@hmforester
Author of sci-fi, psi-fi, and mystical adventure novels • Avid reader • Wikipedia editor • Webmaster • Lover of nature • Peacefully resisting. Blog: mystical-faction.blogspot.com Original photo by Gabriela Palai, cropped. Creative Commons Zero licence.
😳🇺🇸 Donald Trump: We could do things [regarding Iran] that would be so bad that they would literally never be able to recover as a nation. And we're trying to be nice about it. We're not doing that.
Like the man said ...
Palantir CEO Makes Shocking Confession on Disrupting Democratic Power:
“They’re saying the quiet part out loud now ...”
newrepublic.com/post/207693/...
A girl seated side-on, with her head turned to look toward the viewer. Her right shoulder rests on her lap and her chin rests on her right hand, deep in thought or contemplation. Behind her, though not painted in detail, are dark green hills and sky.
No Better Time
~~~~~~~
“Whatever you're meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible.”
~ Doris Lessing, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, 2007.
Image: Girl's Portrait (Thinker, Contemplation) / Erzsébet Korb (1899–1925) / Wikimedia Commons / Public domain.
Image: Zan Zig performing with rabbit and roses, magician poster / Strobridge Litho. Co., Cincinnati & New York / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.0.
Image: Zan Zig performing with rabbit and roses, magician poster / Strobridge Litho. Co., Cincinnati & New York / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.0. A theatrical poster for the magician Zan Zig, showing him clutching hold of a rabbit, and with other objects in mid-air that he's made appear, such as doves and roses. Sporting a handle-bars moustache, Zan Zig is wearing a black suit with tails, and a white short and white bow tie.
Carpe diem
~~~~~~~
“What you can do, or dream you can, begin it,
Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it,
Only engage, and then the mind grows heated—
Begin it, and the work will be completed!”
~ Goethe, freely translated by (and inspiring) Irish poet John Anster.
New research indicates humans experimented with symbolic writing as much as 40,000 years ago. This recontextualizes the history of human communication, given the earliest known written languages are Mesopotamian dating back to around 3000 BCE. bit.ly/4bgcRYw
A rectangular maze with walls drawn in black on a white background. There is no exit from the maze.
“A rat in a maze is free to go anywhere, as long as it stays inside the maze.”
~ Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale.
Image: Scratch BG maze-03 10 [with increased border] / Nevit Dilmen / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0.
#MargaretAtwood #HandmaidsTale #Prison #Freedom
MeshCore: Connecting people and things, without using the internet:
Off-line and Off-grid messaging platform for a new era of secure communications.
meshcore.co.uk
The Garden Gate at Vetheuil, a painting by Claude Monet. Leading toward the wooden picket gate, on either side, in front of a low picket fence, are flower beds containing a profusion of leafy plants with red blossoms. Above the tall gate, to each side, are trees, bowing toward the partly open gate, and also above the gate is a shallow wooden arch.
A Sense of Wonder
~~~~~~~
Art: The Garden Gate at Vetheuil / Claude Monet / WikiArt / Public domain.
#Monet #ClaudeMonet #SenseOfWonder
Witkoff + Kushner are fools:
"Nuclear experts undercut White House claims about reactor at heart of case for war: Administration sent negotiators w/o nuclear expertise to lead talks on enrichment program. Now, its case for war centers on a facility that experts say cannot do what officials claim."
A photo titled "Doors of Perception", showing a short corridor with open doors at each end, and Hamilton Gardens in view through the far end.
Source: Richard Tarnas, The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas that Have Shaped Our World View.
Image: Doors of Perception / cogdogblog / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.0.
Image containing a text quotation, with a grey silhouette of the side of a human skull and white cogs in place of a brain, in the lower left-hand corner. The text, from Richard Tarnas, The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas that Have Shaped Our World View, reads: Our Worldview: “The world is in some essential sense a construct. Human knowledge is radically interpretive. There are no perspective-independent facts. Every act of perception and cognition is contingent, mediated, situated, contextual, theory-soaked. Human language cannot establish its ground in an independent reality. Meaning is rendered by the mind and cannot be assumed to inhere in the object, in the world beyond the mind, for that world can never be contacted without having already been saturated by the mind's own nature. That world cannot even be justifiably postulated. Radical uncertainty prevails, for in the end what one knows and experiences is to an indeterminate extent a projection.”
“The world is in some essential sense a construct. Human knowledge is radically interpretive. There are no perspective-independent facts. Every act of perception and cognition is contingent, mediated, situated, contextual, theory-soaked ...”
~ Richard Tarnas, The Passion of the Western Mind.
Plato’s Cave
~~~~~~~
Once You Understand Plato’s Cave, There’s No Going Back ...
Video (14 min).
www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAn9...
#PlatosCave #Illusion #Awakening #Reality #HerosJourney #HerosQuest
Thousands of authors publish ‘empty’ book in protest over AI using their work
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
Trump doesn’t have the ability to dictate when the war is over.
A young woman, sleeping beauty, with long fair hair, in a dark dress, and with the fingers of her hand interlaced in front of her, lies asleep, with her head raised, perhaps on a reddish-coloured couch.
Image: Sleeping Beauty / Victor Gabriel Gilbert (1847–1933) / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0.
Image containing a text quotation. The text, from Edgar Allan Poe, Marginalia, reads: Poe's “Psychal Fancies”: On the Edge of Dreams: “There is ... a class of fancies of exquisite delicacy, which are not thoughts, and to which, as yet, I have found it absolutely impossible to adapt language. ... They arise in the soul only at its epochs of most intense tranquility—when the bodily and mental health are in perfection—and at that mere points of time where the confines of the waking world blends with those of the world of dreams. I am aware of these ‘fancies’ only when I am upon the very brink of sleep with the consciousness that I am so.”
“There is ... a class of fancies of exquisite delicacy, which are not thoughts, and to which, as yet, I have found it absolutely impossible to adapt language. ... They arise in the soul only at its epochs of most intense tranquility ...”
~ Edgar Allan Poe, Marginalia.
#Hypnagogia
Yes, it could be a lot worse: Dr. Strangelove is back on the bingo card.
Logo with the word "trivia" in blue block capitals on an orange rectangular background. Behind the "t" on the left-hand side is a yellow pointed star, and above the "i" and the right of the "a" are five more stars in blue, maroon, green, light blue, and purple.
Source: Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death. Quoted in Norman D. Livergood, The Perennial Tradition.
Image: Trivia 1 / NunoAgostinho at Portuguese Wikibooks / Wikimedia Commons / Public domain.
Image containing a text quotation, with a small cartoon of a clown, arms outstretched, and a broad smile etched across his face, in the bottom left-hand corner. The text, from Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death. Quoted in Norman D. Livergood, The Perennial Tradition, reads: The Demise of Western Culture: “When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk: culture-death is a clear possibility.”
“When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk ... then a nation finds itself at risk: culture-death is a clear possibility.”
~ Neil Postman.
The octopus and the handmaid: Reform’s Epsteinian cultural agenda:
“From Epstein’s web to Reform’s proposed raft of policy ideas, creeping misogyny now risks redefining women’s rights in Britain ...”
westenglandbylines.co.uk/politics/hum...
Illustration of “The Emperor's New Clothes” by Vilhelm Pedersen (1820 - 1859), showing the emperor parading past a crowd, with his attendants at hand, some holding a canopy over his head.
Source: Mary Watkins, Invisible Guests: The Development of Imaginal Dialogues.
Image: Illustration of “The Emperor's New Clothes” / Vilhelm Pedersen (1820 - 1859) / Wikimedia Commons / Public domain.
Image containing a text quotation. The text, from Mary Watkins, Invisible Guests: The Development of Imaginal Dialogues, reads: Relativizing the Ego: “As psychic life is peopled with multiple characters who enjoy varying degrees of autonomy and who are known in their complexity, there occurs a radical shift with respect to the “ego”. The “I” becomes not just the one who observes the others. It is now seen as well. It too is like a character, with certain styles of being and interacting which the imaginal others recognize: organizer, narrator, confidant, supervisor. One character may see “ego” as power hungry, another as an infidel, always deserting him or her. Each reveals a different persona, often eclipsing our habitual conceptions of ourselves.”
“As psychic life is peopled with multiple characters who enjoy varying degrees of autonomy and who are known in their complexity, there occurs a radical shift with respect to the “ego”. The “I” becomes not just the one who observes the others ...” ~ Mary Watkins, Invisible Guests.
Meet The Female Journalist Risking Her Life To Report On Women In Afghanistan
Joan Baez, "Joe Hill" live at the Woodstock Festival, 1969 ...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-JW...
Country Joe & the Fish ~ VietNam Song - Live Woodstock 1969 ...
R.I.P. Joseph Allen "Country Joe" McDonald (born January 1, 1942 - March 7, 2026).
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ft0v...
When The Wind Blows (1986).
~~~~~~~
A British apocalyptic adult animated film . The film stars Peggy Ashcroft and John Mills in voice roles as Jim and Hilda Bloggs, an elderly British couple living in rural Sussex during the Cold War.
Video (1 hr 25 min).
www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zjJ...
Threads (1984 film).
~~~~~
“The effects of a nuclear holocaust on the working class city of Sheffield, England and the eventual long-term effects of nuclear war on civilization.”
Video (1 hr 57 min).
www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUmU...
