer reasons than Ukraine to see his taking office as an immediate game changer.

"There has been a long-running narrative since the election that both sides are going to try to substantially improve their positions ahead of Jan. 20," Kofman said, describing it as a "fixation" that encourages "short-term thinking" about the war.

I been writing since forever that Trump won't stop it in 24 hours and he just made it official this week by saying he will have a meeting with Putin in 6 or so months.

So did Russian planned to enter Sumy or not now doesn't matter since they ain't going to lose such opportunity so Ukraine GENIUS plan to trade Russian Kursk territory for something would end up giving Ukraine Kursk territory back and some Sumy territory.

"There are signs of a Russian interest to meet with Trump, but that should not be confused with a willingness to negotiate. It's unclear why Moscow would negotiate right now, given the trajectory of the war," he said.

Ukrainian soldiers don't understand why would Russian even accept any negotiation. That's how hard Ukraine is winning.

Oleh said. Ukraine, meanwhile, has taken advantage of communication challenges between Russian and North Korean troops to retake some positions in Kursk, as what Oleh described as confusion between the two groups appears to have slowed Russian efforts to stabilize territory after assaults.

Some news from parallel universe, you won't find those "retaken positions in Kursk" in our universe.

So on top of all other sectors Ukraine also now will need to think what to do with Sumy.

Toretsk was favouriting defenders a lot since look how many industrial areas (triangles) that place had. Only Donetsk city had more. Ukraine losing it faster than Avdiivka shows they have serious problems.

Ukrainian geniuses also didn't build any fortifications in the rare and were stealing like no tomorrow

And it was Kharkiv where some fights were going on all those years since Russian never really kicked Russian out of Kharkiv. Sumy has no fortification and are in such positions that if the retreat Russian will just follow them same roads so no time to mine them.

And Dniper they only now started building something

The geniuses didn't even finished building defence line 1.0

And Russian went in 2024 from 0 defence like to 0,5 > 1.0 > 2.0 > 3.0 > 4.0 and now breaking the unfinished first defence line of Dneper

In 2024 Russian took most of Ukrainian Donbas defence lines and the rest they now can attack from rare or through those defence lines.

They lost 250.000 troops, and 900 tanks for this village thats not even important.

Donbas is also Ukraine most populated region and its main industry

It cost for Ukraine also 4 working man to support one soldier

And when you consider also this

We are past Ukrainian winning arc, we are now at arc of how to persuade Putin to agree for peace and do a goodwill tin

Fun part that now Putin has so many arguments to b-word about. He can point that he steeped out of Kiev and Kharkiv as goodwill tin and that west betrayed him later and when this talks happens Putin will have a huge chunk that Ukrainian "Kharkiv counteroffensive" got. He can point on all Zelenskyy hate speech towards Russia

🇷🇺🇺🇦 “I do not respect either the leader of today's Russia or the Russian people” — Zelensky, President of Ukraine

Well that’s nice. pic.twitter.com/Cr6UqINi9f

— HOT SPOT (@HotSpotHotSpot) January 5, 2025

He can point at Zelenskyy not being elected. At US missiles targeting Russian soil when Biden told no offensive weapons for Ukraine

How Biden warned Putin if Putin uses nukes that Ukraine will receive tanks, jets long range missiles and target black fleet

And attack on Russian soil what was this ?

So goood luck convincing Russian not to finish off Ukrainians who now begging for 2022 March deals

Trump just need some stability to even start the talk since if front constantly moving in one direction you can't start discussing about where to freeze it. But at this point mobilisation won't help it and in worst case for Russian they going to do their own mobilisation

First things first, I consider The Wire to be one of the great literary masterpieces, no less in ambition, scope and propulsion than War and Peace or Crime and Punishment.

To compare it with other TV shows is like comparing the Eiffel Tower with telecom signal towers.

When I first watched it a year later after it had ended (my brother gave me his 256 gig external HDD when he went off to college) the wire was one of the few things he didn't scrub.

I kept it. I watched it 3 years later just as I was going to college myself. It didn't appeal to me at all. Yeah everyone knows about inner cities and corners of Baltimore and Detroit but so do Seattle and LA. But I watched it over 3 months only when I felt like I needed something different. As I finished it, i realized it wasn't about Baltimore or as so many people like to point out "The Decline of America" or "This is Capitalism" in their marvelously stupid analyses. It's about system dynamics. Particularly social system dynamics.

NERD ALERT:

Jay Wright Forrester was a pioneering American computer engineer and systems scientist. He is credited with being one of the inventors of magnetic core memory, the creator of the first computer animation, and the father of the field of System Dynamics. He was inducted into the computing hall of fame just weeks earlier for his contributions to the advancement of RAM. But what he is most famous for is his theorization of system dynamics, more appropriately nonlinear system dynamics where a system with many I/O processes huff and hum along with feedback loops, creating enormous amount of non-linearity in the final output.

Obviously, for !mathematics and !engineering who are well versed in control systems and differential equations this isn't an unheard of idea. {side note if you have an engineering degree and you don't know what transfer functions or PID controllers are, do everyone a favor and rope} But Forrester went further and looked straight at the problem. It is tough but nevertheless straightforward to find a generalized solution to a third order nonlinear diff eq. But how to formulate one from looking at just the output and input and the basis of assumptions for the multiple feedbacks that gives rise to the ODE than say just a polynomial function?

This is what set Forrester off.

[All the books by Forrester are available for free on his personal website maintained by either MIT or his family, not sure. https://systemdynamics.org/news/memorial/jay-w-forrester/ ]

Everyone knows that if the radius of a circle is changing at rate X, to find the rate of change of area a diff eq is to be used. But how can someone crack open Porter's five forces and surgically separate the structures (to their best effort) and apply cause/effect in their stocks and flows after which applying an ODE can be done by a freshman? The short answer is: Forrester. He wrote System Dynamics in the 70s because he was very much dissatisfied with the amount of practical guidance the EECS undergrads at MIT had about nonlinearity and their formulations. Most could find out the general solutions of ODEs within minutes, none could explain their reasoning on why they went for an ODE when given a black box with a nonlinear I/O instead of a polynomic equation.

As noted by Forrester in his paper:

Differential equations are difficult, confusing, weak, and unrealistic. They often mislead students as to the nature of systems. Mathematicians have had difficulty defining a derivative and there is a reason. Derivatives do not exist except in a mathematician's imagination. Nowhere in nature does nature take a derivative. Nature only integrates, that is, accumulates in stocks. Casting behavior in terms of differential equations leaves many students with an ambiguous or even reversed sense of the direction of causality. I have had MIT students argue that water flows out of the faucet because the level of water in the glass is rising; that seems natural to them if the flow has been defined as the derivative of the water level in the glass. Any child who can fill a water glass or take toys from a playmate knows what accumulation means. The stocks in a system dynamics model (the rectangle in Figure 4) are the integrations (accumulations). By approaching dynamics through the window of accumulation, students can deal with high-order dynamic systems without ever discovering that their elders consider such to be very difficult.

So in this manner he approached Social Dynamics (which is a zillion orders more complex than any simple control system)

THE FIRST MAXIM

As the first foundation, system dynamics makes direct use of the vast store of information that people have acquired from living and working in their social systems. The overwhelming preponderance of such information resides in people's heads, not in the libraries, and not in measured numerical data. There are no written instructions adequate for raising a family, or building an automobile, or running a university. Such knowledge has been acquired through apprenticeship and experience. It exists in the mental data banks people use to guide their actions in response to what happens around them. The mental data base is also the primary source of information about the policies being followed at each decision-making point in a system. A typical discussion in a board meeting or at a cocktail party about what so-and-so will do if such-and-such happens is a discussion of that person's policies. It is an analysis of how the person will react to a new set of conditions. Such information about policies, while richly represented in the mental data base, appears in only limited form in the written data base, and almost not at all in the numerical data base.

The heart of SSD

As the second foundation, system dynamics rests on the concept of feedback loops as the fundamental building blocks governing change. A knowledge of feedback loops provides the necessary framework for selecting and organizing information. A feedback loop exists where present conditions determine actions that change surrounding conditions and thereby influence future actions. This circular process where conditions lead to actions that change conditions that lead to future actions are found at all levels of the natural world and human affairs.

The behavior of multiple, nested, interconnected feedback structures is often contrary to what our intuition would lead us to expect. Such structures can operate to defeat policy interventions; we see the results in so many failed governmental programs. Our attention is attracted to points in a system that have almost no leverage for producing change; the result can be extensive political debate about policies that matter very little one way or the other. Often, feedback-loops exhibit dynamic symptoms that lead people to exactly the opposite actions from those that would produce the desired results. Such counterproductive actions have characterized many urban programs intended to relieve the plight of the poor and underemployed. However, such programs have actually created social traps that draw the unskilled into situations where jobs are not available. Rather than alleviating hardship many government programs have unintentionally produced poverty and unemployment.

A policy giving opposite of the intended result was identified in Urban Dynamics by Forrester. Economic distress in declining American cities in the 1960s generated symptoms of high unemployment and deteriorating housing. It appeared natural enough to combat such symptoms by government intervention to build low-cost housing. But the modeling study showed, as events have since confirmed, that such urban areas already had more low-cost housing than the economy of the city could maintain. Public policy to build more such housing merely occupied land that could have been used for job-creating businesses, while at the same time the housing attracted people who needed jobs. The low-cost housing program was a powerful double force for increasing unemployment, both by reducing employment while at the same time attracting people seeking work. Low-cost housing in inner cities created a social trap. The policy of building low-cost housing was actually creating poor and unemployed people, rather than alleviating personal hardship. The lesson here is to avoid attacking symptoms of difficulty until the causes of those symptoms have been identified, and a high-leverage policy has been found that will cause the system itself to correct the problem.

The current press reports the pressures of the moment that surround decisions. The temporal nature of a decision sharply restricts the kind of literature in which operating policy will be revealed. Policies govern decisions and decisions control action. Decisions are fleeting. There is only a single instant in time when one can act. That time is now. Action must take place in the present moment that separates history from the future.

^^^THIS DIRECTLY NEGATES THE FIRST MAXIM

The ever-advancing present moment is the business person's and politician's world of action. It is the world of placing orders, hiring people, buying equipment, borrowing money, bargaining with unions, and extending credit. As a consequence of the short life of a decision, it is primarily in the literature of the present that decisions are discussed in terms of goals, threats, limited information, and restraints on action. The multifaceted conflicting pressures of real decision making are almost absent from economics text books and professional journals. The professional literature emphasizes how decisions should be made rather than how they actually are made, how equilibrium is determined rather than how dynamic behavior arises, and how macroeconomic theory might apply rather than how the microstructure creates the macrobehavior.

The usual writing and debate about a complex social system contains internal contradictions. Those contradictions usually occur in going from the structural assumptions to the implied dynamic consequences. In the step from assumptions to behavior, a writer tries to solve intuitively in his head the high-order nonlinear equations of the system; such is done correctly only rarely. But a model simulation provides certainty in going from the assumptions about structure and policies to the implied behavior.

Tl;dr - If you have ever seen a romanesco broccoli and wondered why the frick does it have a golden ratio spiral on it, the wire is the show for you. It's the greatest puzzle piece of nonlinear ODEs (more like OD's am I right drugtards) in a social system ever shown. Slice by slice. Model by model. Season by season

End.

Post-script:

!kino does anyone seriously think Stringer was smarter than Avon? Some people only come to realize how stupid bell was when he tried to get Mr.Sheeeeeeeeeiiiit whacked. Others excuse even that saying "he just lost his cool for a second"

Motherlover thought 2 years of economics courses (and acting like a stoic b-word) would make him manage a drug network better. Imagine Jobs going to design school at 50 thinking it will make him understand Apple's competitive edge better.

Avon outsmarted everyone, did not cross on anyone's turf (not because he was meek but because he was constantly weighing his enemies and allies), showed genuine sympathy for his family and understood plain and simple that A. illicit drugs have a demand that will never go away and B. You cannot operate with a network whose authority is higher than law enforcement (like Bell tried to do by lobbying Clay Davis; because if the story breaks it becomes national and you have become too big of a target to survive) or whose power is lower than their rival gang (then you're just waiting to be muscled out).

Hello. Today, I wanted to discuss the origins of psychedelic writing in Europe. I happen to know about this topic due to my heavy interest in drugs. I hope you enjoy it. I can't sleep, so I thought I'd write instead of cutting myself.

In the Beginning...

Michael Boon, in The Road of Excess: A History of Writers on Drugs, investigates the relationship between drugs and writing in the literary canon. He claims that European literary history before Thomas De Quincey “is generally considered a drug-free zone”. Boon posits a contrary theory and argues that drug-inspired writing can be found in works as ancient as Comus (1637) and Paradise Lost (1667).

How could these texts be considered psychedelic? Comus is a 17th-century masque that “tells a tale about the dangers of taking a walk in the woods”. It features a sprite named Comus who attempts to seduce a virginal nymph named Sabrina as she wanders the woods. Comus offers Sabrina a drink, claiming that “one sip of this/Will bathe the swooping spirits in delight/Beyond the bliss of dreams”. Paradise Lost is an epic poem that retells the Biblical story of Adam and Eve. Boon notes that the tree of knowledge described in the poem bears fruits that offer what he calls “gnosis – knowledge of the divine”. After Adam and Eve have eaten the forbidden fruit, God sends the archangel Michael to give Adam a vision of the future of humankind. This is done using plants, namely “euphrasy and rue”. According to Boon, in both Comus and Paradise Lost, Milton is referring to psychoactive substances that have “many of the same qualities we attribute to hashish or LSD”, and rue may be another name for the aforementioned Peganum harmala plant.

Boon argues that several plants in Renaissance literature could be considered psychoactive and that “love potions, poisons, mythical philtres and brews, powerful herbs, magical stones, and secret powders” all play the role of “mediating the space between the imagination, with its vectors of desire, intoxication, death and truth, and the material world”. This is true for the aforementioned Pantagruelion plant which can be considered an “allegorical plant, half-real, half-myth” and is “strongly linked to the history of cannabis”.

Marijuana

Cannabis also appears in early European psychedelic literature. As Boon points out, there is little information regarding “actual cannabis use in Renaissance Europe, although there are references to the psychoactive properties of the plant in writings about witchcraft in travellers' accounts”. According to Boon, “the earliest account of cannabis intoxication to appear in Europe was that of a Moroccan Christian convert named Leo Africanus” in 1510. Africanus travelled great swaths of Africa and wrote about it in his text Descrittione dell'Africa which means ‘Description of Africa'. In this text, he describes his experiences with hashish in Tunisia and claims that anyone who eats “but one ounce falleth a laughing, disporting, and dallying, as if he were half-drunken”. Succeeding Africanus is Rabelais who dedicated three chapters of Gargantua and Pantagruel to a plant called “Pantagruelion”. Boon claims it can be argued that these chapters were a “homage to the psychoactive properties of the good weed” and that “there is little doubt that Pantagruelion is the cannabis plant”.

The tradition of cannabis-inspired writing in Europe is continued by many other writers, including Walter Benjamin who was a German philosopher and essayist who also experimented with hashish. He took the drug for the first time in December 1927, along with Ernst Joël and Fritz Fränkel who were both Berlin doctors. Benjamin wrote an essay titled “Hashish in Marseilles”, in which he details his own subjective experiences with the drug. His descriptions demonstrate that the effects of hashish are not unlike those described by other psychedelically inspired literature. He notes cannabis's effects on consciousness, writing that it produces a “continual alternation of dreaming and waking states, a constant and finally exhausting oscillation between totally different worlds of consciousness”. Benjamin also describes changes in perception and claims that “colours grow brighter, more luminous; objects more beautiful, or else lumpy and threatening…”. States of mild dissociation also occur. As Benjamin explains, one knows one is under the influence of hashish when “his laughter, all his utterances, happen to him like external events”. Benjamin also claims that hashish raises one's sense of humour and situations “can become so compulsively hilarious that the hashish eater for minutes on end is capable of nothing except laughing”. Despite all the effects of hashish, “the memory of the intoxication is surprisingly clear”.

Peyote

Another drug featured in European psychedelic literature is mescaline, which can be derived from several types of cacti, including the peyote cactus and the San Pedro cactus. The drug is mostly associated with Native American tribes and, as such, makes a larger impact on American psychedelic literature. The psychedelic effects of certain cacti have been known by Native Americans for centuries, and archaeological investigations have dated the use of mescaline by indigenous people as far back as “8500 BC”. Some of the earliest reports of peyote use among Native Americans can be found in “Spanish missionary records dating to the late 1600s and early 1700s”. For many centuries, “North American Indians used mescaline as a medicine, amulets and hallucinogenic religious sacrament”. In modern times, mescaline is still used by Native Americans, as seen with the Native American Church (NAC) which has a peyote ritual performed for “individuals to access certain cognitive structures and mechanisms within their brains that effectively expand consciousness, resulting in physical, mental, and spiritual benefits”. The psychic effects of mescaline are not unlike those reported from other common psychedelics such as LSD and psilocybin and include “various distortions, involving sensory perception, space, time, colour, sounds, and shapes, as well as dreamlike feeling[s]”.

Peyote found its way into the hands of European writers such as British psychologist Havelock Ellis who obtained some in 1897, did self-experimentation, and shared it with both William Butler Yeats and Arthur Symons. Scientific research that emerges from Europe struggles to maintain a firm delineation between the subjective and the objective, and the language used to describe the effects of peyote dips into the fantastical. Hence, “in describing mental states produced by mescaline, researchers searched for analogies in religious experience or literature”.

The German solider Ernst Junger speaks at length about mescaline. During his discussions, the inability of scientific language to entirely encapsulate the psychedelic experience reveals itself, and Jünger increasingly relies on figurative language that leans towards being more mystical than scientific. He notes the profound psychedelic effects of the drug, writing that it produces “an effect that is more brutal and demanding than the effect of the opiates; they transport the user not just to the visionary world and its palaces, but also bring him down into the depths of the subterranean crypts”. Outlining the differences between mescaline and other drugs, he demonstrates his reliance on figurative language once again when he claims that “stimulants and narcotics modify time: they expand it or accelerate it. But with mescaline the earth is cloven; the creative power of time returns to the origins”. He also describes his experimentation with mescaline in Stuttgart during January 1950. After consuming mescaline, he “could not write down even one word” and spent “about an hour experiencing mild nausea”. Soon after, the mind-altering effects ensued. Jünger was “immersed in visions, meditations, visual and auditory perceptions of images and compositions, until six in the evening”.

LSD

Jünger was a close friend of Albert Hoffmann who was a Swiss chemist who synthesized LSD. This drug is widely believed to be “one of the most powerful psychoactive drugs known” due to its ability to produce intense effects at exceptionally low doses. Hoffman synthesized LSD “by chemical cleavage of some other ergot alkaloid”, namely ergotamine. Ergot is “produced by a lower fungus (Claviceps purpurea) that grows parasitically on rye and, to a lesser extent, on other species of grain and on wild grasses”. Once synthesized, LSD is a substance that is “odourless, colourless, and tasteless”.

Hoffmann and Jünger experimented with LSD together, and their psychonautic experiences are recorded in Hoffmann's text LSD: My Problem Child. When Hoffmann describes his experiences, he uses the language of fantasy and surrealism that has appeared in the previously discussed psychedelic texts. This is seen primarily with the use of colour, light, and the numerous abstract descriptions he provides. For instance, when discussing a time when he ingested LSD with Jünger and his pharmacologist friend Professor Heribert Konzett, Hoffmann describes red-violet roses that “radiated in portentous brightness” and claims that “Ernst Jünger enjoyed the colour display of oriental images”. Furthermore, themes of spirituality, transcendence, and profundity make themselves apparent. He evokes the divine when discussing music, writing that “the concerto for flute and harp by Mozart was perceived in its celestial beauty as heavenly music”. Hoffmann claims that Professor Konzett experienced “a breath of timelessness, liberation from the past and the future, blessedness through being completely here and now” which suggests a transcendence from immediate reality and its temporal constraints.

Hoffmann argues that LSD can unearth memories that are repressed yet, nevertheless, negatively impact one's psyche. Memories brought to one's conscious awareness “may then become accessible to psychotherapeutic treatment”. This view is shared by Grinspoon et al who claim that “forgotten incidents from the remote past may be released from the unconscious and relived” when LSD is consumed. It was also believed that LSD resembled the symptoms of schizophrenia, hence it could be used to better understand mental illness. As such, clinicians were interested in LSD, hoping that the drug would “help them better understand and empathize with their schizophrenic patients”. In contemporary times, the view that LSD is a substance capable of simulating schizophrenia has since been “seriously attacked by many phenomenologically and psychoanalytically oriented psychiatrists”.

Hoffmann also notes that LSD is a potentially invaluable tool for terminally ill patients. One of the potential benefits Hoffmann lists is pain relief. Hoffmann claims that LSD might be used instead of analgesic medication. However, he does admit that psychedelic treatment for pain might only be effective because “patients under the influence of LSD are psychologically so dissociated from their bodies that physical pain no longer penetrates their consciousness”. The second benefit Hoffman notes is LSD's potential to allay terminally ill patients' dread of mortality and allow patients to accept their imminent death. He claims that there are numerous cases of “patients who gained meaningful insights about life and death on their deathbeds, as freed from pain in LSD ecstasy and reconciled to their fate, they faced their earthly demise fearlessly and in peace”. For psychedelic treatment to be effective, Hoffmann suggests that patients “be prepared and instructed about the kind of experiences and transformations that await them”. Hoffmann's views of LSD represent a shift in the understanding of psychedelics. From their locus in a spiritual realm among shamans and religious rituals, they are brought into the clinical setting and integrated into psychoanalysis. As will be seen, this paradigm shift will have a profound impact on psychedelic literature and the usage of psychedelics.

It did not take long for LSD to find popularity as a recreational drug. Hoffmann laments that the “joy at having fathered LSD was tarnished after more than ten years of uninterrupted scientific research and medicinal use when LSD was swept up in the huge wave of an inebriant mania that began to spread over the Western world, above all the United States, at the end of the 1950s”. He argues that the “rapid rise of nonmedicinal LSD consumption at the beginning of the 1960s was also partly attributable to the fact that the drug laws then current in most countries did not include LSD”. The period Hoffmann refers to, which will be discussed in greater detail at a later point in this chapter, saw the explosion of psychedelic art which encompasses “creations produced under the influence of LSD and other psychedelic drugs, whereby the drugs acted as stimulus and source of inspiration”. Psychedelic art was unique because artists were influenced in their creative work in unconventional ways. Mediums affected by the wave of psychedelic art include visual arts, literature as well as music, as is the case with the Beatles, a highly influential English band who were wildly popular in the 1960s and experimented with psychedelic rock.

Conclusion

To do drugs is awfully human and even the brightest intellectuals among us have indulged. Don't feel bad to light one up or pop a tab. Folks far greater than you have done so for centuries.

https://x.com/ug_chelsea/status/1810273828720758919

There were a lot of hits and in cities that were supposed to be protected by patriot like Kiev and Khrivoi Rog

https://x.com/menchosint/status/1809861278917091768

This patriot system that was destroyed 2 days ago and obviously pro Ukrainian claimed it's fake. Was supposed to protect khruvoi rog.

Ukraine started campaign that Russia supposedly hit some hospital with x101 missile

It's a slowed down video so you can compare that missile with couple of x101 hitting same target

Ukraine also didn't mention that main strike was at night and only focused at that hospital.

Ukraine put a lot of effort in this campaign

https://x.com/mylordbebo/status/1810419215599620181

But question should been what do they expect from it ? US already rushed saying they won't let Ukraine use its weapons on Russian soil. There also wouldn't be any new weapons for Ukraine and Israel with Gaza made sure nobody would give a frick about this event.

But what's important to me is

I been telling for months patriots ain't going to do a shit. And now after Ukraine received more patriots than Germany has, and Zelenskyy promised it would stop Russian bombings. We are enjoying how effortless Russian is bombing a city that has most patriot defence on earth. As I mention in the past, patriots can stop around 100 missiles a year. It's probably less in reality because factories that build those often get caught in fire and storages etc in nato countries get blown up like this happened 2 days ago:

Only a year ago they were proudly claiming patriots are shooting down kinzhals

And now they have to beg Israel to give them ammo

>Could Turn the Tide

If Zelenskyy poo right now it could turn the tide, I mean everything is theoretically possible.

With new Orlan drones Ukraine is now constantly also losing Himars vehicles

https://x.com/dd_geopolitics/status/1810611257856213352

The targets Russian hit yesterday was some factories and some electricity generators but that's just propping since Russian main goal is to send Ukraine into blackout during the winter.

The winter part will be very interesting because with constant blackouts a lot of Ukrainian will move to the west.

But don't worry to Bloomberg Zelenskyy promised a new counteroffensive and that he end this conflict by end of this year. And yesterday signed some agreements with Poland and Poland promised to him they will shot Russian missiles that enter Polish air space. It's a good promise is will be as effective as:

Russian missiles are just couple seconds in Polish air space, shooting them in Polish air space + making sure it falls in Polish soil is kinda very hard to do. Russia has radars in that area so if Polish missile hits Russian missile in Ukrainian air space it will be a direct involvement.

Edit: seems later Poland did an back-steep

Tusk on the idea of shooting down missiles in Ukraine's skies: we need NATO cooperation for this

We need unequivocal cooperation within NATO for this, because this kind of action does require joint NATO responsibility.

So it was just some food for Ukrainian to feel good yesterday

Edit: Ukrainian twitter channel today flex that it got patriot from Germany on 5 June and something (probably ammo) from Romania on 20 June

https://x.com/ukrreview/status/1810618910154043565

They couldn't pick a better day to flex about it

In the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, a Japanese airman crash-landed on an island that Japanese intelligence presumed to be uninhabited.

The Hawaiians helped the young man, and sought Japanese interpreters, who immediately decided to attempt to aid the pilot, abandoning loyalty to their adopted country.

The ensuing struggle was broadcast over the entire United States. It is probably true that the decision of these two Japanese Americans led to the common belief in mixed loyalty of Japanese Americans at large.

After all, German Americans didn't help a German pilot, though we have no way of knowing if they would have done so.

Because of this belief in the mixed loyalty of Japanese Americans, they were rounded up and put into camps in one of the most horrifying events on United States history.

I'm not here to tell you that the Japanese Internment was justified, because it probably wasn't: the Japanese Americans who were most likely to defect were on Hawaii, which was too far from the camps (instead, the islands were placed under military rule).

What I'm trying to get at, though, is this distinctino between authoritarianism and fascism. Between xenophobia, and xeno, to attempt to coin a phrase, xenomisia.

Because in my conversations with the people who are adamant that Trumpism is not, cannot be fascism, a common plausible belief is that the most "fascist" the United States has been was under FDR in World War 2. Here I am using "fascist" in the common understanding of "like Hitler's Germany."

And there is this similarity: people of some other tribe are collected and confined.

Wholly authoritarian.

But unlike Hitler's Germany, the motivation and reasoning for the internment of Japanese Americans wasn't hatred of Japanese people. It was simple suspicion of their loyalty, based on incomplete information, in a war which shocked the nation and changed the way the United States looked at the world.

The Cruelty Is The Point

Because our society is nakedly authoritarian, because that is the nature of societies. People reflect the beliefs of the authoritative sources they respect. Scott Alexander has an authoritative grip on the people who read him. Trump has an authoritative grip on the people who attend his rallies.

We are human: there is only so much that anarchist rambling about abolishing hierarchy can accomplish.

I had someone talk to me about how the COVID response, mask mandates, vaccine mandates, was obviously authoritarian. Of course it was.

One of the reasons Trump won't win re-election is because his authoritarianism isn't well calibrated in this way: his ambiguity on the nature of the emergency, his reluctance to believe in the disaster which was unfolding which he performed, caused the people who followed him to be skeptical of masking up or social distancing, and as a consequence his followers died.

Because the president is an authority figure. A person who should say: "Yes, I know it's uncomfortable. I know it's hard. I'm asking you to do these things, to take these steps."

This was one of the big struggles in the wake of the Iraq War: the unveiling of the authoritarian structure.

Because what makes Democracy powerful is precisely the nature of the authoritarian power dynamic which unfolds in an emergency.

It's uncomfortable to perceive. But when it functions well, what you get is FDR implementing a decision that the American People made: distrust of Japanese Americans leading to internment of Japanese Americans.

Nothing about the internment of Japanese Americans was xenomisic. It wasn't hatred of Japanese Americans, it was recognition of a threat of another tribe on our soil.

What makes Trumpism fascism is this authoritarian strongman style without the connection to the deeper authority of the American people. What makes it fascism is the hatred of immigrants, who are people. Human beings.

Christ has a lot to say about how we treat people.

This has been: Impassionata untangles Grave Misconception #1 about fascism: FDR was not a fascist. Our society was not a fascist.

The military buildup always looks authoritarian and is, functionally, authoritarian. But in a Democracy, authority flows up through a figurehead. In authoritarianism, top-down leaderhsip is stupid and bad.

In fascism, blasphemy against God occurs, and woe be to the people who tolerate such evil.

I previously wrote about the history of psychedelic literature in Europe. I thought I'd round it out by briefly discussing American psychedelic literature. Hope you enjoy it.

In the Beginning....

According to Michael Boon, Silas Wier Mitchell is considered one of the earliest Western writers to describe mescaline. This claim is also made by McKenna, who argues that “in 1897 Philadelphia novelist and physician Silas Weir Mitchell became the first gringo to describe peyote intoxication”. As McKenna points out in more informal terms, Mitchell was an American writer and physician, and he is partially known for prescribing the rest treatment to Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who would later write of it in The Yellow Wallpaper.

In 1896, Mitchell wrote an essay describing his experiences with peyote. In the essay, he describes hallucinations that gave him a sense of profundity and includes imagery of nature and the universe that evokes the transcendent. Colour is a recurring theme in his report. When he closed his eyes, he saw huge, fruit-like stones that were “green, purple, red, and orange; never clear yellow and never blue”. He acknowledges his inability to describe the intensity of these “gorgeous colour-fruits” and claims that all the colours he had seen before were “dull as compared to these”. Much of the imagery he sees is related to nature and is described in ways that are fantastical and imaginative. He mentions hallucinations of “soft golden clouds” and “things, like green birds”.

Not all the imagery described is natural. He also hallucinates manmade structures that evoke death and the divine. This appears in the form of an ancient Egyptian tomb that he sees. Themes of death introduced by the tomb are amplified by the “funerary orations” he hears, and the themes of the divine are further highlighted by the “priests in ornate headdress” that circumambulate the tomb. His senses and his perception of reality are also affected by his ingestion of peyote. He describes seeing a huge bird claw of stone from which hung a fragment of a substance that seemed to represent “Time as well as [the] immensity of Space”.

According to Boon, Mitchell's writing represents “one of the first explorations of visual abstraction in modern culture”. However, Mitchell's writing is not entirely novel and features literary elements that are common within European psychedelic literature. For example, he makes liberal use of colour in much the same way that Hoffmann and Benjamin do. Furthermore, Mitchell's writing also evokes the divine, a Romantic element, much like the European poet Gautier does. Lastly, Mitchell's psychedelic writing features death. As previously discussed, European writers such as Hoffman and Jünger also feature death in their psychedelic writing, using the concept to symbolise a “Great Transition” as Jünger describes it. Similarly, the death theme occurs to Mitchell as he transitions to a state of altered consciousness where contradictions and surrealism blend with familiar elements of his life. He is whisked away from his old life and sees himself reincarnated as a “fur-capped Mongol huntsman, cold-eyed and cruel, bow in hand, striking down a running rabbit from the back of a racing, gaunt half-wild stallion”.

From comparing Mitchell to the aforementioned European writers, recurring patterns regarding the use of the death and rebirth theme becomes apparent. For psychedelic writers, death is symbolic of a psychological transition that leads to rebirth. However, at the time in which Mitchell writes, this concept has yet to be fleshed out from a psychoanalytical perspective. As American psychedelic writers are further explored, the recurring theme of death and rebirth being used symbolically to represent psychological transition will become more ubiquitous and defined as psychedelics become an unignorable issue within politics, art, science, and other sectors of civil life.

Cannabis

Although mescaline is strongly associated with American psychedelic literature, several other psychedelics are also significant influences. Cannabis, for instance, makes multiple appearances in American psychedelic literature. While it is difficult to pinpoint exactly how cannabis was introduced to North America, Suman Chandra et al argue that evidence points to the fact that “Louis Hébert (1575–1627), the apothecary (pharmacist) of Samuel de Champlain (1580–1635), a French navigator, cartographer, and explorer, introduced cannabis to American settlers in 1606”. Originally, the cannabis plant was used to produce hemp, which can be used to make a wide variety of resources including textiles, rope, and paper to name a few. However, between 1840 and 1900, cannabis was used for medicinal purposes in North America and was administered to cure ailments such as “tetanus, epilepsy, rheumatism, rabies, and as a muscle relaxant”. For some time, cannabis-infused medicine was freely sold in North American pharmacies, but this would not last for long.

Boon claims that the “first American writer to report on his own experiences with cannabis was the travel writer and diplomat Bayard Taylor” who writes about it in his text titled The Lands of Saracen (1855). Cannabis was not always tolerated in the USA and, as Boon notes, the end of the nineteenth century brought with it “a wave of paranoia about the drug”. Consequently, “a number of anti-cannabis laws were passed in at the state level in the early twentieth century”. Boon argues that these laws were motivated by fears of Mexican immigrants and blacks committing crimes under the influence of cannabis. A large influence in the criminalisation of cannabis was Harry Anslinger, the commissioner of the Bureau of Narcotics, who referenced the assumed link between the words ‘hashish' and ‘assassin' to argue for a link between cannabis and crime and largely ignored scientific work on the drug. As previously discussed, this etymological link is likely false. Nevertheless, he played a role in the “passing of the 1937 law against cannabis products”.

One of the ways that cannabis gained popularity in the USA was through its association with music, namely jazz. As Boon notes, “marijuana was used in black communities, especially in New Orleans, where it was associated with the jazz culture of the brothels”. Furthermore, by “the 1930s, there were a number of jazz songs about marijuana”. The love of cannabis did not stay in New Orleans, however. In Harlem, there emerged ‘tea-pads' where “people went to get high and listen to a record player, or jukebox”. Because of this association of jazz with cannabis, “one of the narcotics bureau's first targets was jazz musicians”.

LSD

LSD is another psychedelic drug that plays a prominent role in American psychedelic literature. It had as much, if not more, of a social impact in the USA as it had in Europe. In the 1950s and 1960s, LSD gained popularity among therapists and psychologists in the USA. Therapists claimed that when low doses of LSD were administered to their patients, “their patients' Ego defences relaxed, allowing them to bring up and discuss difficult or repressed material with relative ease”. By the end of the 1960s, “psychoanalytic LSD therapy was routine practice in the tonier precincts of Los Angeles, such as Beverly Hills”, and received plenty of positive attention.

With the increasing popularity of psychedelics in the USA came charismatic figures who associated themselves with these substances. Al Hubbard is one of those figures, and he occupies a prominent position in the history of psychedelics. Hubbard was born in Kansas and, although it is difficult to confirm many facts about his life, “his FBI file suggests he had links to the CIA during the 1950s”. In 1952, he “obtained some LSD, and had a literally life-changing experience”. Following this event, he developed a messianic complex, believing that “it was up to him to bring the new gospel of LSD, and the chemical itself, to as many people as he possibly could”. Using his government connections, he was able to acquire copious amounts of LSD from Sandoz and it is believed that he introduced an estimated “six thousand people to LSD between 1951 and 1966, in an avowed effort to shift the course of human history”.

He developed a form of psychedelic therapy that took patients out of the clinical settings of hospitals and instead put them in more comfortable locations with “pictures and music, flowers and diamonds”, to prime “patients for a mystical revelation”. Changing the setting has the potential to alter how an individual experiences a psychedelic session because, as Grof explains, “people in LSD psychotherapy often manifest seemingly inappropriate and highly exaggerated reactions to various environmental stimuli”. Hence, “it makes a great difference whether the session takes place in a busy laboratory milieu, in a comfortable homelike environment, in a sterile medical setting with white coats and syringes, or in a place of great natural beauty”.

Shamans

Pollan argues that Hubbard understood that the cognitive disruptions brought on by psychedelics could be effective for “breaking destructive patterns of thought and proposing new perspectives in their place”, hence his “greatest contribution to modern psychedelic therapy was to introduce the tried-and-true cowtools of shamanism, or at least a Westernized version of it”. Broadly defined, shamans are figures who “enter trance to provide services”, usually of a spiritual nature. Some definitions include restrictive criteria, such as requiring the practitioner to make use of “death-and-rebirth initiations, soul journey trances, and animal helper spirits”. The trance the shaman enters “represents a temporary state that appears psychologically”, and associated behaviours during trance include, but are not limited to, “trembling, shuddering, horripilation, swooning, falling to the ground, yawning, lethargy, convulsions, foaming at the mouth, protruding eyes, large extrusions of the tongue, paralysis of a limb, [etc.]”. The cultural narratives of the society of the shaman will determine how the trance is interpreted. For example, as Singh explains, some cultures might frame the trance state as spirit possession, soul journeying, or a combination of these and many other possibilities. Typically, an individual must undergo an initiation to become a shaman. Initiations usually involve rituals that feature “death and rebirth, ritual surgery, magical surgery of body parts”, or dramatic experiences.

Despite the scepticism the lens of Western rationality exercises over shamanism, the concept gained a foothold within America's psychedelic culture. This is partially due to the aforementioned North American tribes who had incorporated psychedelic plants into shamanic rituals for many years. However, figures such as Hubbard were also pivotal in expanding the school of thought which viewed psychedelics in a manner that shamans would – as cowtools to evoke emotional and psychological change for one's betterment.

Conclusion

America has a long history of psychedelic literature that continues with figures such as Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, and Terrence McKenna. However, they deserve posts of their own. Tune in next time when I delve into the Beat Generation. Writing = no cutting.

porn starts after the * * *

We all hear the familiar security chime and the door swing open. I perk up, quickly set down the ladle and briskly walk—no, almost run—to the door. I throw my arms around William and bury my face in his chest.

“Hi, honey,” he says. I can feel and hear the vibrations of his voice in his chest.

“Hi baby,” I say. He brings his hand around my head and runs his fingers through a thin lock of my hair that managed to escape my bun. “I made chicken marsala, your favorite!” I tell him.

He lets out a soft chuckle, and we come to the table with the two kids.

“Mom, I'm hungry,” Johnny says.

“Now that Dad's home, we can eat. Boys, go serve yourselves. And Johnny, help your little brother out.”

“Okay,” Johnny says to me. He gets up out of his seat and walks over to Kelvin, who's reading a picture book about cars and trucks. “Kelvin, put that away now, we're going to eat dinner now.”

“Okay,” Kelvin says in his cute little voice. William and I have a beat of shared happiness watching our little Johnny helping out his brother.

Johnny goes to the stovetop and serves himself. Kelvin obediently stands behind his older brother, watching his every move. Johnny turns to him and serves him, though probably a little too much for his smaller stomach. My husband and I follow behind, serve ourselves food, and when we're all sitting down, we say grace and dig in.

I finish wiping down the countertop. The boys are in bed and William is showering after a long day's work. After putting away the leftovers and closing the fridge door, my eye is drawn to a family picture held under a magnet. I take the picture off of the fridge door and smile. It's a picture with me, my husband, and our two kids, taken a year or two ago by my sister while our family was playing at the local park. I love it so much because of the genuine joy on all of our faces, and because of my pride in the family that I have built. My hand feels the growing bump in my stomach, and I know that the picture will be outdated soon.

William steps out of the bathroom, hair dripping wet with steam billowing out of the open door. Almost instinctually, I perk up out of bed and bite my upper lip seeing his body like that, only obscured by a small towel. He smirks and starts running his hands through my hair, and I let out some kind of instinctual sound that I can't quite describe. William presses my face against his towel, his peepee throbbing underneath. I can smell his pheromones through it.

He lets go of the towel and it falls to the floor. His peepee flops onto my face, and I instinctually start sucking. He palms the top of my head with his hand, pushing my head towards and back, towards and back again. From so much experience, my gag reflex has been completely disintegrated. His peepee moves back and forth in my mouth, inching farther and farther back in my throat every time. It feel so good to feel and taste every square inch of his peepee filling my mouth and throat. His imposing figure—as seen from down where my eyes are—only makes me hornier.

Eventually I need to take a breath. I push back, and William's hand seems reluctant, but it lets go. I gasp. I grab his peepee, ready to keep sucking but William has other plans. He scoops me up and throws me on the bed, turns me around so that I'm laying on my back and my kitty is facing him. He grabs the waistband of my leggings and my panties and tries to take them off, but the leggings end up inside out, still snugly attached around my ankles.

“Stupid woman,” he says to me. “Why wouldn't you be ready for me?”

I giggle, say sorry, and kick my legs up to finish taking them off. As soon as they're off, he grabs me by my waist and brings me closer to them so my kitty is flush with the edge of the bed, and he goes inside. His hands on my waist, he pulls me into him and thrusts into me. My heart absolutely pounding, butterflies swarming about from pure love, I let out an involuntary moan, trying to keep quiet for the kids.

He thrusts into me more and more. He's so horny that I can feel his rapid heartrate beating through his peepee. Every bit of warmth he transfers to me, every inch he thrusts—it fuels my absolute desire for him, for him alone and no one else. I let out another sound, this one a deliberate release of my pent-up joy.

His right hand grows curious and moves its way up my chest under my shirt. He rolls my shirt up and grabs my breast as he fricks me. I make eye contact with him and smile, and then in pleasure I bite my upper lip. His breathing is heavy and labored.

He goes harder, his hip bones smashing harder and harder into mine. “Mmmmmmm~!” I say, my upper lip still bit. I wrap my legs around him, feeling what I can of his musculature with my thighs and the sides of my legs. He puts his hand on around my throat, and presses his thumb against my trachea. He lets out a soft grunt under his increasingly labored breaths.

I can feel in the rhythm of his thrusts and redness of his face that he's about to c*m. I wrap my legs around him and pull him close into me. As he exhales an exhilarated “Frick” under his breath, I feel the c*m squirt out of his peepee and into me. I moan now and c*m too.

He breathes heavily, exhausted. He kisses me and the baby in my stomach and then flops down to me. I lay my head on his chest, and he runs his fingers through my hair a few times. We fall asleep like this.

i wrote this myself. it is an extremely personal fantasy that feels almost strange to share online.

the most painful part about all of this is that this (or something close to it) is a reality for many women. it's just that God decided to curse me for some reason and now i am forced to be an onlooker to the life which i so desperately want to live. i believe that people are wired to want to live a certain way, so some women want to start families with their husbands in the suburbs, and others don't and would rather live in a lesbian relationship in the city. i dont have anything against the latter, its just that i have been cursed to be wired for the former. and it is thus that the life that i was made for only exists in my head.

i seriously think about killing myself everyday, maybe then i'll have a chance to be reborn as a woman, or at least be dead and not have to live through this.

Aldous Huxley was born in Godalming, Surrey, England in 1894. According to Nicholas Murray, Huxley was “immensely tall – six feet four-and-a-half inches”, and he had a voice that was “beautifully modulated, silvery, precise”. His mother, Julia Huxley, died “of an inoperable cancer after a very short illness” in 1908. This greatly impacted Huxley, and Murray claims that the pain of the loss is apparent in Huxley's literature. As evidence, he argues that “in both Brave New World and its counterpart, the ‘good utopia' of Island, the nature of motherhood and the role of the family is an important theme, and one informed by Huxley's complicated feelings about the matter reaching back to his childhood experiences”.

Huxley would not avoid health problems of his own. His school attendance was not consistent because he “was ill as a child and missed some of his lessons”. When Huxley was sixteen and attending Eton College, he began experiencing pain in his eyes and he was taken to an eye specialist in London. It was determined that he had a condition known as keratitis punctata, and although doctors did their best, he was left blind from 1911 to 1912, and his sight was impaired from then onwards. His sight impairment was devastating because he was “a voracious reader, a painter, a delighted explorer of the natural world” and, according to Murray, “it was a catastrophe which he always believed was the most important single determining event in his early life”. Interestingly, George Woodcock notes that Huxley's seeing impairment was accompanied by aphantasia, and he “could remember scenes, but he could not create a scene by invention in his mind's eye”. Huxley writes about his experiences with near blindness in The Art of Seeing (1943).His sight problems may have been unexpectedly serendipitous because “realising that a medical or scientific career was now out of the question, Huxley turned to the idea of writing”. He read voraciously using braille and a magnifying glass, and he also learnt to play the piano by touch. His loss of sight may have also sparked his search for alternate ways to view the world, ultimately fuelling and shaping his views and interactions with psychedelics. When he was seventeen, he published his first text titled Crome Yellow in 1921. One of his most impactful texts is Brave New World (1932), a dystopian text that imagines a future where society is bioengineered and conditioned with the aim of crafting a perfect utopia.

In 1937, Huxley and his family moved to California, USA. During this time, there are “oriental elements that became increasingly preponderant in his religious attitudes”, and this is seen in writing. As Woodcock points out, in Island Huxley crafts a society with a “religio-philosophic basis combining Indian and European elements”. In the 1950s, Huxley began experimenting with psychedelic drugs. He “had heard, since coming to the United States, circumstantial reports of the use of the cactus known as peyote in the ceremonials of a semi-pagan Indian church in New Mexico”. While some view psychedelics as a psychosis simulator and others view them as recreational substances, Huxley instead saw them as spiritual helpers. As Woodcock explains, “he realised that the ways to enlightenment were many; that prayer and meditation in themselves were only techniques, and that there could be other techniques – mortification was one of them – which might effectively break down the resistance of the Ego”.

The doors of perception

The phrase “the doors of perception” is originally found in William Blake's text The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790). Within the text, it is written that “if the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, Infinite”. This carries a similar message to what The Doors of Perception argues with regards to psychedelics. Huxley's reference to Blake is no mistake, and he displays a constant fondness for the Romantic artist through his references to him, and titling an essay “Heaven and Hell”, making yet another allusion to Blake.

The Doors of Perception can be considered psychedelic due to the way Huxley handles the topic of drug use. The text is presented as an autobiographical account of the author's experiences, and he attempts to make himself appear as a man who is using psychedelics for the sake of science and knowledge rather than hedonism. Like psychedelic writers before him, he assumes the role of the psychonaut who aims to explore unvisited realms of human consciousness. Huxley, with his scientific tone and his philosophical musings regarding psychedelics and their social and spiritual potential, plays the role of the psychonaut quite convincingly, and his eloquence allows him to discuss even his most abstract thoughts.

Mescaline

Huxley's drug of choice is mescaline. As previously discussed, the use of mescaline is usually associated with Native Americans who have used it for generations for spiritual purposes. Huxley is aware of the relationship Native Americans have had with the drug, and he also discusses how Native Americans have appropriated customs and rituals of the past to still carry meaning in the modern world. As an example, he looks to the Native American Church which has been discussed in this thesis. Following the colonisation of the Americas, Native Americans had to deal with Christianity's encroachment on their culture. In many countries that have experienced European colonisation, Christianity often becomes the dominant religion that moulds many aspects of life including culture, morality, and law. In the process, the culture of the natives is erased. Rather than fight the overwhelming tide of Christianity, Huxley notes that some Native Americans instead did “something which is at once psychologically sound and historically respectable” and incorporated some of the fabric of Christianity into their cultural beliefs and customs. This can be seen in the way the use of peyote has been sacramentalised in a Christian fashion by the Native American Church. As Huxley explains, the church's “principal rite is a kind of Early Christian agape, or love feast, where slices of peyote take the place of bread and wine”. Hence, while Christians experience rebirth by taking part in the symbolic resurrection of Christ through communion, members of the Native American Church use mescaline instead for the same ends. The effects of mescaline are interpreted as religious and spiritual experiences and the Native Americans occasionally “see visions, which may be of Christ Himself”.

Huxley speaks positively of the Native American Church, and he lauds them for seeking “the best of both worlds, indeed of all the worlds – the best of Indianism, the best of Christianity”. However, Huxley does not spend much time using Native American worldviews to understand mescaline, nor does he use Native American myths and folktales to make sense of his psychedelic experiences. Instead, Christianity is the religion he mostly uses to frame his experiences. He makes use of Christian language and imagery, and he refers to Christian parables, including the story of Mary and Martha. This is not unexpected for Huxley, whose life in the United Kingdom and the USA would have chiefly exposed him to Christianity. His understanding of both Christian and Native American belief systems goes a long way to shedding light on the prevailing socio-religious climate in the USA during Huxley's time of writing. For instance, by highlighting the Native American Church, Huxley also brings to light the ways Native Indian belief systems in America were undermined by Christianity brought in by European settlers and how, while some Native Americans did try to form a new hybrid culture, others “reacted to white supremacy by becoming Americanised”.

Huxley treats his experiments with psychedelics as a scientific endeavour. This is seen, for example, when he introduces his experimentation with mescaline in quite a scientific manner. He uses precise language, including stating the date and exact dosage he took. In May 1953, Huxley is visited by a friend who is researching mescaline, and he allows Huxley to be his guinea pig. Huxley agrees and consumes four-tenths of a gram of mescaline dissolved in half a glass of water before patiently waiting for the effects. The objective, scientific tone of the text is further magnified by the fact that Huxley, after consuming mescaline, records his conversations on a “dictating machine”. Throughout the text, Huxley makes several scientific observations, and he posits theories on how mescaline might alter one's consciousness. He hypothesises that mescaline “interferes with the enzyme system that regulates cerebral functioning”. Consequently, it lowers the “biological efficiency of the brain” and permits the entry into consciousness “certain classes of mental events, which are normally excluded”.

One of the ways he establishes a scientific tone is by inserting himself onto the end of a long chain of prior psychonauts and scholars. He begins his research by stating that “it was in 1886 that the German pharmacologist, Louis Lewin, published the first systemic study of the cactus”, then continues by pointing out that “such eminent psychologists as Jaensch, Havelock Ellis, and Weir Mitchell began their experiments with mescalin, the active principle of peyote”. Displaying his scientific knowledge of the drug, Huxley explains that “chemists have not merely isolated the alkaloid; they have learned how to synthesize it”. He is also aware of how the drug garners interest from various fields of study including psychiatrists, philosophers, “neurologists, and physiologists”. By discussing his predecessors and outlining the body of scientific knowledge of peyote, he portrays himself as scientifically learned and positions himself as yet another psychonaut in a long line of experimenters.

Whether intentional or not, Huxley's scientific approach adds a subtle layer of humour to his text when it is applied to the most mundane of observations. A notable example of this occurs when Huxley stares at his trousers and notices “those folds in the trousers – what a labyrinth of endlessly significant complexity! And the texture of the grey flannel – how rich, how deeply, mysteriously sumptuous!”. He has a similar experience when staring at draperies, causing him to conclude that “for the mescalin taker draperies are living hieroglyphics that stand in some peculiarly expressive way for the unfathomable mystery of pure being”. What might have been a forgotten observation suddenly becomes a scientific quandary, and in an attempt to solve it, he hypothesises that perhaps “the forms of folded drapery are so strange and dramatic that they catch the eye and in this way force the miraculous fact of sheer existence upon the attention? Who knows?”.

Despite his scientific approach, he also occasionally makes use of mysticism in his writing. This is seen through his several references to religion, especially Christianity. For example, when he attempts to explain negative experiences, he compares them to Dante's Inferno, an epic poem that imagines the Christian Hell as an abyss comprised of nine circles. Huxley also juxtaposes positive and negative psychedelic experiences by referring to them as Heaven and Hell, respectively. Thus, as has been the case with his predecessors, Huxley's psychedelic writing disrupts the usual boundaries between different modes of observation and blends the scientific with the poetic. Boon's research on Huxley suggests that the intermingling of the subjective and the objective in The Doors of Perception may be a product of Huxley's life and upbringing because he “came from a background in which literary and scientific pursuits had long coexisted”.

It should be noted that while Huxley does make use of mysticism, and though he does give into trailing thoughts and subjective language when describing psychedelic experiences, he does so to a lesser degree than his fellow psychedelic writers, including Ludlow. Comparatively, Huxley is far more lucid than his predecessors, and this is seen, for example, when, during a moment of navel-gazing, he states that “by its nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies, – all these are private and, except through symbols and a second hand, incommunicable”. He suggests that while humans may attempt to socialise, the human experience is ultimately a solitary one, as our experiences can only be shared through secondary means, and tools such as language can never fully communicate one's internal experiences. His remark echoes the kind of philosophizing emblematic of psychedelic writers who are tasked with describing the most exotic internal experiences, but Huxley can put forward a coherent thought without dipping into language that is too strange and imagery that obfuscates.

Huxley and Psychedelics

Like prior psychedelic writers, Huxley displays a positive attitude towards psychedelics, and this view does not change from the start to the end of The Doors of Perception. He does not see an issue with the regular use of mescaline, and he claims that reports by Dr Slotkin reveal that peyote users are “on the whole more industrious, more temperate (many of them abstain altogether from alcohol), more peaceable than non-peyotists”. He views the drug as superior to legal substances such as alcohol and tobacco which he believes are a detriment to society. However, he does not advocate for the banning of alcohol and cigarettes, and instead, he argues that by introducing the public to psychedelics, they could “exchange their old bad habits for new and less harmful ones”. Mescaline may be the drug to do this because, as Huxley notes, “unlike alcohol, it does not drive the taker into the kind of uninhibited action which results in brawls, crimes of violence and traffic accidents”. He also stresses the harmlessness of psychedelics, and claims that “to most people, mescalin is almost completely innocuous”.

Although he sings the praises of mescaline, he is not entirely blind to its negative aspects. He notes that while mescaline is safer than most legal and illegal drugs, it is “not yet an ideal drug”. This is partially because, while many who consume mescaline will find sublime splendours and deep contemplation, there are a select few who find “in the drug only hell or purgatory". Although he presents mescaline as an alternative habit to alcohol and tobacco, he does not think that it is a perfect replacement because “for a drug that is to be used, like alcohol, for general consumption, its effects last for an inconveniently long time".

To Huxley, mescaline is a solution to a problem. He poses this problem to the reader by asking the following question: “short of being born again as a visionary, a medium, or a musical genius, how can we ever visit the worlds which, to Blake, to Swedenborg, to Johann Sebastian Bach, were home?”. To solve this problem, he hopes that mescaline will admit him “at least for a few hours, into the kind of inner world described by Blake”. Hence, in many ways, his motivations are that of the classic psychonaut, as he chiefly desires to explore anomalous states of consciousness.

To better understand Huxley's aims with mescaline, one would need to grapple with how he conceives of human consciousness. In Huxley's view, the human mind is capable of remembering everything that has ever happened to it and perceiving “everything that is happening everywhere in the universe”, a belief inspired by the Cambridge philosopher Dr C.D. Broad, who in turn is inspired by Bergson. However, much of the content consumed by the brain is “largely useless and irrelevant”. Hence, to assist humans, who are biological organisms geared towards survival, the brain, and the nervous system will shut out most of what is perceived, “leaving only that very small and special selection which is likely to be practically useful”. Hence, the brain and the nervous system can be thought of as a reducing valve that gives us “a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive”. Some special individuals, however, can bypass this limiting valve to perceive more than the average person. These are the creatives and the spiritually enlightened through whose eyes Huxley aspires to see, though he plans to do it through mescaline. Huxley's ideas may have some psychoanalytical basis. The previously discussed Freudian concept of repression may be thought of as a form of reality narrowing in service of the Ego. However, this narrowing can be expanded through the use of psychedelics which, as C.J. Healy's research reveals, have been noted by clinicians to unearth repressed childhood memories.

Although The Doors of Perception is a popular text, there were several criticisms of it at the time of its release. As is to be expected, many critics chastised the text for its drug-centric nature. The ethnologist Weston La Barre claimed Huxley looked upon mescaline with the “Romanticism-ensorcelled eyes of Europeans” while the Oxford professor R. C. Zachner took umbrage at Huxley comparing his drug experiences to those of great mystical traditions. Huxley did have plenty of critics who praised him, however, and he has been celebrated by psychedelic writers who have come after him. In High Priest, Leary speaks of reading Huxley repeatedly before finally meeting him and describing him as a “wise and good man”.

The Doors of Perception is a highly influential text that has gone on to affect not just psychedelic literature, but also public perceptions of psychedelics. The text drew attention to itself due to the way it presents a psychoanalytic approach to psychedelic experiences and posits psychonautics as an intellectually valuable pursuit in the West as opposed to a merely esoteric cultural trait of primitive exotic cultures or a pastime of degenerates. Huxley was also influential in inspiring others to share their own psychedelic experiences. According to Boon, the late 1950s saw a large increase of “Huxley-inspired accounts of LSD and mescaline”.

Conclusion

Wewlad that was a long one. I hope you enjoyed it. Tune in next time when I discuss Hunter S. Thompson or circumcision or some shit.

As Hideo Kojima has taught us, humanity's first cowtools were sticks and rope. It's an easy idea to understand. Some cowtools are meant to keep people away from you, while others are to pull people in.

Some would argue that a mother's love is the strongest bond possible, and even when the umbilical cord is cut, an invisible strand remains. What happens when that strand is put to the test? Sprinkle trauma, pain, drugs, theft, and r*pe into the mix. How much can a strand handle?

More importantly, what happens when a mother kills their own child? All the mothers that I have featured in the past have been rightfully vilified. The woman I'm about to discuss never received hate. Instead, she received overwhelming love from women and men countrywide, and a movie was made about her, positioning her as a hero.

Today, we're going to South Africa to discuss Ellen Pakkies. The images are of Reeva Steenkamp who was killed by Oscar Pistorius. Just keeping things South African.

I tried to build up excitement and intrigue with this introduction but failed. The only saving grace is this meta-commentary that at least you know that I'm self-aware when my writing is shitty.

Buckle up, we're going for the detailed, researched story. You're welcome to point out any flaws.

Tik

When your body wants to release Dopamine, the following occurs. The neural impulse moves along the dopaminergic terminal and meets the dopamine receptor in the limbic system which has synapses (little spaces). A special protein is released by the synapse and it binds to the dopaminergic terminal of a dopamine transmitter.

Dopamine makes you feel good, but all good things must come to an end, so typically the dopamine is reabsorbed. But meth does not want the party to end, so it influences trace amine-associated receptor 1, convinces it to stop letting dopamine in.

=====

Notes from Reeva!

Synapses are related to sleep

• During sleep, synapses can be cleaned

• When we sleep, synapses decrease in size which allows for lymphatic system to clean the synapses

• During sleep the body prunes irrelevant synapses and neural networks, hence creating space

Once stimulated, a neuron will communicate information about the causative event. The neurons are called sensory neurons. Sensory neurons will send info to neurons in the brain and spinal cord.

====

But it doesn't stop there. Meth also encourages the production of more dopamine! Up to ten times more. It feels so good! It acts as an upper, giving you energy and acting as an aphrodisiac.

Of course, there are negative effects to this. Neural damage occurs, and this is irreversible. This can leave the user with memory loss, aggression, and paranoia.

Lavender Hill

Our story takes place in Lavender Hill. Despite the nice name, it is a place of horrors worse than Amityville, some would say.

It was created in the 1970s as a segregated area for Coloreds (mixed-race Malays, not Blacks). With poor access to the CBD and a lack of services, it dilapidated and this continued post-Apartheid.

A lack of policing resulted in the growth of gangs and the proliferation of crime which has come to characterize the township. The crime statistics are shocking, to say the least. Let's cover drugs, which is what this article is about:

>Although statistics for Lavender Hill specifically are difficult to ascertain, crime statistics from the South African Police Service (SAPS) illustrate the prevalence of drug-related crime in the area: between April 2011 and March 2012, Grassy Park (ward 68) recorded 1 810 cases of drug-related crime (SAPS 2012). Local gangs hold the bulk of economic power in the area and recruit many community members by offering financial support. For example, they offer to pay rent or electricity bills in exchange for hiding parcels.

https://ggln.org.za/media/k2/attachments/SoLG.2014-DDP.pdf

Part of the problem is that Lavender Hill is plagued with Tik, which in turn increases other crime rates.

Ellen Pakkies

There used to be far more information on her when the case occurred. However, most of it has been overshadowed by the movie they made about her.

According to her, she was sexually abused as a child. R*pe seems to be a constant theme in her life when she was 17, she was r*ped and had her first child, Abie Pakkies. Shortly after, she married at age 18. She had her second child, Colin. The marriage did not last, and she would go through one more marriage before meeting Ontil, her longstanding husband.

Like many others in Lavender Hill, Abie fell victim to drugs. He got hooked on Tik at age 13, and from then onwards his life became a tragedy. To get money to buy drugs, he would steal everything from Ellen, who owned very little to begin with. She tried to get him to stop, but he basically emptied the house to feed his habit.

This went on for years, with Abie stealing money from his mother and robbing her of her wages. She tried to get him to rehab but that did not work. He was kicked out of the house but he would return banging at the doors and windows begging for money the whole night. To put it mildly, he was a pest.

One day, Ellen had enough. Her son was living in the backroom of the house. She went to visit him, carrying a rope with her. She entered the backroom and found Abie sleeping. He was no threat. Ellen put the rope around his neck and started stranding him. The asphyxiation woke Abie up and he started struggling, likely in shock that his own mother was attempting to murder him. She tightened the rope, asking him why he never listens. He begged for his life, claiming he would listen from then onwards, but this was not enough to quell Ellen's rage. Let's cut to the chase - she killed her son.

Following the incident, she put on her clothes and went to work, much like Chris Watts. However, unlike the family annihilator, Ellen eventually confessed to her boss who then took her to the police station.

Her case was very famous in South Africa and I have vivid memories of reports always painting her in a sympathetic matter, as someone who was pushed to their limits. She eventually got a 3 year suspended sentence. I'm here today to say this is bullshit. This woman is a murderer just like all the others I've previously covered. I feel sympathy for her situation but not for strangling her own son. She did it in such a personal manner, to someone who was sleeping. Frick that.

What are your thoughts? Was Ellen justified? Or is she just a killer?

Darklands Series

1 - Darklands LP Part I

2 - Darklands LP Part II: Charles Bronson Edition

3 - Darklands LP III: Nuns and Coins

4 - Darklands LP Ep IV: Introduction to Equipment & Combat

5 - Darklands LP Part V: We finally briefly go out into the dark lands

6 - Darklands LP VI: We actually start a quest!

7 - Darklands LP VII: We reach our destination

8 - Darklands LP VIII: Raubritter confrontation & learning how combat works

9 - Darklands LP IX: I'm not giving you my goddarn alchemical materials

10 - Darklands LP X: We actually do some alchemy!

11 - Darklands LP XI: The Main Plot

The Witches' Sabbat

It's Halloween today, October 31, 1402, so it's time to take on the forces of darkness once again.

In our last episode, we finally made it to the witches' Sabbat, basically ComicCon for Satanists. Day one has a bit of an amusement park feel, but they seem to be building up to a big event tomorrow. We're going to do what we can to ruin their fun. But hopefully we won't have to slaughter everyone here. Even these people can still be saved if they repent.

Let's start out with the food. It's what Anthony Bourdain would do.

It's not ideal, but let's at least give these babies a quick baptism while we can.

We really do not want to attract too much attention, so we better be careful the next place we go.

Okay, let's see what's going on by the stream. Ugh. This is no good. But I'll try to give these people a chance. I'll boost Sasha's Speak Common and Charisma even higher and have her try to persuade them this is wrong. St. John Chrysostom is an obvious choice. One of the most important figures in the development of the early church, he was renowned for his oratory. Chrysostom literally is "Golden Mouth", exactly what we need now. Sasha now has 99 Speak Common but you can never be sure of success in dangerous situations like this.

As demonstrated here. Looks like these guys are gonna have to die.

They're very poorly equipped and no trouble to beat, but I expect we'll get in multiple combats before the Sabbat is over and we won't have a chance to heal between them, so any damage done here will add up. That cultist with his flail turns out to be more dangerous than I thought and Redactor gets hurt a bit.

We've drawn too much suspicion to ourselves. This busybody is going catch us eventually if we don't do better. I'll use the "yeah, I'm up to something" line, hoping to confuse him for now.

Let's check out the broom-riding and see if this really is as cute as they make it out to be in childrens' books. Oh no, it's actually awful.

Sasha still has her Speak Common boosted so maybe she can at least convince these people. She fails again and we have to kill these people too. I've consistently been getting really bad luck throughout this. Maybe Halloween isn't my lucky day.

Let's see what's going on at the altar. So that's what this is all about. They're summoning a demon. Satanists are so lame. It really is a ripoff of Burning Man.

We're under a lot of suspicion but there is absolutely no way I'd ever consider engaging in this kind of blasphemy.

My party has pretty terrible Stealth skill, so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised at failing this check.

Despite screwing up everything we tried to do, we managed to get by using brute force. Our party is hardly even injured. That chainmail really makes a huge difference when going up against a mob of poorly-armed enemies.

The fortress monastery? What's that? I guess we'll find out someday.

I have Sasha try to win over the baptism crowd and she fails yet again. Then it's summoning time. So that's where the Fortress Monastery is. I always knew that the Danes were Satanic.

We've got practically no injuries and most of our Divine Favor left. And for this special occasion I'm going to break out the alchemy. I'm passing out:

• Hardarmor - One for everyone. This will increase the quality and boost the effective thickness of the armor by +2, better than even plate without alchemical enhancement.

• Fleadust & Arabian Fire - Two for everyone. The offensive potions you want to spread around through your party. If one guy is carrying them all he might be engaged and unable to throw.

• Essence of Grace - The healing potion. There's no mechanic in the game to stop you from just chugging these constantly, which isn't really a fun way to play, so I'm going to arbitrarily limit us to three per person for now.

I won't bother invoking saintly aid to improve our weapon skills since they're already into the 80s. Okay, let's do this.

The demon turns out to be pretty weak. Am I over-prepared for this battle?

Now is the hard part. The high witch will be tossing potions and her minions have flails, which with 4 penetration would match our chainmail if it wasn't alchemically enhanced.

The fight is tougher than we've had in a long time, but not too challenging. The enemy can't penetrate our armor so they do very little damage to our Strength, but there's a lot of them and they land a lot of non-penetrating hits that do a few points of Endurance damage. Sasha takes an Essence of Grace to keep from getting knocked out.

The second wave is just like the first, but this time I'm a little smarter about defeating them in detail. Nathan manages to slip past the cultists to get to the high witch but she hits with him Fleadust or something, greatly reducing his skills, so he has trouble hitting her, but it's over soon enough.

We now have a clear mission ahead of us: Go to Denmark and assault the Fortress Monastery!

Sorry for this being so anti-climactic. I didn't realize how powerful my party had become and I wanted to make sure to explain all the main systems of the game before going forward with the main plot. Don't worry, it gets much more difficult.

Happy Halloween!

Darklands Series

1 - Darklands LP Part I

2 - Darklands LP Part II: Charles Bronson Edition

3 - Darklands LP III: Nuns and Coins

4 - Darklands LP Ep IV: Introduction to Equipment & Combat

5 - Darklands LP Part V: We finally briefly go out into the dark lands

6 - Darklands LP VI: We actually start a quest!

7 - Darklands LP VII: We reach our destination

8 - Darklands LP VIII: Raubritter confrontation & learning how combat works

9 - Darklands LP IX: I'm not giving you my goddarn alchemical materials

10 - Darklands LP X: We actually do some alchemy!

One of the few weaknesses our party has now is Sasha. She's not well armored enough and her longsword is pretty useless against most of the enemies we're starting to run into. I head back to our old home turf in Westphalia. I know Paderborn makes good weapons and Soest makes good armor. I buy her a poniard, basically a dagger. That might seem like a big step down as it has a base damage of 5 down from the longsword's 12 but it has 4 penetration (matching chainmail) and is much faster. With the poniard we should be able to get her into full chainmail eventually.

Level Scaling & The Main Plot

Darklands does have level scaling but don't jump to the conclusion that it's a bad thing. Some games like Oblivion are notorious for doing this the wrong way. All the enemies in the world are pegged to the same level as you, so theoretically if you could teleport to the end boss at the beginning of the game he would be at level 1 and the fight would be no more difficult than if you had played the whole game out to being level 20. In Darklands it calculates how strong it thinks your party is (I'm guessing based on skills) and as you get more powerful it upgrades the enemies, I believe twice. For example those street thugs who fought at the beginning of the game used to have just ordinary clothing on their limbs. Now it's padded armor. Presumably their attributes and skills are boosted too. But it still matters who they are. We're still going to slaughter those guys. But now a raubritter's henchmen will actually have some decent armor and are a challenge to us again. Since we're playing out the same quests over and over again, this is a way to make sure they don't get too stale.

Another thing that's triggered by your party growing stronger is an event calling you to stop just wandering around and take on mid game challenges. This definitely should have triggered by now. Either there's a bug or I got my saved games mixed up. So let's pretend it just happened now.

Well now we've got a real quest. Not from some banker or mayor but from God. Let's get on it.

I happen to be outside Magdeburg again. Let's check out this castle.

Oh it's not a castle. Yuna prays to St. Dorothea for guidance and we get this result.

Okay, let's go in.

(They act like I've already been here before. This must be a bug. She's an enigmatic astrologer who can see fleeting glimpses of your destiny. The first time you go here, she should either tell you that you're too weak and need get stronger or that you're ready to take on the Satanists at their Sabbat.)

Investigation

The Sabbat is where the pagans meet to celebrate their obscene rituals on one of their holidays. But when and where will it be this time? What would Crockett and Tubbs from Miami Vice do if they were hunting down a vast Satanic conspiracy in 1400s Germany? They'd start by picking up a low level Satanist and find out who his boss is.

We go to another Satanic village (there's quite a few) and slaughter everyone without even taking a single hit. Now what's this? Southeast of Goslar on June 21? It sounds like something important is going down. We should check it out. Today is June 5 but Goslar happens to be very close by so I should be able to get there in time. We'll want to avoid all combat if possible because we don't want to lose time healing wounds.

On the 15th we find this interesting Stonehengey type place southeast of Goslar. As we approach the music turns from adventurous to ominous.

I haven't been to a place this disturbing and depressing since I quit reddit.

A severed finger

I was thinking yakuza but actually Satanists would make more sense. So we've found the place we're looking for. There's not much to do but camp out here and wait a few days for them to show up. Maybe Redactor can stir up a few more potions. We're going to need them.

Nothing Happens

Somehow I missed them. Maybe I got the dates mixed up or something. Happens to me in real life all the time. Whatevs. We go to another Satanic village and get the next date: SE of Teschen on Halloween. Teschen is in Silesia near the border between Bohemia and Poland. It's pretty remote, but I think we've got plenty of time to get there.

Along the way we run into this place. It's a good reminder of just much history already existed back then. Germany had been Christian in Roman times but was then conquered by pagans who eventually were converted. This whole process took centuries, so there's ancient Christian ruins now that are long forgotten. In terms of the game, somebody probably sent us on a fetch quest here and I never bothered to go because I was far away at the time. But if we get his item maybe we'll run into him again someday.

See, I told you those Thunderbolt potions would be useful someday. I use one to blast open an entrance.

There's gotta be skeletons in every game.

This is the first time we've been in a long multi-part combat. There are groups of enemies around this dungeon and if I run into them I'll have to fight, but between fights we can walk around and go wherever we want. I'll have the party travel in single file so we don't get stuck every time we reach a doorway. But wait, Sasha, our weakest fighter, is pointman. I change the party's marching order so Nathan is in front. Now it's time to search for an exit.

Well that was easy. I find some stairs guarded by just one skeleton. He goes aggro on us when he sees us, kind of like a pod of enemies does in Nu X-Com. We make short work of him and walk off with the ancient crown.

I go after another one of these evil castle lords. For the first time we run into enemy archers. Everyone does fine except Sasha. Their armor blocks most of the damage, so it's only about 3 points for each arrow. A 3 point hit probably will only hurt endurance, not strength. Most of your lost endurance is regained after each fight so that's not huge problem. Restoring strength requires either rest, prayer, or alchemy so it's much more serious. Did I mention that when strength goes down to 0 your character is dead? Like completely permanently dead and you have to replace them with a new one.

I got plenty of time to kill before the Sabbat so I wander around the region, doing my usual thing, learning new saints and new formulas. In Pressburg the local alchemist trades to me the formula for Essence of Grace, the most important in the game as it's the healing potion that restores lost endurance and strength.

Teschen

Here we are. It's October 11, so that gives us plenty of time before Halloween to find the site and do some alchemy while we wait for the Satanic horde to show up. It's supposed to be SE of Teschen but Teschen is at the extreme eastern edge of the map. It must be this place. Yuna knows St. Raymond now, who can boost Redactor's Alchemy skill up to 99, so he can make huge batches of common potions. We'll settle down and let him do that for now.

Today's the day. Let's see what they're up to. WTF? This better not be Burning Man. I'll slaughter everyone if it is.

I'm going to chat up some of arriving weirdos and try to blend in with them.

Well obviously there's only one answer to this. They're a bunch of goths after all.

See, I still know my high school subcultures.

Uh oh. Instead of bomb-sniffing dogs for security they have Christian-sniffing dogs. Fortunately we don't have to try to bluff our way through. St. Aidan will help us. He was an Irish monk who converted the Anglo-Saxons of northern England and also really liked animals.

Good dog.

What in the heck have we gotten ourselves into? We'll find out in the next episode.

Russian is acquiring territory at a rate of 100 dead/km². Another 50 million dead, and they'll control all of Ukraine.

There are more than 50 million Russians, so it's doable.

So smart.

Yet he forgets that Ukraine is about to mobilise their 18 years old. And that Russian captured in 2024 more than in 2023 and all their big gains happened the last 3 months.

Why look at those facts if it will make things look bad for Ukraine ? I mean Ukraine is going to win any moment they get the game changer… wait he ain't talking about Ukrainian victory, what happened ?

Area taken really doesn't show the full picture. You could probably calculate that it would take something like 100 years for Russia to take the whole of Ukraine. However neither Russia or Ukraine can't keep this level of warfare up more than a few years at most. One of them will eventually collapse either from lack of manpower/equipment or due to economy.

Shut up stupid Redditor

This. One of them is going to give up because both are really, really struggling. Both are running out if people. Both are irritating their allies. Both are getting increasingly desperate.

Exactly

The difference is that Russia is running on volunteers while Ukraine is conscription. Most of those volunteers come from the most impoverished areas of Russia and even from foreign countries. Russia can keep the war going much longer than Ukraine

Shut up no truth Russian soldiers having low moral

https://old.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/1fng9wy/russian_morale_is_collapsing_now_is_the_time_to/

Well, this ignores the fact that Russia is losing its position in the world (like in Syria) and that its economy is increasingly in trouble. It also misses the fact that the motivations are dramatically different. The Ukrainians are fighting for their very survival, they have very little incentive to surrender. The Russians are fighting for pride and money, which means they just want it all to wrap up quickly. The Ukrainians are far more committed to their fight than the Russians who are just there for a paycheck.

Exactly !

Ukrainian Journ*list Yuriy Butusov confirmed that 1,700 soldiers from 155th mechanized brigade "Anna Kyivska", which was trained in France and sent to Pokrovsk deserted before the first battle. He added that the brigade commander was dismissed immediately after the battle, and…

— AMK Mapping 🇺🇦🇳🇿 (@AMK_Mapping_) January 1, 2025

Ukrainian so motivated that after half year training in France they run away from their first battle. Not the second or third but first

Majority of Ukrainian dislike Zelenskyy, don't want 18 year old mobilised are ready to give up the territory

Burgers cuts the nafo budget and all the "combat Russian misinformation" budget. Media starts painting digits that tell majority of European now want it all just end

Ahmad Al Sharaa said in an interview with Saudi Arabian state-owned news outlet Al Arabiya this weekend. "We do not want Russia to leave Syria in the way that some wish."

Al Sharaa, still better known by his nom de guerre Abu Mohammad Al Jolani (and other simply just as Jolani), is head of Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which led the rebel coalition that deposed Assad.

"All of Syria's arms are of Russian origin, and many power plants are managed by Russian experts," Al Sharaa further told Al Arabiya, while also highlighting the "deep strategic interests" of what he described as the "second most powerful country in the world."

@DaddyReagan

Was insisting to me that Russian run away from that base like almost a month ago. Except Ukraine and EU (that ain't even part of that Syrian party) ain't interested in Russian leaving Syria. Redditors are too stupid to understand Israel, US, Turkey and the new Syrian gov won't benefit from Russian leaving.

"That isn't entirely true Russia forces are actually expanding And that has been noted on many occasions by NATO generals 1- https://www.businessinsider.com/top-us-general-russia-growing-back-pre-war-military-strength-2024-4

2- Atlantic council talking about how Russia military is expanding and it might reach peak military production in 2025 -2026 https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth-research-reports/report/nato-russia-dynamics-prospects-for-reconstitution-of-russian-military-power/

3- https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4589095-russian-army-grown-ukraine-war-us-general/

4- https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-12-16/putin-says-russia-recruited-more-than-430-000-to-army-this-year

Since start of the war Russia conducted a semi mobilization for reserves

Meanwhile ukraine conducted six mobilization efforts in 2014 and 2015 Since the start of the war Ukraine have conducted countless mobilization and Ukraine has been snatching people from streets for year and half now

Antony blinken said in interview that Ukraine Basically has more equipment than troops at this point of time and they need to mobilize fast and also No increase in equipments will save them

Stupid Redditor making sense

With Trump as president, Ukraine will fall. It's a sad reality but we need to start admitting it.

This is smart Redditor, despite Ukraine last victory was on October 3rd 2022 so more than 50% of Biden presidency was without Ukrainian victories. So next years you will hear from them that Ukraine lost because of Trump

Because if Biden had won then Ukrainian demographics would been fixed. Can you argue with it ? You can't because you ain't multiverse creature that can test it

russia will collapse in 2025

— HotSotin 🇫🇮🇺🇦🇮🇱🇹🇼🇺🇸 NAFO (@HotSotin) December 31, 2024

That what I am talking about ! Oh wait it's not Ukraine going to win it's Russia going to collapse because subliminally they know Ukraine ain't going to win so they are coping with Russia will callabse

My fav prokhohol last year was this guy

Two things can be true at the same time.

Russia is advancing south of Pokrovsk, at huge sacrifice. Taking monstrous casualties and capturing a very small amount of land.

Ukrainian forces there are overwhelmingly outnumbered and feel hopeless as a result.

Both are true.

— Andrew Perpetua (@AndrewPerpetua) December 10, 2024

It actually isn’t a good result for Russia to shove a division into a fight with a few battalions and end up taking catastrophic casualties while capturing not much land. No matter how hopeless and overwhelmed the defenders feel.

— Andrew Perpetua (@AndrewPerpetua) December 10, 2024

I know a lot of people are currently obsessed with Russia’s advances in Ukraine, but I personally see these advances as largely a failure of the Russian military. They are dumping entire Divisions directly into combat and advancing a few km while sustaining absolutely…

— Andrew Perpetua (@AndrewPerpetua) December 7, 2024

Writes billions words in early December about Russian are now slowing down, Russian in December 2024 had best month since March 2022. Slowing down baby

Ukraine has two extremely toxic problems that should have been addressed a long time ago, but never were.

First, there is this pervasive idea that being mobilized into the military is basically a death sentence. Which is entirely untrue.

— Andrew Perpetua (@AndrewPerpetua) December 11, 2024

First, there is this pervasive idea that being mobilized into the military is basically a death sentence. Which is entirely untrue.

Ukraine literally didn't had any demobilisation the only way you get delisted from army in Ukraine is if you lose combat capability

Second, there is this idea that once mobilized, you can no longer contribute to the economy. This is asinine. Of course they can. There are many models of mobilization that allow people to keep their jobs and continue working while also being trained.

— Andrew Perpetua (@AndrewPerpetua) December 11, 2024

There are many models of mobilization that allow people to keep their jobs and continue working while also being trained

Ukraine has shortened the training requirements and so did eu for Ukrainian

So this homo suggest that Ukraine that is short on men power and has hard time replacing loses will just for lol train some guy to send him back to his regular job ?

This homo banned me but you can see he is genius. He believes that Ukraine has 6-12 months training and will do it 2 times Ukraine officially has 8 weeks training and in reality 2-3 and he talks about 100 weeks training

Then he finish of with this

Russian government: we have manpower problems
Russian military: we have manpower problems
Russian soldiers: we have manpower problems

People on twitter: RUSSIA HAS INFINITE MANPOWER AND WILL LAST FOREVER

— Andrew Perpetua (@AndrewPerpetua) December 14, 2024

And blocks comments because he wants to believe Russian having as much problems as Russian

I mean legendary frog brigade proved this point

Remember they haven't even really mobilized yet.

— Tom Neznamy (@Tom_Neznamy) December 14, 2024

So back to the front lines

Russian forces have completed the capture of Kurakhove. pic.twitter.com/tYSzMlLmzD

— KalibratedMaps (@Kalibrated_Maps) December 31, 2024

Kurakhove has fully been captured so now Ukraine will lose whole lower half of Donetsk and fight will start in Dniper region

As one Redditor wrote in og post

Once prokovsk is taken there is only fields till Dnipro, so loosing the Donbas would lose Ukraine the war. Taking the Donbas is by far the hardest part. Just look at WW 2 mr super military genius

Donbas is the most defensible part of that whole region of Ukraine / Russia, as you said first the Germans had trouble going through it and then Soviets too when they were retaking land. The guy calling this advancement against 2014 super entrenched defensive lines insignificant just outed himself as knowing nothing about the war

Ukrainian mappers of course don't report it

Since admitting Kurakhove has fully Ben lost is admitting that black line territory will be soon lost and chances are for truth Sirsky is going to mobilise then as he did with deepstatemap

Many people have high hopes with Trump that he will come and end it all.

And I have a good news, he won't

2025 will be year of legal battle. They talking about peace deal but what peace deal if nether Russia nor Ukraine are fighting each others ?

For a peace deal there must be a legal conflict and there just no conflict on paper. Russia wants that Ukraine side says that those 5 oblast are Russian territory. That something Ukraine side won't do since its defacto killing Ukraine, they of course don't have power to recapture it but they need cope that one day they will be able to do it. US offers no nato for Ukraine for 20 years. So every side wants to come out as victorious. But what West and Ukraine is offering Russia is just a draw and not fixing the reasons why Russia invaded. Why would Russia accept it after it survived all the giga western weapons. Aid for Ukraine is now around 500 billions that's inflation adjusted is 3 times more than lend lease to Soviet Union. And Biden created lend lease for Ukraine but never used it, you wonder why ? Because he was giving everything for free to Ukraine

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine_Democracy_Defense_Lend-Lease_Act_of_2022

Lend lease was such pathos moment

So after all the epic pathos moment how Russia will be defeated by united west

The scary tanks and long range missiles, Ukrainian are on their back foot without any ability to regain balance, west is offering Russian a draw

So you see it's ether Ukraine recognise that those 5 oblast are Russian or the grind will go on

As I mentioned before Zelenskyy is dead if he recognises those 5 oblast as Russian and he already against elections since now even republicans ask it and he still says no

So don't worry bros Slavshit won't end in 2025

Have a good year, see you again around February, need to study, will have exams about how bad and evil Trump is. Had to listen like 2 hours about how Trump is facist but you can't call him facist

Dramatards, today I'll tell you a bit about one of the most schizoid and polarizing figures in the recent history of Brazilian politics, Olavo de Carvalho (1947-2022)

Olavo Luiz Pimentel de Carvalho was born in Campinas, São Paulo in 1947. He was a "philosopher", writer, journ*list, professional politicuck, conspiracy theorist and astrologist and was considered as one of the "intellectual figures" of modern Brazilian conservatism.

In 1966, during the early stages of the Military Dictatorship in Brazil (1964-1985) he joined the Brazilian Communist Party , he left in 1968 and became a rightoid. In 1976 he entered a psychiatric hospital after a meltdown and in the late 70s he studied astrology at PUC (Pontificial Catholic University) in São Paulo.

He became famous for publishing rightoid books in the 90s like "O Jardim das Aflições" and "O mínimo que você precisa saber para não ser um idiota". He became a Youtuber and gain followers, in 2005 he moved to the United States because he couldn't stand Lula and died in his ranch in Virginia after getting Covid in 2022 (he was antivaxx)

He was one Bolsonaro's most trusted advisors and I remember him getting an interview on Globo (mainstream news and literally globohomo) by Pedro Bial.

Now, there are many who said "he's the Brazilian Alex Jones", but that comparison is flawed. Alex Jones is an r-slur, Olavo wasn't, he was a very intelligent and articulated man and you could tell that in his interviews, the thing is the guy was insane, like clinically mentally ill and he believed every single schizoid conspiracy he came up with.

I'm gonna detail the schizoness now, if you want to learn his general ideology I'm linking his wikipedia page in English along the "Garden of Afflictions" his "magnus opus", I think it was translated to English.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_Jardim_das_Afli%C3%A7%C3%B5es

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olavo_de_Carvalho

So, beyond the standard "Global Warming is a hoax" and "vax causes autism", Olavo went farther and claimed dinosaurs are a hoax !dinochads. And he also believed in the Geocentric model and actually criticized Galileo.

Here's a video of him denying the existence of fossils and claiming "fossil fuels" are not of fossil origin !ifrickinglovescience

I'm gonna translate for you guys, he curses a lot and that's a bit difficult to translate so i'll do it word by word on that.

>on fossils, I even remember the book by Georffrey of (didn't understand last name) "Mutation Point" he spoke horrors of fossil fuels, and he claimed that by the end of the 1990s fossil fuels would be abandoned (phased out), that there would be other sources of energy, I'm still waiting for it, it's been 20 years and it hasn't happened yet. It just happens that scientists found hydrocarbons on a galaxy which is on the whore who birth it! Where there were never any fossils nor dinosaurs frick! So, "fossil fuels" are the whore which birth it you get it? Fossil fuels are you mom's butthole, there are no fricking fossil fuels or anything like that, this is a farce, a clownshow

On the blacks he wrote this

1. Blacks have no rights to reparations as it represents an incompatibility and bias as blacks used to enslave arabs and jews when they were Pharaohs

2. Slavery was the fault of blacks for falling because of their decadent, degenerate and unstructured societies pushed by their animistic religions

3. blacks had no cultural contributions to western civilization, only material contributions due to slave labor, having no rights to claim anything from the white Western world

4. Black culture is inferior to western culture and judeochristian traditions, the greco-latin onthology and the Renaissance, which shows blacks won more than what they lost with colonization

!macacos !nooticers thoughts on this fellow?

@Aevann, @MAGAshill can this get pinned please?

Frick all the Uvalde cops

They're all peepees

They don't peepee guns

They just run

When the shots rung

Chief Arredondo

The head honcho

Couldn't let the shots blow

For a whole classload

of kids

Talking about a barricaded subject

Nothing but a sick injustice

He's a man who can't be trusted

No disembowlment, but he's gutless

Sheeeit

The moral of the story be

No more weapons of war in the store

Because they used so morbidly.

Today we won't be discussing Uvalde, although that was my initial intention. Instead, I want to speak about Joseph Campbell and the world of archetypes and the hero's journey. Why? Because I don't always control what topic my mind wants to focus on. I took a singular xanax and I'm feeling mellow so let's begin so I get back to playing Alan Wake 2. I've been working on this one for a while so I hope you enjoy it!

The Early Days

Born in 1904 in New York, Joseph Campbell's interest in mythology was sparked at a young age when his father took him and his younger brother to Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show in Madison Square Garden, and to the National Museum of History, and he soon recognised similarities between the stories and symbols of Native Americans and those from his Roman Catholic upbringing. Later in life, he would study Hinduism and find the same symbols once again. He would also study Arthurian medieval material, and he would recognise the same symbols. Upon entering Dartmouth College in 1921, he studied biology and mathematics. However, he would eventually transition to the Humanities, earning his master's degree in medieval literature in 1926.

In 1928, he discovered the works of Freud and Jung which would influence him greatly. Comparing the two, Campbell argues that the Freudian unconscious is “biographical, not biological”, while the Jungian unconscious is “based on a biological point of view”. Unlike Freud, Campbell points out, Jung recognised the collective unconscious which is universally shared and from which mythic symbols emerge. During his lifetime, Campbell would expand on Jung's ideas of archetypes in the realm of mythology, theorising how these images manifest in the myths, stories, and traditions of disparate cultures around the world.

Campbell on Myths

In The Power of Myth (1988), Campbell outlines much of his beliefs and theories regarding myths and their purpose. The text takes the form of an interview between him and Bill Moyers, an American journ*list and political commentator. The simplest definition Campbell gives for myths is that they are “stories about gods”. Of course, this causes one to question what gods are. Campbell argues that a god is a “personification of a motivating power or a value system that functions in human life and in the universe”. Furthermore, “the god idea is always culturally conditioned”. To illustrate how culture might affect a society's idea of God, Campbell compares societies that live in different geographies. According to Campbell, societies that live in the desert will lean towards monotheistic ideas of God because “when you're out in the desert with one sky and one world, then you might have one deity”. If a society dwells in a rainforest, however, they are more likely to practice polytheism because, as Campbell argues, the jungle is a place where “there's no horizon and you never see anything more than ten or twelve yards away from you”. Hence, we are more likely to speak of “the gods, plural, of the rainforest”.

In Campbell's view, myths are stories that are concerned with higher values and grand life aims relating to self-actualisation. This is clear when Campbell outlines what he believes are the four purposes of myths. Firstly, myths serve a mystical purpose. They assist to show humans “what a wonder the universe is, and what a wonder you are”, as well as to evoke “awe before this mystery”. The second purpose of myths is to reveal a cosmological dimension. As Campbell explains, myths do this by showing “what the shape of the universe is, but showing it in such a way that the mystery again comes through”. The third purpose of myths is a sociological one. Myths, according to Campbell, assist in “supporting and validating a certain social order”. Although “the main motifs of the myths are the same, and they have always been the same”, the sociological function of myths differs from society to society, and it can also change over time. The fourth purpose, the pedagogical function, is the one that pertains most to ‘gods'. Campbell elaborates by explaining that myths serve to teach us “how to live a human lifetime under any circumstances”. Important life lessons are transmitted from generation to generation through myths, and virtues are personified as gods that serve as guiding forces for the individuals and societies who follow the myths.

Campbell identifies a close relationship between myths and dreams and claims that “myths and dreams come from the same place”. Expanding further, he explains that they both “come from realisations of some kind that have then to find expression in symbolic form”. The difference between myths and dreams is that a dream is a “personal experience” whereas a myth “is the society's dream”. The contents of dreams typically concern themselves with matters that are personal to our lives. Hence, drawing from Freud, Campbell argues that a dream “is an inexhaustible source of spiritual information about yourself”. Myths, however, are more universal and although their sociological functions may differ, the mythic images remain similar across time and cultures, such that it appears as though “the same play were taken from one place to another, and at each place the local players put on local costumes and enact the same old plays”. Summarising the differences, Campbell states that “the myth is the public dream and the dream is the private myth”, and that one can tell that they are in accordance with the public when their dreams coincide with the myths of society.

Campbell offers two explanations for the similarities between myths around the world. The first theory involves archetypes. In the same way that human bodies are relatively similar the world over, so too are psyches similar. Hence, “out of this common ground have come what Jung has called the archetypes”. The second explanation Campbell gives is that myths spread through diffusion. To illustrate this explanation, Campbell gives an example of an agricultural society that develops myths around agriculture. As agriculture spreads, the accompanying myths will also spread. Consequently, aspects of agricultural myths such as the killing of “a deity, cutting it up, burying its members, and having the food plants grow” will “accompany an agricultural or planting tradition” but will not appear in a hunting culture. Rather than choose one explanation over another, Campbell states that “there are historical as well as psychological aspects of this problem of the similarity of myths”.

Death, Rebirth, and Myths

Campbell notes the particular importance of metaphorical death and rebirth, stating that “all children need to be twice born, to learn to function rationally in the present world, leaving childhood behind”. He claims that this wisdom is captured in the Biblical verse 1 Corinthians 13: “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things”. This death and rebirth, Campbell argues, is achieved through puberty rites. As Campbell explains, “in primal societies, there are teeth knocked out, there are scarifications, there are circumcisions, there are all kinds of things done. So you don't have your little baby body anymore, you're something else entirely”. Campbell even cites his own experiences of wearing short pants as a boy and wearing long trousers when he was older as a kind of puberty rite.

What must be noted is that rebirth is unattainable without the preceding death. In several religions, as Campbell points out, “the god of death is at the same time the lord of s*x”. In this way, death and birth become intertwined concepts, and one cannot exist without the other. Giving examples, Campbell lists the death god Ghede of the Haitian Voodoo tradition who is also a s*x god, as well as the Egyptian god Osiris who is “the judge and lord of the dead, and the lord of the regeneration of life”. From this, Campbell concludes that the central lesson to be drawn is that “you have to have death in order to have life”.

To be clear, the death and rebirth metaphorized in myth is not a clinical death that involves the cessation of all life processes. This is also the case with Freud's concept of Eros and Thanatos, and with Jung's death and rebirth archetypes. According to Campbell, within myths, death is a psychic process that we must all undergo if we are to achieve self-actualisation. He stresses this when he states that we are all born dependent on others and are required to be obedient to our caretakers. To “evolve out of this position of psychological immaturity to the courage of self-responsibility and assurance requires a death and a resurrection”. Hence, the death and rebirth motif is a metaphor for “leaving one condition and finding the source of life to bring you forth into a richer or mature condition”. The use of death and rebirth in this manner will be found in the selected psychedelic texts that will be analysed in the subsequent chapters.

According to Campbell, psychedelic experiences can be incorporated into a ritual that induces a rebirth experienced as self-transformation within the participant. Rituals are closely related to myths because rituals are, as Campbell defines them, “an enactment of a myth” (182), and “by participating in a ritual, you are actually experiencing a mythological life”. Giving an example of how psychedelics can be used in ritual, Campbell analyses the North American natives of north-western Mexico. This group associates the peyote cacti with deer and prepares very special missions to collect the peyote and return with it. According to Campbell, these “missions are mystical journeys with all of the details of the typical mystical journey”. The mission begins with disengagement from secular life. This requires the participant to confess all their faults before beginning their journey. As they approach the area that contains the natural growth of peyote, they pass special shrines that “represent stages of mental transformation”. Once they find the peyote, they approach the cacti as though they were deer. As Campbell explains, “they sneak up on it, shoot a little arrow at it, and then perform the ritual of collecting the peyote”. All these steps are not necessary from a practical perspective. However, they are necessary in a mythical context, as the ritual is a “complete duplication of the kind of experience that is associated with the inward journey”. Replying to Moyers who asks why the process must be so intricate, Campbell elaborates by saying that “if you undergo a spiritual transformation and have not had preparation for it, you do not know how to evaluate what has happened to you, and you get the terrible experience of a bad trip, as they used to call it with LSD”. What is suggested by Campbell is that the process of self-transformation – or the psychic/spiritual death and rebirth – is not arbitrary, and some guidelines must be adhered to, lest one suffer a bad trip. Campbell looks to religion and mythology to discover what these guidelines are.

Campbell argues that Christians also experience death and rebirth through the rituals and narratives of their religion. This is done by achieving a rebirth that represents a transcendence of one's current self. To do this, however, requires one to relinquish attachments to one's self and, in this way, experience a kind of metaphorical death. As Campbell explains, “you die to your flesh and are born into your spirit”. Campbell characterises this as a metaphorical return to the garden of Eden described in the Bible which is guarded by cherubim, and which humans have been banished from. He claims that to pass the cherubim and return to the garden requires an Ego death. Hence, “if you are no longer attached to your Ego existence, but see the Ego existence as a function of a larger, eternal totality, and you favour the larger against the smaller, then you won't be afraid of those two figures, and you will go through”. To find harmony, which is represented by the garden, therefore requires not a fear of death nor an unfettered attachment to life. This view of death is at odds with modern conceptions of death. From this perspective, death is not an end that is to be avoided, nor is it seen as the antithesis of life. Rather, it is conceived of as something that must be balanced with life to achieve harmony. Without death, there is no self-actualisation and only stagnancy is possible. As Campbell writes, “you have to balance between death and life – they are two aspects of the same thing, which is being, becoming”.

The motif of death and rebirth being a process of self-transformation is not limited to shamanic cultures and Abrahamic religions. It also makes an appearance in many Eastern religions and myths in the form of reincarnation. Campbell suggests reincarnation must be understood metaphorically because a literal interpretation fails to capture what is being conveyed by the myths. The idea of reincarnation, according to Campbell, suggests “that you are more than you think you are. There are dimensions of your being and a potential for realisation and consciousness that are not included in your concept of yourself”.

The Hero's Journey

The idea of death and rebirth as part of a psychological transformative process embedded in mythology is best expressed in Campbell's theory of the monomyth, which claims that in stories around the world, a recurring pattern of the Hero's Journey is present. In short, the Hero's Journey centres on an everyman who is thrust out of his ordinary world into an adventure that variously tests them, and ultimately has them facing death. By overcoming death, the hero is reborn, and they bring the treasures they gain back to their home. This story, although it may take a different archetypal form, retains the same structure, as it describes a universal psychological process. Hence, in The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), Campbell claims that:

whether we listen with aloof amusement to the dreamlike mumbo jumbo of some red-eyed witch doctor of the Congo, or read with cultivated thin translations from the sonnets of the mystic Lao-tse; now and again crack the hard nutshell of an argument of Aquinas, or catch suddenly the shining meaning of a bizarre Eskimo fairy tale: it will always be the one, shape-shifting yet marvellously constant story that we find.

In this work, Campbell explores his theory of the universal monomyth. The central figure, the hero, represents the idealised self as well as the highest ideals and values of a culture, and “is the man or woman who has been able to battle past his personal and local historical limitations to the generally valid, normally human forms”. It is through the hero that myths illustrate that “there must be, if we are to experience long survival – a continuous ‘recurrence of birth' (palingenesia) to nullify the unremitting recurrences of death”. There is a similarity between the Hero's Journey and psychedelics' effect on the psyche, as they both concern shifting one from familiar states of mind to unfamiliar, often novel mental states that can result in tumultuous experiences. As Campbell explains, “the first work of the hero is to retreat from the world scene of secondary to those causal zones of the psyche where the difficulties really reside”.

Conclusion

Nobody is going to read to this point so I can admit I'm going to try again with the girl who rejected me. I'm going to tell her I still have feelings for her and I can't get over them. Last time she rejected me, she also said she doesn't know how she feels so there's a chance if you ask me. I'm going to tell her I love her and I want to give a relationship a chance. If I fail, then it's truly over beyond belief.

Tune in next time when we discuss Richard Huckle, Peter Scully, and Daisy's Destruction.

Since summer is coming all too soon to !texas I got to work on a project I been needin to do recently: fixing my window unit

A little backstory. I live in a trailer. pulled this circa 2003 ish unit, from another trailer. it sat since the end of 2010

it was 2021 I pulled it out.

when you're a country boy, you make do. why go buy a new window unit when the old trailer's got some sitting around?

actually, I pulled 2 sister units of the same vintage and manufacture at the time. one had a bad refrigeration circuit, probably the compressor rotted out on the bottom and leaked the gas

a parts unit

it sat in its new home beside the driveway patiently until it would be needed

lo and behold, just 2 yeears later, its time came

the working unit had served me well for 21 and 22 but the bearings on the fan were shot from sitting 10 years without moving, partially exposed to the weather.

it was pretty loud.

and since you need AC at least 8 months out of the year in this glorious state , it was working pretty hard.

I had alreaty scrounged the capacitor from the parts unit bc it was going, and every six months or so I had to oil the bearings or they'd start to seize.

and it was getting worse. as 'winter' finally rolled around last year and I only needed the thing some days I could spare time to try and fix it. the seizing was terminal at this point and she would suffer no more

this wasn't my first time putting together a frankenstein unit. I had done basically the same thing before with 2 other sister units from another building. these were from 1998/1999, the good old days , older than me

they also sat since 2010

well one had no refrigeration and the other had a seized motor right from the get go. so I took the good from each and made one working unit

back to the newer unit... I pulled the fan assembly from the driveway machine and put it in. one uuge problem. It was so fricking loud

I couldn't even sleep with it on. these bearings were worse than the old ones, but at least they were still spinnign. there was still some heat to get through before november brought peace so I powered through

but it got worse. the plastic condenser fan, having sat outside, dissembled in the driveway, had been exposed to a bunch of UV I guess and had turned to more or less cardboard. (I could just peel pieces of it apart when I took it out)

the fan blades were breaking and making it go out of balance.

So by the end of the cooling season this thing was an ear bleeding and earthshaking monstrosity in my windowsill.

something had to be done... but its december now there's no need for AC I'll fix it later

that time was (is) now. ferbruary is coming to a close and with it will go the beutiful cold I've been enjoying. ( can't wait to find home)

I took the seized fan unit that was just waiting for some kind of final solution. I tore that motor open

there they were...

2 easy to replace 608s

got a 10 pack online for $7

pulled the mfs and pressed the new ones on

spin the thing

silence

so I threw her back together and into the window.

turned it on and there's only the sound of the air (and compressor) now

now you might have read this (probably not ) and wondered, what's that title about?

well its about what happened last night when I got the thing in the window and turned it on.

the satisfaction of a job well done washed over me as I sat down at the old puter to browse rdrams.

and then thought popped into my head. the pernicious idea. only for a moment, but made me stop right in my tracks: "why didn't I take pictures of everything to make an effortpost?"

and then I was sick

I realised this was the thought of a social media user. this is not me. no.

so no I DIDN'T take pictures. No you DON'T get to see

I'm going to enjoy my life with my own dmn eyes and I'm not going to become a 'gram zombie posting my every meal.

everytime I see a picture of a modern concert or venue where every. single. person. there is more concerned about filming the thing than actually being there, I want to vom.

it's disgusting and I feel ashamed for even the brief moment of remorse I felt about not filming this mundane task for the viewership of what, like 23 r-slurs online.

still felt the need to make the text post albiet

I should be making marseys like I came here to do but instead I've been gooning to stable diffusion building workflows and exploring advanced generative ai systems all weekend. at least I went outside and fixed a AC

Um dia atrasado pq eu tomei um ban de 1 dia por postar mulheres com pinto

/r/Brasil

https://old.reddit.com/r/brasil/comments/1hhapxv/d%C3%B3lar_dispara_e_fecha_a_r_626_maior_cota%C3%A7%C3%A3o_da/

Trancado pq estavam falando verdades inconvenientes demais, isso obviamente só pode ser obra de infiltrados fascistas de outros subs

https://old.reddit.com/r/brasil/comments/1hh3gqy/eu_j%C3%A1_entendi_a_quest%C3%A3o_do_d%C3%B3lar_alto_por_que_ele/

Um monte de bosta sem sentido, os caras tão dando nó na própria fimose pra defender o governo. Eu não li mas eu imagino que seja mais do mesmo: mercado fascista malvadão etcetc

https://old.reddit.com/r/brasil/comments/1hhc2o9/d%C3%B3lar_bateu_r_631/

O post não trancado mas altamente janniado

Olha só

antes

depois

KEK

Esquece, já trancaram

Vamos aos outros subs

/r/Brasilivre

Não li, mas imagino que seja tudo 'faz o L'

https://old.reddit.com/r/brasilivre/comments/1hhb3y4/eita_poh/

Cagando na cabeça de um twitteiro r-slurado

https://old.reddit.com/r/brasilivre/comments/1hh7z0l/a_seita_ataca_novamente/

Cagando na cabeça daquelas jornalistas nojentas

https://old.reddit.com/r/brasilivre/comments/1hh2nmh/_/

Esse é pro @nuclearshill, tu que curte a argentina. viu que mataram um argentino no rio e o juiz não mandou prender?

https://old.reddit.com/r/brasilivre/comments/1hgzlll/o_recado_no_finalzinho_%C3%A9_bem_importante/

Seria esse governo horroroso uma vingança do lula?

https://old.reddit.com/r/brasilivre/comments/1hh2lm4/mude_minha_opini%C3%A3o_lula_est%C3%A1_se_vingando_por_ter/

Já aproveitando a deixa, isso aqui foi engraçado, mas não tem a ver

https://old.reddit.com/r/brasilivre/comments/1hg8xw9/universidades_p%C3%BAblicas_brasileiras_beiram_o/

https://old.reddit.com/r/brasilivre/comments/1hh0jw5/discuss%C3%A3o_entre_jornalista_e_s%C3%A9rgio_sacani_sobre/

/r/Farialimabets -- era um sub de meme mas meio que virou um campo de batalha entre MAV do rBrasil e seres humanos

https://old.reddit.com/r/farialimabets/comments/1hh0y9h/compre_na_alta_e_venda_na_alta/

https://old.reddit.com/r/farialimabets/comments/1hh80x6/estupidez_level_1000/

https://old.reddit.com/r/farialimabets/comments/1hhcejq/o_mundo_n%C3%A3o_%C3%A9_mais_o_mesmo/

https://old.reddit.com/r/farialimabets/comments/1hhf274/a_um_m%C3%AAs_atr%C3%A1s_algu%C3%A9m_comentou_aqui_no_sub_que/

https://old.reddit.com/r/farialimabets/comments/1hh97a4/j%C3%A1_eras_sub_fomos_descobertos/

https://old.reddit.com/r/farialimabets/comments/1hhb8qe/partiu_aeroporto/

https://old.reddit.com/r/farialimabets/comments/1hh9vc5/achei_o_tal_ataque_especulativo_do_cambio/

https://old.reddit.com/r/farialimabets/comments/1hgmj5o/em_quem_eu_acredito/

/r/Flanelaa (reduto de gente que quer xingar o /r/Brasil)

https://old.reddit.com/r/Flanelaa/comments/1hh0qxz/o_governo_lula_%C3%A9_um_fracasso/

https://old.reddit.com/r/Flanelaa/comments/1hhcexl/update_senhores/

https://old.reddit.com/r/Flanelaa/comments/1hhbn4e/n%C3%A3o_sou_nenhum_economista_mas_acho_que_est%C3%A1_na/

https://old.reddit.com/r/Flanelaa/comments/1hgi10q/haddad_era_so_uma_ferramenta/

/r/investimentos -- Segura que agora vem pedrada

https://old.reddit.com/r/Flanelaa/comments/1hgi10q/haddad_era_so_uma_ferramenta/

https://old.reddit.com/r/investimentos/comments/1hh41ul/acho_que_n%C3%A3o_tenho_emocional_pra_bater_cabe%C3%A7a_com/

https://old.reddit.com/r/investimentos/comments/1hha874/selic_negociada_na_curva_de_juros_est%C3%A1_acima_de/

https://old.reddit.com/r/investimentos/comments/1hhafgi/como_est%C3%A3o_protegendo_o_seu_patrim%C3%B4nio_desse/

https://old.reddit.com/r/investimentos/comments/1hh16ru/vou_voltar_a_aportar_na_bolsa_brasileira/

https://old.reddit.com/r/investimentos/comments/1hhdfqu/ueee_come%C3%A7ou_a_terceira_guerra_mundial/

https://old.reddit.com/r/investimentos/comments/1hh5810/acredito_que_o_d%C3%B3lar_vai_se_acomodar_afirma_haddad/

https://old.reddit.com/r/investimentos/comments/1hhcex4/s%C3%B3_pode_ser_piada_parte_2/

https://old.reddit.com/r/investimentos/comments/1hhcv2l/saiu_agora_18hs38min_18dez24_bc_anuncia_leil%C3%A3o_de/

https://old.reddit.com/r/investimentos/comments/1hhbd0h/onde_voc%C3%AAs_acham_que_vai_parar_essa_subida_do/

https://old.reddit.com/r/investimentos/comments/1hhd39r/histeria/

https://old.reddit.com/r/investimentos/comments/1hh5g9i/d%C3%B3lar_alto_no_fim_do_ano_%C3%A9_o_pior_cen%C3%A1rio_que/

https://old.reddit.com/r/investimentos/comments/1hgl87e/cansei_n%C3%A3o_vou_deixar_1_centavo_do_meu_dinheiro/

E pra finalizar, você sabe o que realmente é brigading?

Quando um MAV do /r/Brasil vai em outro sub pra fazer post desonesto defendendo o governo.

https://old.reddit.com/r/investimentos/comments/1hgg6a7/voc%C3%AAs_tem_no%C3%A7%C3%A3o_do_que_%C3%A9_um_ipca_7_at%C3%A9_2045_%C3%A9_uma/

Libertarians are a funny bunch. Half want to smoke weed and let corporations run everything and the other half secretly wants to roll back to 1946 America. How can person possibly tell which libertarian they are talking to? The age old litmus test of illegal immigration. It's always a hot topic among libertarians where half want to deport every illegal and the other half doesn't want the government to be strong enough to do that. It's their version of the omnipotence question.

Only instead of trying to give an honest and thoughtful answer, they just accuse each other of being sock puppets for (((sarc)))

The linked article is written by some foid that wants to have completely open borders. Typical libertarian talking point. Below is a summary of the comments

Chapter 1: 5.56 is a fed

Vernon Depner: Every time a criminal is punished, that tears apart a family.

5.56: I hope those ILLEGALS get theirs torn apart so good and hard. Time to watch some border footage, yum.

VULGAR MADMAN : Ok, Fed.

5.56: Ok, Fag

VULGAR MADMAN : Is 5.56 the length or the diameter of your penis?

5.56: A faggot would be interested in that kind of information.

VULGAR MADMAN: So you're tiny. I'm so sorry.

Don't look at me: .

A wild prfd1 appears!

prfd1 is angered by Don't look at me's comment consisting of a single, fucking, period.

prfd1: An international political (DEMOCRAT) organization issues arrest warrants for Jews……

	First nation saying – "WE WILL ARREST THOSE JEWS"

	.

	GERMANY – 2024.

	.

	WTF?

	DEAD SERIOUS.

	FUCKING LOOK IT UP.

	DON'T USE GOOGLE IF YOU ARE HONEST.

prfd1's version of gooning is injecting wild thoughts into unrelated conversations.

Chapter 2

Times's up on VULGAR MADMAN's and 5.56's refractory period. These lady boys are busting out the manly toys. First they swing at a woman. Her name is Fiona, she wrote the opinion piece on illegal immigration. Opinion pieces

are the only thing reason.com is has. They don't actually do investigative journalism. They constantly insult the main stream media's ability to do a job they aren't will to do themselves. Oh the illegal irony!

5.56: Fionas tears are almost as sweet as those of ILLEGALS. Im thinking about all the DOORS that are SHUT to the children of ILLEGAL LOSER parents. All those translator puppet children of ILLEGAL LOSER parents that speak no english and let their 10 year old ANCHOR BABY APPENDAGES do all the talking at walmart for them. How sad and hopeless they must feel. I really love it.

VULGAR MADMAN: You're really overdoing it sarc.

5.56: You are more retarded than you are old. Which is probably really hard.

VULGAR MADMAN: You only get hard when you go to links posted by palins buttplug.

5.56: Jesus Christ, this so has absolutely nothing to do with me. But you also failed to identify me correctly when I did my Fiona one trick pony parody account. You fucking idiot legit wouldnt stop accusing me of being OBL. Youre really not that bright, buddy.

Chapter 3: Drunken sockpuppets

GroundTruth has a solid question about how these policies will be enacted. He thinks racism is for practical matters though. He needs to be sent to the re-education camps first. FR FR.

GroundTruth pontificates with sweeping arms. "How does Trump propose to do this? Will we all be required to carry papers showing where we were born? As a practical matter, how do you separate the wheat from the chaff?"

Sarcasmic turns his head to the side, his smugness already yanking back one side of his mouth.

	   "If you're unwilling to sacrifice liberty to round up 11,000,000 vermin, then you're not a libertarian. If you don't support expanded police powers and immunities to catch these vermin, then you're not a libertarian. 

	   If you oppose deploying the military to build concentration camps for these vermin, then you're not a libertarian.  No, if you oppose any of those things, you're a leftist. Duh."

5.56 looks in sarcasmic's direction and righteously yells "ICE ICE BABY".

"Getting your socks mixed up again?" says VULGAR MADMAN as he walks up the 5.56.

VULGAR lifts his pant legs to show both of his socks match.

5.56 rolls his eyes at VULGAR MADMAN while scratching his balls. He replies, "You are beyond retarded, bud. Hope you die soon,

telling from how inflexible your brain is it can't be much longer."

A bottle of scotch is crafted from artisanal air as its imagined contents glides into VULGAR's mouth.

"Your alcoholism will kill you first, sarcasmic." replies VULGAR

"You know that everybody here can see how much of a fucking dipshit you are when you call me sarc, right?" shouts 5.56.

"Keep coping drunky."

"I think youre coping with the fact that you are expired. Must hurt."

A commenter by the name 'Don't look at me!' clicks the littlest co-signing pen in the world.

"Poor sarc" he says while making a pouty face at 5.56.

5.56 didn't even turn his head while quipping,

"Another goddamn idiot, dont worry, won't look at you. Unless you really want me to lol".

The green ethereal form of Vernon Depner fills the room with a faded green smoke. Arising from the vapors is a skeletal hand draped in a tattered sleeve. A long yellowish boned finger points to 5.56. The spectre's drooping face wails "We can all see who the dipshit is."

DesigNate is not impressed by the Spirit halloween store theatrics and asks ,"Is that a 5.56 spoof or did him and Vulgar get some beef with each other?"

5.56 and MrMxyzptlk both have eager replies to DesigNate's query.

Disgust flinging from his mouth 5.56 lets us know what he really thinks aboug VULGAR.

"Vulgar is old and not very bright, so he is stuck on that sarc paranoia. He also seems to really like ILLEGALS for whatever reason. I mean, reason really doesn't have the brightest kind of commenters in general when you look at their little AI infatuations of late. But this here is as bad as it gets."

He continues.

"Its pretty obvious that Vulgar doesn't have the ability to process a whole lot of information, I mean I comment rarely, but not that rarely that the slow kid would have a reason to assume that I'm a sock."

MrMxyzptlk then offers his own theory to the query. "I think it's a reverse Spartacus gambit. Anyone they don't like they claim is 'Sarcasmic' a guy living rent free in their heads. They then dismiss this supposed sock of Sarcasmic as

being not worth discussing matters with. They're pussies."

From the top of the peanut gallery two new voices accuse MrMxyzptlk of being a sarc puppet

"Says the sarc puppet."

"Good one sarc!"

Chapter 4: AT is the worst AT-AT

A commenter by the name of AT thinks Fiona is cherry picking deflated numbers because she cited a report that came out in January of 2022. AT insists that Fiona could have used more relevant numbers and AT's barrage began with the glare of red rockets and bombs busting in air!

AT goes on a rant and I'm not copying all of it.

Sarcasmic from the top of the ropes invokes Godwin's law and lands with an elbow drop that causes his haters to spew cope.

"We're either a nation of laws, or we're not.

Germany in the late 1930s was a nation of laws. Everything that was done was done in accordance with laws and regulations from the government. Everything.

It doesn't matter if it would tear apart families, affect American workers, or require militaristic enforcement.

They said the same thing."

VULGAR scoffs "Sarc with his genius idea's again."

"He's now an ansarcist" says someone not worth remembering

"More like: analcyst." chortles VULGAR

AT replies with spit flying from his mouth.

"So what? You did the EXACT THING that I said punks like you do (and Godwin'd it while you did).

Look, this is simple:

If you DON'T want to be a nation of laws, THEN SAY THAT.

If you DON'T think the United States of America should be a thing, THEN SAY THAT.

Stop pussyfooting around where you really stand. The criminal illegal population in America is a SERIOUS problem.

If you want that problem to continue until the United States of America can no longer endure and then falls, THEN SAY THAT.

Or are you too much of a coward, and intellectual fraud, to do so – like Fiona clearly is."

Sarcasmic responds with vague talk about morals that vault him onto the high road.

"Authoritarians blindly follow laws because they blindly follow authority. People with a moral sense question unjust laws and see flouting them as a patriotic duty."

5.56 screeches

"Dude, the open borders camp is completely tonedeaf and out of touch with the reality of the kinds of individuals that illegal immigration brings into this country. Those upgraders are one of last groups that need sympathetic

political representation. Even the legal-ish ones know very well what theyre doing by instrumentalizing their children to become socioeconomic anchors. Making this shit legally easier isn't gonna help anyone."

AT is practically on his knees begging Sarcastic to declare that he hates America.

"You still can't even manage to say it out loud, can you. Can't sell it to anyone unless you obfuscate what you're peddling."

Chumby thinks making fun of Biden is going to make libertarians seethe

"Guess that makes Biden Hitler."

"Now THERE'S a winning ticket!" replies the ghostly form of Vernon Depner as he finally admits he's a nazi.

It's off to heaven now as his spirit finishes it's unsettled business.

Well that all the highlights everyone. I hope you guys enjoyed my first effort post. Jewish lives matter