The main source of mass media disinformation is in the frame.

No matter whether any specific claim is factual or a lie, we can be sure that all the facts, and interpretations of events, will always and without exception be falsely framed - because this has the effect of making the facts and interpretations ...

🖼️

Monarchy was a TV series by historian David Starkey from twenty years ago, which I am re-watching for about the third time.

The series runs from the Anglo Saxons up to Queen Elizabeth II; and treats this as a single narrative arc - albeit with major disruptions along the way (e.g. the Norman ...

On February 24, I downloaded Hugh Nibley's book Enoch the Prophet, which I haven't read since childhood but still remember quite well.

On March 1, I posted "Strange is the night where black stars rise."

Last night, I checked The Higherside Chats and found an episode, published March 4, called "Wayne McRoy Jr. | 2026 ...

On the road early this morning, I somehow got to thinking about doughnuts. I'm not sure what started this train of thought, but I was thinking about how doughnuts used to be a fairly regular feature of my life, how common it used to be to bring a box of them to the office or classroom, and how long it had been -- a ...

Acknowledgments: My starting point for this analysis was "What is Malachi doing in 1st and 2nd Nephi?," a Reddit post by someone using the handle stisa79, which Bill Wright brought to my attention; and "Samuel the Lamanite, Christ, and Zenos: A Study of Intertextuality," an Interpreter article by Quinten Barney, which ...

My March 12 post "Breadcrumbs, iron pens, and avian epigraphs" was about a synchronicity involving the three themes in the title. One of the iron pens involved was one with which things "may be written, upon plates of brass."

Yesterday, I read in Joseph Smith's Seer Stones:

If the record and the stones buried by the ...

When I recently wrote about the severe and increasing subfertility of the populations of all developed societies in the world; I had not realized that this was becoming a topic in the mass media...

Sort of.

Because the discussions reveal that people have not even begun to consider the implications of subfertility. ...

Certain places, even in today's world, retain an atmosphere that speaks of a reality beyond the everyday and the mundane. There are natural sites that have this quality and these were often adopted as sacred places in bygone days by our pagan forefathers. Springs, wells, mountains, caves and many other naturally ...

🖼️

As a Northumbrian (by inheritance, conception, and residence - if not birth!) who yet has a better claim to pretend to be Irish than most of the show-biz people who make such a big thing of it...

[The Irish can do what they like to celebrate their patron; but I am referring to the international, ...

For, behold, I will send serpents, cockatrices, among you, which will not be charmed, and they shall bite you, saith the Lord. When I would comfort myself against sorrow, my heart is faint in me.-- Jeremiah 8:17-18

"Observe this motion: Clench the fist,Pull taut the tendons, flick the wrist -- For thus did Paul of ...

Over the past eight years; my reading-of and brooding-on the Fourth Gospel (called "John") has had many and profound effects on my understanding of the differences between what Jesus said and did, and the Christian churches that came after.

In particular, that the core of Jesus's work was to provide Men with the ...

🖼️

An interesting and useful resource has appeared on the excellent Fourble website: a collection of 45 podcasts featuring or written by Colin Wilson.

I have sampled a few - and enjoyed them all.

I am not sure who is responsible for making this compilation, but Thanks, whoever you are! ...

🖼️

I thought regular readers might be interested to see the official document by which I became Baron of Jesmond, some three decades ago.

This entitles me to the hereditary title of Lord - or just "Jesmond" among my close friends and equals (if any) - and those to whom I have given permission to use ...

Today I read in Words of Them Liberated a reference to a Silmaril as a "gem-pip sprouting" into a yellow flower, a stone become a seed.

Hours later, I read in Joseph Smith's Seer Stones that

Joseph Smith planted his seer stone like a seed, which grew to become the immovable oak of Mormonism.

🖼️

John Pritchard, Tragedian: 1830-1868

Seems to have been a rather handsome chap, and rather too obviously proud of it - given that this is the only sculpted head of the deceased in any of the three Jesmond cemeteries.

A "Tragedian" was a (self-styled*) serious actor of the Classics; and this is ...

I've just finished reading When Women Were Birds by Terry Tempest Williams -- a good read overall, though perhaps a bit too Creative Writing for some tastes.

I started reading it at about the same time that I started Words of Them Liberated, and in "Breadcrumbs, iron pens, and avian epigraphs" I noted the coincidence ...

The problems of this mortal life are (essentially) evil and entropy. Those who are honest and give the matter thought, acknowledge that these problems are intractable, incurable - they always have been, everywhere.

Some people assert that this is good enough, Life as it is and has-been is basically fine...

But in ...

I had a dream with no visual component, just music: a single cello playing, with great intensity and virtuosity, the Beatles song "With a Little Help from My Friends." It's been in my head all day -- the cello version from my dream, that is, which appears not yet to exist in the waking world, though I did check ...

A lot of poetry sites now append an "AI analysis" to the end of each poem -- as if anyone who loves poetry ever asked them to smear its sacred pages with that filth!

Today, wanting to read Emily Dickinson's "From Blank to Blank" while away from my library, I turned to one of these sites. When I reached the end of the ...

to be a professional writer now you have to be a small business owner. i don’t want to do that. first, i’m not really cut out for business. and whenever i tried to make a job out of things i liked to do i ended up hating the thing (and the effect can last a very long time, depending on how much investment ...

2020 was the year when there was a completely successful coup in which global-totalitarianism took-over all the nations of the world; conclusive evidence for which was that the various previous governance procedures of nations were displaced by diktat - and under such a system the peoples of the whole world were ...

The vast and endless stream of drivel on the subject of the supernatural superpowers of "AI" continues - and it will continue until the funding dries-up.

Those many thousands of propagandists on the "AI" payroll will keep doing what they are being "paid" to do (remembering that "payment" comes in many shapes and ...

All over the media (mass and "alternative") are explanations of how the such-and-such Big Nation has made a Big Bistake, because badly advised, because influenced by X, because over-optimistic, because poor intelligence, because too greedy... or because whatever.

It's all "A Big Mistake" of some kind... supposedly; ...

Free time! -- but how am I supposed To write a half-so-weighty tomeAs Marcus in his head composedWhile waging war and ruling Rome?

Last week my wife and I were the first to celebrate a new festival that we originated: "Aunt Grace Day"...

🖼️

JRR Tolkien's Aunt Grace

🖼️

Last week, my wife and I decided to establish a new tradition of celebrating the anniversary day of the death of JRR Tolkien's Aunt Grace, by laying some flowers on her grave - this being the most tangible link between JRRT and Newcastle upon Tyne.

🖼️

🖼️

During a break between classes, I was working on my very long (and still unfinished) post trying to reconstruct the hypothetical 1 Zenos document from quotations and allusions in various parts of the Book of Mormon and Bible. When I stopped to teach my evening class (7:50-9:20), I had just been writing about Samuel ...

Michael and I were not the only Europeans living in Yercaud. I mentioned Sofie de Mello from Germany in a previous Indian Story post but there were a few other European residents there as well. One, an Englishman, Vic Tate by name, had been born in India around 1915. I say he was an Englishman because all his ...

I dreamt that there were two colonies in Antarctica. I had first visited the one run by a man named Campbell whose motto was "We must maintain a warlike atmosphere in Antarctica." He talked about this a lot, and about the need for "a war of all against all" in his colony. Members of the colony would compete to be ...

.

🖼️

.

🖼️

.

🖼️

.

🖼️ ...

Assuming that we acknowledge it as a real possibility, and have not pre-decided that it cannot be true; we can know that our soul is is not bounded by mortal life (our conception and death).

We can know this directly and for-ourselves - simply by remembering our past experience.

If we have personal knowledge of ...

The players bow; the watchers rise.The program printed on the pageHas reached its end, and now no eyesBut God's alone are on the stage. The curtain falls; they file away. I have not yet begun to play.

Now comes a dark both thick and deep,And misty paths before me lie.I pray the Lord my soul to keep,And let me ...

Though almost everyone else in my family wears glasses, I have enjoyed excellent visual acuity all my life. Every time I've had it tested, for routine physicals and such, it's been 20/10, placing me in the top 1% of the population. Until recently, my close-range vision has been excellent, too. Back when I was a poor ...