Above is a photo from last weekend at Dick’s Sporting Goods in Denver. As we walked in there was a display rack that must have had 300 jerseys on it, each with the number 3 and the name Wilson on it. For those who don’t follow football, the Denver Broncos signed Wilson two years ago to a monster deal that was supposed to last five years. He did not work out, and the Broncos just recently released him, taking a huge pay hit (cap ceiling, if your follow football). Some notes:
- These jerseys are marked down 75%, which tells us how far Russell Wilson’s stock has fallen. But take note: Their retail price is $130! That knocks them down to about $32.50 each, which is probably still profitable for Dick’s.
- I am sure I am like most everyone in that while I enjoy some sports, I do not idolize players, and would not for a second consider wearing a shirt that has a name on the back that is not mine. What is wrong with sports fans? Are their lives so empty that they must compensate by putting someone else’s name on their back? Do they also have this annoying habit of referring to the team they support as “we”? Isn’t that interesting.
Several years ago we were in Phoenix for spring training. The previous winter the Anaheim Angles had signed Albert Pujols to a monster deal. As I looked about Tempe Diablo Stadium (we were in the cheap seats), I could have sworn that 25% of the men in the seats were wearing Pujols jerseys. I think there’s a real identity crisis here, and a lot of empty lives. I’ve been a baseball fan all my life, first of the Milwaukee Braves, and later the Cincinnati Reds. (Come Covid and playing before empty stadiums*, I gave it up.) But never once in my life did I wear a shirt with a sports logo on it, or one that said Aaron or Spahn or Rose or Bench or Votto. I don’t get it! My name is Tokarski.
Shortly after we moved to Colorado, I went to the local supermarket on a Sunday wearing an orange shirt. No logos or words, just orange. Looking around I noticed that half the patrons of the store were wearing orange jerseys, shirts or hats that day. The Broncos played that day. I refused to be part of the madness, and gave that shirt to the local resource center.
*Speaking of playing before empty stadiums, the Reds were accustomed to that anyway, so it was nothing new.
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We live at 7,900 feet and the foothills of the Colorado Rockies. It’s a wonderful climate here, cooler temperatures, frequent rainfall in spring and summer, and wild animals out our back window. But there is a price to pay. Earlier this week we got warnings that a storm was on the way. Typically these warnings start out small, maybe 5-8 inches of snow. Then they get bigger, and at our house, we can usually double the amount predicted. This one got bigger and bigger until yesterday they were warning people that if they did not have to be out, stay home. 3-4 feet is forecasted for our area (1-2 feet in Denver). We have a 330 foot driveway (there’s that number again) that is very steep at the base, so I knew I was in for a workout.
This morning I got out there at about 6:30, and the snow was up to the top of the hood of my snow thrower, which I guess is about two feet. But that remarkable machine never quits. I put it in low gear, and two hours later, the driveway was done. We still have two more feet coming our way, but we are on top of it now. We can get out there frequently and plow.
I watched a local news channel on TV, knowing full well that they pay people to go outside and stand in storms as they talk. I was not disappointed. One gal said “Hey, watch this” and they pointed the cameras at a pile of snow, and she swept it all off and my god! It was a park bench. Goodness gracious me, whoda thought?
That park bench was covered in snow! We are having a CLIMATE EMERGENCY!
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I have a three-day free trial subscription to an app called ChatGPT, which allows me to chat with an AI bot. Let the fun begin!
Me: Did the US land men on the moon in 1969?
ChatGPT: Yes, the United States successfully landed astronauts on the moon in 1969 as part of the Apollo 11 mission. On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first and second humans to walk on the lunar surface. Michael Collins orbited the moon in the command module while Armstrong and Aldrin explored the moon’s surface. This historic event marked a significant achievement in space exploration.
OK, I threw a softball. No way is a sentient being in this country going to dis our greatest achievement 54 years go. On some level, and I include AI, we all know it is bullshit, that it never happened, but in true 2+2=5 form, we never speak openly about it.
Me: What are the Van Allen Belts?
ChatGPT: The Van Allen belts are regions of energetic charged particles that surround the Earth, trapped by its magnetic field. They were discovered in 1958 by scientist James Van Allen using data from the Explorer 1 satellite. The belts consist of two main zones: the inner belt, which is composed mainly of high-energy protons, and the outer belt, which is primarily made up of high-energy electrons.
The particles in the Van Allen belts are captured from the solar wind, which is a stream of charged particles emitted by the Sun. The Earth’s magnetic field traps these particles and causes them to spiral along the magnetic field lines, creating the belts.
The Van Allen belts are important to study because they can have a significant impact on satellites and spacecraft passing through them. The high-energy particles in the belts can damage electronic components and pose a radiation risk to astronauts. Understanding the behavior of the Van Allen belts helps scientists develop strategies to mitigate these effects and ensure the safety of space missions.
OK, I have found something that AI is really, really good at: Use of weasel words! The first two paragraphs are OK, as they are descriptive, but in the third paragraph, well, AI must know that three astronauts went through the belts in 1969 and were not at all affected. Note, they can have a “significant effect on satellites and spacecraft” an can damage electronics and “pose a radiation risk to astronauts”??? So tell me, then …
Me: Why did the Van Allen Belts not affect astronauts in the Apollo program?
ChatGPT: During the Apollo program, the Van Allen belts were indeed a concern, but the astronauts were able to pass through them without significant harm. There are a few reasons why the Van Allen belts did not pose a major risk to the Apollo astronauts:
- Timing and trajectory: The Apollo missions were designed to minimize the time spent in the Van Allen belts. The spacecraft followed a trajectory that allowed them to pass through the thinner regions of the belts, reducing the astronauts’ exposure to radiation.
- Speed: The Apollo spacecraft traveled at a high speed, which allowed them to pass through the Van Allen belts relatively quickly. The shorter exposure time helped to limit the astronauts’ radiation exposure.
- Shielding: The Apollo spacecraft were equipped with various layers of shielding to protect the astronauts from radiation. The command module, in particular, had a protective shell made of aluminum and other materials that provided some defense against radiation.
- Low radiation levels: While the Van Allen belts contain energetic particles, the overall radiation levels encountered by the Apollo astronauts were within acceptable limits. The astronauts received a dose of radiation that was comparable to a few chest X-rays, which was considered an acceptable risk for the short duration of the missions.
It’s important to note that the Apollo missions were relatively short in duration, lasting only a few days, and the astronauts received medical monitoring before and after the missions to ensure their safety. Subsequent space missions and long-duration stays on the International Space Station have further increased our understanding of the risks and challenges posed by the Van Allen belts.
OK, NASA, your lies are safe with AI. #1 above is an outright lie, #2 is an evasion, as we do not know the effects of the belts at any speed, #3 is a diversion, as we don’t normally think of aluminum as a shield (think lead), and #4 a complete flubber-loaded bouncy-bounce bunch of nonsense. The International Space Station, if it exists in orbit around the planet, is well shy of the Belts, and can study nothing that cannot be studied here on earth.
NASA has sent probes into the Belts in recent years. The results? Classified.
Piece of Mindful 
There are two things you cannot insult a man about: His food and his sports team (unless, like my Oakland A’s, you have to concede that they are now a minor league franchise. But, I have to say it, not you(s))
Eating is an emotional experience and men don’t like emotions. But we have to let it out or stress will kill us. Obesity is a symptom of emotional dysfunction. Overeating substitutes for the emotional turmoil of a relationship. I.M.O.
As well, wearing the animal skins of your animus or whatever you call your favorite player, infuses you with the vicarious thrill of victory and defeat. An emotional outlet that carries very little consequence.
The key is the term ’vicarious’. This is how men cope with stress. They deflect. There is, for example, no more ennobling feeling than vicarious suffering. It is what has fueled conflicts since time immemorial. Every General, Politician, Religious leader and sports fan knows the feeling. To suffer with no real consequence is as cheap as it gets in offloading emotion.
I’m reminded of a post I saw on Facebook years ago where we get a look at a woman’s diary entry where she laments that during the last two days her boyfriend has grown morose, distant, emotionally unavailable and all she could do is love him out of this pit of despair. Then we get a look at the BF’s journal and it reads: Yankees lost two in a row but I got laid twice.
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Tyrone, I noticed that phenomenon of people naming things after that which has been vanquished and plowed under is typical way of naming new developments and subdivisions. For example, in my neck of the woods in the 1980s they opened the “Fox Run Mall”, or i.e. the area that foxes formerly inhabited which is now occupied by Orange Julius’ and Chess Kings.
Or, a typical development in the northeast will be called “Tall Pines”, meaning of course they cut down a lot of nice old tall pines to make your cute little suburban development.
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On October 19, 2004, all Red Sox fans experienced stigmata of the ankle as Curt Schilling hurled 7 brilliant innings on the way to the miraculous defeat of the Yankees in game 6 after being down 3-0 after the first 3 games, something that had never happened in a seven-game series before (OK maybe somewhere?) A true miracle! Three sutures like the father, the son, and the holy ghost. Quote from wiki, believe in miracles at your own risk:
“Schilling, still injured from the ALDS and Game 1, pitched seven strong innings, allowing only one run on a Bernie Williams home run. To help stabilize the tendon in his ankle, Red Sox doctors had placed three sutures connecting the skin with ligament and deep connective tissue next to the bone, effectively creating a wall of tissue to keep the peroneal tendon from disrupting Schilling’s pitching mechanics. Schilling was only forced to field his position once and visibly limped to first base to field the toss from Millar. Nonetheless, the Yankees did not bunt for the duration of Schilling’s outing, something Joe Torre later explained as not playing out of the normal character of his team. Torre also admitted that had he known beforehand how bad the injury really was, it might have changed his mind. By the end of his performance, Schilling’s white sanitary sock was partially soaked in blood, and he stated later that he was completely exhausted.”
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Also Tyrone you may like that I have firsthand experience that Dennis Eckersley is super nice guy. If I figure out how to paste pictures here I’ve got a collection of great pictures I took in the late 1970s-early 1980s from Red Sox spring training, which my family visited every year in Florida then. A few other names of really nice ballplayers are Carlton Fisk, Jerry Remy, and Dusty Baker, to name a few..
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Carlton Fisk was also arguably the toughest person to ever play a professional sport. Check out his stats, the guy played catcher until the age 45! I remember standing next to him in March 1980 looking up at him like a God, as he was talking to my Mom about how he layered himself in WOOL during spring training to get acclimatized to playing 9 innings in 90+ degree humid conditions during the 162 game season. And Fisk did not take days off.
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To post pictures, you just need a site with free image hosting. Upload your pics there, then copy the URL of the pic itself. Paste that URL here. (It may include width and height in pixels, encoded in the URL which may need to be adjusted smaller or the images will be giant.)
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Thanks and hopefully we don’t regret this! I have some great pictures to post. I’ve just never been afraid of walking up to people and asking questions and taking pictures.
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My uncle played ball. I was in the clubhouse after wins growing up. Fergie Jenkins was the nicest fella I ever met. I’ve also had breakfast with bob feller a few times, rapid Robert was cool too.
I also met squiggy from Laverne and Shirley thru my uncle. He was high as shite in the back of my uncle’s van when I met him.
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Has AI passed the
Turning Test? I propose the Turing Test should have been if the Machine can bullshit you as good as a typical three card monte dealer. If that’s the criteria then AI has passed the test, congratulations here’s your diploma!
Right. I doubt it. No doubt they have some intern CIA flunkies pumping out bullshit after bullshit answer for all the fakes and fuckery that have been inflicted upon us.
Some good news of late, I see NPR is tanking, as MM reported. The local NPR in my area, WBUR is laying off big time. Oh my and boo hoo.
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I’m planning to write an article on the congruence and incongruence of evidence with an hypothesis. There’s a kind of continuum of congruence and there can be items (even tiny ones) that are simply so incongruent that they disprove an hypothesis all on their own, eg, 2.25 seconds of freefall in WTC-7’s destruction.
Equally though, extreme congruence is very compelling. While extreme incongruence disproves an hypothesis it is difficult not to find a congruence so extreme – in the absence of evidence to the contrary – that it proves an hypothesis.
I’m mystified, Mark, why you would focus on the Van Allen Belts in relation to proof of the moon landings. To me they’re so intangible. On the other hand there’s great tangibility in the artefacts of imagery and the audio recordings. Sure, they fake artefacts but at least they’re tangible and give you something to really work with. The catchcry of the greatest of all disbelievers, my sister, to just about everything is, “That could be faked.” What she really means is though, “That could be faked WITHOUT DETECTION,” an entirely different proposition because it is not necessarily a fact that something could be faked without detection. Because of Revelation of the Method, as psyop analysts we simply have no experience of events where they go all out to simulate things as realistically as possible – we don’t know what that looks like.
What I regard as extreme congruence with real
*** There are about 200 hours of audio recordings for Apollo 11 and hundreds more for the rest of the missions. 200 hours of audio that sounds perfectly authentic – you can dip in here and there to check it – and you can also check the transcript.
https://archive.org/details/Apollo11Audio
https://archive.org/stream/Apollo11Audio/AS11_PAO_djvu.txt
*** Matching of imagery with the alien lunar conditions of no atmosphere, low gravity and black sky in daytime which cannot be achieved simply by sticking a camera in the desert at night (or in a studio) on earth – the conditions are simply too different
— Because of no atmosphere, the light quality is different and shadows are more delineated than on earth.
— Movement in a low gravity situation is simply completely different and while fakery is alleged the claims of fakery don’t stand up to scrutiny
— There is clearly a single light source which couldn’t be achieved with artificial light, you’d have to have multiple lights and they would cast multiple shadows and show spotlighting and falloff.
Really extreme congruence
Tiny amounts of regolith particles in the mylar creases on the landing pads that are only visible in high res photos using the magnifying tool. This is so very alien to fakery even if you were going all out to fake something as realistically as possible.
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I did not realize until I read to the end of your comment that you had been sent to moderation. It might be the number of links you supplied, but it was not me. Gotta trust me on that. You are always welcome here.
The Van Allen Belts were discovered in 1957, when space travel was just a twinkle in the eye. They sent Geiger Counters into space, and realized that there was much radiation out there. It seems innocent enough that they did not solve the problem then, and as importantly, have not solved it now. A NASA leader, Kerry or Kelly or the like, said quite innocently that going to the Moon and beyond is impossible until we solve that problem.
What I took from that is that it is well understood within NASA that Apollo was not real, and they speak freely about it in those confined circles. The guy merely spoke out of school, innocently.
I brought the matter up because our grandson was showing us his AI app and asked me if I had questions. The questions I asked were the first two in this post. The third I added today, and he does not know about it. I thought it enough to introduce doubt in the boy. After all, doubt is the beginning, not the end, of education.
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I’m aware of the two-link limit sending comments to moderation, Mark. You give fair warning unlike every other place 🙂
In the film American Moon, four questions were asked about the Van Allen Belts including a question about what NASA engineer, Kelly Smith, said about solving radiation problems. The questions have all been answered and I quote the answer with regard to Kelly Smith below.
https://petraliverani.substack.com/i/139354189/the-van-allen-belts-questions
If it were true, like the debunkers maintain, that “a lunar mission entails a total of radiation equivalent to an x-ray”, why does NASA describe today the Van Allen belts as “an area of dangerous radiation”?
‘The NASA engineer, Kelly Smith, who says the Van Allen belts are dangerous in the clip starting at 1:09:44 actually explains the reason. He says “radiation like this could harm the guidance systems, onboard computers or other electronics on Orion”. Smith does not say that the radiation is a danger to humans. NASA scientist David Sibeck gives more detail here, stating that “Our current technology is ever more susceptible to these accelerated particles because even a single hit from a particle can upset our ever smaller instruments and electronics.” It is the threat to sensitive electronics, not to people, which is the problem.’
To my mind, it is not what is said after the fact but the evidence presented for going that has priority. My sister always quotes the Buzz Aldrin conversation with the little girl where he says, “Because we didn’t go there.”
The full quote:
“Why has nobody been to the Moon in such a long time?”
“That’s not an eight-year-old’s question. That’s my question. I want to know. But I think I know. Because we didn’t go there. And that’s the way it happened. And if it didn’t happen it’s nice to know why it didn’t happen so in the future, if we want to keep doing something, we need to know why something stopped in the past if we want to keep it going.”
His answer doesn’t quite make sense and is ambiguous, you cannot say he clearly says, “We didn’t go to the moon.” But even if he did say that, so what? He’s supposed to be a 33 degree Freemason so he could easily simply say that as a total windup.
The purported evidence for going is first priority.
I’m not going to get into an argument about it – we’ve been there done that so many times. I’ll read your response, Mark, and will leave it at that.
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In casual speech people sometimes make leaps and connections in their own mind that result in garbling what they’re trying to say. I would parse what he was likely trying to say this way (and this is not to take sides, just my guess about his confused answer-
“Why has nobody been to the Moon in such a long time?”
“That’s not an eight-year-old’s question. That’s my question. I want to know. But I think I know. Because we didn’t go there [we didn’t go BACK there]. And that’s the way it happened [that we didn’t go back]. And if it didn’t happen [going back] it’s nice to know why it didn’t happen so in the future, if we want to keep doing something, we need to know why something stopped in the past if we want to keep it going.”
I think the end of his answer is the point he was aiming at, but by having that in mind he mangles the first part of the answer, making a ripe target for those who view him as a bad faith actor.
Note I am not saying he did or didn’t go, just that I think he was “on script,” not intentionally trying to create a shitstorm. He just spoke poorly as happens in speaking.
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You and I both know … they never went. Why so hard to come down that way?
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I lean heavily towards it being fake, but I’m not really expert in the topic. In my comment above I was trying to separate the larger discussion, from what it looks like to me was an off the cuff remark that isn’t strong evidence of anything but how people can stumble in casual speech.
Even if he’s acting, imo, it appears to me he was still acting here, just garbled his meaning.
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Buzz Aldrin is just conflicted, like Neil Armstrong, caught in a web of lies, and in danger of being killed if he does not go along.
Kelly Smith said something true that got out, accidentally, and had to backtrack, that is, lie.
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“Tiny amounts of regolith particles in the mylar creases on the landing pads that are only visible in high res photos using the magnifying tool. This is so very alien to fakery even if you were going all out to fake something as realistically as possible.”
I think what you’re seeing is 100% primo Peruvian coke sprinkled on the landing pads. They had $30 billion to blow and cement dust and mylar aren’t too expensive, so it looks like they may have dipped into the party favors during late night filming sessions.
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My favorite quote about A.I. comes from TV writer Vince Gilligan. “I think ChatGPT knows what it’s writing like a toaster knows that it’s making toast.”
AI will get more complex, more integrated with other AI systems, and its uncanny ability to replicate human thought processes, activities and behaviors will evolve by leaps and bounds in the coming years, but it will never “know” anything or have its own consciousness… though I predict the criminals who own the world will try to convince us it has.
I’m only saying this because you talked about A.I. as if it were deliberately lying and knew that it was lying. I presume you were being facetious. But efforts to drive the entire globe deeper into the state of “controlled insanity” that we were already in have gotten extremely aggressive since the CoVax hoax, and A.I. is a big part of that effort. So I don’t even indulge people when they jokingly talk about it as if it were thinking or lying or whatever. It’s running algorithms created by humans; that’s it.
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I remember Pauline Kael’s review of 2001 where she said H.A.L. sounded like a jilted homosexual lover, especially when Dave was trying to unplug his memory banks.
Speaking of which, I’d like someone to ask ChatGTP (unfortunately I have a very strict aversion to this AI bullshit and will not degrade myself into asking a stupid machine a question) what it thinks of the Ralph Rene book NASA mooned America, or Bill Kaysings book We never went to the Moon. I had not read Rene’s book until recently, since I was well acquainted with the wonderful and magic world of moon fakes. However I found it very well written and a great technical demolition of the whole moon capsule idea. The only issue I had is he takes some of the early missions seriously like Gemini or Yuri Gagarin; IMO it’s all bullshit, you’d be a smoking pop tart (put a few pop tarts in their mylar wrapper in a toaster oven or microwave for 30 minutes and you get a good idea of what a journey to space and back would be like in a capsule like they claimed in the 1960s and beyond).
Once you ask AI these questions see if it gets bitchy, arrogant, and emotional like most elite do these days if you broach upon any topic that could be construed as a “conspiracy theory.”
Click to access NASA%20Mooned%20America%20by%20Ralph%20Rene%20_%201994%20_%20237%20p.pdf
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Great quote! Exactly right and puts it so clearly and succinctly.
Ray – I’ve read transcripts where people push chatGPT in that manner, and it tends to immediately change tune and respectfully concede your point, acknowledge caveats and so forth, pontificate on material from those more obscure sources.. then perhaps throw in some sop about it being outside consensus or something ambiguous to cloud the issue and suggest it’s not totally on board.
It reflects YOU back is part of it, it aims to please. Starts with the broadest mainstream views, but adapts to your preferences like a good little toady.
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