Godzstalgia

It is my honor to be a pretentious douchebag and spoil Godzilla Minus Zero for you if you haven’t seen it.

Like many children growing up in the 60s and 70s I became fascinated with dinosaurs.  So Godzilla was a must watch.  Every weekend one of these.  And I didn’t know enough about real world crises to understand anything beyond the simplistic dichotomy.  Godzilla = good.  Other monster = bad.  Nuance wasn’t important, these were the family friendly Japanese films, a franchise intended for profit more than epic story telling.  And quite fun for a kid who wasn’t supposed to be exposed to the first two of this Showa era of Godzilla.

Way oversimplified it had a message.  You nuked us.  Ordinary, innocent civilians got nuked.  A very naughty topic subject to scrutiny of all governments trying to cope with Cold War fears.  Over the 20ish years of Showa era Godzilla, other than these first two, there was just one that went outside the kiddie comic books dichotomy.  Godzilla Vs. The Smog Monster.  Pollution is the enemy.  So in addition to two gigantic monsters clomping around until an excuse is made for a big showdown, the naughty topic of pollution was brought up.  Naughty, because propaganda suggests burning up fossil fuels = always good because money = always good.  Extremely naughty topic because instead of a culture war Americans = nuclear villains = bad, Japan as a group of tiny little islands with way more people than natural resources can support has had, oh mercury in fish meat among other more mundane pollution problems.

Godzilla Minus One lay cooking in fertile brains as Godzilla shuffled through more monster vs monster standard movie stuff.  Shit blows up.  Bad monster dies.  Catharsis achieved.  And despite scripts trying at times or not even bothering it’s hard to feel much concern for the idiot humans involved.  Even the children.  Brandon Tenold on YouTube calls them “Kennys.”  A very young child you’re *supposed* to care about, but is so annoying you wish Godzilla would accidentally stomp on him.  Fortunately the child Kennys would grow up into stupid sexy teens and get an harpoon in the chest in slasher films, but that’s for another day.  

Until Godzilla Minus One.  Actual character development.  Actual skill, craft, and effort into something that just so happens to have a giant monster in it.  Something to chew on.

So, people being people, when the sequel was announced it was speculation time.  Would there be a monster for Godzilla to fight?  If so, which one.  People *cared* about the big lizard and humans more than they had since Millie Bobby Brown didn’t gain her official Kenny (Kendra?) status.  And Hedorah was on the list.  People wanted it to be a possibility.  A relevant societal point with actual investment in a good story?

And then the announcements were teased out after much vague pre-teasing to add to the speculation that worked like a charm.  It was going to be King Ghidorah, the three headed dragon monster.  A worthy choice for Godzstalgia fans, but how would the societal relevance be achieved?

And now the spoilers.  They went back to the old classic, the atomic bomb.  It’s set in the 1940s, so yeah.  But here’s what they added in.  The way I took it.

Godzilla and Ghidorah through sci fi magic technology stuff are lured into close proximity.  Yeah!  A proxy war!  Because the U.S. military brass secretly wants the “how to control Godzilla” technology.  And they haven’t forgotten about the You Nuked Us! revenge stuff.  A dream sequence from the mad scientist who made the magic controlling Godzilla thing.  He’s pissed.  He survived Hiroshima, his family did not.  He yearns to lure Godzilla to New York City and give ‘em a taste of their own medicine.  Statue of Liberty destroyed.  New York in flames.  First R rating in Godzilla history achieved.

And it wasn’t censored, which you might expect in Trumpmerica.

Ultimately, the human pawns figure out they’re being used.  They go through with the basic create a monster vs. monster fight because - two things can be wrong at the same time.  A chance to stop one is better than both being a problem forever.  The key to the solution is foreshadowed.  To awaken Godzilla they track him down while he’s slumbering or watching  reruns of Kevin Sorbo in Hercules or whatever.  Instead of immediately doing more city destruction he swims off into the sea.  The force of nature angle, he really just wants to be left alone.  The only friends he needs are the sequel bait chummed into the 2 hour + run time.

A fully satisfying end to the monster side of things.  The human side, the lure King Ghidorah sci fi magic guy - he’s a good bloke.  So yeah, the smart and empathetic people have to make sacrifices, so he’s dead.  The Nuke New York guy grows a conscience literally overnight and decides to stick it to the U.S. military by plotting and succeeding in burning all his secret device blueprints.  The family from the first movie, Kendra is growing up too quick.  Her parents are accepting that after their crimes (from the U.S. military point of view) they are going to be fugitives forever.  They see Kendra who has a character name of Akiko one last time to say goodbye.  And we get the satisfaction of not wanting Godzilla to crush her.  The family in full motorbikes away into the sunset.

But one last go ahead and censor us you want message from the film.  It’s about revenge and is the solution worse than the problem.  A topic personal to me, since I’m really sick of being the one to say, “Fuck you, asshole” to people that are clearly assholes.  There’s no way the film went the direction it did with the U.S. midterm election slaughter in mind.  Steve Shives who I’ve recommended before had this to say about getting even:

https://youtu.be/2khN0mIpMwU?is=zd-ZKqbbYhi20k_L

If you allow yourself to get carried away, aren’t you just as bad or worse than the source of your anxiety?  Godzilla movies are saying to think about it - two things can be wrong at the same time.

Nathan Fielder Needs To Do This Next

Way oversimplified, the old days of Qanon low level conspiracy theories like gematria there was a formula.  Like a movie has a formula.  Good guy, basic premise, damsel to rescue, blah, blah, blah.  

For a blockbuster  movie the formula proves effective a gets attention by being ripped off and copied in various degrees of homage or shameless ripping off.  And it’s never quite the same.  The plot has more holes.  The lighting is bad because of the budget.  And sometimes the actors weren’t just substandard.  Sometimes they sucked.  And they suck so bad it has kind of a charm.  You can’t help at look and snicker.  And realizing some people adore it not just because it’s so bad that it’s funny, but they genuinely believe it’s better quality than the original masterpiece that is admired for its legitimate goodness.

So the basic bullshit conspiracy plot is this.  It could be Democrat good/Republican bad, but these weren’t popular enough.  All the violence, bigotry and hate, that propaganda is the other side.  That’s Republican good/Democrat bad.  And now it’s time for the actors, the influencers and podcasters, to show off their acting skill on an objectively bad plot.  Instead of Plan 9 from Outer Space with all its B grade actors, we’re supposed to believe that the objectively bad actor (liar) Alex Jones and his message.  Which really can be summarized as, “Parents are faking the death of their children in a school shooting, so the way to fix everything wrong in the world is to buy my vitamin supplements.”

I’ve met lots of different actors (liars) at the workplace.  Most give off just a subtle vibe.  The standouts are really obvious.  They act like humanity (mostly based on laser focus of $) is alien to them.  Now a real life workplace actor (liar) who is an actor (movie) playing an actor (liar), someone who acts like they’re schizophrenic and totally chaotic - That’s a challenge.  And separating the reality of the moment with someone who should be playing professional poker but they’re flipping burgers.  That actor is out of place.

Which is kind of the point of You Can See Everything.  These are professional liars squaring off against professional liars.  Nathan is so good at lying, like a magician telling you ahead of time it’s a trick, he can tell he’s lying and maybe he is or isn’t at any given moment.

I want to see Nathan face off against a low level liar.  And try to sell it like they are a good liar.  See if Nathan can keep a straight face during filming.  Just for my own selfish amusement.  Because even though the acting guild (legal system) has already determined Alex Jones is a terrible liar his response to the extent of the Democratic whomping Republican is

<GIGANTIC DRUMROLL>

Donald Trump has been a Democrat all along and is acting this way to discredit the noble and pure Republicans.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/ex-maga-firebrand-drops-craziest-210251380.html

Now that’s a conspiracy that to work out would literally take billions of people to be true.  Usually stupid conspiracy theories try to limit it to something a little more believable.  Higher math and some critical thinking required to sort out the improbability, sure.  Going whole hog and claiming THAT?!

Yowzers.

Not it fits in with the idea of the extinction burst phase we’re in.  MAGA influencers turning on each other.  Resignations.  Top Republicans, some who want to run for President turning on Trump because jail for fraud suddenly becomes a concern.  Stuff that’s beyond the pouty crybaby shit from a low level MAGA troll who has been driving a truck for two decades.  Alex’s extinction burst - an entirely new level.  Global problems engineered by Democrats, the oldest plot in the MAGA playbook.  A bad plot.  A dumb plot.  With a bad actor who got his SAG card removed in the lead.  Is that the Ed Wood of conspiracy theories and funnier than anything Fielder could make?

Could be.

I Know Why Conservatives Really Hate Art & Film

When I was growing up you could count on an abundance of crappy mad scientist and monster movies.  And because they were a product of the times, the excuse for the scientist playing god or the hokey giant insect was more than any other single reason:

RADIATION.  The destructive force of a real atomic bomb taking real human lives was now a very real danger.  I missed out on a lot of that fear.  I was just left with the aftertaste.  Mostly a human actor in a rather unconvincing rubber suit or maybe if you were lucky some stop motion animation.  The love/hate relationship between Washington D.C. and Hollywood was boiling away.  American culture made money = capitalism good.  “Naughty” diversified viewpoints was propagandized into a moral and satanic panic.  I’d like to think the witches, dinosaurs, demons, vampires and radioactive lizards stood their ground pretty well.

Now in 2025 and 2026, since it’s a sensitive subject for me, I’m seeing a new bogeyman in film.  Some of the most acclaimed recent movies have at least a degree of narcissism in the villains.  For example, Obsession, Backrooms, Buddy deal with narcissistic human and supernatural themes.  The “kill the rich” genre continues with movies like The Menu, They Will Kill You, Ready or Not that channel the same vibe as The Purge series. Heretic, Midsommar, Hereditary… movies with cults and sects dealing with toxic and manipulative abusers.

And juxtaposed with this are the real and pseudo documentaries.  Primetime, Musk, A Social Reckoning, You Can See Everything.  What scares you?  Real people who definitely don’t have your best interests in mind.  And for the crowd that wants to call Gordon Gecko a hero, I remind you - he’s the bad guy you morons.

I didn’t have any mentors to guide me.  Nobody in my mostly but not pushy religious family was like me.  My narcissism detector came about organically from watching movies.  A lot of movies.  Some were bad with atrocious acting.  Some had great acting.  People with natural talent and those that put in the time to get good.  And Tom Cruise.  And as I watched the whole spectrum I absorbed who was a good actor and who wasn’t on my own.

And that carried over in to real life.  And it really kind of sucked.

I remember the man whose name was Jack, the head of my confirmation class the last day.  He “conveniently” ran out of time.  Looked at his watch and proclaimed, “Oh, only five minutes left for the virgin birth.  We might as well just end now.”  Right before the awkward questions, he made a joke out of it.  Jack was an elder or deacon, I’m not sure which.  But more than just a casual church goer either way.  An earlier exercise had us recite what we were interested in.  He loved golf.  A lot.  Of course.

I don’t hate Jack, my parents who wanted me to go to the confirmation class and more or less (mostly less?) forced me to go, or any of the other people.  For me, church was just an awkward and boring school class.  The ordinary folk, those other kids approaching adulthood, some were fun to be around.  In retrospect, I’m not convinced Jack was a true believer.  Nor do I think he was a predator.  It was just what you did when you believed in Christian values and being a God fearing churchgoer was part of the package deal.

All of this just in time for Reagan era trickle down economics.  And that’s when the mild bullying started and people began to think being socially dominant was the cool thing.  Being confident in yourself, that’ll get you a good job.  Putting your summer internship at a church affiliated - that’s good for job prospects.  And some of the people, the most aggressive even without the extent of bullying - to me they seemed like just another bad actor.  The speech patterns between things they were passionate about and the ones that weren’t really in their nature changed.  Sometimes dramatically.  Sometimes suddenly.  Their facial expressions had the same liminal “there’s something not quite right here” aura.  Fight or flight?  Flight was so much easier.  Books, more movies, later computer and video games where I naturally proved to have really good pattern recognition skills.  (One of the Robotron arcade game champions in a big college town.  Suck it assholes,  more than once I ended my game with the maximum possible score before the points rolled over to 0).  I was a weird and creepy nerd and I didn’t care.

Narcissists now when you’re on to them.  They still suffer the same physiological problems of any liar .  Nervousness, increased heart rate.  Even if you can’t dismiss them based on stupid content (Flat Earth?  Really?)  They aren’t machines.  They aren’t stupid.  Not usually anyway.  The ego is driving them.  Always to that one thing that symbolizes intelligence that has nothing to do with actual critical thinking skills.  The money.

And as the top of the list gets heavier and heavier and there’s no real alternative.  Well, the narcissists these days kind of suck at it.  Now it’s a bullseye instead of a pedestal.  The narcissistic supply trained to admire the wealthy businessmen and the evangelical pastor with ill intentions, that’s not an easy gig anymore.

Now there are YouTubers talking about atheism, and not in a manner that attacks the product.  It attacks the bad faith chests who don’t respect the good parts of religion.  There are YouTubers that teach about logic and who to debate against the fake debaters like Peterson and Kirk.  There are YouTube channels that give practical advice about finances.  Hosted by kids and aimed at how to survive when rich assholes are ruining everything.  No wonder people are funding movies that this age bracket is interested in.  It’s their actual lives.  Nobody can put their watch away with a flimsy excuse to end the session with all the shit that’s going on now.

It’s not too difficult a concept.  Vietnam created PTSD vets - Rambo.  Nuclear weapons fear - giant insects.  People not admiring rich assholes like they used to - welcome to the mid 2020s, grab a seat and a bag of popcorn and we can all watch this late stage version of mutant capitalism drag us into something that nobody wants, at least for the next two years.

The Mountain Lyin’

In a small Pennsylvania town, not quite suburban and not quite rural, there is the legend of The Mountain Lyin’.

Based on its suburban/rural niche, there are the modern amenities.  Electricity.  Wi-Fi.  Sewer, water, gas connections.  But there is still an abundance of wildlife.  You’ve got your squirrels, rabbits, foxes, snakes, deer, bears.  You know, the standard forest critter stuff.  What they don’t have is mountain lions.

Or do they?

One day a local who has some cows (not a dairy farmer, but not just a hobby) finds a cow brutally murdered.  He’s been around animals enough to know this is not a normal event.  It wasn’t kids playing a prank.  It sure doesn’t look like the work of a bear or coyote.  Something about the wounds suggests it’s something not native to this area.  So he calls the Department of Agriculture and talks to a representative who suggests exactly what he’s already discarded.  Deny the evidence of your own eyes.  You are wrong.  We’re the experts.  We’ve forgotten more about the critters in the area than you will ever learn.

A few days later there is a ruckus in the cow pens.  And of course the mountain lion he’s told didn’t exist is going for murder victim #2.  There’s no time for a “I told you so” check with local government.  Already armed with his gun and suspicions he’s prepared to deal with the mountain lion himself.  He kills it and stores the lion carcass in a shed.

And before he can do his planned, “I told you so” moment, the one with proof that is indeed a mountain lion, the local government official, the same one who specifically not a mountain lion, comes calling.

“Where’s the lion’s body.  We know you have it.”

“Whadda fuck?!  How?!?”

“There was an electronic tracker.  It was released to thin out the deer herd.  We didn’t want to tell anyone about the cow murdering lion to avoid a panic.”

The legend of the Mountain Lyin’ became famous.  It’s like the local version of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey or Fielder and Oppenheim’s Now You See Everything.  When retold it gets spun differently every time.  Further and further from actual truth as only a handful of people experienced what actually happened.  The mountain lion became a Mountain of Lyin’.

Some people think the cow owner made it up for attention.

Some people think it really happened, but it was a bear.

Some people think it was part of some cover up the local government and cow owner are in on together.

Some people just don’t care.  And they’ll say anything to avoid conversation about the mountain lying just to end an awkward conversation.

And more variations.  Lots more.  Variations of variations of variations.

Me, I like telling tall tales.  And lots of other folks do, too.  My over the top story is that a rogue, ordinary mountain lion made its way to this town.  Was prowling around the trash and ate the remains of a discarded radioactive tuna fish sandwich.  Having grown 40 feet long something had to be done.  Because the local tuna hatchery was going to be economically devastated.

Don’t let your mountain lion grow into a mountain of lion.  A 40 foot lion doesn’t care if it was released because the normal process of issuing hunting licenses to maintain the deer herd size wasn’t working.  It stands to reason a 40 foot lion with a mind poisoned by radiation sickness will eat your kid when the tuna isn’t available.

The Intersection Of The AI Bubble And Now You See Everything

As one of the few people that followed the different gematria cliques regularly I got to see one clique that didn’t seem to fit in one the others.  And now it looks like it’s the most important.  Gematria decodes of investments.  Bitcoin, mostly.  <sarcasm font> Just what an unstable world needs.</sarcasm font>

Remember the 2008 financial crisis aftermath?  The part about the banks getting caught being naughty and getting a slap on the wrist, told they were bad little monkeys and still got to pay out executive bonuses?  That’s where we are headed with AI.  It doesn’t have to be laser shooting robots, it just has to be a system of control to pacify people long enough for the cult to form.  Because the “tech” industry is not a business.  It’s a religion masked as economics.

The gematria clowns that headed the crypto cliques still suffer the same fate as the more notable cliques - sports betting, rapture, and synchronicity.  Conspiracy gematria is a news report of what has already happened.  Waiting until events have already transpired to make a big deal out of the most trivial things.  Instead of the Dodgers winning 5-3 in 11 innings it’s bitcoin price for a minute or two starting with 111.  And the appropriate bullshit gematria pseudo spiritual lingo combined with investment jargon,  like “esoteric core competence” and “leveraged synchronicity”.  (Don’t quote me, I don’t really remember those specifically.  Just get the vibe.)  If you are aware of what’s going on it’s really fucking painful to listen to.

Just like Bitcoin gematria didn’t have a real product or service to sell, tech “visionaries” like Elizabeth Holmes have no real product.  Sure something might actually work, but it’s purely incidental.  It’s all just advertising, shameless self promotion for the next big scheme.  Theranos 1.0 didn’t work?  Who cares?  The Producers have Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder making more money from a flop than from a successful movie.  Theranos 2.0 is on the way.  And more knock offs if we let them.  None of them need to work.  Because the visionary is always looking ahead and you are too stupid to see that like the rapture still hasn’t happened for that clique the breakthrough is always, “just around the corner”.  It will be just around the corner tomorrow, a month from now, a year from now, five years from now.

Holmes is more religious zealot than most realize.  Like Scientology, instead of a couple Patreon subscriptions it’s deliberately aimed at a higher income target audience for the top of the pyramid.  The pyramid getting bigger and bigger, morphing into the bubble shape we know is just aching to burst.  Like 2008 in basic structure, but with the sheeple trained to accept that “rich assholes just gonna be rich assholes.”  The more appropriate name might be the narcissist bubble, since everyone’s talking about them.  Narcissists make better liars.  And the common folk might just be screaming out the obvious.  What is wrong with you people?  And they do not care.  Tomorrow will bring a new scam.  (I’m waiting for the 3D water printer!)  Which will be stupid.  (3D oil printer!)  Expensive (3D uranium printer!)  and have no accountability for the perpetrators just like 2008.

The zealots are very convincing.  Either psychopathic liar or narcissistic true believers, the marketing skill is more important than results and human lives.

Psychronicity

 

This struck me as amusing.  Another case of how narcissism and the manipulation involved are the cool topic right now.  Eight years ago I would have worked up a gematria decode, probably making it something silly just to prove that gematria can be used by manipulators to mean anything.

I kid you not.  Valerie and I are in the same ballpark.  And I swear she was one of my earliest celebrity crushes.  I didn’t even like One Day At A Time that much.  Just watched it with the rest of the family because she was so adorable.  And here she is on BlueSky, talking about narcissism.  To me, that makes her even more adorable.

Sounds like she’s talking about personal relationships.  But I’m still calling this synchronicity.  My experiences have been mixed with both personal relationship narcissists and workplace narcissists.  But most of what I’ve been yakking away about has been motivated by the assholes at work who make life miserable for everyone else.

Or instead of magical synchronicity.  Let me catch up on Valerie.  My duties as a creepy stalker type have been pretty lax.  I kind of totally forget I was semi-obsessed with her.  Or maybe it’s the great parents that instilled me with a functional moral compass.

Google time.  Married to Eddie Van Halen.  Divorced, long before Eddie passed away.  Knew that.  But then married a financial planner which lasted about a decade until a divorce in 2022.  Tom Vitale.  Knowing what I know, I could jump the gun and take the educated guess.  But know privacy is non existent and I can just tweak my search - Why did Valerie Bertinelli and Tom Vitale divorce.

And the answer is irreconcilable differences; betrayed trust with Valerie specifically mentioning narcissism.

<sigh>

Of course.  Finance and narcissist are almost becoming synonymous.  Poor Val has suffered enough, I sure hope she finds someone to hang with who isn’t a problem, or the solace of distance if that gives her peace.

I suppose this would be a terrible time for me to beg for an autographed photo.

Thanks to Theranosification…

 

Yep.  Because of Theranosification, which sounds like something I would make up but I heard in a YouTube podcast, we have an intriguing film.  An offbeat film.  A film about the dangers of narcissism

YOU CAN SEE…

Buddy on YouTube.  

See what I did?  You thought I was going to mention the Elizabeth Holmes documentary and I was deceiving you.  One of the prime elements of Theranosification, unabashed bold faced lying.

But seriously, there’s more similarities than you might think.  

The psychology content on Youtube, especially in horror film is through the roof. 

 And maybe that’s because my algorithm knows I like that, but it keeps popping up.  Obsession —> Narcissm.  Backrooms —> Narcissism and a shrink for a character.   So although now you can see me is shining with its exploration of the Silly Con Valley mindset, that’s a little too heavy for kids.  A little much, and maybe the same way Coyote vs. Acme is a kiddie lean in to corporate greed, and just like gematria was a light version of conspiracy, kids could use a fun romp about narcissism.

Buddy is a horror comedy.  It openly admits that it is a parody of kids shows like Barney.  Buddy is a unicorn (and so much more), who has a heart symbol on his tummy.  And literally requires children to say that they love him.  

Feet, and Everything Else, of Clay

 

Another day, another movie for me.  And another spoiler filled review.  I just saw Clayface and as is usual for me I can’t just sit back and just enjoy things 100% without thinking of things based on the lens of my personal experience.

So getting the plot points out of the way.  It’s an origin story of a Batman villain.  I’m familiar with the character from the animated Batman series.  Like Supergirl it’s an introduction, and unlike Supergirl it’s a full origin story.  You don’t even need to be familiar with Batman, he’s not mentioned in the entire run time.  The closest you get is it’s set in Gotham City which is referenced frequently providing name recognition- that’s the city that everyone knows that Batman resides in.

Matt Hagen is an up and coming actor and seems like a pretty decent guy.  While partying at an expensive night club he hooks up with a girl he doesn’t know.  Animal attraction and the drugs she slips him at the club take over and they end up sleeping together.  Despite warnings from his friend she’s “the property” of a notorious crime boss.

Waking up there’s more than just the girl in the room.  The crime boss and some flunkies are there and they’re gonna teach him a lesson.  Killing isn’t good enough, it’s far more brutal to take switchblades and ruin his pretty face so he can live with the consequences of messing with the wrong guy.  This leads Matt to lose his money, social status and pretty much everything - the face is scarred too much for being seen as an abomination regardless of how his past might have shown signs he had any good qualities.

Except there is a chance.  An experimental nanobot procedure that can rebuild his face.  And naturally as events play out things go wrong.  A temporary burst of rage disturbs the nanobots, he revisits the doctor and you get the sense she can fix it, but instead of waiting for the painkillers the doctor trots off to get for him his pain and desperation drive him to overdose on the nanobot serum.

Which works.  Temporarily.  The rage problem still makes him change into an ugly clay faced abomination, but he gradually learns to control it.  And he really starts to like the feeling of power.  And it’s time for revenge which he successfully metes out on the crime syndicate.  But the rage doesn’t go away and he only has one person remaining that cares about him.  The attractive female doctor that treated his scarred face he’s now obsessed with.  So obsessed he murders her husband and tries to convince her that she should be devoted to him.  He’s the cool guy with these superpowers she gave him.  Never mind the dead fiancé thing.

Great movie.  Much better than the new Supergirl at portraying damaged mental state and motivation.

——————————————————————-

A great companion for the philosophy and discussion we can have from Now You See Everything which I whined about yesterday.  Indeed, it’s quite an interesting time where content about the Epstein class is openly being offered.  The Social Reckoning, Musk, Now You See Everything.  The contradiction of being forced to admire the most terrible people who continue to verify that things aren’t working out yet we are magically supposed to assume that they’re “just misunderstood good guys.”  The relentless psychological projection that they are strong when their open overconfidence is a sign they are terribly insecure and fearful.  We’ve seen this movie before, it’s just playing out on a global scale now.  Complex problems require complex solutions, not decoding gematria as black and white only.  Not unilaterally assigning tariffs because you had a bad day and never learned that historically it’s kind of dumb.  Serious flaws that are masked as strength and increasingly butting heads with reality and losing.

———————————————————————

And now it’s personal.  Because in many ways I am Clayface.  Nothing really left to lose.  Society decided I wasn’t worthy not because I don’t care but because I care too much.  And it’s terrifying to me how petty and vindictive I can be when I’m pushed too far.  How counterproductive it can be in the long term.  Selfishly, I don’t like the idea that I’m bound to be judged as a greedy white man just because I’m superficially a Boomer age white man.  Thanks oligarchs.  Appreciate that.

Now You See…Lot’s Of Stuff, But Certainly Not Everything

This continues to be a remarkable year in film for me.  Earlier I saw my now favorite movie ever, Project Hail Mary, marking the first time I’ve ever seen a movie in the theater more than twice.  (It’s sexy to be smart and worry about climate change at the same time.). In general, films that will be remembered for the era they were made and reviewers will acknowledge the growing anti-MAGA sentiment as the subtle and not so subtle nods are peppering the cinema screens.

And now we have Now You See Everything, which like many others apparently I did not even know about until this week.  The first time I’ve ever seen a documentary in the theater.  I have no intention of being spoiler free.  So you can check it out first before reading more here.

It’s really good.  It’s definitely a smart movie.  It’s too long, but not long enough for an intermission.  Some of the content is unsettling, and that makes it thought provoking because as a doc it’s ostensibly based on real conversations.  But is it “real”?  A common theme others have latched on to - what happens when several master manipulators are interacting with each other?

So spoiling the end for you right off the bat.  Actress Amanda Seyfried, who portrayed Elizabeth Holmes in the film The Dropout, as herself instead of a reenactment (the doc has a lot of those) tells us this:

It’s complicated.

With this level of money and attention at stake, a strong but shallow personality can’t operate at a high level forever.  Once I realized that toxic narcissism was involved I was hooked, long before the word narcissist was mentioned.  And the narcissist in question, Liz’s partner Billy, has invited a documentary film crew into the house to get some things off their chest.

The dynamic is perfect, since Nathan Fielder has a particular style and previously had a TV show, The Curse.  That’s about people running a housing scam.  A “What were you thinking” moment.  Can Liz and Billy be truly genuine for such a long time with cameras running?  Can Fielder be truly genuine when the documentarians have control of editing?  Really complicated stuff.

It would be dishonest of me to claim that I was unbiased.  My negative view of Elizabeth Holmes is established and my own views on toxic narcissism - I’m sure I know more than the average person and sure I know far less than I think I do.  And that brings us to key scene number one.  As a defense mechanism our brains trend towards thinking we are smarter than we really are.  I’m better equipped than most to take a step back and reevaluate.  I’m certainly better than Holmes who admits on camera she NEVER LIES.  Not rarely.  Not even a little white lie.  When pressed she admits that she will do the little white lie.  But as for the serious stuff and the multibillion fraud, oh no way.  This ties in to later conversation and one can pick up the sense she is actually incredibly naive.  The perfect target for a toxic narcissist.

Another sure to be fan favorite scene is (allegedly) Liz’s first exposure to the famous Abbott and Costello Who’s On First? skit.  The finale of that is that we are to believe Liz genuinely doesn’t get the joke.  And the same way her brain is wired to not understand that the point is someone’s name is actually Who or What - that’s the same brain that misinterpreted a key part of the real life fraud case.  My testing machine can test for anything.  As long as the particular thing I’m testing for isn’t a set up correctly ahead of time.  I’ll try to explain this with the self created analogy while in the theater.  You can brag that your dog can do any trick.  You’ll eventually get challenged, because it’s framed as an absolute black vs. white instead of complex situation.  Then if your defense is, “Well, only if I train him” you are exposed for not being clear on “My dog knows how to sit, shake and lie down now.  I know I can teach him to do any other ones later.”

And within that scene we get a glimpse into Liz’s partner Billy.  He gets The Who’s On First? joke.  And somehow we are supposed to believe after all this time and money spent on legal fees he’s never explained it to his soulmate?  Really?  Really???

We are given a glimpse at Theranos 2.0.  The never say quit stick to it entrepreneur fire.  Where the actually mechanics of the first Theranos are pretty much scrapped to let AI take care of the processing.  Because sure.  Getting bitten once by the first (alleged) scam needs to latch on to the trendy AI (alleged) scams.  More fundraising.  More dubious and vague promises of future value.  More of the (alleged) toxic narcissist who handled and will handle the business end pulling the strings and having meetings to just say that with a little more money this will work the next time.  My own bias instantly latched on to the gematria sports predictor’s wild claims of spectacular success rates and constantly being shown to be right about 50% of the time.  Or being right 0% of the time for the end of the world Jesus is coming rapture crowd.

One of the reasons for the length of the doc is the extensive Amanda Seyfried material.  For the role in The Dropout she watched a lot of deposition tapes and interviews.  She nailed Liz’s mannerisms - the patented bobbing the head up and down and wide eyed unblinking stare.  When discussing narcissism it is important to remember that you can’t just wildly claim it after limited exposure.  But a true pattern over months and years.  That’s starting into dark and dangerous territory.  Where the narcissist spoon feeds tiny bits of positive reinforcement while the supply just keeps them happy long enough to get what they want.  Even a three hour documentary isn’t enough to make a completely informed opinion.  I’m assuming that legally Seyfried and the makers of The Dropout knew what they were getting into.  But I wasn’t privy to those talks so who knows.

And that’s a lead in to a discussion of film interpretation and analysis.  Movies are a great thing for narcissists who want to dominate a social setting.  Purely subjective material can always be framed as “my opinion is right, yours sucks.”  Calling a film ruined by being too woke has always seemed shallow and dishonest to me.  The low quality evidence (it’s a take my word for it thing) is the mention of Charlie Kirk.  The audience has already been through two hours with a couple of audible chuckles at Liz’s less than stellar showcase of herself being spontaneous.  Fielder asks Billy what Liz thinks of Charlie Kirk.  No big deal.  Then he asks Billy who brightens and admits he’s a Kirk fan.  That prompted quite a negative reaction from the group at my theater.  They were not fans.  Kirk is one of those polarizing figures in recent history, and my tribe for the afternoon reacted the same way - recognition that Kirk was a for profit manipulator who likely didn’t even believe in what he was saying.

Ultimately it’s kind of a dark and sad movie that is hard to come away with clean answers.  It should be safe from MAGA trolling at the theater.  YouTube psychologists are going to have a field day discussing manipulation, Stockholm Syndrome, and NPD.  It’s hardly my favorite documentary ever or even that close, but if you’re genuinely on the upper edge of the IQ scale I’d recommend it.  Like The Odyssey it’s worthy of genuine conversation instead of the everything is black and white approach.

What Everyone Gets Wrong About the Werewolf Vs. Vampire Conflict

Most of the people I hang out with are on Team Werewolf.  It’s been far easier to dismiss the push for extremism coming from the Team Vampire side.  Vampires are non stop, “Me!  Me!  Me!  Me!”  Up there on the mountain in their ancient castle with the gold plated coffins and their buxom and vacuous vampire Zacharia’s brides that they really don’t care about that much.  Other than the symbolism.  The, “Do you know who I am?” attitude that gets them out of every speeding ticket.  Most constables aren’t aware that a carriage could even move that fast without the wheels of the carriage falling off.

Werewolves, on the other paw, are much more human except for those couple of days with a full moon.  Often horrified of their insatiable hunger and downright repentant about the feeding frenzy and chewing up the sofa cushions.  No amount of chastisement with the labels of, “Bad wolf!  Bad, naughty, stupid wolf!  What’s your problem you stupid woke mongrel!” while ‘human’ can retrain them to avoid being a self indulgent pup when the hair and fangs come out.  No amount of trying to act like a suave and sexy vampire master with a really cool eastern European accent can really change them.

But deep down, they are the same.  It’s not that they are monsters.  It’s not that they are inhuman monsters.

They don’t have a fucking clue about math.

So let’s create a fictitious example with a head vampire that we’ll randomly <cough><cough> call Donald.  The first vampire ever and directly responsible for creation of a whole generation of vampires.  In turn, they created more vampires.  Who created more vampires.  An endless cycle of creation of vampires that left unchecked will (checking math…carry the 2…divide by Pi squared…multiply by log x…) leave zero villagers.  The magical solution is that once Donald is dealt with all the other vampires, now at 100% of the population are either redeemed and return to human or dust depending on what silly story you believe.

But not everything is fun and games for those vampires before the magical solution.  The earliest ones to buy into the supernatural Ponzi scheme had it good for a long time.  They genuinely believe they are protecting the investment towards global vampire dominance.  As more and more vampires arrive on the scene it starts to get tricky.  Why does Donald get Kate Beckinsale quality brides while I get Darla the Starbucks barista with the bad teeth?  Fuck this shit.  How am I supposed to continue the vampire lineage and have my personal army to change my vampire colostomy bag in my old vampire age?  She doesn’t even have all her incisors.  AND WHERE IS MY FUCKING SEXY EUROPEAN ACCENT?!?!!!

The lure of the werewolves hangs heavy.  Instead of the pretending that everyone likes you when they really hate you that the vampire lifestyle brings, you do get the chance to be human for most of the month.  That’s a CHANCE to be human.  Whether you take advantage of it or not, well that’s an open question.  A werewolf is far more likely to settle on running down a deer than actively searching for villagers.  But there’s a non zero chance that unless you’re super careful with the locks and heavy sedation that an accident will happen.

Just for fun let’s create a top werewolf named Gavin.  When the shit started to hit the fan with vampires overrunning the population he was a super powerful ally to have for the moonlight period.  The fangs and claws came out at the right time.  Push back on the vampire agenda, that in all seriousness should have happened a long time ago.  Maybe it’s because he had his now vampire wife Kimberly to share some of the more interesting moments of not being a werewolf.  Or maybe he really believes that a solid werewolf pack is the answer - an army of wolves that are rough and tumble ready to go when the war starts.

And maybe he’s just fucking wrong, too because THE MATH STILL DOESN’T WORK.  It just takes longer.  More werewolves create more werewolves and left unchecked will reach 100% and no more villagers remain.

And the culmination of the simple math is the villagers always lose out in the end.  The poor saps having to negotiate the constant pressure of existing in not just binary of either/or vampire or werewolf, but the constant pressure of being pushed to choose one or the other.  Your darling children are sprouting fangs one way or the other.  Just hope you get about 18 years of love before the propaganda starts.

———————————————————————-

A functional multi racial democracy and fascism don’t really play well together.  Thanks to the internet, instead of an isolated village your sweet child is easily exposed to “the wrong side”.  As my stupid story here attempted to illustrate, America is having a political moment here.  A choice between investing in vampirism with a 100% failure rate assured.  Believing in the conflation of a single werewolf being correctly pointed out as being not the greatest 100% of the time.  Or you could roll the dice, take the chance on humanity winning out and realizing that 39 days of a year being a monster is better than 365.25 days of the year of being a monster.  And as soon as the wolf brings the claws out during a time when the moon isn’t full.  Call him out as the monster he truly is.

Extinction Burst - Grasping at Straws

 

The good news - when cults start to implode it’s a one way train ride. Sometimes the head honcho does us a favor by exiting the mortal plane like L. Ron Hubbard or gematria using Negative 48.  Other times the leader is still kicking’, but the behavior that separated them that was fueled by Cluster B personality disorders gets increasingly erratic. Cluster B personality disorders and related brain decline are not a good mix.

The bad news is - the fascist element in play.  The narcissistic supply.  People mentally capable of recognizing the shit has hit the fan but because of the paycheck involved still can’t bring themselves to set boundaries and say, “No.  That’s a line I won’t cross.”  At a time when a significant number are having second thoughts, there is still a wait and see attitude.  If I survive Hurricane Trump and get to pretend I was against him all along I escape with my money and my values (or lack thereof) intact.  Just like Hurricane Caligula.  Just like Hurricane Hitler.  Terrible excuses for a leader drag the quality of those that surround them down to their level.  This time is different, they say.  This time the cause is going to work out.  Then, this time as history rhymes with the Cluster B disorder traits it changes to, “I was just following orders.  The real problem people are anyone else but me.  Thank God there’s not something like an internet to catch me doing something stupid during the height of Hurricane Trump.”

For me, the most interesting development in recent  history is the unforced error that Eric Schmitt made.  There’s no doubt in my mind the Orange One is having an extinction burst moment everyday.  It’s impossible to appease a Cluster B disorder.  Everything is anger.  For far too long the anger was successfully outsourced to the scapegoat of the day.  But, ordinary people have woken up.  Not the fake conspiracy theory waking up the sheeple, but actually waking up to the lack of a final solution being provided by an angry toddler.

The gematria clowns did the exit strategy right.  The writing was on the wall and the content is far from the hyper aggressive early days when everything was a hoax.  Schmitt didn’t get the memo.  He rolled the dice on a gotcha that required a fumble on the part of the target.  A fumble that was not meant to be.  I guess I’ll have to pretend there are those that don’t know yet, so here’s one of the many clips available on the fateful moment.

 https://youtu.be/bW6kVAddSVM?is=3s9ZLsmqsDUfMTOj

A fun moment for those of us that hate the gotcha game.  Trying to trick someone smarter than you are…doesn’t always work.  Sure we might trip up on something like the wrong Constitutional amendment number for something obscure.  Have your two minutes of enjoyment for something inconsequential.  But now Schmitt is on record coming a gematria level of evidence blunder.  Hawks sounds like Hawkeyes.  It’s something that could have easily been avoided if you believed in actual fact checking.  But the rules of the gotcha game are clear on fact checking.  Money is more important than being right.  Calling someone a dirtbag and a perjurer is more important than being honest and correct.

As the ultimate leader calling the shots on what filters down the line, loyalists with shit for brains are the norm when you have shit for brains.  The best guess on Schmitt’s blunder includes wonder if he thought this moment would get him a shot as VP candidate on a JD Vance 2028 ticket.  That’s what happens on lower levels of the pyramid.  When the leader is obviously faltering, somewhere down the line the wheels start spinning and guesses are made on what to do and how to take advantage of the extinction burst.  And the cleanup time after the hurricane damage is always longer than you think, even if you still have a home to go back to.

Gematria and the Extinction Burst

 Thanks for pushing that, Bob.  The lights on, but you never know, it really might be broken.

At the start of Speed, the tense opening sequence sets up a lot of important background information.  And I’m not talking about introduction of characters and their competence and motivations.  A simple line, very early in the movie.  A one off throwaway joke, demonstrating what happens when a learned behavior based on a reward system is doubled down on after the reward is withheld.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_(psychology)

“Neoliberalism and the petrodollar, blah blah blah… Reaganomics trickle down blah blah blah…late stage capitalism and current policy failure blah blah blah…polling numbers among independents and Republicans crashing blah blah blah….”  Oh, here it is.  The MAGA extinction burst.  Type that in the search bar and see what articles and AI synopses give you.  Armchair psychologists like me can have a lot of fun with it.  Because if MAGA is undergoing an extinction burst event, even those results are polarized.  Conservative commentators deny it.  Liberal commentators on social media are putting content out about it.  Scholarly articles from trustworthy sources, not so much.  I may not be scholarly enough with my over reliance with my “Fuck Off” attitude, but that doesn’t stop me from admiring people who are smarter than me and have some fighting spirit left.

And I’m pretty sure I’m qualified for a strong opinion on what happened in the gematria community regarding an extinction burst.  Just like pushing the elevator button over and over again, gematria as a system of generating wealth and conspiracy theory expertise was doomed to failure.  I just got to be the bandwagon instead joining the bandwagon.  Yay me, it doesn’t make my home heating bill any cheaper.

As part of the broader MAGA cult, Qanon latched on to the weirder side of things.  Gematria, used mostly for sports betting, was a natural fit.  An attention Ponzi scheme.  Become viewed as a reliable source of information, gain a following, those followers pressured to get more followers.  Those followers having a subconscious link to the higher sources on the pyramid, even if their chosen clique didn’t mesh with how the Jews/Freemasons/Illuminati/Jesuits/Elites/Politicians/ <insert scapegoat of the day here> rhetoric.  The lower levels of the pyramid, despite lack of results monetarily and progress up the pyramid were powered by the Attaboy!^TM.  And the learned helplessness and grievance politics that comes with the sycophancy.  Trained to deflect to the scapegoat and double down endlessly.

The gematria community watched their heroes constantly engaging in questionable behavior.  Too many fundraisers with the money remaining with the organizer instead of whatever vague goal was stated.  Too many decodes after the event finished claimed to be a prediction.  (Waaaay too many.  Too many as a phrase to describe this does injustice to the phrase “too many”). Too many verbal assaults on those that had been faithful but suddenly started to think about some things for themselves.  In short, too much ME!  ME!  ME!  from the top.  A collapse when reality caught up to hollow promises was inevitable.  And meanwhile in the big picture there’s something like this:

https://youtu.be/Qk96-PjcblI?is=dLmcspwRmMBUFS9p

Independent journalists filling the gaps where legacy media was too scared of consequences.  And if you pay attention to the parallels between Trump’s behavior and the gematria extinction burst it at the very least should make you see some reference points being duplicated.  The self referential expert that consistently fails and does everything in their power to show they don’t care because they can’t admit that the party’s over.

Now, under a hypothesis that MAGA as a whole is collapsing and the signs of extinction burst are here, what can we expect?  A lot of pain.  The next two years should be really bad.  Training someone to behave differently after getting caught in the confirmation bias of gematria is way easier than convincing cult members dedicated to bad ideas of a lifetime.  The remaining 30% of supporters are a mix of what looks to be the following personality types, mostly centered around those of boomer and early Gen X age groups:

1). Die hard cult members that are lifers and will never let go.

2). The hedgers who prefer counterproductive behavior and who selfishly insist that everything is fine now, but are still willing to go with the flow of the kids and the working class getting some relief.

3). The openly supportive whose heart isn’t really into it anymore.  The Angry Man of the twelve who just wants to go to the baseball game and doesn’t really care about the trial outcome.  Then gets to pretend he was part of the winning team long after his not being terribly important to the outcome has passed.

If you are not part of the problem, where your age and lack of access to decent wages and affordable housing has ruined your life - bad news sunshine.  It’s going to take some effort.  Don’t fall for the continued ragebait tactics of the lifers.  That’s a waste of time.  Yes, you’re angry and have every right to be.  Now is the time to pay attention and improve your target selection process.  Pushing the elevator button over and over is a magical solution.  Like gematria decodes are a magical solution.  Like not participating in a democracy when you have an opportunity to be active and then complaining about the results is a magical solution.  A solution that is no solution at all.  The elevator is still operating on its own schedule whether it’s working right or sabotaged by Dennis Hopper.  

Know Your Grifter Tactics - The Pipeline To a More Lucid Argument

The past couple of months have been odd with my daily search for “gematria” on BlueSky.  It’s usually the same weirdos posting the usual tired and stale gematria nonsense.  Hardly any likes or reposts.  

And then one day I see a post with a link for “The Board.”  Talking about the problems with gematria used in sports gambling.  And reading that I say to myself, “This sounds like somebody has read this blog.”  Yay me.  I filed it away in my memory palace after a cursory review of their site.  Then a second post about the dangers of using gematria in sports betting.  A second check on “The Board” and what they’re about only adds to my skepticism.

Finally, the disappearance of gematria related content from The Board on BlueSky.  Now you’ve really got my attention and it’s time to dive in a little deeper.

Im trying very hard (and obviously failing) to distance myself from this blog.  People are talking about housing prices, Flock cameras, and lots of other real issues instead of gematria and moon landing hoaxes and other stuff known in the parlance as Stupid Shit.  But one more red flag popped up, so here we go.

The references to gematria articles on The Board’s website were removed from BlueSky.  So here’s my analysis of what’s going on, for all that’s worth.  My opinion and my speculation.

Considering that their site reads like technical analysis of markets, geopolitics, technology issues, etc….

Considering their lack of transparency….

Considering that since they understand the dangers of confirmation bias in sports gematria (per their articles on the site) and other AI warns about inheriting curated confirmation bias….

Considering a real human can’t even take the time to go through social media and resume some fucking obvious porn bot followers…..

Considering these and how theboard.world reads like it’s expected to be high brow analysis that uses AI, how of all things to pick as being superior to is gematria decoding the point is,

Hey, did you lose money by listening to an online sports gematria grifter?  Well we’re a bunch of smart people here and we use AI so listen to us.

Except there doesn’t seem to be much real human activity involved.  The content is all AI generated.  Generative AI set loose to scrape the internet to form a summary of news articles.  Add in a healthy dose of talk about prediction markets and the likely pipeline becomes a bit clearer.  Smart people don’t use gematria for predictions.  Smart people use AI and gamble on Kalshi or Polymarket.

Claims of gematria prediction skill and AI analysis of predictions are not mutually exclusive.  There’s no binary that says that because using gematria to predict sports means that AI prediction of world events is good and a sure winner.  You’ve traded your black and white binary of the Lions covering the spread for whether the crazy world leader will be cruel enough to allow bombs to fall on civilian targets and cause resource shortages worldwide wide.  You’ve traded “The Jesuits are rigging the Super Bowl” for “Kelly bet sizing utilization calculations”.  The claim that this magic is better than the other magic.  Unnecessary information since actual predictions are missing from The Board’s site and if it worked they would spend their valuable time just making money hand over fist instead of pointing out the obvious that gematria sports betting is stupid.  And spend a little bit of the loot to go through the BlueSky account and get rid of the Emma Wilson porn bots.

Like a good scam, there’s a bit of an upgrade.  The talk of Kelly betting maximization doesn’t claim a 100% win rate.  A lesson the remaining gematria gurus refuse to admit.  Between that and the smarter sound to the jargon on the site, it is more convincing than Zach screaming at you.

I like the phrase about “ensuring you aren’t inheriting a curated confirmation bias” from my research.  That describes gematria predictions pretty well.  Whoever you are listening to, whatever talking points they are bringing up is molding the conversation around their subject matter.  You don’t really need to make predictions on who will win the World Series and bring up the Freemasons or the Jesuits.  Or celebrity deaths.  Or politicians being the Antichrist.  But it’s always there.  For further information on the subject of Ground News not necessarily being all it’s made out to be, a somewhat similar situation, check out the following information from the Literate Machine YouTube channel.  All that glitters is not gold and more than one thing can be wrong at the same time.

https://youtu.be/AjF9W91aRwg?is=kRp5ReNr80PmMJw2

https://youtu.be/CqE-SrgvTh4?is=KEeCCP6CLtS8pbJ7

Know Your Grifter Tactics - Going To The Well Too Many Times

Not all grifter tactics are successful.  That is, they aren’t successful forever.  And the overused tactic of blatant bribery just went thermonuclear.

https://theconversation.com/how-anti-bribery-laws-apply-to-trumps-promise-of-5-000-payments-if-republicans-keep-control-of-congress-291722

Which is appropriately worded as not a “slam dunk obviously illegal bribe”.  Technically, in the absence of a direct offer to a specific group or individual, such a promise may count.  But what does count is the continued insult to your intelligence.  After all the non existent payouts for wild promises in recent history (tariff checks, DOGE checks), you should be wary that the possibility that suddenly this time it’s serious seems dubious to the point of having about a zero % chance of happening.  If the head cheerleader runs for class president and gave everyone a cupcake, regardless of school policies everyone got a cupcake.  So there’s that.  If only a select group got cupcakes, at least some people got a cupcake.  If some people got cupcakes and not others after everyone got promised cupcakes, those without cupcakes are left with a better chance of feeling resentful that they were lied to.

And no one gets cupcakes, only the most boot licking of the cheerleader’s inner circle don’t care.  The peasants just get to waste their vote and hopefully realize that they should be wary.

And the next time you were offered a cupcake for loyalty - think about it.  In the big picture a $5,000 payment is not going to help much when it can easily be recouped by a tax law change a couple years down the road.  It’s not a multi-million dollar lottery windfall.  It’s an economic cupcake.  And when you factor in the present value of cupcakes correctly adjusted for prior market performance of cupcakes you should expect that the real cupcake economists who follow the cupcake commodities charts laugh at how this plays out.

Let’s add some context about object permanence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_permanence

As infants develop they learn object permanence.  Once the stuffed unicorn leaves sight does not mean it’s gone forever.  Trump’s brain is moving in the opposite direction.  Previously he was a corrupt, bigoted mentally ill sufferer of NPD.  Now he’s added short term memory loss (dementia) to that list.  The “thought” may come from the mouth, but the permanence it was ever uttered has left the building.

Adding further context let’s talk about Trump Derangement Syndrome.  Originally added to the lingo as a slur against liberals.  Other countries have grown 🥱 of U.S.bullying tactics.  They were never burdened with U.S. nationalism.  Many have different religions.  Many have the “wrong” skin color.  The only thing that held them in check was the U.S. lock on funding fossil fuel transactions - the Petrodollar.  Having managed to antagonize about 200% of the 100% of other countries, U.S. alliances are gone.  Trading partners are gone.  Soft power goodwill is gone.  And gas prices are still going up.  TDS was the psychological projection equivalent of, “I’m not crazy, you are”, with no sources cited to back it up.  Mathematically, if being deranged for hating Trump is a real thing there are literally billions of people with TDS.

But don’t worry, you won’t get a cupcake.  You’ll get more vague promises of cupcakes.

In the old days as gematria decoding working its way towards propaganda and beyond its openly boosted format of sports betting, the Attaboy!^TM was born.  I sarcastically called these “winning a cookie”.  (Oh if only I had said cupcakes instead.)  As the years wore on, Hubbard kept going to the well over and over and over.  Cookies were won for finding Pi (not pie), 666, 113 and other meme numbers.  Patreon subscriptions were given, sucking money instead of just joy from people’s lives.  No verifiable success stories were presented.  Promises were broken.  In the big picture, not really worth too much attention anymore, unless you are interested in how the Alt Right pipeline works.

Here’s the most recent Sports Gematria YouTube account video of Zachnanigans.

https://youtu.be/I4RlAbfWFPw?is=9Z2ZBV96SRDi4fqr

The usual good stuff.  Zach acting like a demogogue wannabe younger version of Trump with a still functioning prefrontal cortex.  Going to the well with the same lies to this day despite knowing that someone is paying attention and keeping track of- a sort of investigative journalist.  And around the 41 minute mark, the same going to the well sad, overwork excuse.  An accusation of Zach Derangement Syndrome.  You must be mentally ill to deny that my psychopathic greed is anything but a good thing.  The projection throughout the 45 minutes of Zachnanigans is staggering.  It’s difficult to imagine a better example of not learning from your mistakes and correcting course.  But that’s part and parcel of making content for money instead of content for being right about stuff.  Well know it’s finally over when the offer of cookies, cupcakes, and pies are all that’s left.

The Natalie Harp Loyalty Test

It really is as simple as that.  Being instructed to not talk about Natalie Harp is just another item in a long grocery list of things that require unyielding devotion to a personality cult instead of exercising some remaining brain cells.  It’s a test that superficially can easily be passed, just wait a few days until nobody else is talking about Natalie Harp and you will blend in along with everyone else.  Cults do love themselves some blending in.

This particular coordinated counterattack was kind of rushed.  And whether by accident or design that makes it stand out as being odd and unnatural.  Which is paradoxically not unnatural as the Trump loyalty test is a signature move.  Follow a simple directive today, when I ask you to do something insane later I know I can rely on you.  Loyalty testing is normalized as a distraction technique.

One of the top comments on a Bluesky Natalie Harp search is this:

And I’m feeling in a generous mood since this was my technique in my previous post.  (Which was made before that Bluesky comment.)  Finding an excuse to post the name as many times as possible, awfully immature and childish.  Nobody, even someone as hungry for attention as Natalie’s deserves that.  I’ve thought of a lot of good reasons to let it go, move on, and repent from the error of my ways and remove myself from the eternal doom loop of polarized criticism and snark.

It would be a shame if the Streisand Effect got renamed the Harp Effect.  Barbara sort of brought that infamy on herself.  Natalie’s case is by association from someone else instructing us to not pay attention.  Two totally different things.

It would be a shame if enshittification got renamed ennattification.  Just because someone else likes money above quality of product and services surrounding them.

Those annoying co-workers who ride the coattails of the most obvious office politicking/sabotaging low life?  It would be a shame if “riding the coattails” got replaced by “plucking the Harp strings”.

Having to insist that you also like the same type of women that Trump likes?  It would be a shame if that gets referred to as “getting Natalie wood”.

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Passing the loyalty test is much less intellectually taxing than spending the effort in researching what the fuss is all about.  Getting eyes on the post (and following it up by a donation request) is far more effective than the order of magnitude of increased effort to understand the real issues behind the hubbub.  Underneath the pettiness are some important topics.  Topics such as genuine concern if there’s a national security intelligence risk at play here.  The loyalty test is a cheap short circuit.  Those that pass the loyalty test actually fail the loyalty test.  The failure is understanding the why you're supposed to talk or not to talk about something.  The failure to comprehend why you’re

Harping on

the same topic over and over again.

This Is Definitely Not About Natalie Harp

It’s never too late to learn something.  And I just found out 

DON’T TALK ABOUT NATALIE HARP.

You may want to talk about Natalie Harp.  You may want to type the name of Natalie Harp into searches or social media messages.  But don’t, because the topic of Natalie Harp is off limits and all mentions of the name Natalie Harp and research on Natalie Harp and any focus on Natalie Harp is taboo.  The less times the name of Natalie Harp is mentioned, the better for everyone.  You’ve got about zero chance of seeing that name here, this is a fully accredited not about Natalie Harp blog post.  That’s easily verified by seeing the enormous effort taken to avoid Natalie Harp’s name of Natalie Harp.

We have Jon Ossoff to blame for not being allowed to mention Natalie Harp.  John mentioned Natalie Harp’s name in full-NATALIE.  Not a pronoun like she, her and not a reference to her position, but a full blown Natalie escaped his lips.  And from context you knew he meant “Natalie Harp.”  Maybe he thought he could get away with saying the forbidden name of Natalie with some plausible deniability that it was another Natalie other then the not to be mentioned Natalie Harp.  It’s almost like he found a giant Don’t Press This Button Which Talks About Natalie Harp and like a wet paint sign gave it a test.  Let’s see what happens when you mention the unmentionable name of Natalie Harp.  It’s no wonder that the don’t talk about Natalie Harp crowd reacted instantly and viciously.  They take their not talking about Natalie Harp seriously in the Don’t Talk About Natalie Harp circles.

Ossoff should have taken a cue from the gematria grifters who are definitely not talking about Natalie Harp.  They’re still busy with Hayden Panettiere instead of Natalie Harp.  Natalie Harp would have been a perfect name to mention.  Even if told not to mention Natalie Harp, why would something sensitive stop them now?  They’re still busy have a perfectly Natalie Harp tie in with the years of bullshit HAARP (definitely not Natalie) weather warfare attack on science stories.  You have to stretch to turn Hayden’s passing into an eclipse ritual.  But HARP vs. HAARP?  How can that not be a clue?

Then the gematria crowd and other conspiracy crowd could help us with the other many questions.  What about other Natalie Harp’s other than the current don’t talk about Natalie Harp, Natalie Harp?  Whether you talk about Natalie Harp (which I won’t) or not, the gematria of NATALIE HARP is still the gematria of NATALIE HARP.  Mostly some two and three digit numbers which could mean other things than the Natalie Harp you aren’t allowed to mention.  Some of them wildly far away from anything concrete about the Natalie Harp I’m not mentioning.  Normally they love the repetition and any reference to the Natalie Harp we aren’t allowed to mention anymore is a good thing.  Talking about Natalie Harp instead of gas prices or talking about Natalie Harp instead of the Epstein files or talking about Natalie Harp instead of tariffs, that’s a good thing, right?  Shouldn’t we be talking about the Natalie Harp we aren’t allowed to talk about instead of housing prices?

 Gematria would be perfect for this.  If I was allowed to decode Natalie Harp instead of being censored for mentioning Natalie Harp I would find out something like NATALIE HARP = 66 (reverse reduction) and FISH = 66 (reverse ordinal).  Does that mean I can’t talk about fish because it might be considered talking about Natalie Harp which I’m still not mentioning?

And there’s side gigs to the main show about not talking about Natalie Harp.  Like we mentioned before, there are likely other Natalie Harps other than the main don’t talk about that Natalie Harp.  What if there was a Natalie Harp that got married and became known as Natalie Smith?  Is that really still a Natalie Harp that we probably shouldn’t mention?  Or is that Natalie Smith who is definitely not the Natalie Harp we can’t mention but is “ close enough” to the Natalie Harp we aren’t supposed to mention?  What about just harp or a harpsichord?  Is that close enough that it’s best not to mention it, just in case it’s hitting too close to the Natalie Harp we aren’t supposed to mention?  Errrggggghhhh.  It’s so terribly confusing, if only Natalie Harp wasn’t allowed to be mentioned much earlier, decades ago.  We wouldn’t have the current don’t talk about Natalie Harp mess now.

And that’s not even discussing the substantive parts about what it is about Natalie Harp that makes the Natalie Harp that we aren’t allowed to mention.  I suppose that the part of being an unrelenting sycophant with questionable access to positions of power is part of mentioning the Natalie Harp that can’t be mentioned.  Some might even be tempted to say that the Natalie Harp we can’t mention now is some version of Rasputin.  Can we still talk about Rasputin?  With or without gematria?  Or is that by extension part of the fiber of the Natalie Harp we can’t talk about that defines why we shouldn’t talk about Natalie Harp.  At least not THE Natalie Harp that we aren’t allowed to talk about.

Some people may say that the unmentionable Natalie Harp we can’t talk about is the primary narcisstic supply to a malignant narcissist.  So can I still talk about malignant narcissism, or is that now under the Natalie Harp we can’t talk about?

Another thing I personally would never do during my free periods of not talking about the Natalie Harp I’m not allowed to talk about is being sarcastic.  Even if I said something favorable about the Natalie Harp I’m not ever talking about, some will miss the joke and make a big deal of my mentioning the Natalie Harp I’m not allowed to talk about.  If I only had the cachet of The Onion I’d be a little clearer on my boundaries of what, where and when I can talk about the Natalie Harp I may never, ever get to mention.  And unfortunately, not being a dedicated enough cult member I might miss any memo on when it’s safe to talk about the Natalie Harp I’m not talking about now.

Updating Civilization 2

 A long time ago, before enshittification worked its claws into every fiber of society, there was a sort of golden age of computer games.  A period of time when you could purchase a stand alone game that wasn’t just existing to funnel you into an endless cycle of upgrades and newer versions.  Upgrades that increasingly had a form of intellectual property shrinkflation.  Dubious benefits versus additional costs.  In that time, Civilization 2 became my favorite. 

 A balance of playability and realism was achieved.  Some stuff from the beginning was just wrong.  For example, a battleship crewed by veterans could be destroyed by a fortified troop of musketeers in a walled city.  Playability-wise that makes sense.  Too easy = boredom and there should be a risk or the reward is hollow.  I suppose the thought process in that example is much like the actual straight of Hormuz situation now.  Just shelling from long range isn’t enough to capture a city.  In the absence of a coordinated force of battleship delivered shells and marines landing and doing the boots on the ground work, they had to do something with just battleship versus just musketeer combat.

A cute touch is that towards the end climate change and pollution is a real issue to be dealt with.  Unchecked, too much pollution would end your dreams of being master of the planet.  But without explanation, dedicating some capital from your global economy made that a nuisance more than an actual threat.  So I would argue that without magical knowledge of what things look like today an upgraded version could theoretically be made.  One that addresses the diplomatic and truly global effort necessary.  Because as is, at the endgame where climate change is being a pest it’s just one human player and any AI positions left are sort of a joke in comparison.  Now let’s look at some other problems with Civ 2 and how they could be updated these many years later.

The King Richard’s Crusade wonder

https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_wonders_in_Civ2

The game is effect an increase in production for engaging in a holy war.  That sounds an awful lot like slavery over a notoriously unstable region of the real world.  Perhaps s a different theme could be chosen, or how about this.  The cost to receive the increased production in that single city is an extra garrison to keep the slaves in line.  One extra military unit of the era’s main type must be in the city or it revolts.

Sun Tzu's War Academy

Veteran troops are better than green newbies.  Got it.  But that means a social cost that should be addressed.  Low morale, PTSD for the society’s forgotten Rambos, stiffing vets out of health care and pensions as is the tradition.  I’m not going to throw a number out for my solution since I can’t play test it.  Troops start as veterans, then after a period of some time reduce to non veteran status unless a monetary upkeep is put in to the system.

Adam Smith's Trading Company

 The game is a product of the era of capitalism is the only way to allocate resources, and it shows.  The “never becomes obsolete” aspect is complete and utter nonsense.  My solution -a timer.  A set number of turns after building the wonder and costs to eliminate pollution increase dramatically.  It takes more time, more of your Cub’s treasury to clean up.  As with real world capitalism clean up in game is more or less magic.  My fix has you pay for the inevitable creation of oligarchs hoarding resources in our bastardized version of Adam Smith’s ideas.

Statue of Liberty and Women's Suffrage

 Ouch.  The U.S. doesn’t take the concepts behind them seriously enough.  Best to just get rid of them until people start treating marginalized groups with more respect.

And let’s leave the rest of the wonders alone, but add Artificial Intelligence.  And adding AI gives a reasonable tech increase but has so many expensive problems that it’s to be avoided instead of built.  That approach takes the stance that the solution to the Fermi paradox is that advanced civilizations give up on wasteful spending on pipe dreams.

Fundamentalism and Extremism

 https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Fundamentalism_(government)_(Civ2)

Double Ouch

That does seem a bit racist and judgmental to instantly dive to the Middle Eastern vibe.  The fix is easy.  A graphic of an overweight AR toting slob with a red MAGA hat….as an option, not a forced choice.

Leaders

 I’m not against the idea of Stalin being the choice for a Russian Civilization leader like in the first game.  Civ 2 lets you pick from a wider set of options.  However, when put side by side with the absence of Hitler as a choice for a German.  The computer opponents per manuals and the internet are based on some set tendencies.  Well I’m calling bullshit on the whole leader concept.  You should be able to adapt and change as new information and eras arrive.  The idea that Abraham Lincoln took you from the Bronze Age to launching a fusion powered craft is fine for playability.  But I want the chance for Shaka to see the era of his ways and accept my regime change ideas after I threaten to nuke him.  AND see that maybe backfire when he immediately forges an alliance with the Celt’s who also have nukes.  Actually , at high enough levels the AI leaders seem to be all pretty much assholes.

Railroads

Sorry railroad fans, in Civ 2 railroads are way overpowered and the one thing for the mechanics of the game I’d change first.  You can literally build railroads in every land terrain square and move across an entire continent sized piece of territory instantly.  There’s no such thing as policing borders being an issue, and with no downside it’s beneficial to max out railroads.  There’s an economic boost to doing it.  The fix - instead of being free forever after construction you must pay for ongoing maintenance.

I could add some more.  The temptation to offer a snarky gematria based conspiracy wonder is high.  But we’ve all suffered enough with that.

The Frozen Eggs Debate

I hate being a conservative these days.  It’s so hard for me to understand sarcasm and satire.  Maybe I shouldn’t talk about this until I get a better grasp of that.

I just watched clips on Fox News of the Eggs Jubilee debate.  A nonexistent but very real sounding parody of the Jubilee debate format where a claimant makes a proposal and then is surrounded by a group of opposing view holders.  The clip was totally not cherry picked and edited to make it as embarrassing for the lefties as possible.

The Claim:  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a poopyhead.

First Debater:  You care to present a single specific point about what makes AOC that?

Claimant:  Because she is.  Checkmate!

And the debate ended.

So I have an ex-friend, let’s call him Leon to secure his true identity.  I’m sure he’d appreciate that since he used to be one of the guys, and now he’s having some naughty thoughts about doing actual research.  And asking to discuss meaningful DEI bullshit topics like bodily autonomy and stuff.  And since his wife is named Noel and that’s Leon spelled backwards nobody will know I’m talking about him.  Noel is the problem.  She has been giving him bad ideas.  So he asked me what I thought of the debate and asked me, “So what would you pick as a single specific point?”

Dammit, Leon you chucklehead.  The softball of all softball of all questions to ask.  The right wing media ecosystem just told me what to say about this.  It’s the big thing to talk about, until the next big thing I’m told what to whine about comes in.  AOC wants to freeze her eggs.  Some lame bullshit about bodily autonomy blah, blah, blah, uncovered by insurance, blah, blah blah, and missing out on the child bearing years and regrets and blah, blah, blah, equality between sexes and blah, blah, blah.  Totally missing that the Eggs Jubilee content has already proven she’s a poopyhead.

Then Leon told me I was being close minded and a MAGA cultist who couldn’t think for himself.  I. Have. Never. Been. So. Angry.

So I laid into Leon armed with all the confidence that one only finds in what Noel calls the multibillion dollar online grift economy.  Like, what the fuck does that even mean?  So here’s what I told him.

It’s the economy stupid.  What’s the most important part of the economy?  Stocks.  Like chicken stock.  That you make soup with.  And what’s the best part of a good chicken noodle soup?  It’s when you cut up pieces of hard boiled egg for the soup.  And what’s the best measure of inflation?  THE PRICE OF EGGS.  Sure the price of oil is part of that, as oil prices rise egg prices rise.  Duh!

Buy low, sell high.  I’ve been trading in cryptoeggs for the past couple of years.  Nothing too big.  Don’t want to lose the house the next time some lefty president comes in with their dumb ideas.  That got me thinking.  Why not invest in egg eggs.  Like the actual thing you could eat.  And I did something nobody I know did.  I bought them when the price was high.  A symbolic purchase in honor of the greatest world leader ever, DJT.  Those aren’t dumb ideas that are bad ideas, they are never before seen displays of genius.  And when the egg tariffs work their way through the system (SOON!!) I’ll be sitting on a goldmine.

Because, I’m freezing my eggs.  The generator to provide electricity for the egg freezer was bought from INFOWARS (back when it was good).  You can tell it’s high quality since it was $59,999.  No cheap ass commie  generator for me!  I’ve made arrangements for purchasing liquid nitrogen as a backup during times when the genny might go down.  Way more inexpensive and practical than you think.  And the nitrogen was made in Texas.

In about 20 years, when prices finally calm down, I’ll have something that retains value better than a house, better than gold, better than cryptoeggs.  I’ll have a fucking ton of genuine ex-frozen eggs that can be exchanged for real goods and services.  More valuable now than ever as 20 years from now when people are just figuring out how ironic it is that AOC freezing her eggs is exactly what poopyhead would do.

The security issue was a tough nut for a while, but finally solvable by finding someone who is willing to guard them for the promise of a couple really valuable eggs a year starting twenty years from now.

And get this.  Leon said,

“Are you sure you aren’t just triggered because she’s a bright young woman who shows signs actually fighting for a future worth living in?”

Leon, I don’t even know you anymore.  Lucky for you things seem to be going great with Noel.  Have some fun now, because she’s a poopyhead, too.  She will turn on you one day.  Her and her bad ideas about the cost of raising a family.  The cost that won’t be subsidized by stockpile of frozen eggs.