I’ve been afk this week, I realize, hoping for inspiration. What follows is just a rundown of the things going on with me, of no particular interest to anyone, of course. If you had a blog, you could do this too! I urge you to make a blog. I’ll be happy to link to you.
Microsoft Edge: Now and then as I am working here on the desktop, I find that the path is unfamiliar and that I am logged out, for instance, of this blog. Then I utter the words under my breath “Goddamned Microsoft!” It was more than ten years ago that I switched over to Firefox from whatever browser Microsoft was offering then. I did so because the company back doors its whole application, tracks your activity, and looks for advertising opportunities, mostly. I am not doing anything subversive – in fact, I am an open book. I go to well-known websites, never look at anything pornographic (OK, I did watch Game of Thrones), and quickly get out of any application that might force me to look at advertising.
MS Edge has less than 4% of the browser market. The company has always been ham-handed when it comes to promoting its own products. Its version of Siri (which I also do not use) is called “Cortana.” Is that an clunky thing to name a program? It’s just clumsy, the kind of thing a very uncool high school student (as was I) might come up with. (From what I read, Google Chrome has control of most of the browser market.) But here is how Microsoft behaves: Since its browser is unpopular, and people don’t voluntarily use it, they force it on us. So when we open an application, no matter our default browser, it opens in Edge. That’s annoying. Here is a video to get rid of MS Edge. It takes extra effort, as Microsoft does not allow us to “uninstall” the program.
Of course, with the next update, like a stray cat, it will return. Hang on to this video if you, like me, find Microsoft to be bullying and unimaginative.
By the way, Mozilla Firefox has been for years acting more like Microsoft, and less like open source software. There are surely other, better browsers out there. I am all ears.
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We just returned this week from Mexico, a place called Akumal, south of Cancun on the Yucatan peninsula. It was a delightful time there.
Prior to then we had spent a few days in Miami Beach, as they have a huge sand pit on the beach there with shovels nearby and a sign that says “dump your money here!” We wanted to visit that sand pit. While in MB people around us were dropping like flies, all testing positive for Omicron, which we all know is really spelled “Moronic.”
We stayed at the Holiday Inn, since it was a short walk from there to the people we were visiting. I could not help but get the feeling that Holiday Inn is coasting, sucking up existing business and not reinvesting in their facilities. I’ve long observed that a motel room is a motel room, no matter where we go. But that place had a 1990s kind of feel about it.
Anyway, how having broken the MALSS (make a long story short) pledge, we both came down with throat afflictions, minor but in our current time enough to spook anyone around us. We had to be careful not to cough. We suspect that the affliction was a result of the air conditioning in the aging Holiday room, though it could as easily come from the aircraft we rode on or the Miami airport. Years ago I became ill while visiting relatives in nearby Fort Myers, I still believed in viruses and thought I had one, but on return to Colorado immediately got better. I never understood that.
Mexico is open – more or less. They don’t require any testing to enter the country. While in MB we were not about to voluntarily submit to the bullshit testing regime, so we just bid our time, enjoying our visit, hiding our life-threatening afflictions. Then we got on the plane, went to Mexico, and had a wonderful time in Akumal. It so happens that the complex we stayed in (not a resort) had on its bottom level a restaurant, and though we tried another one nearby, it is said to be the best in the area. There, after currency translation, we enjoyed dinner every night for less than $30. (Travelers’ hint: When abroad, leave your MasterCard at home, use VISA. There are no foreign exchange fees with Visa,)
Anyway, MALSS pledge now completely out the window, by week’s end we felt great, all afflictions subsided. We did have to get back into the US, and for that we had to submit to the bullshit PCR or whatever test, and I was concerned about that all week long. thinking that if the people around us in Florida tested positive, we might too. But I kept that concern to myself, not wanting to jinx us. We had to pay $45 each the day before departure for a quick test, and my suspicion is this: They don’t really test for anything. $45 is just the price of exit from Mexico. If they don’t care about Covid on entry, why would they care on exit? We both tested negative.
By the way, as easily as Mexico ignores testing for Covid, they are mask-crazy. If you go there, be prepared to be ordered around by little hall monitors and cops-on-the-beat, telling you to mask up. It’s annoying.
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This from Jordan Peterson, whose book 12 Rules for Life I am currency enduring (more than enjoying), page 55:
“Human beings have a great capacity for wrongdoing. It’s an attribute that is unique in the world of life. We can and do make things worse, voluntarily, with full knowledge of what we are doing (as well as accidentally, and carelessly, in a manner that is willfully blind). Given that terrible capacity, that proclivity for malevolent actions, is it any wonder that we have a hard time taking care of ourselves, or others – or even that we doubt the value of the entire human enterprise?”
We are all Ying and Yang, mostly good but capable of evil. Peterson does a better job of explaining PTSD in soldiers than I’ve read before. It’s not so much what they have done, though doing violent things to others is indeed troubling for most of us. It is that we witnessed ourselves doing those things. All our lives we’ve imagined that we are different than those terrible people who (supposedly) did Mai Lai or Jonestown, only to find out that we are them, they are us. That is terrifying and destructive of self-esteem. It makes us all the same animal, only as good as our circumstances require.
I am currently watching Breaking Bad, years after it aired and created a national stir. The lead character, Walter White, is a good man, a chemistry teacher making $43,700 a year and who missed an opportunity to be wealthy because of circumstances not yet made clear to me. He learns he has terminal lung cancer, and decides that to protect his family after he is gone, he needs to leave them a stack of money. He makes some of the best crystal meth the Albuquerque market has ever seen, operating under the pseudonym “Heisenberg.”
That’s surely no coincidence, and frankly, quite clever. The Heisenberg Principle states that we cannot measure something without affecting it, changing the measurement from what it would have been if left alone. Walter White wants to protect his family, and so decides to engage in evil. It changes him. It is utterly frustrating to watch his wife, Skyler, grow distant from him as he builds an massive web of lies. Just as someone with PTSD learns more about himself than he ever wanted to know, Walter finds he is capable of deception, manslaughter, and immense harm to others, the people who buy his product.
All the while through he has to lie to his wife and son and brother-in-law. If he does not do this, they become complicit in his crimes, and culpable. It’s quite a web he has weaved. At the point I am at Saul McGill, the shady attorney, who has just come on the scene, and he is refreshing, as he lies with such ease and confidence.
I never imagined, after Ned Stark was decapitated in season one, that I could sit through the rest of Game of Thrones. But as it turns out, that incident was meant to dehumanize us, and to prepare us for what was to follow. I probably would have watched that series even without the gratuitous nudity. I now judge myself able to watch the rest of Breaking Bad without any problems. I am dehumanized, desensitized in advance by Game of Thrones.
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Speaking of evil and our capacity for lying, I am currently also reading Dark Moon, the 1999 book on the Moon hoax written by Mary Bennett and David S. Percy. I ordered it on December 1st, and it shipped from England, just arriving this week. If you want the fascinating tale of how they faked the moon landings reduced to utter tedium, this is the book for you!
But I have to read it, I have to know this stuff. I suffered through chapter one on the fake NASA photos – that’s all pointless as people see what they are told by authority figures that they see. But tedious as it was, I made it though. Chapter two, equally droll, is about the Hasselblad cameras they fake-used on the fake-journeys. I am now studying radiation. That too reads like a textbook – in fact, the book itself is heavy and made of shiny stock paper, like a textbook.
Is anything interesting about that hoax anymore? Am I jaded? I think I have overthought the subject. But here’s a brief snippet from page 49, not new to me but usually lost in the details:
“In 1970 a newspaper group polled 1,721 US residents in six different cities and discovered that 30% were not inclined to believe that Apollo really happened on the moon. Today certain top NASA officials admit that worldwide ‘many millions’ do not subscribe to the Apollo lunar landings and recent polls show that now, less than 50% of the American population believes that their government, via NASA, sent astronauts to walk on the moon. These results are based on individuals’ feelings about Apollo. At last in this book we are able to demonstrate to anyone concerned that these feelings are well-founded.”
I long ago read that at the time of Apollo 11 perhaps one-third of the American public did not believe in the event. It was some magazine that did a poll, and the groups least likely to believe in the landings were gays and Blacks. This made sense, as those two groups were disenfranchised more so than now and so less likely to invest in “news”. I am utterly shocked now that less than 50% of the population believes in Apollo. Is that encouraging? Not really. They’ve merely moved on to new hoaxes. Climate Change and Covid, and germ theory itself, appear to have just about everybody in rapt illusion. It has been over half a century since the Apollo hoax, and I suppose it will take that long to undo all of the current hoaxes as well.
Piece of Mindful 
I use the Epic browser and sometimes Brave if a site doesn’t run properly on the former. Both are better than Edge by a country mile.
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I avoid Edge, but it inflicts itself on me, and that was my point. I have to take extra measures to be free of it.
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W10privacy is a tool that allows you to influence a lot of win 10’s behavior and data sharing.
https://www.w10privacy.de/english-home/
It also has the ability to permanently disable or remove default apps that cannot be removed through the usual means although the latter is not necessary to no longer be bothered by apps that open up unasked.
The advantage of only disabling is that the functionality of an app can be restored with a single mouse click if necessary.
It is a very elaborate tool that clearly indicates which modifications can be used safely and which are more risky. All customizations can be reversed with this tool (except when you remove apps completely).
It also supports Windows 11. Almost all functions are already available in the current state. Windows 11 is only a further developed and improved Windows 10.
You can install a portable version on a flash drive which is my favorite option for many such tools like CCleaner and Revo Uninstaller. This means that the tools used for privacy cannot spy on you themselves while not in use (I am not under the impression that there is spyware in W10privacy, but there definitely is in CCleaner).
Almost all software that requires permission to access the entire system and/or monitors usage and data traffic collects data that is forwarded and sold. Not to mention Windows itself…
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Interesting point about the PTSD. There’s a related issue called “moral injury” – being coerced or sucked into doing things one finds unethical, often on the job. Even pre-covid, doctors had a high rate of suicide, probably related to these sorts of psychological conflicts.
Thought this was interesting – BMJ scolds Big Pharma for not releasing its raw data. Pretty strong statement and well said, considering the source. Noteworthy though because its so rare anyone with clout states the obvious about anything-
https://www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj.o102
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Another aspect of Breaking Bad*** I just encountered in last night’s episode … promotion of chemotherapy. Walt had a tumor shrink by 80%, and the doctor treating him is a highly respected character in the script.
My two-years-older brother died in 2006 of cancer. Heavy smoker, very lonely man too. I sat with him (and another brother) as the doctor told him the cancer had reached his brain, and then tried to tell him he could buy some comfort with radiation or chemo, I think the former. Joe went through one treatment and said fuck it, and went off to Hospice to die in a morphine cloud, God rest his gentle soul.
Later my other brother who sat with Joe told me that the doctor had left the profession. Why? He became too involved with his patients, he told Steve. I bought it at the time, though with some reluctance. More likely, I thought, he was tired of seeing people die after treatment, or even OF treatment.
***I think it was that show, maybe another where a doctor-type person announced that the HIV virus was discovered in 1981, but not known to cause AIDS until 1983. That really caught my eye, as it was gratuitously thrown in the script of whatever I was watching. HIV has never been proven to 1) exist, or to 2) cause AIDS.
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Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul are the only shows I’ve really cared about and studied closely for a long time. I think the creator, Vince Gilligan, folds a lot of truth in the cracks. Bob “Saul Goodman” Odenkirk once said that he suspects (though can’t prove) that Gilligan knows more about what’s really going on in the world than most people. Gilligan, when asked about his political beliefs, said something to the effect that he wasn’t really interested in public politics, but was interested in the behind-the-scenes stuff, and boiled it down to “people protecting their families.” (I searched for the interview and couldn’t find it. Wish I could, because his carefully worded answer was very interesting.
Anyway, when I re-watched Breaking Bad, I noticed a scene where Walter–after faking his “fugue state–tells the doctor he feels better after not taking his cancer meds. Yes, he continues his treatment because the cost of cancer treatment is a huge justification (plot and character-wise) for his actions that drive the show. But I think you could argue the show presents the possibility that the extended improvement in his health relates directly to the perverse joy he takes in “breaking bad” and becoming a meth kingpin. Mild spoiler (I don’t think it will ruin anything for you): When he decides, in the fifth season, to give up his life of crime and lead a hum-drum everyday existence, his cancer comes back.
My desire to believe that the creative team behind BB and BCS are “good guys” feels more than a little sad and pathetic to me, knowing what I do about the nature of our media and entertainment. But it persists, so I had to jump in.
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My mom died from lung cancer on August 6, 2021. It is hard not to be bitter against a system that is obviously killing people in a brutal way (chemo and radiation). I used to wonder why so many people are dying from cancer, and I realized with my mother that it’s the treatment that is what is literally killing most cancer patients. I tried telling my mother about this, but she repeatedly told me up until the last week of her life that the treatments gave her more time to live. It’s painfully obvious to me that she’d likely be alive and well without the pharmaceutical madness that she endured. I am sorry to hear that you’ve walked down a similar path.
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I lost my three older brothers to cancer, Joe, the one mentioned above, a heavy smoker most of his life. He died at age 57. Tom came down with leukemia, said to both treatable and curable, and died within two years, age 69. He was a non-smoker non-drinker. Steve, a many-years reformed drinker (as was Joe), was also a serious runner, even participating in the Boston Marathon one time, something one has to qualify for in other runs. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer and submitted to the surgery, a huge mistake in my view, now, not then. The PSA test is worthless, and even if useful is thrown off by heavy exercise (or sexual activity) in the 24 hours leading up to it. I would imagine he had done his usual routine, running 12-15 miles or so the day before, 6-7 minute miles, maybe less. The surgery leveled him, and was much more debilitating than he imagined it would be. But metastasis, as I am told (I do not know) is a myth, so that when he developed a cancer of his upper intestines, he undertook steps to fight it. One was to open him up for surgery, and then to close him up again after, finding him inoperable. The other was a trip to Houston for an experimental treatment where, literally, they blew smoke up his ass, and figuratively too, as it had no impact. He died of a perforated lower intestine a mere two months after Tom, in 2011, at age 68.
I say “I lost” as in poor me, but I am long recovered. I set as my goal in 2011, at age 61, to outlive both Tom and Steve, and indeed in 2019 achieved that goal. In those intervening years, I have stopped seeing doctors for anything other than fixable problems, like an inguinal hernia and Dupuytren’s Contracture, and removal of a lipoma on my shoulder, a small volcano I called “my little friend.” I used to do annual physicals, but stopped when my doctor wanted me to visit a urologist after an elevated PSA (I had worked out at the gym that morning before the physical) . I refused. That’s been maybe four years ago, and I am quite OK still. I had a PA and a young and fresh doctor just out of med school stand before me, one on one knee, and urge that I allow vaccinations for pneumonia and flu, quietly telling them “No.” They thought me insane.
I am in good health, exercise often, hike, climb (walk-up) mountains, watch my diet and stay trim, and will die some day of something I don’t know to be on the horizon. I do not fear death, but I do fear doctors and their treatments to forestall it. In his book on the PSA Hoax, Richard Albin, who discovered the prostate-specific antigen, wrote that urologists consider extending the life of someone suffering aggressive prostate cancer by 45 days to be a “successful” treatment.
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We are on similar paths. It is amazing how blind most of us are. I have an aortic aneurysm, which will likely require surgery. The cardiologist wanted me to take medication to lower my blood pressure as it “may” delay the surgery to repair the aneurysm. He was shocked when I said no. My blood pressure is usually about 110/70-80. Aside from that, what difference does it make if I delay the surgery 6 months? I could naturally lower my blood pressure with diet and exercise, but they never recommend that! They always push pills. It’s predictable and really rather sad because there was a time I’d take what they prescribed. Now I usually just say no.
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110/70 is high? Prior to my surgeries I was at 120/70 and the staff said that was excellent before they put me under. Has it something to do with the nature of the ailment?
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I definitely don’t need my blood pressure lowered. Even if I did, I would do it naturally. I think he was trained to prescribe meds and just automatically resorted to what is frequently prescribed for people with an aneurysm. I couldn’t believe he was offering me meds for a problem that I don’t have.
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“Richard Albin, who discovered the prostate-specific antigen, wrote that urologists consider extending the life of someone suffering aggressive prostate cancer by 45 days to be a “successful” treatment.”
the fact that they could claim to know a specific date of death, to then count 45 days after to claim “success”, is ridiculous on it’s face.
Another example of them making up statistics out of whole cloth to fit a narrative they want.
Akin to the vaccinated people who get still sick with “covid”, but claim the shot saved them from death or serious illness.
There is obviously no way to prove how much “more” or “less” sick someone would have been if vaxxed or not vaxxed.
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Just more “broken wing” distraction, IMO. Raw data exposed to public scrutiny might jeopardize the whole franchise. The BJM engages in “year-zero” research on vaccines that have no foundation, no purpose whatsoever in a world in which viruses are harmless to humans. But then, what would happen to ALL the poor old research institutions, corporations and governments ALL profiting from the virology/virus scam? “Moral injury?” Commerce has no moral component anymore.
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There are no criminal penalties for lying unless there is a legal obligation to tell the truth, such as:
lying to legal authorities, lying in court and lying anywhere else you’re under oath.
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A “legal” obligation to tell the truth.
SMH, that is, shaking my head.
So the lawyers need to become involved, at YOUR expense, regarding telling the truth????
So the “fine print” details what should be taken as truth??
It’s a pant load of crap, isn’t it??
Next is “legal” definition of beauty.
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Lying is just plain s@#t, isn’t it??
Kind of like “4 out of 5 Drs recommend Marlboros”…Menthols, of course!!
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VAIDS!!!
“Legal Authority To Tell The Truth”!!!
LOL 🙂
How many of you sweethearts are dealing with the trauma of VAIDS in your life!?! Oh The HUMANITY!!!
🙂
https://dailyexpose.uk/2022/01/21/triple-vaccinated-are-developing-aids-gov-data/
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if you ever heard of the so called “New German Medicine”, you also might heard of a Gerd Ryke Hammer, a doctor who due to his own clinic and access to about 2000 of patient files analyzed cancer cases and found out that the begin always correlates to a personal tragedy. He himself got cancer after his son painfully died after long bad treatment of a gunshot wound. His son got into trouble with an Italian aristocrat who first shot him and then used his connections to made sure he will never recover. But this is a side story, also very interesting and demonstrating the power of the elite. Dr. Hamer then realized that his cancer started after his only son died and that this tragedy switched his mind into such negativity that he became sick. He found out about the importance of water edema in the body and defined different stages of healing which we still call sickness. That’s the basis of NGM. That is nothing new of course, since every sickness always comes from healing some damage. Our predecessors new about the healing effects of abrosia, which is abstinence of food. In short, if you don’t eat anything for a few days the body will get rid of all the new and old poison from metabolism and begin to clean the edemas from past damages because that is the primary function of the body: to repair itself. Metabolism in our times is the primary reason for feeling bad. We eat to much and to often and our body does not have the time to take care of other “poison”. The trick is not to eat anything for some time. Not even drink juice. Only water is allowed and has to be drunk regularly. This will clean the body and make chronic pains disappear. I do that every year for a week or two. I don’t eat for a day to switch the stomach into different metabolism and force it to use the reserves (fat). The next day you won’t feel hungry anymore. On the second day I eat a little but just some crumbles, then I don’t eat anything for 2-3 days in a row, which is much easier than it sounds. As I said, not even juice. Just drinking water is ok and necessary. I then eat very little for a week or so. And very littel means like one slice of bread or one small piece of a pizza and that’s it for the day. After that I start eating but very carefully increasing the amount from day to day. The stomach is not used to food anymore and irritates easily. Try it and you will see, once you stop eating and start abrosia you’ll feel great, even euphoric. That’s why some people fall into anorexia. So be careful there. After that you’ll usually regain you old weight which they call the yo-yo effect but the edema will stay gone and also the chronic pains. If something hurts for a long time it is not because it can’t be healed but because your body does not have the opportunity to heal it.
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BARBM124,
I’ve never seen the benefits of fasting described this way. Also, most everything I see here in the U.S. involves juice fasts (because corporations still gotta make their money, right?) Can you point me to a site with more information (that’s in English?)
You say you do this once a year. Do you do it more often if your health is troubling you? Very curious to learn more about this. Thanks.
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Hi SCOTTRC, it is my own version of the NGM combined with my own reflections. It’s just a consequent detox. A few years ago, when I tried that the first time really hard core, I found out that it is easier that way. You have to force your stomach to switch on to the reserves. As long as you don’t start to eat again, it will use what it has (fat). You can lose weight very fast that way but it usually comes back again. That’s my experience. I had rheumatism pains in the legs, probably from many years sitting at the desk in a cold office, especially when the weather changed. It wasn’t something you can’t live on with but it was there for years and after my first hardcore detox it was gone. Completely. I still do this every year, mostly before Xmas or Eastern to enjoy the food then. The first day is the hard one, because your stomach wants new stuff but I make myself tired during the day and go to bed early. Next day is easy then. It costs nothing, has no negative side effects and I can recommend it to everybody, except to the very thin ones. I don’t know what happens if you don’t have any reserves.
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I’ve been doing a bit of fasting lately. A couple of weeks ago I did a 5 day fast, not eating from teatime on Sunday until lunchtime the following Saturday, just water, sometimes warm and salty. I don’t think having juice is a good idea as the sugar would cause an insulin response and put your body into starvation mode, slowing your metabolism. If you stick to water you just burn stored fat for energy.
I have no health issues and have done it twice now, the first time for 3 days.
Maybe it’s psychological but it feels like it’s doing good, I’ve been watching youtube videos from people like Dr Jason Fung and Dr Ekberg where they talk about how it upregulates your body’s healing and repair processes.
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In that sense, Colombia is better. Here in the capital most are also mask crazy, but I never wear one and only pull my hoodie/turtle neck/Palestine shawl over my face in the only shop where they ask me to mask up.
Never have the little green friends, some of them becoming real friends thanks to my amazing Mudi (a unique Hungarian breed, that was not created, yet organically evolved from natural mixes of other herding dogs, there are just a few thousand Mollies in the world…!) bothered me about being unmasked.
First hand accounts from our terrain theorist 7th day adventist (seems a more based version of christianity) palacemate (F, 63) in other parts of Colombia is that the World of Maskedness is much less omnipresent, as is the case here around us.
Did you manage to get in contact and talk with Mexican or US-American-Mexican expats who are aWARE. of the Animal Farm?
Anarchapulco is coming up again, still a big pity I’ve never been at one, and I heard ashifter Max Igan fled to the country and lives with Jeff Berwick, the Dollar Vigilante now. Unmarked me doesn’t know more, if anyone does, nice to hear more about that.
3 weeks ago the Mudi was officially registered at the American Kennel Club.
meaning the breed will become hugely more popular
meaning that getting your hands on this amazing race early gives you the edge
and you can even make it valuable by trading puppies with good humans around you ; aDORE. + aCHANGE.
read about the Mudi here:
https://dogtime.com/dog-breeds/mudi#/slide/1
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Miss Watchdog…
on the street, she sits on the street corner, her head moves like a motion camera, and her ears as chameleon eyes independently from each other. Capturing everything.
I have talked extensively about her incredible intelligence in the for that reason called Mollycasts.
You can also see some of her youth at Instagram ;
https://www.instagram.com/mollymuisca/
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