In Which Yours Truly Almost got Caught Up in the Bystander Effect

The Bystander Effect is an interesting phenomenon, in which people become less likely to do the right thing if there are more people present*. In short, everybody thinks that if there was something that should be done, somebody else would already have done it, resulting in nobody doing anything. This is why in an emergency you never say “somebody should call the emergency hotline”, but “You there in the red jacket, call the emergency hotline”.

Today we went for our usual walk at our usual lake. The weather was lovely. Temperatures had risen to 4-5° above zero, sun was shining, no wind.

©Giliell, all rights reserved           The picture is from January, I didn’t take the camera today

Before the current cold spell (and we got off lucky here with -10° C at the lowest) we had lots of warm (+10°C) rain, so when I went to the lake on Wednesday it was still completely open. It froze over since, but of course not completely, and I will not speculate on the thickness of the ice. But when we arrived there, there were people on the ice. Mostly young men (who else…) but a few people with small children as well. Everybody around exclaimed “are they mad???”, but nobody did anything. And… neither did I at first. Because there are so many emotions at once. Disbelief, worry, anger (how stupid can you be, how dare you take the children), but also fear about what will happen if I do something (Including the fear of being accused of wasting emergency service time) and of course the idea that you don’t tattle to the cops. Mr was exactly the same. When I said “I should call the emergency hotline” he was “yes, you should”. Not calling it himself.

Well, I did. It took some time until I got to the person who was responsible, who apparently hadn’t left his office in a while, because he asked me “how many people were there” and I said “about 10” and he said “not at the lake, but on the ice” as if you could find a nice quiet place right now with only 10 people in sight. We walked away after we informed the emergency hotline, because there was nothing left to do. If they’d fallen in, we couldn’t have done anything, so we went to the woods where there are less people.

At least when we returned, the Office of Public Order was there and yelled at people who still thought it was funny to step on the ice but on the other side of the lake. Dudes, when 100 people around say that you’re a fucking idiot, you’re probably not some edgy rebel fighting against the forces of evil. Chances are that you’re just a fucking idiot. Mr said I’d probably saved a life today, but I’m pretty sure the person whose life I possibly saved is pretty angry with the asshole who called the cops. As they say, there’s no glory in prevention.

 

*Though, as numbers increase so does the likelihood of somebody finally doing something

 

Tree Tuesday

Trees in the News: According to Vox, the trees at Joshua Tree National Park in California are now one step closer to extinction thanks to the current US government shutdown.

According to National Parks Traveler, visitors are creating illegal roads and driving into some of the park’s most fragile areas. They are also chopping down trees, setting illegal fires, and graffitiing rocks. With Joshua Tree being roughly the size of Delaware, the eight on-duty law enforcement rangers had no way to stop all the prohibited activity.

Joshua trees are already facing possible extinction, with scientists claiming that the Joshua Tree habitat will be lost to climate change by 2100. Smith told National Geographic in October, “We’re just in crisis mode right now.” Twenty days into the government shutdown, vandals are accelerating the trees’ demise.

Why? Why must people be so short-sighted and destructive? The article at National Parks Traveler notes that Joshua trees were cut down so that 4 wheelers could go around entrance gates. Once inside the trespassers continued their destruction, tearing up virgin desert, running over plants, camping in off-limits areas, leaving behind heaps of trash and generally behaving like 3 year olds high on sugar and let loose in a toy store with no supervision. It’s one more thing we can add to the list of things that Trump is destroying.

When you don’t have enough hands or faces to palm.

American politics have a serious side effect of headaches from shaking them or facepalming constantly over here in continental Europe (made worse by the weeping over the Brits), but sometimes it’s just bizarre.

Have you heard about that big scandal involving Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?

Well, hold on fast, because these revelations will break your heart. When she was a teenager, she danced and had friends.

Here is America’s favorite commie know-it-all acting like the clueless nitwit she is…
…High School video of “Sandy” Ocasio-Cortez @AoDespair

And then there’s Elizabeth Warren. Did you know what she did? She drank beer on Instagram!

I hope I have now thoroughly ruined your new year with these groundbreaking revelations of human women doing normal human things.

 

Whom Will They Blame Next, Unicorns?

I have never watched Fox News when I was in USA, and of course I have no incentive to watch it now. However the stories that I read about it on the interwebs are truly bizarre.

This one trumps them all: Fox News host: ‘Anti-Semitism from the left’ is the real cause of hateful attacks on Jews

Where exactly does this “virulent anti-Semitism from the left” happen? Where do roam these elusive creatures, these leftist antisemites? Where exactly is the land of “fringe of the progressive side.”?

How come that someone spews such a weapon’s grade bullshit on air and is not immediately challenged for providing evidence for it? Any person who says such inane claptrap should be discredited and mercilessly mocked.

Wackaloon

Liz Crokin, right wing “journalist” has recently lost the tips of two fingers in a surfing accident and is blaming Hilary Clinton as the cause.

While she realizes that it was probably “just a freak accident,” that didn’t stop her from also asserting that it may have been the result of a curse that had been placed on her by Hillary Clinton or artist Marina Abramović or some other “witch” that is targeting her due to her efforts to expose the secret satanic cannibalistic pedophile cult that supposedly runs the world.

Is it just me, or do other people think that the right wing of America have lost their minds. I can almost get past their belief in their God (almost, but not really), but what is up with the belief in witches and spells and curses. Do they really think we live in Harry Potter World full of magic, and if so why isn’t their all-powerful, all-seeing God doing something about it? It seems to me that it just highlights the impotence of their sky God. It all seems so totally illogical and totally ridiculous. The full story is at Right Wing Watch, if you can stomach it. Just a word of warning, if you click on the links inside the story be prepared for even more ridiculous right wing thinking.

 

Demonic Virtual Reality.

Janet Mefferd and Tim Dailey got together to have a chat about the Bigfoot Question. Yep. I had no idea there was a question at all, and certainly not one about bigfoot. Apparently, it’s important for christians to know how to interpret reported bigfoot sightings, and how this all ties into the paranormal conspiracy, which is orchestrated by Satan, of course.

Dailey said it was telling that “many, many reliable observers” have reported spotting Bigfoot but yet there is a “virtual absence” of tangible proof that would convince the skeptical public that such claims were credible.

“It’s real. It’s a projection. It’s a demonic virtual reality, but it’s not nuts-and-bolts, in this case, flesh-and-blood creatures,” Dailey said.

Well, that’s one way to have your cake and eat it too. “It’s real, but it’s not real real.” Generally speaking, Mr. Dailey, a reliable observer would have something or other to give their claim credibility. As that virtual absence of evidence continues, that would mean there have been no reliable observers.  There is projection going on, I’ll grant you that much, but it’s not coming from a devil or any other imaginary being.

Mefferd went on to ask Dailey why nobody ever takes a picture of Bigfoot “at noon,” when someone could take a well-lit photograph. Dailey said that the devil designs Bigfoot sightings to happen when it is too dark to take clear photographs.

“The vast majority happen in the dead of night and you wonder, ‘Why is this?’ And then if you remember the biblical verse about the powers of darkness that love darkness rather than light,” Dailey told Mefferd.

Y’know, camera equipment has advanced a great deal, and there is no excuse for such incredibly bad shots outside of doing it that way deliberately. Why would anyone do that on purpose? Ah, what else, money. Many a hoax has been perpetrated, and many hoaxes put a fair amount of money in pockets before exposure of the racket. It has absolutely nothing at all to do with ‘powers of darkness’.

“That’s right. That’s important,” Mefferd replied. She went on to ask Dailey, “What could possibly be the reason the devil might be motivated to make an appearance, even if it’s a UFO or an alien that somebody sees, why would the devil do this?”

“It’s part of the devil’s modus operandi. He has always used this kind of phenomena to, once again destabilize, to engender fear, to open us up to the possibilities of other realities and other beings and then we begin getting involved with demonic spirits. So yeah, all through history there have been many, many different varieties of beings that are primarily spiritual beings that have terrorized civilizations and peoples and non-Christian cultures are very aware of this,” Dailey said.

Sigh. Engender fear? Really? Bigfoot doesn’t scare me, because bigfoot doesn’t fucking exist. UFO sightings don’t scare me either, because again, non-existent. The amount of people who buy into nonsense like bigfoot and UFOs are not a large percentage, so if this is Satan’s way of engendering fear, it’s a damn stupid one, and I certainly don’t see any of this nonsense “terrorizing civilizations”.  I think the last time I heard someone bringing up bigfoot was waaaaaay back in the 1970s. Even then, there wasn’t any terror attached to it all.

As for “non-Christian cultures are very aware of this”, ummm, would you be implying that christian cultures are on the stupid side? I suppose what’s meant there is that all those non-christian types* are in league with the devil, but it can certainly be read in a few different ways.

*Which of course includes many a flavour of other christians, such as catholics and mormons, etc.

RWW has the story.

League Of The South Goes Russian.

Michael Hill speaks with a WWLTV reporter at Confederate monuments rally (Image from WWLTV May 17, 2017 broadcast). Source.

Unsurprisingly, League of the South is attempting to mate with Russia, home of, and saviour of white people. There’s a whole lot to the article, just a bit here.

Amid the controversy over President Trump’s recent summit with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, the neo-Confederate League of the South announced this week that it will soon be introducing a Russian language section to its website.“To our Russian friends,” a missive on the League’s website, is signed by Michael Hill, the group’s president. An excerpt:

We understand that the Russian people and Southerners are natural allies in blood, culture, and religion. As fellow Whites of northern European extraction, we come from the same general gene pool. As inheritors of the European cultural tradition, we share similar values, customs, and ways of life. And as Christians, we worship the same Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and our common faith binds us as brothers and sisters.

We Southerners believe in societies based on real, organic factors such as shared blood, culture, and religion, and all that stems naturally from these salient factors in the human experience. As fellow White Christians who are grounded in the sublime traditions of our common European cultural heritage, we believe that the Russian people and the Southern people are natural allies against the destructive and impersonal impulses of globalism.

Religion is organic? Huh. As for these “sublime traditions”, c’mon, let’s hear about some of them. Any of them. Provide some details on all this sublimeness. Interestingly enough, the first definition of ¹Sublime is: to cause to pass directly from the solid to the vapor state and condense back to solid form. If one uses that particular definition, yeah, I can buy the sublime tradition nonsense.

Mr. Hill teaches that the defeat of Nazi Germany was “an unmitigated disaster for Western Christian civilization.” I don’t know who taught Mr. Hill about World War II, but they should be smacked.

Alt-Right leaders and white nationalists adore Russia’s Vladimir Putin, much as American Religious Right leaders do. As Casey Michel noted in a RWW report last year, Richard Spencer has called Russia the “most powerful white power in the world.” Matthew Heimbach, leader of the now-disbanded white nationalist Traditionalist Worker Party, called Putin “the leader of the free world.” Former KKK leader David Duke, who was a speaker at this year’s League of the South conference, has said he believes Russia holds the “key to white survival.”

Putin has supported right-wing nationalist movements across Europe. In 2015, Jared Taylor, the American proponent of “race realism,”  took part in a conference in St. Petersburg that gathered activists from Europe’s far right. There Taylor declared the United States “the greatest enemy of tradition everywhere.” Also in attendance was former KKK lawyer Sam Dickson, who praised Putin’s efforts to preserve “[the white] race and civilization.”

I can’t figure out why all these wannabe nazis don’t just run off to Russia. They’d be happy, and we’d all be better off without them.

RWW has the full story.

Sunday Facepalm: Demon-strations.

A print from Bernard de Montfaucon's L'antiquité expliquée et représentée en figures (Band 2,2 page 358 ff plaque 144) with different images of Abraxas.

A print from Bernard de Montfaucon’s L’antiquité expliquée et représentée en figures (Band 2,2 page 358 ff plaque 144) with different images of Abraxas. Source.

Abraxas (Abrasax) is an interesting character, across cultures, a god, an archon, an aeon, then deemed a pagan god by the catholic church and promptly downgraded to a demon. Tsk. The image above is different kinds of Abraxas Stones, which were quite common. Unfortunately, the idiots under discussion today are not nearly as interesting.  It’s Dr. Bill again, and wannabe prophet Mark Taylor. They are both exceptionally nasty people, but Mr. Taylor does have a ways to go before reaching the open malice and hatred of Dr. Bill.  Mr. Taylor seems very open to being swayed by whoever is in front of him at the moment, and if he keeps hangin’ with Dr. Bill, I expect it won’t be long before the viciousness level is up.

“Individuals like Peter Strzok and Hillary Clinton, these are people of clay and iron,” Deagle said. “Clay being human flesh and iron being the trans-dimensional energy that is inside of them. They’re being avatared like a video game … These are not just normal human beings—your brothers and sisters—these are your brothers and sisters who are totally taken over by evil.”

“These people are not human,” Taylor agreed.

“These people like Peter Strzok,” Deagle responded, “when I saw him screwing up his face and leaning forward and making his eyes look really dark, I’m thinking, ‘Ooh, we’re not hearing a person talk, we’re hearing a demonic entity talk through his mouth.’ It’s disgusting.”

Odd, I feel disgust just reading your words, Mr. Deagle. So, Dr. Bill declares “he has an amazing “spiritual gift” that allows him identify “the names of the succubi and incubi inside Peter Strzok” just by looking at him.” Right. I’ll invite people to stare at your face and make up shit about what’s inside you, Dr. Bill.

It’s not easy finding a current, good shot of Dr. Bill. He seems to dislike facing straight on, and uses old photos on his website. It seems Dr. Bill is in love with his younger profile. I can’t say I see demons, because they don’t exist. There’s definitely a high shit content, but you can’t get that from a face. It’s an old belief, thinking you can tell everything by looking at someone’s face and head, but it was idiocy then, and it’s idiocy now. Unfortunately, it’s in vogue once again. Can’t say I think much of that “amazing spiritual gift”, you just see what you want to see, and whatever fits your lunatic narrative.

“Individuals like Peter Strzok and Hillary Clinton, these are people of clay and iron,” Deagel said. “Clay being human flesh and iron being the trans-dimensional energy that is inside of them. They’re being avatared like a video game … These are not just normal human beings—your brothers and sisters—these are your bothers and sisters who are totally taken over by evil.”

“These people are not human,” Taylor agreed.

Gotta say, I love the sideways shift from devil to aliens (or trans-dimensional energy) so many lunatic asshole christians are now embracing. They are just so damn desperate to come across and up to date and relevant.

As for not being human, Esme Weatherwax once stated that thinking of people as things was start of all evil, and I agree:

“…And that’s what your holy men discuss, is it?” [asked Granny Weatherwax.]
“Not usually. There is a very interesting debate raging at the moment on the nature of sin. for example.” [answered Mightily Oats.]
“And what do they think? Against it, are they?”
“It’s not as simple as that. It’s not a black and white issue. There are so many shades of gray.”
“Nope.”
“Pardon?”
“There’s no grays, only white that’s got grubby. I’m surprised you don’t know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people like things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.”
“It’s a lot more complicated than that–“
“No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.”
“Oh, I’m sure there are worse crimes–“
“But they starts with thinking about people as things…”
–from Carpe Jugulum, by Terry Pratchett.

Ah well, back to the idiots:

“It’s almost like the protests your are seeing now,” Taylor then added. “Those are not protests, those demonstrations; they’re demon-strations. … They’re flailing around, these are demon-strations, these are demons that are manifesting because they know that their time is short.”

Oh ffs. I’m sure weak word play makes Mr. Taylor feel oh-so-clever, but it’s the cleverness of someone in 3rd grade, who simply wants to taunt without thought. Seems to me all the people who are busy organising protests are not the ones flailing about, Mr. Taylor. I put that sort of action more on your side of things.

RWW has the full story.

10 Plants: Bulldozed To Death.

In this June 17, 2015, file photo, marijuana plants grow at LifeLine Labs in Cottage Grove, Minn. | Photo: AP Photo / Jim Mone.

In this June 17, 2015, file photo, marijuana plants grow at LifeLine Labs in Cottage Grove, Minn. | Photo: AP Photo / Jim Mone.

That’s right: Confronted with a small-scale illicit marijuana grow on public land, the [Pennsylvania] State Police deployed a helicopter and the on-scene bulldozer and managed to kill their target. But that’s not how the cops tried to spin it.

Brought to you with utter disgust and contempt, contempt for fucking cops, who seem to be good for only one thing: murder. Contempt for the puritanical, colonial bullshit which is a complete blight on Amerikkan society.

You can read all the sordid details here.

A Case of Bad Timing.

This little gem arrived in the mail yesterday. Might be nice if they could put off the invite until I have officially and for sure survived cancer. I can only imagine what someone going through a relapse would feel, finding one of these in their mailbox. FFS, a little organization and thoughtfulness can go a long way. I can’t say I was any sort of impressed with it, and it shocked Rick, as his first thought was the same as mine: not yet a survivor, and we don’t need to be reminded of that one. Also in yesterday’s mail was a letter from Blue Cross, informing me that the Xeloda (Capecitabine) for my next phase of treatment had been approved, however, approval was not a guarantee of payment. That’s where they left it. I have a sinking feeling about this, that I’ll start, and then they’ll weasel out of payment. I don’t yet know what my dose will be, and while Capecitabine is on the relatively cheap end when you’re talking cytotoxins, it could still add up to thousands over 28 days. Cancerland, always full of surprises. <Insert near-fatal eyeroll here.>

© C. Ford.

Beware The Dolls!

Three Dolls, Vintage Warehouse.

Three Dolls, Vintage Warehouse.

Democratic Florida state Rep. Kim Daniels is also an exorcist preacher whose bill requiring all public schools to display “In God We Trust” goes into effect this summer. Ms. Daniels also has a thing about dolls. And witches. Now granted, dolls are creepy (at least to me), but they aren’t demonic or otherwise possessed. If you’re afraid of dolls, well, they’re kinda like vampires – you have to invite them in, after you’ve purchased them of course (or worse, made them!)

In her book, Breaking the Power of Familiar Spirits: How to Deal With Demonic Conspiracies (June 5, 2018), Daniels writes on how evil spirits operate under covers that make up our everyday lives. From fashion to furniture, from trends to traditions, and from rituals to dolls, Daniels shows how the familiar areas of our lives can harbor demonic influences. One of these areas is fetishes.

“Most idolatry is rooted in fetishism,” Daniels writes. “Simply put, a fetish is an object with a spirit attached to it. If we’re not vigilant, we can open doors to familiar spirits in our lives and homes simply by the items we possess and the practices we keep.”

In writing on fetishism and idolatry, Daniels goes back in history to when dolls had spiritual value attached to them. In religions and occult practices, dolls were used as supernatural intermediaries to confer favor, represent gods and enact witchcraft.

Oy. If we’re going to talk fetishes, how about we have a nice chat about the overwhelming amount of christian ones? Generally speaking, dolls have a long history of being toys, a comfort item for young children. If you go back far enough, dolls were happy comfort items for all genders, they weren’t just for girl children. As for ‘representing gods’, let’s go have a cleansing of every single fucking christian based church. No more altars. No more ugly crucifixes with Jesus dolls on. No more rosaries. No more statues. No more stained glass windows. And so on. I mean, you wouldn’t want to take a chance, would you?

“If you create an atmosphere of holiness and seek God,” Daniels says, “everything that is not like God will come out of hiding and be exposed.”

Great idea! From now on, all christians need to strip their homes of all the comfy material stuff, because it could be harbouring a spirit! Live like monks or nuns. And no fetishes, either!

Via Joe My God and Charisma News.

Oooer, A Psy-Op Blender! Wait…

Wow, Coach Dave is on one hell of a trip. His latest lunatic screeth is quite long, and so full of batshit, it’s hard to know where to begin. What’s all the fuss? The latest royal wedding – it’s a major psy-op to enforce the worst of the worst: the blending of white people with :gasp: people of colour!

Daubenmire, who has declared that he is “proud to be white” because “white, heterosexual, Christian” men represent America’s only hope for survival, has fretted about the threat of white genocide, and has fumed that interracial marriage weakened this nation “because multiculturalism is spiritual AIDS [that] has brought an infection into what was once a great Christian American culture,” said that the marriage of Prince Harry to a woman of “mixed blood” is an attempt to corrupt the pure bloodline of House of Windsor.

Yes, Coach Dave is a fully paid up member of the White Patriarchal Assholes™. He’s also astonishingly dense, as we shall see.

“Let me just lay it out there, because most people won’t say it because they don’t want to sound racist,” Daubenmire said while wearing a literal tinfoil hat. “Prince Harry’s wife is half-black. Now, wait a minute. That ain’t that royal bloodline lineage there, is it fellas? Isn’t there a little bit of mixed blood coming in there?”

Pretty much everyone on the planet has a someone in the woodpile who comes as a bit of a surprise. Now royalty everywhere does have a perturbing history of inbreeding in an attempt to keep things within the right class, but I’d happily bet there are some right interestin’ people in those bloodlines. Royalty has also spent a lot of time breeding like out of control bunnies, and there was seldom much concern about all those babes born on the wrong side of the blanket, and there were a fucktonne of them, too. History, Coach Dave. Try learning some.

“Did you see who performed the service?” he said. “Was it the Bishop of Canterbury or some official WASPy guy? Was it? Did I miss something? Or did we see the ultimate—umm, how do I say this?—a blending of the races; one new world order, one-world government, the blending of the [races] in the House of Windsor coming together for the first time.”

Bishop Curry is the ultimate blending of the races? How on earth do you figure that one, Dave? It’s not as if Bishop Curry was getting married to Harry. You might be unaware, Dave, but there have been people of colour in England for a very long time. A really long time. There have even been people of colour at the royal court, going waaaaaaaaaay back. I did hear that Bishop Curry preached about love, and I rather expect that’s what got under your skin. As for the whole new world order blahblahblah blending of races in the House of Windsor, uhhhh, it was one wedding. I don’t think it even qualified as a herald to all that nonsense.

Daubenmire insisted that since Prince Harry is sixth from the throne and very unlikely to ever become King of England, he was allowed to marry Meghan Markle in order to send a message endorsing mixed race relationships.

Oh, all that idiocy has been downgraded to an endorsement now. Gotcha. Who the hell knows who is going to end up on the throne? I can’t be arsed to care. As it stands, Elizabeth might live to be two hundred years old, given her death grip on that throne. People aren’t influenced by this kind of thing as much as you seem to think, Dave. For most people, it’s a matter of falling in love, and skin colour doesn’t enter into it.

“I’m going to tell you something, if there was any chance that Harry was ever going to be King of England, do you think they really would have let him just choose any woman he wanted?” Daubenmire said. “Of course not. So what’s the message that is being sent to us? … Is it a psy op that now, all of a sudden, sixth to the throne, he ain’t never going to be king, now it’s okay for the crown to be diverse?”

Yes, I expect Harry would have been allowed to marry who he wanted to marry. Even royalty has to make concessions to the current reality. If there was an obstacle, Harry could always choose to abdicate, it’s been done before. No, it is not a “psy-op”. Harry is not “all of a sudden” sixth in line. As for the crown being diverse, yeah, it’s just fine. There’s no reason it shouldn’t be.

RWW has the full story and video.

Wearing a MAGA hat is like being openly gay in 1950! Really!!1!

Gavin McInnes, leader of the Proud Boys, has decided that wearing a MAGA hat in New York City is the worst of the worst, persecution wise.

“Here in New York City, wearing a MAGA hat is like being openly gay in 1950, and I’m not exaggerating,” McInnes said on Tuesday’s episode of his CRTV program. “You will get your ass beat, you will not last at a bar in Harlem—we try it all the time and get booted out. There’s many bars that say, ‘You cannot openly be here.’ If you go into a bar wearing a MAGA hat, people start getting uncomfortable. The bartender will ask you to leave politely and people will yell at you on the street and spit on you.”

Perhaps you shouldn’t be trying to push your way into Harlem bars, idiot. There’s one big difference between quietly minding your own business and getting hassled and going looking to get hassled. And of course you’re exaggerating – just what would you know about anyone being openly gay in the 1950s? Or anyone closeted and living in constant fear of being outed? Shoving your way  into Harlem bars while sporting arrogant whiteness with a stupid cap on is in no way equivalent.

It must have occurred to the rather dim Mr. McInnes that associating himself and his cadre of idiots with gay men might be a bit off agenda, so he closed with this incredibly offensive tidbit:

“You’re treating us like pedophiles,” he added.

Because of course, you can’t mention gay men without making an association with pedophiles. For that alone, I’d certainly consider spitting on you, Mr. McInnes.

RWW has the story and video.