SKYE’S LINKS 09/29/22
They Blew That Baby Up!
Somebody blew big holes in the Nordstream undersea pipelines. Who did it? The commie scum press blames it on the United States military. But not so fast, folks…
Spooky things took place below the Baltic Sea, and everybody was talking. Blowing up a pipeline is an act of war against Germany and Russia. Who stands to gain by creating anti-war refuseniks in the USA after getting two scoops of problems from Russian refuseniks?
Our soldiers were let down. The top brass was so hyped up about a false threat to readiness that they discharged the best and the brightest – dishonorably. The tide is turning in favor of the troops that maintained their critical thinking skills when everyone else was bending to the media campaign.
Are you an investor? There is more trouble afoot. Even if the greenie weenies suddenly came to their senses, Germany is shutting down its nuclear power plant tomorrow. A lot of maintenance was deferred ahead of the decommissioning. Oh, yeah, they want nuclear power now…
Skye’s links are pretty intense this week, including great insight from TTP’s dear friend, Victor David Hanson.
Welcome aboard.
THE EYELASH AT DAWN
The first of The Seven Pearls of Shing is called Mijgon or The Eyelash. It’s at 5,300 ft in the Fann Mountains of Western Tajikistan. At dawn, the air is still and crystal clear as is the water. The surface of the lake becomes a mesmerising mirror with the early light reflecting the vertical cliffs above while penetrating to the translucent lake bed below. It is an epic example of the boundless beauty of our world. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #222 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
THE EMPRESS WHO LOVED ACHILLES
On a mountain top on the island of Corfu in 1890, Empress Elizabeth of Austria built a magnificent marble palace called the Achilleion, dedicated to her hero, the legendary Achilles of Homer’s Iliad. Here she retreated from the world, amidst the palace’s gorgeous gardens overlooking the Mediterranean abundant with larger-than-life statues of her ideal man, “who despised all mortals and did not fear even the gods."
All of Europe knew her as Sisi. Adored by her husband Emperor Franz Joseph I, renowned as the most beautiful – and most beloved -- woman of her time, she was Austria’s Empress for 44 years. Her life ended tragically, murdered at random by an anarchist who wanted to “kill a royal.”
The Achilleion today is maintained immaculately in all its original glory as a museum you can visit. Don’t pass the chance to see it for yourself. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #76 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
IRANIAN WOMEN CAST OFF THEIR HIJABS
The death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman, has ignited nationwide protests across Iran. Amini was beaten to death by the mullahs’ morality police after she was detained in Tehran on 13 September, after failing to comply with the regime’s strict hijab (headscarf) rules.
Women in Iran have been treated as second-class citizens by the mullahs for more than four decades. The misogynist lunacy of the clerical regime has even extended to a demand by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that cartoon character women must wear the hijab. Now, in Iran, even animated female characters in cartoons cannot reveal their hair!
Women’s dress codes are under constant scrutiny. They must wear the hijab and ‘morality police’ are on relentless patrol to enforce the law.
REPUBLICANS MAKE THEIR CASE TO MIDDLE AMERICA
MONONGAHELA, Pennsylvania — Whether by design or necessity, the decision by House Republican leaders to kick off their Commitment to America in this river town on the edge of Allegheny County was quite apt.
There is no easy way to get here from Pittsburgh, or from the airport, or from our nation’s capital. House Minority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana laughed, saying the very point of the Commitment to America is to reach the people and places Congress neglects to the point that it needs a GPS to find them and a dictionary to spell them.
The Republicans' goal, he said, is to show up and hear the concerns of people in places just like this one and to commit as a party to finding solutions.
ADAM AND EVE AND AMANITA
Glimpse (#98) was the back panel of the Painted Monastery of Voronet. Here you see a side panel fresco of Adam and Eve tempted by the serpent in the Garden of Eden.
Startlingly, however, the couple is not eating an apple at the serpent’s behest but a hallucinogenic Amanita muscaria mushroom – recognizable as the classic Disney cartoon mushroom with the red cap and white spots. Sounds hard to believe but there it is, 532 years old. It’s the center panel of a triptych, the left panel has Adam and Eve each grasping an Amanita stalk, the right panel knowing they are naked covering themselves with fig leaves.
In all three panels, the Garden of Eden is an Amanita garden. This is devotional art by deeply devout Christians over 500 years ago. What’s going on? Amanita muscaria is commonly found in the Carpathian forests to this day. Did the Voronet painters engage in Amanita ceremonies giving them visions they used to paint their churches? Did those visions make them decide it was Amanita and not an apple that Eve ate?
From time immemorial, people have used hallucinogenic plants to commune with the spirit world. Researchers have shown that Soma, the god instantiated on earth in the earliest Hindu texts, is Amanita muscaria. And they’ve made another connection. Google Amanita muscaria + Santa Claus to find out. Better be sitting down. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #99 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON IN CHINA??
Something weird is taking place in China but, as of this writing, nobody is quite sure what’s happening. Social media has lit up with information, some of which is verifiable and some of which is pure speculation.
The most widely spread rumor is that there is a coup being carried out against Xi Jinping, but that’s also the least likely thing to be taking place according to experienced China watchers.
We know that, on Saturday, there were fewer commercial flights over Beijing than usual. There’ve also been rumors that trains and buses into and out of Beijing have been canceled, and claims that military vehicles have been seen heading for Beijing, although there’s no reliable provenance for that particular short video.
According to Newsweek, the most prominent source for the story is an Indian politician:
CONTRACT TO DEFEAT BIG GOVERNMENT SOCIALISM
The goal of every American should be to defeat Big Government Socialism. Republicans specifically must develop a contract for 2024 built around restoring the America that works by defeating and replacing Big Government Socialism.
It is not enough to just defeat individual personalities. President Joe Biden might lose or retire because he is at times incoherent and cognitively challenged. Vice President Kamala Harris might lose because of her laugh and her failures at the border (and at every other assignment she has been given).
But failed Democrat personalities will simply lead to new Democrat personalities’ being lifted by party kingmakers. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, or some other favored Democrat will run, arguing that predecessors’ failures were due to personality and not to philosophy.
And modest reforms that simply slow the growth of Big Government Socialism are not enough. We must...
KEEPING YOUR SANITY BY DISTINGUISHING WANTING FROM LIKING
What we want, and what we end up liking when we get it are two different things. They each involve different parts of our brain, and different states of mind.
Understanding this difference and bringing more consciousness to what you think you want can save you a huge amount of time, effort… and money.
The difference between what we want, and what we will like when we get it is what researchers Dan Gilbert and Tim Wilson call “Miswanting.” We have a strong bias toward what we want, and we often aren’t very good at predicting how we’ll feel once we get it.
The antidote, as with many things, is to bring awareness to the part of the experience we haven’t been looking at.
HALF-FULL REPORT 09/23/22
Quality in Government
We have a Serious Problem
From one end of government to the other, in nearly every country and every system, we face a problem with Quality.
The electric grid is failing; it has already fallen in many places.
Our politics are based on false counts and false data.
As bad as it is in the West, it's much worse in Russia. Ukraine has learned some critical lessons and made much progress.
Can it be fixed? Can the ship be righted?
YES! Yes, by treating poor quality government as we treat propaganda. Expose it. Fix it.