Mindless Freeks
Providing a runaway ramp for the crazy bus since 2017.
Sunday, October 25, 2026
Asymmetric Warfare - Fred Saberhagen’s Goodlife
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 fiancĂ© thing.
Great movie. Much better than the new Supergirl at portraying damaged mental state and motivation.
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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.
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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.
Saturday, October 24, 2026
Now You See…Lot’s Of Stuff, But Certainly Not Everything
Saturday, October 17, 2026
What Everyone Gets Wrong About the Werewolf Vs. Vampire Conflict
Sunday, October 4, 2026
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.
Sunday, September 27, 2026
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.
Saturday, September 19, 2026
Know Your Grifter Tactics - The Pipeline To a More Lucid Argument
Sunday, September 13, 2026
Know Your Grifter Tactics - Going To The Well Too Many Times
Saturday, August 22, 2026
The Natalie Harp Loyalty Test
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.
Thursday, August 20, 2026
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.
Sunday, August 16, 2026
Updating Civilization 2
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
Fundamentalism and Extremism
Leaders