Finish Work

Finally, the fruits of Their/his labor move into the observable by the layman. I’m meaning both here at home, in our bathroom reconstruction, as well as on the grander stage, the Global Reset.

The temporary a/c unit has been so necessary! For the grunt work post, click here. https://kenshohomestead.org/2026/06/17/growth-vs-comfort/

the latest in moisture prevention, perhaps to become the next generation’s asbestos?

Once the global AI Governance is finally visible to the public at large, and we are ruled over officially by cartoon cutouts, at least we will have a gorgeous new bathroom in which to adjust to our Wizard of Oz overlords.

I think it’s fitting that this moment in the latest rewriting of global history we will forever connect it to these long sweltering months of bowel movements in our larvae-infested poop-with-a-view. It’s just too bad the long drop isn’t pasted with the photos of our current parasites-in-charge, that could become a new genre of target practice.

Global AI ‘governance’ aka surveillance, warned about for decades by many researchers whose work was then disseminated by a great many more for decades, is now being noticed by the masses and academia as the final act moves to the center stage.

Abstract
Artificial Intelligence (AI) now shapes many aspects of security and intelligence work. The European Union and NATO have moved in different directions in how they handle its use. The EU leans heavily on law and ethics to keep AI under democratic control, while NATO treats it mainly as a way to speed up operations and strengthen cooperation between allies. Drawing on policy documents and two case studiesβ€”biometric surveillance and automated signals intelligence (SIGINT)β€”securitization and co-production theory are used to show how these choices affect daily collaboration. Governance differences often create friction but can also lead to complementarity in intelligence practice. Coordination should be improved through shared certification standards, secure data-sharing protocols, and the establishment of a permanent EU–NATO working group on AI in security so that innovation supports, rather than divides, transatlantic cooperation.”
Artificial Intelligence Governance and Intelligence Interoperability: Diverging EU and NATO Approaches in National Security Contexts: International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence: Vol 39 , No 3 – Get Access
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08850607.2025.2578461

In both cases . . .

The grunt work was longer and far dirtier than expected. There were clogged and sloped pipes, some caught only by chance, and luckily so, because they would’ve proven to be disastrous down the road for sure. I was actually a useful idiot more than once. There’s much to be said about the usefulness of a complete but curious novice asking stupid questions to see the hidden in plain sight yet somehow overlooked details.

In the political parallel I’m crafting, the grunt work has also been laid, the architecture of the system has moved from spy novels and science fiction flicks and of course, conspiracy theories, to a bonafide subject of academia, the final stage of normalization. The scafolding is replaced with bricks and cement. Now it will take far more than proverbial monster hurricanes to blow the house down. Ominous continuity. And now they no longer have to pretend they’re pretending!

“Performative power and strategic illusion in Russian foreign policy: geopolitical spectacle and the domestic construction of legitimacy”
Ana Jović-Lazić
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08850607.2025.2578461

ABSTRACT
“Russia uses performance to project strength abroad and sustain legitimacy at home. This article analyses how the state stages media events, rituals and official narratives to construct power beyond its material capacity. Drawing on Bourdieu, Scott, Foucault, Ringmar, and Weber, it examines military parades, Putin’s speeches, state media coverage of the war in Ukraine, narratives of NATO encirclement, and the choreographed 2014 annexation of the Crimea. These performances create what Stoner calls a β€œmyth of authoritarian competence”. Internationally, they signal great power status; domestically, they foster unity and normalise authority. Yet, economic strain and military setbacks expose this performative power’s fragility.”

Here and abroad, it’s all a very expensive and deadly charade.

The US Military is a paper dragon.
“If there’s one thing the war with Iran has revealed, it’s that the U.S. government is woefully underprepared for any sustained conflict, despite spending more on its military than China, Russia, and many more countries combined.
In the first few months of the war with Iran, the U.S. military used up over 1,000 tomahawk missiles, leaving only 2,000 in stockpiles. A third of its inventory, for a war with no strategic benefit to the U.S., that Americans are paying for at the pump and Iranians are paying for with their lives.
The U.S. military budget is now over $1.5 trillion dollars for 2027. An eye-watering amount for a nation running an annual deficit of $1.9 trillion, exceeding the entire annual spending of the British government.”
https://open.substack.com/pub/thelibertylookout/p/the-us-military-is-a-paper-dragon?r=87pg2k&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

But, like our DIY project, in for a penny, in for a pound! Who really cares about budgets anyway?

Here’s what just one arm of our miitary industrial complex does with our tax dollars, develops weapons by experimenting on the defenseless public, with our own money! Oh the irony!

Department of War FY 2027 Budget Estimates ARMY

26 July 2026 | ZEROGeoengineering.com | Conflicts of interests due to U.S. Federal entanglements with foreign governments and foreign militaries make this funding particularly problematic. The following FY 2027 Army Research, Development, Test and Evaluation (RDT&E Program) budget plan through September 30, 2028, is $18,708,826,000.00. Funding β€œsupports the Army’s collaboration in the Interagency Council for Advancing Meteorological Services (ICAMS), which was chartered in 2020 per the β€œWeather Research and Forecasting Innovation Act of 2017” (Public Law 115-25, April 18, 2017).”
Other research programs include: Unmanned Aerial Systems, applied research, research critical and unique to the Army and DoW (e.g., atmospheric modeling and meteorological technologies), open-air field experimentation, Air Platform Enabling University Applied Research, techniques, methods, and models for the characterization of ambient atmospheric and threat aerosols, aircraft systems, sensors, passive, persistent sensing technologies, novel micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) / aka β€œsmart dust,” genomic research, High Power Microwave and Directed Energy weapons, Electronic Warfare Advanced Technology, 5G, Next G, antenna systems, Golden Dome, Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) technologies, Radar Digital Twin (EXHILARAMA), classified programs, and many more areas of experimentation.
Department of War FY 2027 Budget Estimates ARMY – Zero Geoengineering

Those doing the grunt work have been at it for over a century, usually with no questions asked, all for a paycheck and a pension.

The governance channel has always been subservient to the financial channel, and we have never been a democracy. Can we call it good news that at least the masks have fallen?

“The clearing architecture reached the post-war institutions through a different route as well, one that had been turning the logic of clearing from finance into governance since before the First World War.
In 1916, Leonard Woolf published International Government, a blueprint for permanent international bodies to manage trade, communications, health and labour standards through functional co-ordination above national governments. His key insight was that once essential functions became international, national governments would gradually lose their grip on the day-to-day running of economic and social life. He proposed that these organisations would work through β€˜soft law’ β€” international recommendations that would steadily harden into binding obligations, because participation would eventually require compliance with international standards. It was clearing logic applied to governance rather than money: membership was voluntary on paper, but functionally impossible to avoid.”
https://open.substack.com/pub/escapekey/p/the-foundational-myth?r=87pg2k&utm_medium=ios

“Quinn Slobodian’s Globalists documents what RΓΆpke and the Geneva School were building: supranational institutions designed to shield economic governance from national electorates, permanently. Their aim was deliberate and unapologetic. These economists believed that democratic populations would make economically foolish choices β€” protectionism, inflation, capital controls β€” so the solution was to place the rules governing economic life in institutions that electorates could not touch. Slobodian calls this β€˜encasement’. He maps the walls but does not identify what they protect: the clearing function, operating through conditional settlement, safely beyond democratic revision.”

The public observes, but are ignorant as to what they are observing, as ignorance has become a weapon of war against us.

“The third is ignorance as active construct β€” the deliberate manufacture of doubt, uncertainty, and confusion by parties with an interest in keeping the public unclear. This is the tobacco strategy, the climate-denial strategy, the manufactured uncertainty of product-defense firms. It is ignorance as engineered achievement, and it is the type this volume most wants to make visible.”

The fourth, It is ignorance produced not by concealment but by exhaustion.
https://open.substack.com/pub/unbekoming/p/agnotology-the-making-and-unmaking?r=87pg2k&utm_medium=ios

Question (8): How large is the classified universe of documents, and how does its acquisition rate compare to the open literature held in libraries?
Answer: The classified universe is not a small strongbox in the corner of human learning. It is, on the best available estimates, five to ten times larger than the entire open literature held in the world’s great libraries. The Library of Congress holds roughly 7.5 billion pages across 120 million items. Estimates suggest that as many as a trillion pages may be classified in the United States alone β€” the equivalent of two hundred Libraries of Congress. In 2001, some 33 million classification actions were taken, adding roughly 330 million pages to the closed archive that year alone. By comparison, the entire Harvard library system, comprising over a hundred libraries, adds about 60 million pages of unclassified material per year. Five times as many pages enter the classified realm as enter the world’s great open depositories combined.
The people involved match the paper. Roughly four million Americans hold security clearances, against about 500,000 college professors in the country. The Information Security Oversight Office reported spending $5.5 billion in 2001 just to keep classified documents secure. The commonsense picture β€” that a modest domain of state secrets sits adjacent to a vast open commons β€” is inverted. The open literature is the modest information booth. The vast classified empire sits behind it, unseen, its contents unknowable by definition. This is not a marginal fact about modern knowledge. It is the shape of modern knowledge.”

The on-screen constant political theater and media circus has been so stupidly surreal and exhausting, not only to divide and distract, but also so the pubic welcomes their AI replacements. Anything will be better, right? ‘Voluntarily’ led from the frying pan into the fire by State-manufactured ignorance.

Try to focus on the pretty tiles, not the brick wall

Well, when it comes to our bathroom remodel, it’s definitely going to be a huge improvement and I’m SO excited to finally be seeing the finish work. Finally my hard-earned observation skills and esthetic sensibiities can be put to good use.

I do not have a parallel certainty for life under global techno-fascism, unfortunately.

Funny Friday

It’s that time again! Big harvest, many laughs.

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and for our musical selection . . .

Wishing y’all a lovely weekend, thanks for stopping by!

Don’t Mess With Amos!

This Substack post has made my day!

The Amish Farmer the Feds Can’t Stop by The Liberty Lookout

Exit & Build – Amos MillerRead on Substack

In the year 2000, an Amish farmer named Amos Miller attended a Weston A. Price Foundation conference with his father. He listened to Sally Fallon talk about traditional food: raw milk, grass-fed meat, fermented vegetables, the way humans ate for ten thousand years before the USDA decided it was dangerous. He went home to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and started selling it.
Twenty-six years later, his farm has been raided by federal agents, subjected to three consent decrees, slapped with $85,000 in fines, and dragged through nearly a decade of litigation across federal and state courts. His products have been blockaded, detained, and ordered destroyed.

If you need some good news, continue reading . . .

He’s still selling. His food club has over 4,000 members nationwide. And an appeals court just ruled that Pennsylvania can’t stop him from shipping across state lines.
This is the story of the underground real food economy, and why the government keeps losing to a man who doesn’t use electricity.

There is a better way and it’s been here all along.

Imagine if this could go viral, not just the article, the practice.

Name your kids Amos, that could be the trick, seems they take no shit! πŸ˜†πŸ˜

Funny Friday

It’s that time again! There better be some laughs in here somewhere.

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and for our musical selection . . .

Wishing y’all a lovely weekend, thanks for stopping by!

Purple: The Color of Special

Eggplants and an eggplant-jalapeno ferment

I endured the heat just long enough to harvest more eggplants and tomatoes, pretty much the only thing besides peppers still surviving. It was feeling a bit depressing, pretty normal for me this time of year. I really hate watching everything die and/or get over-taken by the pernicious grasses and vines, which thrive in the heat while I wither.

And then I saw it! Instantaneous mood booster: the first passion flower from a variety given by a friend, which I’ve planted in numerous locations. Stunning!

That got me thinking, and rummaging through my photo files for all things purple.

Of course we know purple is the color of nobility. I remember reading somewhere that’s because the dye was so expensive that only royalty could afford it. So I looked it up.

According to AI, that is true.
Tyrian purple was among the original most-favored, called Imperial purple, originating in Tyre, ancient Phoenicia, which is modern-day Lebanon.
From Wiki:
The pigment was expensive and time-consuming to produce, and items coloured with it became associated with power and wealth. This popular idea of purple being elite contributes to the modern day widespread belief that purple is a “royal colour”. The colour of textiles from this period provides insight into socio-cultural relationships within ancient societies, in addition to providing insights on technological achievements, fashion, social stratification, agriculture and trade connections.
Tyrian purple – Wikipedia

They call that purple?
Purple poke berries

Poke berries stain purple, but I guess that was not the proper shade for Byzantine royalty? Or perhaps it just sounded more elegant to them that the proper shade required monumental manual labor to extract the dye from special snails sacrificed for their purpose of pleasure for the leisure classes?

Anyway, I’d love to wear a gown made of purple passion flowers! Flower Haute Couture is another thing I just learned is a real thing.
The wonders of the internet!

Royal influencers aside, there really is something special about purple. It would seem this little wren nesting in my purple wandering jew might agree.

Purple seems quite plentiful in nature. Purple grapes, purple berries, purple flowers, purple peppers, onions and potatoes.

Being so plentiful it shouldn’t feel so special. Yet somehow it still does.

Is the special of purple in the eye of the beholder, or is it somehow ‘objectively’ special, what do you think?

Don’t Help, Please!

I really mean it, for all, not just the government. You seriously over-estimate yourselves, all ye who cling to the coping, helping, giving categories.

At 12 I asked my ballet teacher to help me improve my lacklaster turnout. I have hip problems to this day from her suggested, prolongued, insufferable positions.

At 20 I asked my professor to help me with a chapter of my novel. That was asking a lot, but rather than saying ‘no’ she redirected me from my natural aptitude toward her personal literary preferences.

At 23 I asked a close friend to teach me to snow ski. Big mistake, I loathe downhill skiing to this day after he ‘accidentally’ led me down the black diamond run instead of the bunny hills.

At 33 I asked my sister for advice on a very sensitive issue. Big fucking mistake, again.

At 40, oh yes, more bad advice. Not long after that crisis I was given ‘help’ after asking for it, in the form of drama from disturbed individuals. Ask for help, receive drama, that’s the pattern.

And more at 45, indeed still at 55, plus!

The solicited advice is bad enough, then there’s the constant stream of unsolicited advice.

The latest offense coming laughably not too long ago. “Don’t say yes to things that will drain you.”

Classic condescending cuntery! From a so-called friend! That will be going on a permanent plaque in the forefront of my mind, forever.

So many (not) thanks!

Will I ever learn? Can I ever learn?!

Let me give y’all some really hard-earned, yet totally unsolicited advice.

Most advice sucks! Most advice proferrers are FOS.

We-means-I . . .

Hopefully, maybe overtime we recognize and can more easily sift the rare and precious advice from the . . . might we dare to say . . . the profane?

Self-satisfaction is king and his queen is self-delusion!
And you can quote me on that!

And all that bitched, here’s my best-ever advice based on a lifetime of bad advice, and now featured eternally on Youtube: Choose reality over fantasy.

Rocket science, eh?

And that’s all folks!

Thanks for stopping by.

Reality over fantasy. Where’s my dinner, boss?

Funny Friday

It’s that time again! Great harvest, many laughs.

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and for our musical selection . . .

Wishing y’all a lovely weekend! And a Happy Global Dependence Day! 😏

Thanks for stopping by! πŸ€—

Looks Be Deceiving

It’s more than mere marketing.

That disgusting-looking melon is the first one to be halfway decent this year. We nearly fed it to the pigs out of looks alone. Our cucs and melons have been crap. We don’t know why. The cucs were bitter by their first harvest, the melons are ripening in a most bizarre haphazard sort of way that half rots while the other half remains unripened.

It’s not quite the same as the old adage ‘don’t judge a book by its cover.’

that ugle cheese on the plate is a first-time cheese experiment success. and damn how I needed that yesterday. a soft, non-renneted fresh cheese wrapped in fig leaf and aged for 6 weeks.

I love cherries so much I display them over our own grapes, also coming in half-ripe, half-spoiled, on the same bunch.

That is, cherries from Walmart, on special at an irrestible $2/pound! On my once-a-month town run, which I mostly loathe, especially when it includes Walmart!

We call it a ‘bad year’.

I’m exhausted.

Hubby barrels on in the heat on our new bathroom, while I wither.

Bad years are to be expected, yet . . .

What will it take to see it through fresh eyes?

Tomatoes and feta, ugly, but still pretty tasty!

We don’t typically expect how that will feel.

Whether good or bad. It sort of molds into a morph-space best called ‘unexpected.’

I was not raised to be a ‘tough times’ sort of girl. I struggle every summer here, I complain in writing every summer. I think it helps, but, only because it helps me, to carry-on.

Seduced by slogans

I only became a fantasy tough-times type through marketing. So, forty years later I really understand its power.

My maternal grandfather was a salesman who used to try to warn us about marketing. He used to turn down the commercials on the constantly-on TV. The commercials were often the only part of the selected programming that I liked.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Or, so the slogan says.

I liked this sewing lady’s take, she seems more aware and accepting of the times than I am. Sometimes inspiration comes from the oddest places. Thanks for that.

Luxury comes at great costs we rarely acknowledge, especially the appearance of it.

And thanks for stopping by!

Bubba with Beautyberries, 2025

It’s all good, according to Bubba

Funny Friday

It’s that time again already! Surely some laughs in here somewhere.

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And for our musical selection . . .

Wishing y’all a lovely weekend, thanks for stopping by!

Growth vs Comfort

A homestead happenings post complete with dirty DIY pics, jungle-garden updates and my attempts at calm amidst the chaos.

While I see others around the world are thrilled with finally warm temps and blossoming gardens, we’ve already hit the hot mess stage. I’m embarrased a bit to include pics of the jungle that just a few weeks ago had several brag-worthy elements.

It’s so hot, wet and fertile here the seeds are coming up anywhere!

Oddly, not the cucumbers nor the onions. We’ve had bad onion years before, but cucs are our biggest no-brainer. I can’t recall ever having a bad year, normally they are so prolific they become pig food by this time, but this year we haven’t even had a big enough harvest to pickle, and they’re already dying back in the swelter. I’ve succession planted and can only hope whatever fluke has hit them, the youngens will bounce back by next month.

I guess it’s relative, when I see the onions displayed like that in Hubby’s hand-crafted bins, it seems ok.

The green beans in Hubby’s monster row are producing by the bushel and I’m already sick of them. We’re too unsettled with the bathroom DIY to do any canning and have even stopped harvesting them. Such a shame, I do hate to see them go to waste, but it’s all I can do to keep up with all the other chores.

Like the flowers! I know, it sounds rather frivolous compared to beans, to devote my painfully precious hours of manual labor to flowers instead of food, but they make me so happy I’ve gotten over it.

These Black Hopi sunflowers were actually volunteers from last year’s seed gift from Gavin Mounsey who sends heirloom seeds to those who buy his book or become a paid subscriber to his Substack newsletter–so worth it, a gift that really does keep giving! 😘

They are so rewarding and of course very functional as well. These giant sunflowers are not only gorgeous, but they serve as mid-day shading for the tomatoes and there are pollinators all over them. I even saw a squirrel up there eating the seeds. Too bad I didn’t have the tablet, it would’ve been a great shot, but I didn’t even see him until he started barking at me when I was picking tomatoes right underneath him.

First bloom of the lovely Blackberry Lily

Meanwhile, while I’m goofing off, Handy Hubby gets to experience male priviledge. Mr. Know-it-All likes to impress me and the dogs with all his savoir-faire. I know he secrectly delights in sweating and rolling in the dirt under the house with Buttercup. He’s totally thrilled that the bathroom remodel has turned into dirt to rooftop overhaul and his fancy tile project has been delayed by a month and tidy unplanned sum.

But not only was the subfloor coated in mold and mildew, but the piers and beams were sagging and unaligned and the drainage was partially blocked. He had to dig all that out and replace some and add more and while unexpected, it wasn’t terribly surprising. It was built as a camp cottage in the 80s, no one ever lived here full-time until us.

Considering that, Hubby says they did a good job and that the quality of materials for a camp cottage back then was leagues better than what goes into the pre-fab modern construction. We’re really lucky we got on this whim to remodel when we did, because that mess was only going to get more ugly with time.

That’s the bad news. The good news is the other development that grew spontaneously out of this project–I now have a real flex-room–a place for fermenting and seedlings and maybe just lounging. Considering how small our place is, I know it sounds a little crazy, but considering we’ll most likely never move again, why not? There was a big bed in there that just made for useless space, now it’s full function. Or rather, it will be, whenever the bathroom gets done.

Hubby is never so impressive to me than when he is in Mission-Man-Mode. He has a single-minded, goal-oriented side to him that perks up with such vigor suddenly you’d think he was once again a 30-something in hot pursuit of a sexy young thang (and by that I mean me). πŸ˜‚

Seriously though, it is impressive and he can work leagues past my breaking point when he’s in the zone. And Youtube is another godsend sometimes, the two of them in lockstep is like any DIYers dream couple. Between that and the regular influx of inspiration from the home shows on TV, there’s really nothing a devoted follower can’t learn, it seems. How marvelous to be learning so much still at our age!

old-style mortar and lath out

Like, when choosing between new toilets, humor helps.
https://youtu.be/O7x5g2VFc50

Hubby says he’s leaving it there until I plant flowers in it.

I’m so excited to share the before and after photos, someday. Until then, here’s what the deconstruction looks like.

Our current facilities . . . I don’t mind the poop-with-a-view, and the outdoor shower is actually delightful.

How nice it is to smell the citrus blossoms and hear the birds and watch the bees while I shower!

A sneak preview of the future tile for our imminent zero-threshold shower in our completely dirt-to-ceiling sweltering summer bathroom renovation.

How serene and lovely is my Zen water feature gift to myself for Hubby’s birthday!