Healing, or Perception Management

“Don’t sweat the small stuff. And it’s all small stuff.” ~ Idiots everywhere

“That which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” Fathers everywhere

“Where God closes a door, he opens a window.” Mothers everywhere

“Best cancer EVER!” ~ Stefan Molyneuxhttps://freedomain.com/freedomaininterviews/how-cancer-can-make-you-well-stefan-molyneux-with-laurette-lynn/, shilly online philosopher

“It’s just a flesh wound!” Monty Python

The message is clear and ubiquitous in the modern world, that favorite word of religions, wanna-be warriors, social programmers and closet tyrants everywhere: Transcend.

Or suffer. Your choice.

Transcend pain, transcend discomfort, transcend ennui.
Transcend mind, transcend body, transcend your very sex.

Jennifer Bilek might tell us a thing or two about that.

“The speed and coordination of this deployment—from zero “transgender children” before 2000 to their ubiquitous presence in schools and media within two decades—reveals orchestrated social engineering rather than natural cultural evolution.

The speed of normalization reveals coordination impossible through organic social change. Within two decades, major medical associations endorsed pediatric transition, schools implemented gender identity policies, and laws passed making it child abuse to question a minor’s gender identity. This transformation required massive funding, institutional capture, and media compliance—all documented in the money flows Bilek traces.”

Growth, like healing, does not happen on a fixed schedule, and sometimes it never happens. But, permanent medical interventions invented to create a profitable market out of confused and abused children is truly circling the drain.

It really irks me when those who call themselves and think of themselves as healers, use this form of gaslighting, which is actually perception management, in order to train ‘patients’ and the public how they should feel.

What’s actually happening at a fundamental level is cognitive and emotional dissociation. It makes the healer feel a lot bettter than the patient.

It’s an epidemic really. Magical thinking, positivity, silver linings, Hopium–they really only get you so far–which is to the next moment, where your mood or situation will have necessarily altered, but the REAL healing, the real growth, was simply relinquished to the back seat.

To rear it’s head another day. A day when most likely that fair weather friend or healer has moved on to greener pastures. More hopefully, the seeker has to. And by seeker I mean, the one looking for the healing.

It is the worst possible solution to be in because 99% of nitwits everywhere call themselves healers and having to navigate that at the precise moment of your own weakness is really shitty.

“Instead of ending these experiments, wealthy transsexuals like Martine Rothblatt began creating legal and linguistic frameworks to normalize their fetish. Rothblatt, who built satellite surveillance systems and founded Sirius XM, authored the first gender rights legislation and created ideological structures supporting body dissociation. The shift to “transgender” accomplished multiple strategic goals: it removed medical gatekeeping, expanded the market beyond surgical candidates, created ambiguity about what the term meant, and most crucially, included children.”

Soon, just another decade or so, this worst possible solution will be obvious to everyone with any cognitive function left. Because the endless loop between healers and patients will encompass the vast majority of the population. Wounded healers will become the most common archetype of the modern ages.

“Understanding the financial architecture behind gender ideology matters because it fundamentally changes how we perceive and respond to this phenomenon. When we recognize that the same billionaires funding gender clinics invest in artificial wombs, that the same foundations promoting “trans kids” advance transhumanist philosophy, that the same corporations threatening economic sanctions for “bathroom bills” develop human augmentation technology, the seemingly inexplicable suddenly becomes comprehensible. This isn’t about civil rights or social progress—it’s about market preparation for humanity’s technological transformation.
Breaking the spell, as Bilek emphasizes, requires following the money. The trail leads from philanthropic foundations through medical institutions to tech companies, revealing coordinated investment in reshaping humanity’s relationship with biological reality. This essay traces that trail, examining how gender ideology serves as psychological and cultural preparation for transhumanism’s larger project: the transformation of human beings into technological substrate.
What follows challenges comfortable narratives on all sides of the political spectrum. The evidence presented comes not from speculation but from documented financial transactions, institutional connections, and the explicit statements of the movement’s leaders. The patterns revealed demand we reconsider everything we think we know about why gender ideology emerged when it did, spread as rapidly as it has, and encounters such fierce protection from institutional power despite growing public opposition.

Children internalize this commodification through comprehensive indoctrination. They learn about “choosing” their sex characteristics like selecting avatar features in video games. School curricula teach about “families created through technology” and normalize the idea that biological parents are merely “genetic donors.” They see their bodies as collections of customizable parts rather than integrated biological systems. This dissociation from physical reality serves the larger project of normalizing human augmentation, genetic modification, and eventual merger with artificial intelligence.”

The Wounded Healer, the Autistic once called the Artistic? The previous victims of collective perception management, noticing.

Noticing no healing is happening. And calling out the so-called Healers.

Milk Into Cheese

Just some cheese talk this post, plus a bit of a book review and a delicious recipe for Blackberry Ricotta Cake.

David Asher’s latest book arrived and I’ve been devouring it, as well as a whole lot of cheeses. He dives deep not just into the biology, ecology and history of cheesemaking, but the dairy and fermentation traditions that continue today around the world. Really fascinating!

Since the beginning of August, when I found a raw milk lady with a surplus willing to work with a renegade cheese lady, that’s me, I’ve been my own milk lab*.

5 gallons of warm milk spoiling on the table. 😆 Plus a ‘failed’ pressed ricotta, used too much vinegar, but it will still be good further dried and crumbled on salad like feta.

Together we settled on a suitable style and schedule that’s been rather rigorous for me, 5 gallons twice a week, right from the barn to my containers. Not even chilled. (I can see my mom in my mind’s eye trying to hold the grimace from her face! 😆)

A very hot Pepper Jack before its tallow rub before aging several months.

But I’m in hog heaven! It’s brilliant to have top-quality raw milk for a cost so reasonable I can afford to experiment again, because that’s my favorite part. It still feels like a mini-miracle after searching and pining for so long. Plus, my milk lady is arranging for me to teach a workshop again very soon at her church. (I wonder if their grimaces will match my mom’s?!)

My raw milk lady winces at the idea of making clabber cheese too, and I bet most others would as well. Sitting warm milk out on the counter for a few days would scare Brits and Yanks, equally I expect, because our unusual cheese habits in America came from them, mostly.

The vast majority of the rest of the world, Europe included, drink fermented milk and eat raw fresh cheeses, as well as cooked and aged cheeses. Velveeta, like Squeeze Parkay and American cheese slices are a true embarassment to culinary culture and it’s a shame more Americans can’t see that. But I think it’s changing.

It’s our obsession with pasteurization and refridgeration that both giveth and taketh away in the realm of cheesemaking.

Sweet cream and fresh milk are far from the norm, and came about with industrial-level and widespread home-use of refridgeration. Cooling milk should really be considered as less than ideal, it begins the de-naturing process, which continues when we then must re-heat to an optimal temperature for cheesemaking, which is about 93 degrees, the same as it comes out of the cow.

Not that I ever care to live without refridgeration, mark my words! I LOVE all our costly cooling devices. Still, I really do want to know what the most naturally produced cheeses taste like, and I have that rare opportunity now.

The other problem that gets solved by not chilling the milk before cheesemaking is re-heating the milk adds about an hour to the process, because it must be done slowly and evenly, which requires stirring, or using a water bath.

Hubby’s Redneck solution–Water bath in a garbage can, equipped with a fish-tank heater and oscillator, and now on casters for easy storage. Wow!

Just as Hubby tries diligently to solve all my complicated problems with custom redneck solutions, the temperature challange got him thinking creatively on my behalf once again. Not to mention the fact (I’m sure) that I’m taking up way too much prime kitchen space and time. Did I mention we have a small kitchen in a small cottage?

As a bonus from cheesemaking we have loads of ricotta, made with the whey after the curds are removed. I mentioned whey cheeses last time, which are most delicious pressed and soaked in cider or wine, mixed with herbs on crackers, in pasta sauces or salad dressings, but ricotta also freezes well. It also has to be made the same day, another reason for as many shortcuts as possible in the overall process.

And still, with all those possibilities, it’s proving a challenge to keep up with all the ricotta. My scheme is to create something so delicious the neighbors will start taking it off our hands.

So here’s one more tasty solution.

I like it dark, but you don’t have to. 😁

Blackberry Ricotta Cake
(or blueberry, rasberry, whatever berry)

1 1/2 cups soft wheat (sifted)
1 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 large eggs
1 1/2 cups ricotta
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup butter, melted
1 cup frozen blackberries (only slightly thawed)

350 oven, pie pan greased/floured.
Whisk flour, sugar, baking powder and salt, set aside.
Wisk eggs, ricotta, vanilla in separate bowl. Combine both and mix until just blended. Fold in butter. Fold in 1/2 berries, top with remaining berries.
check at 45 minutes.

Good plain as a coffee cake or with ice cream or whipped cream for dessert. 😋

*milk lab is actually David Asher’s site, not in my kitchen! 😂
David Asher is a Natural Cheesemaker, bringing the traditions of dairying, fermentation and coagulation back into this age-old craft. A former farmer and goatherd from the west coast of Canada, David now travels widely, sharing a very old but also very new approach to cheese production. Through teaching about the use of in-house starter cultures and natural rennet from calves and kids, David helps cheesemakers around the world reclaim their traditional cheeses. He also explores the relations of all food fermentations, and the important role of small scale and traditional food production in our modern world. David is the author of ‘The Art of Natural Cheesemaking’ and the upcoming ‘Milk into Cheese’.

David Asher’s Milklabhttp://www.milklab.ca/

Thank you sir for another most excellent book!

Epistemic Capture in the Medical Industrial Complex

This is a repost of select paragraphs from this essay, which is well worth the full read here:
https://open.substack.com/pub/unbekoming/p/epistemic-capture?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

“Epistemic capture occurs when an industry controls the conditions of knowledge production—what gets researched, how, and what counts as evidence. It’s far more insidious than regulatory capture, where industries influence the agencies meant to oversee them. When you capture regulation, you control decisions. When you capture epistemology, you control reality itself.

The pharmaceutical industry has achieved something unprecedented in human history: the complete capture of an entire domain of knowledge production. Every step in the process of creating medical knowledge—from what gets studied in the first place to what appears in medical journals—has been systematically colonized. Medical school textbooks are written by authors with financial conflicts of interest. Two-thirds of medical school department chairs have financial ties to pharma. Two-thirds of researchers carry these same conflicts.

Federal agencies have side “foundations” enabling corporate contributions. The CDC Foundation, FDA Foundation, NIH Foundation—all serve as money laundering operations where pharmaceutical dollars transform into “public health” policy. Federal officials can own stock in companies they regulate. The foxes don’t just guard the henhouse; they’ve been given shares in the poultry business.

Rogers, a political economist who follows the money through the labyrinth of pharmaceutical influence, sat before senators and explained what philosophers of science have been warning about in obscurity: when an industry captures the entire knowledge production process—what gets studied, how it’s researched, what counts as evidence—it doesn’t just corrupt individual decisions or regulators. It corrupts reality itself. It keeps us chained in Plato’s cave, mistaking shadows on the wall for truth, while those who cast the shadows profit from our confusion.

The corruption begins before students even open their textbooks. The top two-thirds of universities own stock in pharmaceutical companies, creating an institutional conflict of interest that pervades every classroom and laboratory. When the universities themselves are investors in the industry they’re supposed to study objectively, the corruption isn’t a bug—it’s a feature.
Most clinical trials, the supposed gold standard of medical evidence, are conducted by for-profit Contract Research Organizations in China and the developing world, where oversight is minimal and data manipulation is easier. As Rogers revealed in his testimony, a large percentage—perhaps as much as 40%—of medical journal articles are ghostwritten by the pharmaceutical industry. As documented in “Biostitution,” authors with conflicts of interest are up to 20 times less likely to publish studies with negative findings than authors without such conflicts. The published science isn’t science at all, but marketing dressed in academic drag.

Twenty-seven billion dollars. That’s what the pharmaceutical industry spends annually just on drug promotions to influence prescribing practices. To put this in perspective, that’s more than the entire annual budget of the National Institutes of Health. It’s enough to give every medical doctor in America approximately $27,000 per year. This isn’t education—it’s epistemic warfare conducted with an unlimited budget.

This money doesn’t flow randomly. It’s strategically deployed to maximum effect. Continuing medical education, ostensibly meant to keep doctors current with the latest science, is sponsored by Big Pharma. The standards of care that doctors must follow or risk malpractice suits are written by physicians with financial conflicts of interest. The regulatory body that accredits private health insurance companies is stacked with industry representatives.
The money creates what Rogers calls an “epistemic bubble carefully engineered by the pharmaceutical industry to increase its profits.” Inside this bubble, certain questions simply cannot be asked. Certain connections cannot be made. Certain observations cannot be voiced. The money doesn’t just buy silence—it shapes the very conceptual framework through which doctors understand health and disease.

Consider how the tobacco industry pioneered this approach. As documented in “Agnotology,” they created a “stable” of experts to manufacture doubt, to call for endless research, to ensure that the “debate” never ended even as the bodies piled up. The pharmaceutical industry studied this playbook, scaled it up, and perfected it. Where tobacco had millions, pharma has billions. Where tobacco influenced a handful of researchers, pharma has captured entire institutions.

The economic cost runs into the trillions. Autism alone costs the United States over $250 billion annually. Diabetes, autoimmune diseases, neurological disorders—all have exploded in prevalence during the exact period when pharmaceutical influence over medical knowledge production reached its zenith. The correlation is dismissed within the bubble, but outside it, the pattern is unmistakable.

The FDA has no regulations concerning the contents of placebos. Manufacturers can put whatever they want into the comparator and still call it a “placebo” by law. Scientific journals have similar non-requirements. About two-thirds of the time, studies don’t even disclose what was in their “placebo.” This definitional corruption extends throughout medical science. A “randomized controlled trial” should compare vaccinated to unvaccinated groups using saline placebos. Instead, they compare new vaccines to old vaccines, or to aluminum adjuvants, ensuring that adverse events appear in both groups and can be dismissed as “background rates.” The corruption is so complete that when Siri demanded true saline placebo studies, the medical establishment insisted such studies would be “unethical”—a perfect epistemic capture where the methods needed to determine safety are declared morally impermissible.

The path out of epistemic capture begins with recognition. As Rogers emphasized, “ending epistemic capture is the key to stopping corruption, junk science, and iatrogenic injury.” But recognition alone isn’t enough—the entire system of knowledge production in science and medicine needs to be overhauled to liberate it from pharmaceutical industry distortions.

The ultimate goal isn’t just to end pharmaceutical capture but to make epistemic capture itself visible and preventable. Once we understand how entire fields of knowledge can be colonized, we can build immune systems against it. This requires teaching critical thinking, encouraging intellectual courage, and creating economic structures that reward truth-telling rather than compliance.

Read full article:

So. Much. Milk

A sudden mini-miracle has occured and has turned the month I completely intended to be an exceptionally lazy one into a whole big mess of work.

What’s in your cheese cave?
A portion of the cheeses I’ve made in the last two weeks, the largest was from 9 gallons, which was transformed into a Caraway Gouda. The smallest was made right in the half-gallon Mason jar with milk directly from the cow, never cooled and ‘backslopped’ from our own homemade goat rennet. Backslopping was a traditional method used on the farm to carry the culture and rennet combination from day-to-day, similar to keeping a fresh starter culture for sourdough bread.

While it’s work I love, the problem-solving has been endless and my shoulder is an on-going issue. After such a long search, this was so unexpected and has caught me off-guard, unprepared and re-injured. Why am I not surprised?

My milk-quest for cheesemaking has been a decade-long challenge. For the briefest of run-downs I’ve watched raw milk prices double in that time, tried and failed at goat rearing, and for the past couple of years I’ve been herdshare hopping, with prices far too high for cheesemaking.

A few weeks ago I tried another herdshare–closer, nicer, and so much cheaper. Finally, I can make cheese to my heart’s content, to hell with my aching shoulder! And thanks to Hubby on early retirement, who is willing and available for all the heavy lifting.

And who also helps with the redneck innovations–having just made me a new collapsible cheese-hanger unit and also made my cheese-press.

I’ve even been able to experiment again it’s so reasonable, at just $3.50/gallon. Not since the goats have I managed to pay so little for such cheese pleasures. My new milk lady is short on customers, half her milk is going to her neighbor’s pigs every day.

All I can think is, how crazy is that? That precious milk goes to the pigs, because it’s illegal to sell it anywhere but at her farm and to process it into cheese to sell is also illegal. While I can imagine those are some very happy pigs, I still wish I could sell cheese.

Actually, not so much the selling part, just the making part. I do often give it away as gifts and I get rave reviews. I’m often asked why I don’t sell it at the Farmer’s Market, because so few know how illegal it actually is. The requirements for licensing are very strict, not a chance a home kitchen would pass, (Great Dane not included!) and even with all the proper paperwork and a professional kitchen, many cheeses are still illegal to sell.

Various whey beneficiaries on the homestead:

I don’t want to run a cheese business anyway. I want a HWB (Hobby with Benefits) with those benefits being financial as well as delicious.

For now, I’m already out of room in my mini-aging fridge. I bought a second one, but once I got all the cheeses in it I had an impossible time getting a steady temperature. I gave up after 3 days of trying, to a mess of 70 degree cheeses sweating and dripping and starting to smell bad. The fridge regularly swings by 30 degrees, a cheesemaking nightmare.

I can work with a steady 50-55, and control humidity using plastic bins, not exactly a cave in the Loire Valley, but I can make it work well enough for a short Redneck affinage.

The non-existent affinage fridge of my dreams would be humidity controlled. The one that’s close enough costs a mere $700 and has temperature control in two sections (nice!). It’s technically for wine but home cheesemakers who can afford it often convert them with great success, or so I’ve read.

Let me just put that up on my vision board and see if it arrives in a timely fashion!

Also on my wishlist, David Asher’s latest book. His first book is my go-to resource and changed everything I was doing in making cheese, “The Art of Natural Cheesemaking: Using Traditional, Non-Industrial Methods and Raw Ingredients to Make the World’s Best Cheeses.”

Despite the struggle for a reliable raw milk source I have come to the wonderful place in my cheesemaking skills that I no longer follow recipes. I still read plenty of recipes, of course. But I read them to glean new techniques, learn cultural differences and especially pre-industrial methods, and imagine new combinations, in order to try them in my own way, like the rest of our cooking here. Hubby works the same way with his culinary craftiness.

It is the key to turning cooking from drudgery to joy, imo. It’s ‘the zone’ like they talk about in sports, or artists in their creative flow. Who wants to do that in their sterile industrial kitchen rather than in the comfort of their own home? Some, I know, but definitely not me.

Some previous cheeses “Kenshobert” in my territoire version of Camembert.

Turning a favorite hobby into a business is the joy-killer. Being well-rewarded for a favorite hobby is the goal. That’s magical like milk transforming into 1,000 cheeses is magical. Some call it alchemy, but really it’s just fermentation, maybe the most ordinary and natural process in the world.

Cheesemaking is also economical and beneficial to more than just our health and palette. The dogs and the pigs get all the whey after the ricotta is made–whey ricotta is a delicious ‘by-product’ from making hard cheeses. So from each gallon we get the heavy cream for coffee and ice cream, milk for cheeses, and whey for other recipes and very contended critters.

Ricotta pressed overnight then soaked 3 days in homemade hard pear cider. Eaten fresh, with fruit or crackers, it’s mild, slightly sweet and tangy.

The critics of course think it a lot of wasted work when cheese from the grocery store is cheap and plentiful, and there’s a growing network of artisanal cheesemakers who craft excellent cheeses (for a hefty price). I’ve had plenty of such cheeses and they are indeed delicious and worth the money.

But, they are all subject to the laws, which usually means: pasteurization, medicated animals, artificial lab-produced rennet (brought to you by Pfizer!), and freeze-dried cultures, also lab-made.

All that is exactly what I’m trying to get away from, in order to craft the most natural, local cheeses as possible. It’s an impossible task while remaining inside the laws.

Yet, there are folks still alive today who can remember when the laws weren’t so intolerably squashing to taste, creativity and economy. Just as there are old-timers here in Texas who can remember the days when they were allowed to raise, kill, process and sell their own livestock to the public, there are cheesemakers up north (no traditional cheese country in the south, too hot) who can still remember a time they could sell their handmade cheeses produced on farm in their own kitchens. Now most cheeses sold in this country are essentially fake, already lab grown, like the ‘meat’ they keep trying to push on the public.

Somehow there are still the majority who continue to call this freedom and progress.

Landowners Everywhere Beware!

About 5 or so years ago an old timer whose land borders our own gave me a brochure with an enthusiastic smile and said–“Y’all should do this, too!”

I grimaced as I took the materials he offered. As much as I respected this neighbor, bless his heart and rest his soul, as he has since passed, I just knew there had to be a con behind these legal conservation agreements property owners are signing in an effort at protecting their land for future generations.

He thought he’d done good, of course. While his property was entirely recreational, and his full-time home in Houston, he worked very hard on it for many decades. He has a beautiful 2-story cabin there he built himself, as well as fruit trees and grapes, and his children and many grandchildren filled the home on weekends and holidays, often practicing his favorite sport–shooting. He was a good man and he meant well.

No one in the family has been back to enjoy the cabin since his death, about 3 years ago. This is not unsual with inherited property, and our own property was another case in point. Siblings disagree, feelings get hurt, attorneys get hired, acreage gets split and the decades of hard work slowly go back to nature, if the internal conflict continues long enough.

This is a common enough scenario that it makes perfect sense an old patriarch would do all he can to avoid such mess. Now I can’t say if his family inheritors are aware of any potential issue with his decision to legally protect some of his land ‘forever’ or if that’s the reason they have not returned. Maybe a family feud alone is the issue there and the government hasn’t yet involved themselves.

Nature Preserves or Confiscation Scheme?

But that’s exactly the point I’m getting at. These ‘permanent conservation easements’ that are being created by well-meaning landowners are not without risk. And absentee landowners, or those embroiled in inheritance issues, are especially vulnerable.

Because the Globalists want the land, and if they can find a proverbial broken link in your private property chain, they will worm their way in, legally, through the fine print.

https://substack.com/redirect/f2975f0d-0481-47d8-8adf-9fb2b939aa8b?j=eyJ1IjoiYXBsankifQ.vij_GSi8NAkTixijJIkYbmIMsSylddJaDImehSkL3TQ

It’s all part of the Total Human Ecosystem (THE) scheme. From escapekey’s Substack:

Conservation Easements as Confiscation: Across rural America, landowners are being offered attractive deals for ‘conservation easements‘ that sound like simple land protection agreements. But buried in the contracts are ecosystem performance requirements tied to financing. Miss the biodiversity targets and operational control transfers to environmental organisations. The land becomes theirs while you keep the tax liability.”

Long gone are the days when Americans could glibly repeat, “But that would never happen here. We have laws.”

The ‘laws’ for every ‘country’ on Earth will be Uniform. This is the Agenda, and all private property is threatened. The very concept of private property will be demonized through the Government schools so thoroughly that children will be indoctrinated to be afraid of it.

“The Total Human Ecosystem framework treats private property as an outdated concept that threatens ecosystem integrity. Increasingly, local zoning laws incorporate ‘ecosystem service’ requirements that can trigger automatic seizure clauses. When satellite data shows your land use conflicts with ecosystem targets, your property can be transferred to ‘ecosystem management’ organisations. You might own the deed, but the ecosystem owns the seizure authority.”

Agricultural Land Seizure: Farmers are being offered attractive financing tied to ‘regenerative agriculture‘ and ‘carbon sequestration‘ targets. But when weather, pests, or market conditions make those targets impossible to hit, the financing agreements trigger land transfer clauses. Family farms that have operated for generations are being seized by international organisations through algorithmic enforcement of impossible environmental standards.

 The Domestic Blueprint: What’s happening in Belize and Ecuador is the beta test for comprehensive land confiscation in developed countries. THE provides the philosophical justification (individual property rights threaten ecosystem health), the ecosystem approach provides the governance framework (decisions must be made at ‘appropriate’ ecosystem scales), and the financial instruments provide the seizure mechanism (miss your targets, lose your land).”

https://substack.com/redirect/f2975f0d-0481-47d8-8adf-9fb2b939aa8b?j=eyJ1IjoiYXBsankifQ.vij_GSi8NAkTixijJIkYbmIMsSylddJaDImehSkL3TQ

A few more choice quotes from esc:

“Once you see this pattern, you cannot unsee it: every expansion of control comes wrapped in moral imperatives, every loss of freedom is packaged as virtuous necessity, every dissent is reframed as a moral failing. Healthcare workers fired for “ethics violations,” companies forced into ESG compliance, scientists silenced for challenging consensus—all manifestations of the same ethical control architecture that esc has systematically documented.”

https://substack.com/redirect/6953039b-71f0-4d19-a87a-f42fb1fe1f94?j=eyJ1IjoiYXBsankifQ.vij_GSi8NAkTixijJIkYbmIMsSylddJaDImehSkL3TQ

“Yet appearances deceive. The result is a global Soviet: the Party is gone, but the apparatus remains — cloaked in sustainability, cooperation, and humanitarianism, with a web of NGOs functioning as the modern fronts for its operational machinery.

The ideologies of peace, sustainability, and rights have been merged with the infrastructure of surveillance, algorithmic governance, and moral programming. The old flags have been lowered — but the new system flies under a different banner: expertise, ethics, and emergency.”

Gavin’s Recipes & Remedies

I wrote about Gavin’s book and gift of seeds recently, and now I’d like to share a bit about the recipes and his approach to gardening, food, cooking and life in general that I align with so much I can easily overlook our superficial differences–like we’re at nearly opposite ends of the gardening calendar, we’re decades apart in age, and I would normally never buy a vegetarian cookbook.

But as I already said, it’s much more than a cookbook. And I have too much respect for Gavin’s work to shun it just because it’s vegetarian! 😆

I’ve got a dozen pages marked of delicious-looking dishes I can’t wait to try. A number of dishes are already on our regular routine, like sourdough pancakes, heuvos rancheros, enchiladas with salsa verde and refried beans, and Greek salad (and we make it with homemade feta!)

At the top of my ‘Must-Try’ List: Shakshuka. The name alone sounds alluring!

We do eat a lot of vegetables and we always have salad daily and I’ve gotten plenty of new ideas–combinations I hadn’t considered, like a zucchini salad with mint–I’m often wanting to use more mint, it grows like crazy here.

The recipes are very adventurous too, drawing from diverse cultures and culinary traditions–Ethiopia, Morocco, Bali, Mexico, Greece, Thailand –which I truly appreciate, because we tend to get stuck in a bit too much of a routine sometimes. When the garden produce is rolling in by the wheelbarrow, there’s not much time to get creative.

The lovely and edible Borage flower, used as a garnish in Gavin’s Gazpacho recipe on YT. 
(Photo credit: Kath-UK)

In fact, on the things that really matter, we agree completely.

Like on the importance of fermented dishes, and especially sauces, because the ones that are mass-produced are full of chemicals and highly processed garbage. It’s hard not to sound preachy, maybe even impossible, when telling folks how terrible their diet most likely is. But it’s the plain and simple truth.

I still go to the grocery store from time to time and I see what’s available and what’s in most folks’ carts and it’s pretty hard not to get judgy and to bite my tongue!

The difference a few dietary adjustments can make over time is really impressive–and it starts with naturally-grown fresh food.

Considering the vast majority of folks are outsourcing their health to Big Ag, Big Food and Big Pharma it’s not any wonder why our societies are collapsing under the weight of it all!

I’ve been enjoying goofing around with the free meme-maker ap using Gavin’s gorgeous photography and inspiring quotes. 😊

“In the past hundred years or so most people have forgotten about those ancient fermentation practices because of the advent of ‘instant gratification’ mass-produced products has allowed for entire generations of people to become completely dependent on corporations that supply them with the ‘food’ they need to survive. These ‘ultra-pasteurized’, pre-packaged, chemical-laden ‘food products’ are devoid of life, contain very little if any nutrients and are produced in ways that cause much damage to the planet’s ecosystems. Though eating prepackaged factory food (with unpronounceable ingredient lists) might be considered by some as ‘normal’ by today’s standards, it is certainly not a ‘norm’ that is conducive to longevity, sustainability or common sense.”

With thanks once again to Gavin, for his great many gifts, and for sharing them so graciously and generously. I’m already looking forward to his next book!

Homestead Happenings

It’s Shoulder Season on the wee homestead, and by that I mean a few things.

Shoulder season, for those who maybe new to the phrase, has a specific meaning in tourist trades, meaning between high season and low season. Savvy travelers and those who dislike crowds or who are just cheap or nearly broke try to travel in the shoulder season.

As far as I know it doesn’t have a parallel meaning in the gardening world.

But for me it does. It’s the time we move between seasons in the garden and since we garden all year, it happens twice, once in Swelter Season (now) and once in YoYo Season (formerly known as winter).

The key summer crops in the garden are either long gone–onions, garlic, crucifers, or mostly dead–tomatoes, squash, melons. And normally the cucumbers too, except those are, so far, successfully secession planted, with the new generation just coming up as the last one is dying. Good timing there, tiny bow to me!

Old cucs on left, dying fast, on right a couple of tomatillos in the back, also dying and a volunteer datura, doing great.
New cucumber plants looking good, but will they produce?

And big bow to Handy Hubby for growing this 27 pound beauty!

A nice variety of melons and squashes, we are quite pleased.
And still more, a mini-fridge of melon
And still more squash! And cider.

While it could be Vacation Season for some more sane types, for us it’s the work of Shoulder Season. We keep the minimum that will survive our high heat for the next two months and baby most of them best we can.

But under lights inside the fall/winter garden is on its way. There’s already another crop of tomatoes coming up, as well as broccoli, cauliflower and arugula.

In the ‘babying’ bed I continue my lettuce experiment, starting romaine indoors under lights and moving under double shade cloth to transplant, then removing one level of shade cloth after a few days to adjust. They are still alive, yay!
Also in the ‘baby’ bed under shade cloth: some parsley barely hanging on, some dill trying to seed, 2 peppers, 2 dying tomatoes and lots of very happy basil.
Tomatoes, peppers and basil for marinara. And in back left is cured lamb.

There’s processing to be done still, the marinara stockpile is done thanks to Hubby, but there’s still ketchup and bar-b-que sauce. And we still call this a bad tomato year!

stockpiling marinara

Ah, the gifts and curses of relativity. And surplus.

The pears are looking promising, and the grapes–which will be the next big project–wine and cider-making season. Blackberries and pears are our easiest fruits here; everything else seems to struggle. Though we have had years of good figs, and some neighbors still do. The grapes are looking good too, but there’s no guarantee.

And I think I finally got the trick for strawberries. It seems most everything that is most delicious is high-maintenance. What can -we do, if we like high maintenance produce but to contend with the high costs of creating them?

Many years of failed strawberries, but this year was a great success in comparison. Now the runners are going crazy and taking over this bed, so next year promises to be better still.

I’m planning for more low-maintenance in future, but those might be high hopes.

Because, my choice would be to spend my dwindling number of pain-free hours working with the flowers!

I’ve seen a few butterflies and bees on the pink ‘Obedience plant’, such a welcome sight!

Which brings up my other meaning for Shoulder Season.
So much shoulder pain! And I am not good at staying stationary, it drives me nuts actually. So it’s between physical anquish, or mental, and I do far better with the former.

It’s as unwelcome a kinked, knotted, crippling invasion as this mystery fruit I posted about last year. I unknowingly caused quite a crisis in the garden and lost almost all the melons I planted.

What is this imposter which choked out all my melons?!

Just when I was insisting to Hubby we need to be thinking about reducing our garden plots in order to reduce our workload and water usage, I stand corrected. The orchard squash didn’t produce well at all, for some unknown reason; the garden melons were choked out by the wild cucumber; so without the third space we’d have no watermelons or honeydews, which would mean a mostly melonless summer after lots of work and wait, as the main garden produced about half a dozen sub-par cantaloupe.

A sweet, cold watermelon is the best morale booster in the hot, humid Texas summer garden jungle!

Two wheelbarrows full of vines and fruit the pigs don’t even like.

Wild cucumber vs melons and the melons lost bad. I have still not been able to figure out what these things are, which I brought into the garden under false pretenses. I have heard suggested they may be lemon cucumbers or mouse melons, but they are not the right size, shape or color for either of those.

I really get the frustration of invasive species now. I realize I’ve been a bit cavalier on that front in the past, for good reason, but I have definitely been humbled this time as these bitter, seedy imposters are still popping up everywhere.

Please, give me an invasion of the supposedy invasive Mimosa trees, and I’d be thrilled!

You have my permission to invade my gorgeous Mimosa!

The plants that thrive here in the long high heat and humidity are so impressive, even when invasive, but it helps my morale considerably to consider the non-invasive ones as often as possible.

The sweet potatoes are almost effortless. Once they get established and as long as they get a good head start over the bindweed (another ‘invasive’ relative) they are pretty reliable. Eggplant and okra are others, and we’re learning to like eggplant. Maybe even a lot.

The bountiful basil takes center stage as the parsley, dill and cilantro take early retirement and don’t even bother to seed, it’s so damn hot.

Whether and which tomatoes will survive, or thrive, from one year to another is anyone’s guess.

Gavin’s seeds, the Scarlet Runnerbean (barely) and Black Hopi Sunflower, are hanging on still, very impressive.

The black Hopi sunflower behind a mystery weed that smells medicinal. Any idea what it is, anyone?

The two out of three citrus planted last spring are doing well–they look healthy and their growth has more than doubled since spring.

The poke weed, the datura, don’t get me started, such beautiful and amazing plants!

But, the mystery weeds, what are these?

Inquiring minds want to know!

Thanks for stopping by!

Agri-Capture, Psy-Style

“Agriculture is a major contributor to climate change and the devastation of the planet… The only way to fix this, the necessary step, is knowing what food is.”

Converting Food Tradition Into Science With The Periodic Table Of Food

https://www.forbes.com/sites/daphneewingchow/2024/05/21/converting-food-tradition-into-science-with-the-periodic-table-of-food/

This was an infuriating propaganda piece on behalf of the Rockefeller Cartel by Forbes magazine, sent by a friend who likes it when I’m infuriated. Bless her heart!

The article is the perfect example of the methods of ideological subversion being used on the public by the corporatocracy through the institutions.

The single quote above I take from the article, rather than quoting it further, is in order to not subject the reader to further mind poison. But rather instead, to offer an antedote.

How does it work? Why are they doing this?

While the excellent article below is a good means of demonstration, it’s first important to notice the labels themselves are meant to be flexible while still garnering a knee-jerk reaction: Communism, Capitalism, two opposing worldviews, that’s the framing.

Except it’s fake, a false dichotomy. These are economic views posing as worldviews for political purposes.

Often political purposes and religious ones overlap, which is why I avoid religion as well as politics when I’m trying to think logically!

The above quote works a similar frame: Science must know what food IS so that agriculture will no longer destroy the planet.

Except the only reason argriculture is destroying the planet is because it was taken over by BigAg MANY decades ago. Before I was born, actually, and I’m getting up there.

They fail to mention this piece of the puzzle, no surprise there. Many societies have thrived and still thrive on non-industrial agriculture to survive. Industry has ruined agriculture in this country, and many others.

Our brainwashing that it is our job to feed and police the world is the actual problem causing the devastion. The industrial-military global order is the problem causing the devastion.

95% of average folks are just pawns in this game.

Leave the terms ‘communism’ and ‘capitalism’ to the side for a moment and consider this:

“What Marx and Engels pioneered wasn’t specifically a political revolution — it was the rewriting of the moral code itself. The Manifesto operates as a systematic inversion of the fundamental value and structures that underpin social organisation. Every principle that helped stabilise bourgeois society — property rights, family inheritance, religious authority, national sovereignty — was methodically reframed through inversion; consciousness programming designed to make the existing moral operating system feel not just wrong, but obsolete.

Programming Permissible Thought
Control the language and you control the range of permissible thought. The Communist Manifesto introduced this tactic with rhetorical inversions; ESG and global ethics continue it by redefining terms like ‘freedom’, ‘equity’, and ‘justice’ so that dissent itself becomes linguistically unspeakable. When ‘inclusive’ becomes the only acceptable alternative to ‘extractive’, when ‘sustainable’ becomes synonymous with ‘moral’, and when ‘science-based’ becomes code for ‘unchallengeable’, we’re witnessing linguistic capture similar to that Marx pioneered.

The genius lies not just in changing what words mean, but in making certain combinations of words feel impossible. Try arguing against ‘inclusive prosperity’, ‘women’s rights’, or ‘science-based sustainability targets’ without sounding backwards. The linguistic terrain has been so thoroughly mapped that opposition requires either accepting the loaded framework — or appearing to reject progress itself. It’s a steep uphill struggle, almost guaranteed to waste enormous amounts of time — even though these terms typically function to insert ideological blind spots ripe for later exploitation by full intent.”

Like the quote says–to solve the problem, we must know what food is. Imagine, we don’t even know what food is! We must have science explain food to us in order to not destroy the planet by eating.

esc continues . . .

“Inclusive Capitalism as Semantic Cover for Stakeholder Feudalism
‘Inclusive capitalism’ — promoted by coalitions involving the Vatican, the World Economic Forum, and major central banks — promises to ‘make capitalism work for everyone’. The manipulative techniques are identical to the Manifesto: binary framing where ‘inclusive capitalism’ opposes ‘neoliberal greed’ with no middle ground allowed; euphemistic coercion where investors are ‘guided’ to ESG portfolios and non-compliance means exclusion from financial markets; sacred authority through alignment with religious institutions that sanctifies technocratic control; and guilt transfer where individual consumers — not megacorporations, nor central banks — bear responsibility for systemic problems.
You get to keep the word ‘capitalism’… while losing actual market freedom. It’s semantic cover for stakeholder feudalism — the Financial Stability Board and the BIS become moral arbiters of capital allocation, yet you never voted for them.”

This ‘guy’ knows what he’s talking about, read him, not Forbes!

“Recognition and Resistance
What we witness is the emergence of something historically unprecedented: soft totalitarianism with global reach, implemented not through revolutionary violence but through institutional coordination and moral manipulation. The most disturbing aspect is how voluntary compliance is manufactured through psychological techniques that make resistance feel not just futile but morally reprehensible.
Unlike crude twentieth-century totalitarianism, this system preserves the language of freedom while altering its substance, claims scientific and moral authority rather than raw power, operates through persuasion and micro-incentives rather than force, and presents itself as evolution rather than revolution. Koestler⁶² warned that disembodied rational systems could turn pathological when disconnected from human meaning — today’s ESG frameworks automate that disconnection at global scale.”

Geoengineering Update

Just a couple of vids to share today. I have not (yet) done any sort of deep dive on the Hill Country flooding. I have heard some of the speculation and I’m sure readers could guess my opinion to any question of whether this was a ‘natural’ disaster.

I was confused by this first video showing how quickly the flooding happened in an area that was getting no rain at the time. It looks like something from an amusement park. But, I did hear they opened certain dams in some areas to divert the intense water flow, so maybe that could help explain it. I’m going to look into this part of the operation in future.

What’s far easier to see is the current government propaganda drive, and it’s thick and multi-layered. We’ve got promises of disclosure coming from stooges and patsies being played as blame gets shifted and terminology gets altered.

We will not be led into their narrative spin cycle. That’s why I’ve included the 2nd video. The Spinners want the public blaming small, local cloud-seeding operations, not the global military operations.

NOLAButterfly is the researcher of the 2nd video and has been active for a very long time. Notice how few views she gets, how little exposure. I’ve seen her kicked off multiple channels over the years and get in heated arguments with top researchers like Jim Lee, who definitely looks to me like he’s joined the dark side.

I cannot say if her theories are correct. I can say her silencing speaks volumes to me. From what I’ve experienced and seen myself, I believe she has some very plausible ideas backed by research. She explains clearly in the vid what she sees happening and it’s worth a listen.

Click on the link for the 2nd video, because the embed doesn’t work properly with Rumble videos.

NOLAButterfly Texas Hill Country flooding, radar explanationhttps://rumble.com/v6vzs4m-radar-analysis-leading-up-to-the-texas-flood-massacre.html

Disenchanting Enchanted Rock

I was so excited when I found ‘an expert’ on Enchanted Rock, who had written an entire book on the monument and its surroundings and has a website too, with lots of details. I was sure to have found a great source, I thought.

Click pic for my previous post about Enchanted Rock called “My favorite Enchanting photo”

And with a name like Kennedy, it’s gotta be good, right?

In the spirit of disobedience, in a word, no. Two words: Hell, no! Three words: Big, Fat, Disappointment!!

Wow, I didn’t realize anyone can just throw any piece of nonsense together and call it history. Or anthropology. Or pretty much any ‘science’.

Way to spoil a miraculous destination, Kennedy, thanks bunches.

But I can’t really blame him alone, it’s more than a trend. The dumbing down of the public has been documented for decades, and this sort of material that is supposed to pass as educational is a perfect case in point. So, let’s take a few pokes at it from a few of those many angles.

The History of Enchanted Rock in the Texas Hill Country by Ira Kennedy self-published in 2010 naming it https://www.amazon.com/HISTORY-ENCHANTED-ROCK-TEXAS-COUNTRY/dp/1456818783
“The Sacred Landmark of Central Texas”.

It is not sold as a children’s book and costs $21.99. According to the the Amazon page Ira Kennedy is:

“Considered as the state’s leading authority on Enchanted Rock, the sacred mountain of Central Texas, Ira has assisted the author’s of several published books, articles and the Thomas Evans mural of Enchanted Rock in the Austin-Bergstorm International Airport. IN 1992, Ira was awarded a Certificate of Appreciation from the Texas Parks and & Wildlife Department for providing numerous educational talks at Enchanted Rock Natural Area.” And it goes on.

The first Amazon review looked promising.
“Ira Kennedy is the world expert, in the opinion of many, of this beautiful Texas natural treasure. His knowledge comes from spending a great deal of his life on or near the rock. Ira is a creative genius and humble man who has written this amazing book, sure to answer all your questions about this geological wonder. Beautifully illustrated by Ira, you will keep this book among your special collections.”

The ‘book’ itself looks more like a coloring book. There are no references or citations, no bibliography or notes. While the author states he did multi-disciplinary research and himself has an advanced degree and was employed in Naval intelligence as a cryptographer, he must seriously understand what an ‘expert’ text would look like, and this one is the polar opposite of scholarly.

I can only assume ‘expert’ has taken on a new meaning sometime around the year 1999.

Let’s set the tone with his “Brief Historical Timeline” which begins his story in 12,000 B.C. and ends in 1978. With only a smattering of centuries missing, bless his heart!

We learn of a dubious-looking character named Jack Hays who was ‘an enigma’. We learn about a William Kennedy and his ‘flower-spangled’ landscape and ‘lost mines’ the ‘fueled the imaginagtion’. We learn about some immigrants from Germany in the 1840s.

We have the ‘First People’ myths and ‘The Imaginary Frontier’ of the Spanish explorer Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, who passed right through Mason County in the sixteenth century. And some childish stick figure drawings, some arrowheads and feather headdresses.

Later in the book are some drawings of angry indians who we learn may or may not have practiced human sacrifice.

And that about sums up my waste of money and time! Alas, the journey of discovery continues.

Poor, misunderstood ‘Enchanted Rock’ — I don’t even like your name anymore, so I think I’ll find a new one. And a new history to go with it. It would surely be better footnoted than this toilet paper, and good bit more entertaining I expect too!

I dare say, you there, intrepid traveler, can you smell anything beyond the boulders of bullshit?