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END OF AN ERA...
In William's World
END OF AN ERA...
In William's World
Random Observations
In World Outside The Window
Random Observations
In World Outside The Window
Mark M (Giese)
May 01, 2022
Below from an e-mail to subscribers to Tom Tomorrow of Apr 30 2022. His site: https://thismodernworld.com/ Elon Musk is buying Twitter and is making vague-sounding noises about restoring freedom of speech. It’s not difficult to imagine what his vision of freedom of speech is going to look like — just ask anyone brigaded by Gamergate trolls circa 2015. He’s also gleefully trolling and shitposting memes, such as a cartoon suggesting that the left has moved further left over the past few years, but Republicans have remained rock steady. Yes, the party of Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert and Matt Gaetz is exactly the same as it was when Mitt Romney was their standard-bearer. I see no flaws in this logic. On top of that, he’s been interacting approvingly with alt-right influencers like Ben Shapiro and one of the promoters of Pizzagate, Mike Cernovich. And he’s been directing targeted harassment at current Twitter employees. This is all going to work out great! Meanwhile, the free speech warriors cheering his return seem entirely unconcerned by the Republican party’s actual attacks on free expression, some (but not all) of which are mentioned in this cartoon. Oliver Wendell Holmes’ famous line that “the most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theater” will inevitably be quoted, but be careful about that one. It was actually used in a terrible decision, U.S. v. Schenck, a case deciding whether a prominent socialist could be convicted under the Espionage Act for distributing an anti-war pamphlet. The defendant was sent to prison; the decision was effectively overturned decades later in Brandenberg v. Ohio. The thorny problem here is what I consider the need to protect the freedom of expression of those who would otherwise be brigaded online and often harassed in real life (as seen most recently with the weaponized, targeted harassment of the @LibsofTikTok account. Perhaps the old colloquialism that your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins is the guiding principle here. Twitter has been struggling with these problems for years — often ineffectively, but the site is in much better shape now than it was in the days of Milo Yianopoulos, Pizzagate, Gamergate, and, I would strongly argue, the exhausting reign of @realDonaldTrump. Ironically, to even suggest brigading is bad will most likely get you brigaded. And of course any mention of Musk brings his legions of lunatic fanboys out in force. All of which is going to make for an even less pleasant experience on Twitter, a site which is barely functional as it is. It’s really too bad — the site is useful to me as a news and opinion aggregator, and is also a place to stay in touch with friends, and to make new ones. When I was newly divorced and reinventing my life with single-minded determination, I made numerous IRL friends either as a result of meeting up with Twitter acquaintances or by meeting *their* friends. I’ve dated a couple people as a result of Twitter. For all its flaws, it’s had a very positive impact on my life. But I fear the scales may soon be tilting in a direction that makes it untenable. There is probably an argument to be made that some of the founding fathers would, in fact, be trolling and shitposting if they were alive today, but I'll leave that one to the historians, and beg your indulgence as a simple, hardworking cartoonist who needed an amusing line on which to close out the cartoon. Until next week! Dan
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"Astonish me." --Diaghilev to Cocteau
In World Outside The Window
Mark M (Giese)
Mar 12, 2020
Some Seth/Jane Roberts remarks on viruses and epidemics: "So-called harmful viruses are ever-present within the body. You are very rarely vulnerable to any but a small percentage, though you carry within you traces of the most deadly of them all of the time. Viruses themselves undergo transformations completely unsuspected by medical men. If one virus disappears and another is found, it is never suspected that the first may have changed into the second; and yet through certain alterations of quite natural character such is the case. “So viruses can be beneficial or deadly according to the condition, state, and needs of the body at any given time." —The Nature of Personal Reality, Chapter 7: Session 631, December 18, 1972 "The viruses in the body have a social, cooperative existence. Their effects become deadly only under certain conditions. The viruses must be triggered into destructive activity, and this happens only at a certain point, when the individual involved is [unconsciously] actively seeking either death or a crisis situation biologically." —The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, Chapter 6: Session 840, March 12, 1979 "To a certain extent (underlined), epidemics are the result of [an unconscious] mass suicide phenomenon on the parts of those involved. Biological, sociological, or even economic factors may be involved, in that for a variety of reasons, and at different levels, whole groups of individuals [unconsciously] want to die at any given time — but in such a way that their individual deaths amount to a mass statement." —NoME Chapter 1: Session 802, April 25, 1977 He asserted in "Mass Events" that epidemics represent mass despair which is the true cause of the epidemic. He asserted the natural state of the body is one of health. "Remember what I said earlier about the connections between disease and nondisease states. Communication flashes between viruses and microbes, and they can change in the wink of an eye. Once again, then, ideas of the most optimistic nature are the biologically pertinent ones." —Seth, The Way Toward Health, Chapter 14: June 27, 1984
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"Astonish me." --Diaghilev to Cocteau
In World Outside The Window
Mark M (Giese)
May 31, 2019
JANUARY 10, 1984 4:30 PM TUESDAY ...(This material came through after Jane and I had watched a program yesterday and today called In Search Of -- old reruns featuring Leonard Nimoy. I don't recall the shows. In my original notes I had noted that today's "Session material was quite unexpected." (Jane obviously gave this material from her hospital bed in Poom 330.) Now: I bid you another fond good afternoon. ("Good afternoon, Seth.'') A few comments. There are many, many species that man has not discovered, in all the categories of life -- insects onward. There are multitudinous species of viruses and so forth that man has not encountered and recognized, and there are connections between viruses and other species of living matter that remain unknown. There are indeed two different kinds of upward-walking mammals, much like your own species, but much larger, and with infi- nitely keener senses. They are indeed amazingly swift creatures, and through scent alone they are aware of the presence of man when any member of your species is at all in the immediate area -- standing, say, at least several miles away. Vegetable matter is a main diet, though often implemented by insects, which are considered a delicacy. They have, for that matter, devised many ingenious insect traps, so that hundreds or more can be caught, for many are needed since insects are so small. These traps are often constructed on trees, in the bark, in such a fashion that the tree gum itself is used to trap the insects. The traps appear to be part of the tree itself, so as to protect them. These creatures do indeed remember, but their remembering operates extremely rapidly - a kind of almost instantaneous deduc- don that comes as sense data is interpreted. That is, received and interpreted almost at once, or simultaneously. (Pause at 4:40.) Offspring do not occur until the individuals are well past the age that you would consider normal for breeding. Oth- erwise the procedure is the same. With some territorial variation, such creatures reside in many of the world areas on your planet, though their overall population is very small - altogether, perhaps, several thousand. They rarely congregate in large groups, but do have a family and tribal-like organization, with at the very most twelve adults in any given area. As offspring are added, the groups break up again, for they know well that in larger numbers they would be much more easy to discover They all use tools of one kind or another, and live indeed in close concord with the animals. There is no competition between them and animals, for example, and they are not basically aggressive, though they could be extremely dangerous if they were cornered, or if their young were attacked. They grow quite sluggish in wintertime, in very cold climates, and their temperature drops, as is characteristic of hibernating am- mals, except that their temperature is more sensitive to daily varia- tions, so that on some winter days they can forage for food very well, while on the other hand they may hibernate for even weeks on end. (4:46.) They have a keen understanding of nature, and of natural phenomena. Language is not developed to any great degree, for their sensual ordinary equipment is so pure and swift that it almost becomes a language of its own... --Seth, _The Way Toward Health_
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Cocteau "blemish"?
In World Outside The Window
"Astonish me." --Diaghilev to Cocteau
In World Outside The Window
Mark M (Giese)
May 21, 2019
Your beliefs can be like fences that surround you.... [The following is a] list [of] some limiting false beliefs. If you find yourself agreeing with any of them, then recognize this as an area in which you must personally work. 1. Life is a valley of sorrows. 2. The body is inferior. As a vehicle of the soul it is automatically degraded, tinged. … 3. I am helpless before circumstances that I cannot control. 4. … I am at the mercy of my past. 5. I am helpless because I am at the mercy of events from past lives … 6. People are basically bad, and out to get me. 7. I have the truth and no one else has…. 8. I will grow frailer, sicker, and lose my powers as I grow old. 9. ...When my body dies my consciousness dies with it. …That was a rather general list of false beliefs. Now here is a more specific list of more intimate beliefs, any of which you may have personally about yourself. 1. I am sickly, and always have been. 2. There is something wrong with money. People who have it are greedy… 3. I am not creative. I have no imagination. 4. I can never do what I want to do. 5. People dislike me. 6. I am fat. 7: I always have bad luck. These are all beliefs held by many people. Those who have them will meet them in experience. Physical data will always seem to reinforce the beliefs, therefore, but the beliefs formed the reality. There is one belief, however, that destroys artificial barriers to perception, an expanding belief that automatically pierces false and inhibiting ideas. …The Self Is Not Limited…. There Are No Boundaries or Separations of the Self…. You Make Your Own Reality…. --Seth, The Nature of the Personal Reality, Sess 614
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Mark M (Giese)

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