"the lesson of the disaster unfolding in Los Angeles is in the rebuilding of homes and the restoration of lives, not the fire.". I daresay there is a huge lesson in asking and answering how a 'forest fire' left trees fully intact yet melted glass, tires and cast aluminum. Philosophically yes, humans must regroup and re-establish, but scientifically these big WTF questions need answers. Lest we be left to perpetually react to 'events' like this being imposed on us repeatedly and forever. Once-in-a-generation things happening on a weekly basis are not normal and there is no precedent in the human condition for normalizing that. How can you think about the future and disregard this? In just roughly the last quarter we've seen a hurricane drop 50 trillion gallons of rain, strange particulate fogs materializing mid day, forest fires that incinerate everything but forest, and a whole new menu of 'pandemic viruses' imminently encroaching. Three years from now what will we have endured? You think it's all just gonna stop and we're all just gonna hold hands and put everything back together under sunny skies? Just based on the observable reality of right now I'm half expecting a epidemic of sharknadoes popping up by this weekend. I grasp the whole message of resilience and self reliance, but I just refuse to accept at this point that these are random, organic events. The far better answer is to ask and answer who is behind it and then literally strap the lot of them to the bottom of a rocket and shoot them into space. Don't turn the blessing of liberty into the denialism of cowards. We're gonna have to take this thing back by force. And soon, while we still have a chance. Hiding behind libertarian mysticism has been an acceptable cop-out up to now, but in the end it just isn't gonna cut it. It's time to get real real pissed. These things aren't 'happening' they are being done. There is no liberty gonna be found in being at the mercy of a string of imposed cataclysims from now until forever. To pretend this created fire created some new 'conditions of freedom' is just sociopathic denial...
Thanks for reaching out, Deuce. What we will doubtless learn from the LA wildfire post mortems (there will be many) will reinforce a primary lesson we've already known for decades: that generationally one-party towns and states are essentially corrupt theocracies designed to benefit only the high priests -- precisely why the post mortems are so critical.
To reiterate: "Stating the obvious, the post-wildfire resurrection of Los Angeles will require far more visionary insight, self reflection, and outright competence than the current generation of local and state leaders can possibly deliver. That’s because the relationship of Californians to their leadership is now entirely dysfunctional, and very much like the relationship of the Palestinians in Gaza to Hamas: as enablers of pernicious and dangerous ideologists who promise utopia but deliver apocalypse — year after year — for generations."
Per the above, wash, rinse, and repeat cycles are inevitable absent radical change to the current power structures in California, LA, and San Francisco. So I'm in violent agreement with your call for radical change.
The primary lesson we will learn in the resurrection of lives and neighborhoods, however, is very different from the primary lesson of the post mortems. While the primary lesson of the post mortems describes how a corrupt, theocratic priest class eliminated faith in what cannot be seen by design, the primary lesson of the resurrection -- the restoration of faith-based ritual's role in the quality of life -- relies on it.
It is very difficult for boomers like myself to come to terms with the permanence of ShitWorld, my friend, because we are actively grieving the world we knew before everything turned to shit. Your language makes it harder still for us, underscoring and accentuating that same grief.
Your reply begs the question: Given the existence of Directed Energy Weapons and your implied assertion of their frequent and effective application, brother, by what 'force' do you plan to take this thing back? If by these words you mean an armed uprising against the state and the forces that have usurped it, I ask you to soberly consider who is going to constitute this force, and how such a group might be armed and assembled without the use of cell phones and the internet.
I am quite confident that your conversations, for instance, are making a watch list somewhere, given your vehemence and loquacity. I take this for granted on my own account, but I trust that I make myself largely harmless by standing in the open and inviting the lurking traitors to snatch me at will. These years of retirement have been by far the best years of my life so far, but I will surrender them to principle when duty calls.
I can assure you that men like Jeff Einstein are quite ready to die for all of us who are their country. However, it is much more meaningful to live for one's country while one may, especially if gifted with insight and the ability to articulate it.
Thank you for your thoughtful words, Alan. As someone whose position on various watch lists dates back to my anti-war activities in the mid-1960s, I appreciate the option to say what I want when I want. Likewise with the option put my own faith to the test in the temptation of fate. I have exercised both options quite frequently over the years, especially in the 21st-century Rise of Huxwell (https://qolrm.substack.com/p/the-rise-of-huxwell).
Yes, looking back on my childhood in the 50s and 60s never fails to remind me how much freer things were, at least for me and my generation of friends. Thanks again, Alan...
“Linear’s” purpose is to baseline-scaffold all the sharps & flats & bent strings & tempo change-ups/downs that are the music that is the medium that is the message … the symbols splashed on paper are merely suggestive … “unless” someone decides those are god’s lips whispering into his or her ear - in which case, look out (& just look around … & not only “just now” - all of history, but for Rule-Proving Exceptions, is this sheet music constraints/traitjacketing).
All of the “history” that gets so much play is people. Not anything external to people. Like “its the system/s, man.” No, its not. The systems & the institutions & the cultures & all the rest are just people.
And people, same as persons, are a bounded function … that’s bound to function as bound to do.
“My, what a fine straitjacket wardrobe you people have,” saith the wolves … which, with parental blessing, taught them to dress … in grade school (& all prior iterations of those finishing operations).
People, RPE’s aside, are the medium are the message in a bottle.
Those who are not content to pull from bottles, no matter how fine, rarified even, the cabernets & scotch’s might be, have known this for all the generations going all the way back.
Some, not a few, have used this knowledge to ever “improve” the perfection of the art of the win-lose deal. Pump, rhymes trump, & dump, for one example.
Some others, just a few, have summed it up with “I’ve been to a town.”
As for the CA con•flagration current, make that Robert Towne & his confection Chinatown.
Salary? Sure. But don’t Bogart/straitjacket that term, either, Upton. There’s all kinds of bennies in lieu of salary & some, not a few, rabbits would be happy - are happy - to take their salaries in celery.
Rabbits want safety & celery. Maybe a carrot now & then. Not liberty. The surround is innate/inherent rabbit projected - not an external imposition. Cue Grace Slick.
And those “60’s rabbits-cum-wolves” were always exactly what they were & are. Rabbits don’t morph into wolves.
Wolves in social proof sheepskins - when in Rome - just wanna’ get laid, as usual, was most of that. Testo('s compulsion) was higher "back then," too.
Free the love! Burn the bras! Oh, & the draft cards, too.
Flakes. Of toxic aluminum. Or that Kellogg's stuff.
Its biology. Not ideology. And it is “deterministic” - bounded. Eternal recurrence on time’s flat, spinning, disc. Control is an illusion.
If you find yourself in a Huxwell, stop digging …
… Nah, China(town) is somewhere down there, at the end of this hole - got to keep shoveling.
"the lesson of the disaster unfolding in Los Angeles is in the rebuilding of homes and the restoration of lives, not the fire.". I daresay there is a huge lesson in asking and answering how a 'forest fire' left trees fully intact yet melted glass, tires and cast aluminum. Philosophically yes, humans must regroup and re-establish, but scientifically these big WTF questions need answers. Lest we be left to perpetually react to 'events' like this being imposed on us repeatedly and forever. Once-in-a-generation things happening on a weekly basis are not normal and there is no precedent in the human condition for normalizing that. How can you think about the future and disregard this? In just roughly the last quarter we've seen a hurricane drop 50 trillion gallons of rain, strange particulate fogs materializing mid day, forest fires that incinerate everything but forest, and a whole new menu of 'pandemic viruses' imminently encroaching. Three years from now what will we have endured? You think it's all just gonna stop and we're all just gonna hold hands and put everything back together under sunny skies? Just based on the observable reality of right now I'm half expecting a epidemic of sharknadoes popping up by this weekend. I grasp the whole message of resilience and self reliance, but I just refuse to accept at this point that these are random, organic events. The far better answer is to ask and answer who is behind it and then literally strap the lot of them to the bottom of a rocket and shoot them into space. Don't turn the blessing of liberty into the denialism of cowards. We're gonna have to take this thing back by force. And soon, while we still have a chance. Hiding behind libertarian mysticism has been an acceptable cop-out up to now, but in the end it just isn't gonna cut it. It's time to get real real pissed. These things aren't 'happening' they are being done. There is no liberty gonna be found in being at the mercy of a string of imposed cataclysims from now until forever. To pretend this created fire created some new 'conditions of freedom' is just sociopathic denial...
Thanks for reaching out, Deuce. What we will doubtless learn from the LA wildfire post mortems (there will be many) will reinforce a primary lesson we've already known for decades: that generationally one-party towns and states are essentially corrupt theocracies designed to benefit only the high priests -- precisely why the post mortems are so critical.
To reiterate: "Stating the obvious, the post-wildfire resurrection of Los Angeles will require far more visionary insight, self reflection, and outright competence than the current generation of local and state leaders can possibly deliver. That’s because the relationship of Californians to their leadership is now entirely dysfunctional, and very much like the relationship of the Palestinians in Gaza to Hamas: as enablers of pernicious and dangerous ideologists who promise utopia but deliver apocalypse — year after year — for generations."
Per the above, wash, rinse, and repeat cycles are inevitable absent radical change to the current power structures in California, LA, and San Francisco. So I'm in violent agreement with your call for radical change.
The primary lesson we will learn in the resurrection of lives and neighborhoods, however, is very different from the primary lesson of the post mortems. While the primary lesson of the post mortems describes how a corrupt, theocratic priest class eliminated faith in what cannot be seen by design, the primary lesson of the resurrection -- the restoration of faith-based ritual's role in the quality of life -- relies on it.
It is very difficult for boomers like myself to come to terms with the permanence of ShitWorld, my friend, because we are actively grieving the world we knew before everything turned to shit. Your language makes it harder still for us, underscoring and accentuating that same grief.
Your reply begs the question: Given the existence of Directed Energy Weapons and your implied assertion of their frequent and effective application, brother, by what 'force' do you plan to take this thing back? If by these words you mean an armed uprising against the state and the forces that have usurped it, I ask you to soberly consider who is going to constitute this force, and how such a group might be armed and assembled without the use of cell phones and the internet.
I am quite confident that your conversations, for instance, are making a watch list somewhere, given your vehemence and loquacity. I take this for granted on my own account, but I trust that I make myself largely harmless by standing in the open and inviting the lurking traitors to snatch me at will. These years of retirement have been by far the best years of my life so far, but I will surrender them to principle when duty calls.
I can assure you that men like Jeff Einstein are quite ready to die for all of us who are their country. However, it is much more meaningful to live for one's country while one may, especially if gifted with insight and the ability to articulate it.
Thank you for your thoughtful words, Alan. As someone whose position on various watch lists dates back to my anti-war activities in the mid-1960s, I appreciate the option to say what I want when I want. Likewise with the option put my own faith to the test in the temptation of fate. I have exercised both options quite frequently over the years, especially in the 21st-century Rise of Huxwell (https://qolrm.substack.com/p/the-rise-of-huxwell).
Yes, looking back on my childhood in the 50s and 60s never fails to remind me how much freer things were, at least for me and my generation of friends. Thanks again, Alan...
“Linear’s” purpose is to baseline-scaffold all the sharps & flats & bent strings & tempo change-ups/downs that are the music that is the medium that is the message … the symbols splashed on paper are merely suggestive … “unless” someone decides those are god’s lips whispering into his or her ear - in which case, look out (& just look around … & not only “just now” - all of history, but for Rule-Proving Exceptions, is this sheet music constraints/traitjacketing).
All of the “history” that gets so much play is people. Not anything external to people. Like “its the system/s, man.” No, its not. The systems & the institutions & the cultures & all the rest are just people.
And people, same as persons, are a bounded function … that’s bound to function as bound to do.
“My, what a fine straitjacket wardrobe you people have,” saith the wolves … which, with parental blessing, taught them to dress … in grade school (& all prior iterations of those finishing operations).
People, RPE’s aside, are the medium are the message in a bottle.
Those who are not content to pull from bottles, no matter how fine, rarified even, the cabernets & scotch’s might be, have known this for all the generations going all the way back.
Some, not a few, have used this knowledge to ever “improve” the perfection of the art of the win-lose deal. Pump, rhymes trump, & dump, for one example.
Some others, just a few, have summed it up with “I’ve been to a town.”
As for the CA con•flagration current, make that Robert Towne & his confection Chinatown.
"It's all about the water, Jake.” ~ Chinatown
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbX2nQWiNXI
Without Limits, was another Towne. And Prefontaine (even if only as depicted) was another
Jeremiah Johnson exemplar type - & that type will always be lost on the straitjacketed surround:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLefVdWUzbE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDsjcwfixUM
Towne collab’d with Cruise on this one, too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkYmykGhC0M
Salary? Sure. But don’t Bogart/straitjacket that term, either, Upton. There’s all kinds of bennies in lieu of salary & some, not a few, rabbits would be happy - are happy - to take their salaries in celery.
Rabbits want safety & celery. Maybe a carrot now & then. Not liberty. The surround is innate/inherent rabbit projected - not an external imposition. Cue Grace Slick.
And those “60’s rabbits-cum-wolves” were always exactly what they were & are. Rabbits don’t morph into wolves.
Wolves in social proof sheepskins - when in Rome - just wanna’ get laid, as usual, was most of that. Testo('s compulsion) was higher "back then," too.
Free the love! Burn the bras! Oh, & the draft cards, too.
Flakes. Of toxic aluminum. Or that Kellogg's stuff.
Its biology. Not ideology. And it is “deterministic” - bounded. Eternal recurrence on time’s flat, spinning, disc. Control is an illusion.
If you find yourself in a Huxwell, stop digging …
… Nah, China(town) is somewhere down there, at the end of this hole - got to keep shoveling.