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”.

——————————————————————-

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 of 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.

Know Your Grifter Tactics -The Unreliable Narrator, Part 2

Dr. John Gartner in YouTube

I remember the first time I saw The Sixth Sense, famous for its twist ending.  Perhaps I could have slowed down and figured it out before the reveal, but I was pleasantly surprised.  I was fully armed with advance knowledge there was I major twist, but I didn’t see it coming.  A good movie lets you escape and get lost in the story unfolding in front of you.  I had forgotten to even try to figure out what the surprise would be.

Bruce Willis’s character is a classic fictional unreliable narrator.  If he knew he was a ghost at the start his interactions with other ghosts and a tiny human that can see those ghosts would be different.  But there is a sort of bias wall between reality and his perceptions, his framing is skewed by that bias.

I am not a trained psychologist or psychiatrist.  Not that formal education or training would do me any good career wise.  There’s still a lot of anti-science and anti-intellectual sentiment floating around.  You gotta give the dwindling number of cult members something to do.  Not all of them get to deport decent people who just happen to have the (allegedly) wrong skin color.  So hey, Fauci is in the news again.  Let’s reinstate the bullshit false accusations that came about when he was scapegoated the first time around.

For myself, real life unreliable narrators are easy to spot.  Even without formal training it just comes naturally.  This is because there’s nothing wrong with my pattern recognition skills, and a science degree.  I also figured out the science degree wasn’t going to work out for employment.  Going into massive debt to get a masters degree - that wasn’t a grave I wanted to dig into.  But it did help a lot structuring my thoughts and solidifying the critical thinking abilities learned in high school.  Ah yes, those glorious days of high school where I first discovered that people have patterns, too.  I didn’t hang out with the cliques that would be most likely to be found at the type of rally Charlie Kirk would be hosting.  I learned to avoid them.  Which being in a fairly large school meant spending a lot of time by myself.  A classic Generation Jones nerd world of books and movies that I could absorb at my own pace without being assaulted by people in various stages of narcissism.

Yes, it’s another one of those posts.  Because at this point the actual objective facts are undeniable.  Not only is Trump objectively an unreliable narrator due to his lifelong narcissistic personality disorder, his dementia addled brain is mush.  “The Donald Trump you see today is the best you’ll see because it only just gets worse.”

I would gladly trade some peace and stability to replace the flex of seeing something of the kind of world that exists today.  The NPD affected brain by definition is heavily biased.  The NPD affected brain is an unreliable narrator to the body it operates.  The dementia affected brain by definition is a supercharged unreliable narrator.  Nothing is more important than the self.  Every narration is skewed.  Unreliably skewed.  Every story is now purposefully guided towards the skewed alternate reality or a jumbled mess as the various parts of the brain that govern impulse control and memory fade into pudding.  As Gartner and others mention on the various news shows and social media postings, it’s not cool to diagnose without interviewing by a trained professional.  But we’ve seen the trajectory over a decade.  The constant need for attention and providing material for the loyal subjects to get a short term attention boost is a great form of relevant and damning material.

Over not just the decade of active Trumpism and but decades leading up to that, narcissists without NPD have been “trained” to ignore the personality cult leader’s worst displays.  Like Fauci being unfairly scapegoated, Biden, Obama, Comey, Jack Smith, oh….its much shorter to say anyone that ever has disagreed with you is bad.  The multi billion dollar online grifting community latched on, amplified and the lingering seeds of doubt, although wilting now, the plants grew and the rot spread long enough to influence elections over millions of impressionable minds.  It’s absolutely no big surprise that Congressional ability to check and balance, to stop the madness, wasn’t going to happen.  The narcissists in control of those wheels in the machine didn’t do much about the 2008 financial crisis or January 6th.  Or a concerned response to climate change issues.Why should we expect different now.

Gartner has explained across his presentations that Trump is a good candidate to throw a hissy fit and launch some nukes.  I’m a bit more hopeful than that, but it is something to think about.  Yet, this is because my favorite scenario is more like some other nut job responds to his outrageous demands and pulls a big FU in retaliation.  And at least we’d never know who was wrong because everyone at that point is an unreliable narrator.  Some form of monetary reward is part of the online grifter’s speech, and even they aren’t dumb enough to think hustling you for Patreon subscriptions is going to help, right?

Know Your Grifter Tactics - The Unreliable Narrator, Part 1

 *Spoiler alert for The Odyssey and Project Hail Mary*

Back in the old days there was a quaint little practice known as reading.  This archaic mode of information sharing required a reader with enough resources to acquire printed material as well as a fundamental knowledge of how to translate the mysterious scrawling into something that wasn’t complete and incomprehensible gibberish.  For example, you may use this so called reading skill to read a restaurant menu and order the fish that you like instead of a spinach omelette you do not like.  Or you read the instruction manual instead of just trying to assemble your kid’s Christmas bicycle unaided.  Because you’ve got your pride.  You don’t need no damn instructions.  And if you really want to show off your reading skill, you can read gematria decodes because you can tell these are reliable.  The narrators tell you so.  Quite frequently.  Annoyingly and insanely frequently.  Almost like they need to say it instead of just being an actual reliable source needs to be, projected, instead of relying on actually being reliable.

Because this tedious reading thing doesn’t just require an education to read and some form of payment in a late stage capitalist nightmare.  There needs to be a writer.  And that’s a mixed bag.  Some writers are better than others, whether it be for entertainment to distract others from how they are struggling to pay the rent bill, or they’re targeting people who wouldn’t recognize propaganda if it bit them on the ass.  The marketing for sports/conspiracy gematria has always played to it being a somewhat fun method of acquiring secret and forbidden knowledge that just happens to coincide with bigotry and undreamt of wealth.  Every single one of these narrators is unreliable.  The profit motive is there.  The willingness to contradict just for the spur of the moment influencer economy points is there.  The sociopathic lack of giving a shit about others is there.  The doubling down on the craziness is there.  The constant drive and search for new cult members, braggadocio, confluence with other bad ideas, etc….  It just never ended.

Sometimes effective entertainment writing will deliberately use an unreliable narrator as a driving plot point.  And sometimes this can become an effective method of injecting societal concerns into the entertainment.  And as these get adapted into films the burden of slogging your way through hundreds of pages is removed.  You just might be forced to put up with an angle you don’t agree with when 100% objectivity is virtually impossible.  

The narrators of Fight Club, American Psycho, and Shutter Island are unreliable since they’re crazy.  Golden Caufirld in Catcher in the Rye is heavily biased.  Children are naive and innocent.  The unreliable narrator is officially a trope, a trope that exists because in real life the unreliable narrator exists in its many different forms.

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

(Throwing that in because a red flag for spotting an unreliable narrator is insistence that they are the ultimate source of all knowledge without providing references.)

My two favorite movies this year are Project Hail Mary and The Odyssey.  And both have unreliable narrators.  In PHM the protagonist suffers from a (deliberate) drug induced amnesia who slowly requires his lost memories over the course of the story.  The part about man made climate change is more clear in the book.  The clock is ticking to save the Earth.  And fortunately man made climate change bought us some extra time.  The alien microbe is absorbing the Sun’s energy and a super long trip to another star system holds the cure.  The creative choice allows our hero to work hard as tension builds instead of not having much of a movie and magically knowing the answer within 10 minutes of film time.  Throw in an alien that sociopaths and xenophobes can’t appreciate that makes grown adults with real feelings cry.

But I find even more interesting is The Odyssey.  Not more entertaining, but thought provoking.  The mere fact that this is the topic Nolan chose, I find fascinating.  The same way the Vietnam War sparked movies of war veterans trying to re-assimilate back into society (Rambo).  The source material has been part of philosophical discussion for THOUSANDS of years.  And not only is Odysseus an unreliable narrator, the question of his reliability is part of that philosophical discussion.  Translation and interpretation are an integral  part of the lore.  Not just the plot but the subsequent arguments.  Here’s some other content I’ve absorbed from YouTube:

https://youtu.be/u0Y8tFcpWnI?is=9jerJZiBRU2IfjQZ

(Phil0bot philosophy channel)

https://youtu.be/u0Y8tFcpWnI?is=9jerJZiBRU2IfjQZ

(MadMorph Movie Club channel)

These are smart people with worthy opinions.  Reliable narrators.

Previously, my experience with The Odyssey was 

1). High school English - the finale with Odysseus returning home and killing Penelope’s suitors.

2)  Bits and pieces of chapters stolen and thrown into other works.  Usually the Sirens.

3.  Xena Warrior Princess did the whirlpool story and devoted an entire separate episode in the second season titled, Ulysses.  And now we know Homer was full of shit and Ulysses fell in love with Xena.

These things, while fun like PHM and didn’t prepare me for the unreliable narrator.  So wrapping up Part 1 of the blogging.  My three takeaways in my highly personalized and opinionated recap of the Odyssey.

1)  The in movie referencing to the Sea Peoples was frequent.  I can’t help but relate that to current day big issues like the war with Iran and resource depletion.

2)  It’s complicated.  Odysseus is a complicated man.  It’s not black and white.  It does appear that like a conspiracy theorist all the good and cool stuff he accomplished because he’s study and cool.  All the bad stuff, the Gods are out to get him.  The convenient scapegoat.  

3)  With intent I do not waste my time on Twixter anymore.  But I have heard that there’s pointless argument about culture war topics instead of substantial issues.  Like the casting of Page and a black woman for Helen of Troy.  These are the talking points of the grifter.  The talking points of someone unwilling to focus on meaningful content.  The talking points of an unreliable narrator that will not talk about unreliable narrators because it hits too close to home and can’t express a complicated issue without resorting to a two or three digit number in a gematria decode.

Cyclogematriasis

Although not at the levels found in 2016, the Center for Critical Thinking has identified a rise in cases of cyclogematriasis.  Known symptoms of cyclogematriasis include:

Frequent and sometimes explosive cases of verbal and written diarrhea.

Focus on “meme” numbers like Pi, 666, and 88.

Increased cyber bullying and scapegoating.

A sharp decrease in the desire to treat others with dignity and respect.

Sharp weight loss and fatigue due to late night decoding and doom scrolling instead of sleeping.

An early victim of the current outbreak who only gave our reporter the name Superedgelord227 said this from his hospital bed:

“I was decoding the Titan submersible implosion.  That made me think of the Titanic.  That made me think of icebergs.  That made me think of iceberg lettuce.  That made me think of how you don’t see lettuce much in the Planet of the Apes movies.  That made me think of Charlton Heston’s character Taylor, that made me think of Taylor Farms of Mexico, that made me think Mexico in the 2026 World Cup, that made me think of how you’re not supposed to drink the water in Mexico.…” And we finally interrupted him since we got the point.

The best course of action to combat cyclogematriasis is preventative measure.  No decoding at all is best, but if you must remain focused on happy thoughts like the love of Jesus and the Golden Rule.  If you can’t help but talk about political, economic, and social issues be prepared to talk about housing prices, finite resources and the difference between projection and reality.  If you find yourself thinking that Obama is the Antichrist or an urge to gamble call the help line at the Center for Critical Thinking immediately. Do not drive a car, operate heavy machinery or watch Fox News until cleared by a trained CCT expert.