THE WORLD’S MOST UNIQUE BIRD
This is a Hoatzin. I took this picture in the Amazon jungles of Colombia, its native habitat. It has no genetic relationship to any other bird, and thus has its own family, the Opisthocomidae, and its own suborder, the Opisthocomi. Extensive DNA-sequencing demonstrates that “the hoatzin is the last surviving member of a bird line that branched off in its own direction 64 million years ago, shortly after the extinction event that killed the non-avian dinosaurs.”
The Hoatzin is the Dinosaur Bird, the only bird on earth directly descended from the dinosaurs. It makes weird noises – grunts, hisses, groans and croaks – no melodious birdsongs. It emits an awful smell due to its fermentation digestive system, and tastes just as awful so no one hunts it for food. Yet it is distinctively pretty in a hyper-funky way. Spend enough time exploring the Amazon, and you may be lucky to see one. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #186 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
AIKIDO AND THE GLOWARMER FLEA
The Galactosphere
[This week’s Archive was originally published on May 7, 2007. I had some fun with it at the start, but it ends with a fascinating theory by two professors of astrophysics. Since Warmism is a secular religion invulnerable to real facts and science, it has since been ignored, but it’s useful to bring it to attention now. Enjoy.]
TTP, May 9, 2007
We're going for a wild ride here, starting on a log floating down a river, then go on a fling through the galaxy. On the way, we'll examine the extinction of the dinosaurs. We'll end up applying aikido to astrophysics as a way to de-subsidize the glowarmers.
Glowarmers – those who believe in the religion of Man-Made ("Anthropogenic") Global warming – argue that:
- The earth's climate is getting dangerously warmer due to "greenhouse gases" that hold heat in the atmosphere so it can't escape into frigid space…
- The greenhouse gas primarily responsible for this "greenhouse effect" causing global warming is carbon dioxide…
- Human energy production and consumption (e.g., coal-fired power plants, internal combustion engines) is the primary emitter of the additional carbon dioxide causing the global warming…
- Thus the solution to global warming is the drastic reduction of human carbon dioxide emissions.
So lunatic enormous that the glowarmers' egos are like the ultimate joke example of egomania, the flea with a hard-on.
HALF-FULL REPORT 09/01/23
Unconstrained Information Warfare
Around the globe, there is an emergence of unconstrained information warfare. This differs from the type of information warfare the pros prefer to fight. Constrained vs. unconstrained information is at the heart of military strategies and the Democrat's move to silence Trump.
Trump won in 2016 using unconstrained information, which cast terror into the heart of the political world. The counter, the information warriors thought, was to constrain Biden to the basement and garble almost everything he says.
And why not? The political class learned information warfare from the same contractors that provided tools to the military. As insiders predicted, the Dems secured the White House in 2020 and maintained their iron grip over the vote count.
Both sides' attempts to constrain information shaped the recent wars in Syria and Armenia. ISIS ran websites for the West but shut the internet down locally.
Everything changed with Ukraine as Russia attempted to constrain the information space at home but pushed well-financed propaganda abroad. Ukraine entered the war with a blast of unconstrained, uncoordinated, very loud information. This brought them the initiative but distorted and undercut the traditional psyop tools and forces.
Enter the world of unconstrained information, where the goal is for Team A to grab the wide-open space while Team B must deal with messaging constraints.
The effects are powerful and very much behind the urgent need felt by the Dems to muzzle Trump. Eight recent African coups were fueled by information warfare, and the State Department was caught flatfooted.
One presidential candidate uses unconstrained information tactics to the detriment of his Republican challengers. The experienced hands continue to respond as if competing in a constrained environment. Big mistake!
So where is this coming from? The Dems launched a major political campaign strategy revision called Beautiful Trouble, taken directly from military psyop programs. It includes books, seminars, board games, and study aids. Pretty much everything on the table is in the book.
This HFR is the first four-part series on the Democrat's information warfare strategy.
Please join us, your insights on the forum are very important.
FLASHBACK FRIDAY JACKSON AT NAMCHE BARWA
In the summer of 2001, I led an overland expedition of 2,500 kilometers across Eastern Tibet, traversing by foot the “Great River Trenches of Asia,” over the 15,000’ Si-la pass between the Salween and Mekong Rivers, thence to the Upper Yangtze by 4WD following it to near its source, onto Lhasa, capital of Tibet.
Enroute we stopped at incredibly remote and rarely seen Namche Barwa (7,782m/25,531ft), the eastern terminus of the Himalayas, which run in a 1,600 mile-long arc from here in Tibet through Nepal, Northwest India, to end at the western terminus of Nanga Parbat in Pakistan.
At nine years old, Jackson handled this like a trooper. What a rewarding thrill it is to have a great adventure with your children. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #277 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
THE CHAMELEON ELEPHANT
THE RIGALEIRA INITIATION WELL
Do an internet search for “25 Most Mysterious Places on Earth” or similar listing, and almost always the Regaleira Initiation Well in Sintra, Portugal will be there. Since the photo is almost always looking from the top down, I thought you might like to see one from the bottom up, which is just as dramatic.
The Regaleira is a spectacular Gothic mansion with acres of gorgeous gardens built by a 19th century Portuguese-Brazilian millionaire, Carvalho Monteiro (1848-1920). I love it that his exotic eccentric extravaganza, his Regaleira Palace, was built by private capitalist with his own money – not some feudal king with money extracted from the peasantry.
I took this picture in 2021 with fellow TTPers on our Portugal Exploration. Portugal really is a land of wonders, which I hope you’ll someday experience yourself. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #167 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
SKYE’S LINKS 08/31/23
Oversized Economic Failure Requires Oversized Distractions.
Sometimes, it is not just what they say but what they omit.
The government fears the public will grasp the reality of current corruption and institutional failure. The DOJ is either a partner in Biden's sins or is so afraid that the magnitude, once disclosed, will lead to the permanent erasure of the Democrat Party.
They are not behaving rationally.
The media holds presidential debates but questions a country song instead of the actual inflation issue. Most people missed that sleight of hand.
China is in deep trouble, and the West must figure out how to rebuild its supply lines in a world of rapidly accelerating interest rates.
Environmentalism is now fully exposed as some Keynesian monetary theory scam where the government throws money to its friends in hopes of keeping the game going. Who benefits? The finance industry, with their increasing claims on the labor of taxpayers.
The Trump impeachments are election interference through full-throated government power and the best distraction our betters can create. So far.
Jerome Powell's Jackson Hole, Wyoming speech put the world on notice that he intends to be hawkish with interest rates. Very Hawkish.
Come on over to Skyes' Links, and let's have a look:
THE MOTHER LEATHERBACK
The leatherneck sea turtle is the world’s largest turtle, weighing up to 1500 pounds. This female was about half that. They have an enormous range, all the way from the North Sea to South Africa in the Atlantic, spending their lives at sea eating jellyfish – except when a female comes ashore to her hatching beach and bury her clutch of eggs in the sand above high tide.
Dropping several dozen glistening white golfball-size eggs into a depression scooped out with her flippers, she covers them up with sand, and heads back to sea, never to see them again. More than two months later, the born hatchlings dig out of the sand and wiggle their way into the sea, where the lucky ones survive.
I was able to watch this mommy’s entire egg-birthing process at dawn on a remote beach in the West African country of Gabon. It was such a privilege to witness an act of elemental nature by such an extraordinary creature. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #127 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
SAVE THE RULE OF LAW BY DESTROYING IT
The Corruptocrat who runs the Department of Injustice
Some truths are so staggering in their ramifications that Americans simply shrug and tune them out as if strangers in a strange land.
Is their current bewilderment because modernist America is unrecognizable —a nonexistent border, downtown homeless juxtaposed to hipster professional elites, DEI racial essentialism, cities reverting to precivilizational wastelands, millions exiting blue states to red, an FBI and DOJ gone rogue, the normalization of violent theft and assault, biologically born men sandbagging women’s sports and their locker room privacy?
We are reaching the point where the once unbelievable has become the banal, as a single generation has done its best to undo the work of a prior 12 generations. Consider the following:
WHY THE HOUSE HAS NO ALTERNATIVE TO AN IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY INTO PRESIDENT BIDEN
When Congress returns next month, it has little alternative but to launch a long-discussed impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. For House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), the case for an inquiry came from a most unlikely source: Attorney General Merrick Garland.
The debacle in the Hunter Biden investigation has left most objective legal analysts in disbelief, with one CNN analyst calling it an “unholy mess.”
House Republicans had previously demanded that David Weiss and his team answer questions about the investigation and the plea bargain. And an appearance before a House committee was planned when Garland suddenly preempted that by doing what many of us have demanded for years: He appointed a special counsel. None other than David Weiss.
Plus, Garland refused to expressly extend the special counsel’s mandate to include influence-peddling allegations involving President Biden. The House has now no choice but to impeach him.