What’s Happening to Cyberspace?

I’ve been noticing for years, as so many others have as well, that the online world is being transformed into something quite unrecognizable.

I noticed this incremental shift long before the “Fact Checking” era began, but not long after I got removed from the blogging platform I’d been blogging at for years, before I started this blog.

It was mere annoyance at first, at the little things. Why can’t I find recipes anymore by independent bloggers? I thought DuckDuckGo was supposed to be a more neutral search engine. Why is it all becoming so commercialized and institutionalized? So many ads, so much repetition, so few unique voices. If I didn’t know the exact name of the specific bloggers’ recipes I wanted to find the only links that come up in my searches are for the ‘big name’ mainstream mega-platforms, like Betty Crocker, Saveur, Food Network, listed over and over again. The original content creators that made the web what it is are being systematically squeezed out.

And it’s not just about controversial content, as Truthstream Media is pointing out in this new video. Mel aptly describes it as the latest Potemkin Village.

This morning I got this message (below) in my inbox. Now, it’s been some years since I’ve blogged for GRIT, and that stint didn’t last long even back then, because the stupid rules were already starting in at that point, and changing constantly, and I found it too annoying to try to keep up with them, considering it was supposed to be a labor of love (ie, no one’s getting paid for all the free content we provide).

Now it seems they don’t even want free content anymore from mere bloggers.

Dear GRIT blogger:

During the past 10 years, you have offered your know-how generously, supplying millions of readers with the actionable advice that has enabled so many households and farms to turn country living dreams into reality. The work you do — and the wisdom you transfer to the digital page — underpin more resilient, connected communities. Also during the past decade, the Internet evolved immensely.

When we started the GRIT blogging program, we were on a mission to supply a rapidly growing online readership with timely — even daily — information, free of the page and time constraints faced by the print edition of the magazine. We also were largely free of rules; blogging was in its “Wild West” period. As online writing evolved, search engines placed increasingly complex, and ever-changing, “web rules” around what content is featured in search results. Meanwhile, blogging as a format and cultural phenomenon underwent its own transitions. These factors have led us to make a tough decision.

No more bloggers at GRIT.

Looks to me like the WorldWideWeb is being Walmarted. I believe in business parlance that’s called Vertical Integration.

Anyone else finding it terribly annoying?

Are Anarchists Evil?

A proper tongue-lashing for Covidian cultists and other State-teet suckers.  And, a prime example of the ‘divine masculine’ that too many will mistake for ‘toxic masculinity’ because the truth is not there to make you feel even more cozy and comfortable than you already are.

Forgiveness must be earned before it is bestowed.

And, another glimmer of hope from Academy of Ideas!

Eye-Opening Quotes: HG Wells

The Open Conspiracy (Non-fiction, 1928)

“It is impossible for any clear-headed person to suppose that the ever more destructive stupidities of war can be eliminated from human affairs until some common political control dominates the earth, and unless certain pressures due to the growth of populations, due to the enlarging scope of economic operations, or due to conflicting standards and traditions of life, are disposed of. To avoid the positive evils of war and to attain the new levels of prosperity and power that now come into view, an effective world control, not merely of armed force, but of the production and main movements of staple commodities and the drift and expansion of population is required. It is absurd to dream of peace and world-wide progress without that much control.”

“So, in relation to science—and here the word is being used in its narrower accepted meaning for what is often spoken of as pure science, the search for physical and biological realities, uncomplicated by moral, social, and ‘practical’ considerations—we evoke a conception of the Open Conspiracy as producing groups of socially associated individuals, who engage primarily in the general basic activities of the Conspiracy . . . The contemporary mind realizes the evils of production for profit and of the indiscriminate scrambling of private ownership more fully than ever before, but it has a completer realization and a certain accumulation of experience in the difficulties of organizing that larger ownership we desire. Private ownership may not be altogether evil as a provisional stage, even if it has no more in its favor than the ability to transcend political boundaries.”

***

From Mathew Ehret:

“In 1932, Wells gave an Oxford speech championing a global order run by liberal fascists saying: “I am asking for liberal Fascisti, for enlightened Nazis”. This was not paradoxical when one realizes that the rise of fascism was never a “nationalist” phenomenon as popular history books have asserted for decades but rather was the artificial consequence of a supranational financier-oligarchy from above who wished to use “enforcers” to bend their societies to a higher will.”

“Although the bodies of Wells, Russell and Huxley have long since rotted away, their rotten ideas continue to animate their disciples like Sir Henry Kissinger, George Soros, Klaus Schwab, Bill Gates, Lord Malloch-Brown (whose disturbing celebration of the Coronavirus as a golden opportunity to finally restructure civilization) should concern any thinking citizen. The idea of a “Great Reset” expounded by these modern mouthpieces of history’s bad ideas signals nothing more than a new Dark Age which should turn the stomach of any moral being.”

H.G. Wells’ Dystopic Vision Comes Alive With the Great Reset Agenda — Strategic Culture

Eye-Opening Quotes

I’ve decided to add a new and regular feature to this blog—quotes on social engineering. The first is a doozy, just in case you’re snoozing!

This was lifted from the excellent article in Strategic Culture by Cynthia Chung, From Trotskyism to Radical Positivism: How Albert Wohlstetter Became the Leading Authority for Nuclear Strategy in America

Bertrand Russell

Russell would put it forth most succinctly in his “The Scientific Outlook” (1931):

“The scientific rulers will provide one kind of education for ordinary men and women and another for those who are to become holders of scientific power. Ordinary men and women will be expected to be docile, industrious, punctual, thoughtless and contented. Of these qualities, probably contentment will be considered the most important. In order to produce it, all the researchers of psycho-analysis, behaviorism and biochemistry will be brought into play… all the boys and girls will learn from an early age to be what is called “cooperative” i.e.: to do exactly what every body else is doing. Initiative will be discouraged in these children, and insubordination, without being punished will be scientifically trained out of them.”

“In 1953, Russell would update this creepy piece of work and make it even creepier, writing:

“It may be hoped that in time anybody will be able to persuade anybody of anything if he can catch the patient young and is provided by the State with money and equipment… This subject will make great strides when it is taken up by scientists under a scientific dictatorship. Anaxagoras maintained that snow is black, but no one believed him. The social psychologists of the future will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing an unshakable conviction that snow is black. Various results will soon be arrived at. First, that the influence of home is obstructive. Second, that not much can be done unless indoctrination begins before the age of ten. Third, that verses set to music and repeatedly intoned are very effective. Fourth, that the opinion that snow is white must be held to show a morbid taste for eccentricity. It is for future scientists to make these maxims precise and discover exactly how much it costs per head to make children believe that snow is black, and how much less it would cost to make them believe it is dark gray.”

In his “The Managerial Revolution,” Burnham echoes the Fabian Society methodology and Russell’s “The Scientific Outlook,” writing:

“Nevertheless, it may still turn out that the new form of economy will be called ‘socialist.’ In those nations – Russia and Germany – which have advanced furthest toward the new [managerial] economy, ‘socialism’ or ‘national socialism’ is the term ordinarily used. The motivation for this terminology is not, naturally, the wish for scientific clarity but just the opposite. The word ‘socialism’ is used for ideological purposes in order to manipulate the favourable mass emotions attached to the historic socialist ideal of a free, classless, and international society and to hide the fact that the managerial economy is in actuality the basis for a new kind of exploiting, class society.”

Get the Grift

Government = Hypocrites with a monopoly on violence beholden to the highest bidders as partners equally committed to exploitation.

“The science is settled.” is a grift statement.

‘Due to funding cuts, the Government has supplied us with its very own doctor!’


Vaccines are safe and effective.” Is a Barnum slogan.


“I’m sure they mean well.” Is a lazy, avoidant, arrogant, auto-rebuff that in a more sophisticated language might be more obvious, but which gets lost in English because we have dropped the use of the ‘subjunctive mood’ —a ‘tense’ used to express doubt, improbability or impossibility.

Some more telling quotes on the topic:

“Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” JFK January 20, 1961. Notice he said ‘country’ not ‘government’.

“I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries; as long as they are chiefly agricultural; and this will be as long as there shall be vacant lands in any part of America. When they get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, they will become corrupt as in Europe.
Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Madison, 20 December 1787, published in Papers of Thomas Jefferson (1955) vol. 12

“And so the grand vision of science, hundreds of years old—the dream of total control—has died, in our century . . . Science has always said that it may not know everything now but it will know, eventually. But now we see that isn’t true. It is an idle boast. As foolish, and as misguided, as a child who jumps off a building because he believes he can fly.” Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park

When’s the Anger stage?

Or did we already move right into acceptance, bypassing anger totally?

If anyone is still doubting how serious it really is—this global coup-d’etat happening right now, right under our noses—then this is the video for you!

How the World Economic Forum Is Getting The ’Great Reset’ Done
https://odysee.com/@neverlosetruth:0/wef:e

Fostering Dependency

I remember well the first time I heard the expression ‘learned helplessness’. My mom used the term and I didn’t understand it. I asked her to explain, which went something like, “As if a man is actually incapable of doing the laundry.”

Some time later I heard it used again, only this time in reference to a woman who wouldn’t dream of changing a tire because she might break a freshly manicured nail.

These are benign examples of a much more serious issue. A little co-dependency amongst family and friends can be a very good thing. It reminds us we need each other, and it’s nice to be needed, as long as it’s not too needy. 🙂

But there is a much more nefarious kind of learned helplessness that is proliferating in our society and because it’s being sold by some very slick salesmen it goes on, continually championed by those who should know better. US.

This is the kind of dependency that fosters anxiety and dis-ease, because it promotes frustration, alienation, victimhood, powerlessness. Under the guise of convenience, comfort, safety, and even fun, we have allowed ourselves to become dependent on criminals, sociopaths, martyrs, tyrants dressed up as experts and beneficent leaders and stars.

Food, water, shelter, health, energy, entertainment, protection. These are all crucial aspects of human life we’ve willingly outsourced to others. Gone are the days for the vast majority who cooked from their own gardens, played and sang tunes around the fire pit, cared for their own ill, built their own homes. How many generations must we go back to know a time before politicians were household names and stock markets dealt only in livestock?

How many folks believe we have it so much better in our ultra-civilized modern world because they’ve bought the propaganda of their oppressors, those who actively promote and celebrate our dependency as progress?

There is a wellspring of peace of mind knowing that if you ever dare say “Take this job and shove it” you won’t end up homeless and hungry.

If you could do one thing in the new year to release the yoke of dependency just a bit, or a bit more, what would you do?

Happy New Year from the wee homestead, y’all,
thanks for reading!

From Lightbulbs to . . .

I remember the good ole days, from like, a decade ago. There was suddenly the mandate that everyone change their lightbulbs for some ‘common good’ reasons that escape me now.

What doesn’t escape me is at the time I thought, WTF?! I’ve longed considered ‘the government’ just a euphemism for ‘the mafia’, but surely, with this sort of escapade, now it will be obvious to everyone. Same tactics, only ‘legal’: Extortion, bribery, coercion, racketeering. Not to mention the ‘soft’ tactics.

Where will it end? Come on folks! I ventured forth on my social media quest. I was still on Fakebook back then. To the response of yawns and crickets and eye rolls and unfriending and the usual. Everyone clamored about to get their lightbulbs installed.

Now, here we are. As the old Virginia Slim ad boasted: You’ve come a long way, Baby!

No boobs, hmmm . …

It’s baffling, but I am far from surrendering to the mobsters and their minions. And in my own little way, I’ve come a long way, too. It’s very encouraging and refreshing for me to find like-minds in places I’d never have thought to look before. 🙂

Bruce Charlton’s Notions: Compliance is spiritual Dane-Geld

It is always a temptation to an armed and agile nation,
To call upon a neighbour and to say:
“We invaded you last night – we are quite prepared to fight,
Unless you pay us cash to go away.”

And that is called asking for Dane-geld,
And the people who ask it explain
That you’ve only to pay ’em the Dane-geld
And then you’ll get rid of the Dane!

It is always a temptation to a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say:
“Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away.”

And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we’ve proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.

It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray,
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say:

“We never pay any one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost,
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost!”

Rudyard Kipling – 1911

In other words: Give the devil a finger . . .

Cheers to Zombie Apocalypse Survival Homestead for the share.

Photo by Duanu00e9 Viljoen on Pexels.com

When Money Is Your Master 

 When money is your master you create this

Photo by Anuj Yadav on Pexels.com

Instead of this

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

When money is your master you attract her

Photo by Luis Fernandes on Pexels.com

Instead of her

Photo by Elina Fairytale on Pexels.com

When money is your master you cherish 

Photo by Bob Ward on Pexels.com

Over

Photo by Josh Willink on Pexels.com

You believe swindlers, just because they’re rich

Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko on Pexels.com

You obey tyrants, just because they’re rich

You idolize fools, just because they’re rich

You worship at the twin alters of Ignorance and Superfluous 

**********

I read a story decades ago when I was in the Peace Corps that was a well-known parable, but was new to me.  I repeat it now hoping it will land for the first time on someone new to its moral and ring true in their heart for as long as it has in mine.

A rich man went to vacation on a beautiful island and sat in his beach chair under a sun umbrella reading a novel and looking out over the beautiful sea.  He felt marvelous and relaxed and drank in the scenery with great satisfaction.  He loved the experience so much he went back again the following year for his vacation, and again the year after that.

This third year, feeling again very happy and even magnanimous, he noticed the fisherman on the beach that he had seen during each of his vacations.  He liked watching the man, who was very agile with his line and very patient for the five fish he caught each day.  His bucket held the fish perfectly and he spent every morning on the beach until he filled his bucket and then he left. 

One morning the vacationing man decided to strike up a conversation with the fisherman and they shared some pleasant small talk, so the next few days they stood together on the beach while the fisherman caught his five fish. 

The vacationing man said, “I see you here every day and you always catch five fish and then leave.”

“Yes, that’s true.  I have a wife and three children and my wife cooks up the fish for us each day when I return home.”

“But why do you always catch five fish every day?”

“Because that’s what we eat and that’s all I can carry home in this pail.”

“Well, if you caught more fish, you could sell them, and then you’d have enough to buy a bigger pail and even a wagon, so you could bring home more fish.”

“Oh yes, a wagon would be nice. With a wagon I could bring home many more fish, and sell some at the market.”

“That’s right.  And then you could save some, so you could buy a boat, and then you could really get a lot of fish!”

“For sure that’s true, I could get a lot more fish with a boat,” he agreed.

“No doubt.  And with all that money, you could afford to go on a vacation.”

“Oh, a vacation!  I’ve never been on a vacation before, that sounds fun.”

“So, what do you think you’d like to do on your vacation?”

“I think I’d like very much to go fishing on the beach.”

a man when fishing on a beach at sunset