I keep thinking there must be some significance to the extraordinary coincidence of Ceiling Fan Man having started his YouTube channel on the very same day that my own ceiling fan was destroyed by poltergeist activity, so I watched the latest CFM show even though it’s nearly three hours long and kind of goofy. Much ...

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Regular readers will know that I have a fondness for musical pieces in the 5/4 time signature - when it is done well (which is usually phrased as a syncopated 10/8 - or 3/8, 3/8, 4/8 - rather than 5/4).

Well here is another, by the great theme composer Barry Gray - from the early 60s Gerry ...

Over at the Notion Club Papers blog; I speculate on how it is that the High Elves of Rivendell, Lothlorien and the Grey Havens feed and provide for themselves.

I find myself inclined to speculate on the workings of agriculture among the High Elves of Middle Earth leading up to the time of the War of the Rings* - and from information within The Lord of the Rings.

We are told enough about the agriculture and gardening among Men and Hobbits to understand how they sustain ...

One striking aspect of the industrial-scale plagiarism that is current "AI", is that the mechanism of generation leads inevitably to soulless mediocrity in its output.

This is because it samples, selects, blends, extrapolates from multiple sources. It is based on averaging - which entails removing the extremes that ...

I have found Dr. Charlton’s posts concerning First Creation and Second Creation particularly clarifying and helpful in my understanding of the role of freedom, particularly as it pertains to the First Creation being opt-out and the Second Creation being opt-in.

On the matter of Primary Creation, Dr. Charlon ...

Jason Statham, in his role as Levon Cade (meaning "pet lion") in A Working Man, has been in the sync-stream recently. WanderingGondola pointed me back to a 2023 post, "Syncs: The World Beneath," in which another Statham movie is discussed. This is Meg 2: The Trench, where the Statham character is named Jonas (meaning ...

A comment from yesterday by William James Tychonievich on the subject of the "creativity" of the post 2022 iteration of "Artificial Intelligence" (AI) is well worth highlighting:

Real creativity is impossible for a computer, but since “AI” is based on industrial-scale plagiarism, it’s possible in principle that ...

In a very brief dream last night, I saw a cityscape with another, upside down cityscape above it. A voice said, “They weren’t ready for the City of God to come back.”

I understood the lower city to be New York (alias Cainhannoch) and the upper one to be the Zion of Enoch returning. Those who belonged in Zion ...

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You may think she's cute - but she's a replicant, you fool!

Thought experiments are usually pretty evil mind manipulations, as I've said before.

The thing is that in order to respond to thought experiments, you must allow yourself to admit them as possible, as potentially real.

I got the title ...

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I developed conjunctivitis in my right eye, and went and bought some treatment; and only after I had used it, too late, did I realize that the bottle was labelled infected eye drops.

It's outrageous that such a dangerous product can be sold to the unwitting public.

What is it about eye ...

For Christians; prayer addressed to Jesus is primary - because it is by-Jesus that we attain salvation.

This world, this Primary Creation, is mortal, temporary; goodness is mixed with evil and death... Therefore eternal salvation to wholly-good Heaven without death is the most important thing - for those who want ...

The Primary Creation is groupish, because it is universal: the creation of everything that is created, for everything that is created.

We all inhabit the First Creation - and can only "opt-out" in the sense of annihilating awareness of our self as a distinct entity.

Second Creation is personal, individual...

The bulk of what constitutes traditional/classical Christian theology amounts to little more than an apologia and justification for divine totalitarianism—a centralized, dictatorial God requiring nothing more than subservience to his divine will.

How could it be otherwise? Once God is defined as an Abolute, ...

This past March 14, Bill left a comment bringing up my posts about Christina Rossetti’s poem “Goblin Market,” and I followed up the same day with a post of my own, “When only the goblins are out.”

Today I checked The Higherside Chats, which I haven’t done for several months. I found an episode released on ...

In D&C Section 19, the Lord explains that when the punishment of the damned is described as "endless" or "eternal," this does not necessarily mean that it has no end:

Nevertheless, it is not written that there shall be no end to this torment, but it is written endless torment. Again, it is written eternal ...

On Tuesday night (April 1-2), I had a dream in which Claire was giving some sort of presentation in English. She was explaining a general principle, which I can no longer remember, and used the specific example of "records" symbolized by long sticks to illustrate the concept. These sticks were about two meters long, ...

In the past (and perhaps still, in other cultures) men spontaneously experienced "contact" with gods or God, the divine - more generally, spirits, the dead/ ghosts, and many other supernatural/ paranormal forms of interaction such as with remote persons or animals.

These also include sensory/ perceptual experiences ...

In 1979 I spent a month in India visiting the north of the country, going to Calcutta, Darjeeling, Varanasi, Delhi, Agra and Srinagar. I wrote about this trip in Meeting the Masters in the context of that book. I also mentioned that I returned to live in India in 1980 and spent 5 years there but did not include much ...

The simple, personal and next-worldly offer of Jesus Christ - for resurrected eternal Heavenly life to those who followed him - had-to-be, and was, fitted-into a scheme that:

1. Required a Church.

2. Operated at a group-level - because, in that time and place, individuals we groupish in consciousness, and could not ...

The contrast can be seen between the Old and New Testaments.

In the Old Testament, the salvation hoped-for (e.g. from the Messiah) is groupish - of Israel, the nation.

It is not individual - the individual is mortal, disposable, and will die; and after death his depersonalized remnant will be go to the shadowy, ...

Having grown up in North America, I was largely unaware of the (likely) manufactured Britpop battle between Blur and Oasis in the early 1990s; however, looking back at the two bands now, I would have to say that Blur was the superior pop/rock band in terms of musical talent and versatility, to say nothing of their ...

In the UK, at least, "pilgrimages" (including to "Recognized" Christian sites) have in recent decades become popular among churchy people and the secular-intellectual middle class more generally, and are often depicted in the mass media.

Since Christianity continues its steep decline and top-down destruction; this ...

Over in the comments at Leo's blog, Bill brings in the recent Jason Statham movie A Working Man with reference to my supposed laziness. I guess I'll take this as a bit of vindication from the sync fairies on that ridiculous charge, since Statham, who plays the titular working man, is closely associated with me. I ...

Every time the demon-serving Establishment come up with a new Litmus Test for The West, there are a lot of new fails that follow a standard pattern of self-justification by a this-worldly-expedient, materialist, Satanic trope of "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em".

We saw it with the Birdemic: the lockdowns, social ...

Last night I dreamed that a cup of hot black coffee with no sugar was called “an Adolf Hitler.” That was just what it was called, and everyone used the name. I walked into a coffee shop and ordered one but was told, “Actually, we call it a Churchill now.”

The dream felt so real that when I woke I was left ...

I have argued that the future of Christianity lies in direct knowledge rather than submissive obedience to external sources of Christian authority (or any authority).

​This does not entail that all sources of external Christian authority must be indiscriminately jettisoned; however, such external sources should ...

My last post, “A thin man ran out of the library,” reminded me that in the original running Arnold meme, he is leaving not the Reality Temple but a Barnes & Noble bookstore, which is conceptually adjacent to a library. Arnold can by no stretch of the imagination be described as a “thin man,” of course, but ...

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Whatever you say or do: AI just keeps-on coming at you...

I don't know whether you have ever felt that somewhat despairing sense of the weariness of mortal Men, when engaged with simulated-human/ pseudo-intelligent "AI" programming - mechanisms that, very much like demons, do not fatigue, and ...

An observation on the unusual character and taste of Frodo; over at The Notion Club Papers blog.

As I was reading through Lord of the Rings this time; it struck me that Frodo's conversation with Faramir about the history of Men (in The Window on the West chapter of The Two Towers), is something that I cannot imagine occurring with any other Hobbit than Frodo.

Of course, Bilbo and Merry are also unusually ...