TheEncogitationer

[TheEncogitationer]

Jake:

They had a plan and said yes it can. Who put the estoppel on the topple? Would it have worked?

No one had to convince Trump to restrain Israel from taking out the Mullahs. Trump thinks anything can be a “deal” and anyone can be open to negotiation. Trump spared the Mullah regime in 2025, thinking he could get something from them later, like a piece of the Strait action.

[TheEncogitationer]

Reg:

Yep, evidently, “Shark Week” isn’t enough to get people scared to death. Now, fearmongers have to use umbrellas.

I still can’t help but think “Central European News” is a Putin Bot-Farm putting out this story to discobobulate Western minds. Putin’s coworkers in the Soviet KGB did use an actual poison-tipped umbrella to assassinate a dissenter overseas.

[TheEncogitationer]

Jake:

Yeah Enco,

My kneejerk reaction to the threat of Christian Nationalism is grounded in the notion that our history as a nation has enough in the virtues of democracy and limitation of powers that resistance to Christianity as a governing power, the power, would not get too far. But hell who the fuck knows. I am the one who keeps saying people are imprinted by those rivers and how there is nobody home.

On the positive side, religion is still on the downward slide and various schools of unbelief are on the increase in the U.S.A., MAGA has detractors among both Liberals and Conservatives. Trump has only 30% support according to polls linked on The Drudge Report. And Forums like this are still here.

On the negative side, MAGA has control of the Executive and Judicial Branches and the Legislative Branch is either pro-MAGA or Pro-Woke or ineffectual. In The Televised Fourth Estate, Fox, NewsMax, and OAN, are solidly pro-MAGA, and CBS and CNN slant MAGA. ABC and MSNOW have dissenting voices but all networks can be and have been cowed by threats to pull licenses.

Off the top of my head, MAGA has lots of TechBro support. Musk’s X and Grok are MAGA-Friendly, Thiel’s and Altman’s Palantir contract with the U.S. Government providing military and surveillance service, Bezos of Amazon is MAGA-sympathetic as is his Washington Post, and Zuckerberg’s Meta folded to MAGA early on.

We can agree that where the nation will go next is anybody’s guess.

[TheEncogitationer]

Fellow Unbelievers:

A cautionary tale on critically thinking about everything you read from any source, hard copy or electronic:

Do beach umbrellas kill millions? How Google perpetuates a legend
Jun 22, 2026 at 04:46 PM EDT
Mark Keierleber

Do beach umbrellas kill millions? How Google perpetuates a legend

My questions were: How would anyone verify a statistic like this? Hospital records? Local papers seeking “Man Bites Dog” headlines? (a dying institution, and the ones that are still living don’t do gumshoe investigations,) Court records of lawsuits against parasol manufacturers?

And how many of these deaths are of people who think Gravity is “just a theory?”. Or who think they are Timothy Leary or Mary Poppins? Is Nina Jankowitz among the ill-fated?

Ad s “Central European News” a Putin-run Bot Farm?

[TheEncogitationer]

Fellow Unbeliever:

How to refute an antivaxxer.

This is science writing done right! It points out in precise and plain language, the benefits of vaccine and how many lives it has saved and that the risks of vaccine are no greater than the risks of living.

The only thing that disappointed me was that someone sat on this for a year before I and other readers could read it:

As I write this in the summer of 2025, vaccination is under existential threat in the United States—and increasingly so throughout the world.

Now that it’s out, though, this article needs to be in the curricula of anyone educating on science. Too often, science education is put in the hands of Hank Kimball:

Pseudoscience runs rings around this approach, but simple, precise writing on science stops the vicious cycle.

[TheEncogitationer]

Jake:

If you use your imagination and project the worst how will Christian Nationalism play out in USA or anywhere in the west? Any chance it will approach the worst of Islamic Nationalism? Lets take the Islamic Republic of Iran as a model. Anyone think USA or any western nation might degenerate to the point where its comparable in its degradation of human rights and assorted odious attributes?

Sci-Fi writer Robert A. Heinlein wrote of a not-too-distant Christian Theocracy in the U.S.A. in his book Revolt In 2100. It was a collection of 3 short stories about a Televangelist Prophet Nehemiah Scudder who becomes President in 2012, then Dictator in 2016, using mass communication, techniques of advertising and propaganda, and an army of devoted enforcers.

He was the beginning a dynasty of theocratic despots who ruled for nearly a century. Then citizens, the military, and the Prophet’s “Virgins” rise up in a underground revolution and establish a freer society.

In the afterward, Heinlein definitely saw this as possible here, and hoped it would never happen. He noted that religious hysteria has broken out many times in our history. He also noted how far the Klan got in the ‘Twenties without even a dynamic leader and how far Marxism had progressed in snuffing out freedom of thought on half the planet without even having the advantage of being a religion.

To quote Heinlein: “The capacity of the human mind for swallowing nonsense and spewing it forth in violent and repressive action has never yet been plumbed.”

[TheEncogitationer]

Reg:

Fantastic essay! Bill Maher summed it up by pointing out that if The Bible was really anti-slavery, slavery would have been mentioned in The Top Ten.

[TheEncogitationer]

Reg:

The pressure on the Church of England to ditch its slavery reparations plan.

If someone in the Church of England today held someone as a slave or profits from the slavery that still take place in Saharan Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and Red China, this would be a legitimate concern.

Otherwise, don’t be surprised if this is where Church “reparations” would actually flow, from one form of oppression to another:

‘We cannot walk with you unless you repent,’ African archbishops tell Church of England
https://religionnews.com/2023/02/16/we-cannot-walk-with-you-unless-you-repent-african-archbishops-tell-church-of-england/

In any case, don’t expect anyone in the Church of England to say: “Last one out, please lock up and turn out the light.”

[TheEncogitationer]

Jake:

The two most amazing non-match, non-lighter methods are the modern Magnesium Fire Starter Block and the ancient Asian Fire Piston.

Fire Piston
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_piston

Either one still functions if wet and the Magnesium Block produces a 5000°F spark, though it still needs dry tinder. But the Fire Piston actually both dries out the tinder and sparks the flame with high-pressurized air concentrated in a single tiny spot. It is most ideal in wet, humid jungles. The Fire Piston was the inspiration for Rudolph Diesel’s eponymous engine.

Magnifying glasses are good when it’s sunny.

[TheEncogitationer]

Jake:

Our predecessors were smarter than most of us today about what can create fire.

Without human assistance, fire can come from lightning strikes, volcanic lava, and the right rocks and crystals striking just perfectly from an avalanche. Even a drop of water that refracts visible sunlight into a rainbow can also focus sunlight to a point on dry tinder and start a blaze.

Today, there’s people who don’t know a tossed cigarette can start a fire in a petrol-based plastic disposal. Or a vape starter or a shorted Lithium battery can set a fire in a homeless encampment.

And there are U.S. Senators who think Jewish Space Lasers can set wildfires in L.A.

Yep, there is a trade-off in intellect over the ages.

[TheEncogitationer]

Fellow Unbelievers:

Someone sadly never told Trump that this not a desireable aspiration to have:

[TheEncogitationer]

Fellow Unbelievers:

Isreal shouldn’t feel singled-out though. Americans, too are dressed down and Patronized by Junkyard Dog Vance who tells us to “Have a little faith” in Donald “Healing Hands” Jebus!

[TheEncogitationer]

Fellow Unbelievers:

You know, Israel might be better off without military aid from the U.S. and many wise Israelis have said so as well.

Not only would they have the flexibility to get their arms from many sources instead of just U.S. suppliers (as is required by conditions of U.S. aid), but Israel wouldn’t have to put up with getting dressed down and patronized by a Trump-sycophantic Hillbilly:

[TheEncogitationer]

Reg and Jake:

I meant to add another Bierce-ism I paraphrase from a bumper sticker I saw years ago:

Little Big Horn–A litigious battle in which General George Armstrong Custer was Sioux-ed.

[TheEncogitationer]

Reg:

Trumps treaty with Iran was the greatest Treaty of Versailles. If it gets broken he should sign the next one in Fort Laramie. Does Little Big Horn have an airport?

First, the “Memorandum Of Understanding” (MOU) isn’t even on the same level as a Treaty, which Constitutionally requires Congressional approval. The MOU is basically Trump drafting a wish list for the IRGC and calling it a victory.

Second, if this MOU is like The Treaty of Versailles, then evidently, the Allies paid all to the Central Powers and the Kaiser and the Ottomans won.

The MOU is the plaintive neighing of a cattle off to a Halal slaughter, as Bierce would put it.

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