### :radio_button:So was the story legit or fake news?
I'm not entirely convinced of authenticity but I cannot say I have sufficient reason to be overly suspect of it. So I'm leaning towards it being genuine. But at this point you may, like me, realize whether its complete horseshit or not doesn't change anything. Truth matters, but at the same time its' also worth pointing out that the 'them' in this story are real enough. It's something not far removed from what has already been done and in similar fashion will again. I suppose herein lies a tragically delicate choice. Ultimately as sick and twisted as the story is, it is of very little consequence whether its a literal and exhaustive chronicling of the events described. 

Even if it is true, even that arguably is of little importance. In the same way that a republican lowering taxes and a democrat raising them is insignificant, though there are consequences of the action that indeed matter, the change may as well have taken place in November as thats effectively when the direction one way or the other was more or less a certainty and eventuality. You don't have to watch the dominoes actually fall to the very place they were set up to fall. You already know where they are going to fall, its the spot right next to where they were placed just as the one behind it and the one before that. Everything happens because of something else and if you pay enough attention very little should come as a surprise. Don't be hypnotized by watching the tedious, nor awestruck by the inevitable and obvious. 

That said I admit there is occasionally an irrestiably perhaps tabloid effect every now and again, where you are compelled to watch the frenetic race to the bottom. And for those times as long as they are not a habit, do have value as a reminder of the end consequences. Think of an architect of war never once looking at the bodies, becoming increasingly distant from the horrible realities of their actions, think of McNamara by day in an abstraction of reality consisting of a chalkboard and stack of legal briefs and not a drop of blood in site. Balance like in most things should be sought.

### :radio_button:This upsets me deeply we have to do something!
If you feel compelled to 'do something', perhaps to utilize your talents in a way that is in keeping with past endeavors, leveraging unique knowledge and experience in a way that challenges and cultivate your skills and do so ultimately out of a solemn sense of obligation to turning the tide to any discernable degree, I can say I share the inclination and would myself welcome opportunity to actively offset the damage done, halting in its tracks the relentless push towards an inevitable outcome I believe we all should rightfully dread. For myself I can say only that there are those of us with inclination, motivation, perhaps even direction in abundance, but other obstacles of a less typical variety are in their path. We have risks and rewards to weigh, all of us. Some of us additional hurdles. Hopefully some of us will finda opporunity around those hurdles and those with less direction but no obstacles will find and create ways to do exactly that with varying results. And enough good people will show up for the fight when it most matters.

Be creative, get to be comfortable with getting out of your comfort zone and exploring what you never knew you could do. Exceptional acts and people, are the exception, the most capable are precious in number. There are enough out there to win any just battle, if only they knew who they were and how much they are needed. You may be such a person. If this agenda of which I needn't be any more specific is something to which you think you can put up a respectable fight, I can think only of only the simple gift of this gentle nudge that is to say, if you think you can help, the world needs you to step up and clam your place whatever it is sooner than later.

### :radio_button:Christ way to be overly dramatic!
Maybe. Maybe not. Irrelevant insofar as I'm concerned. Comtemplate the times that all of us narrowly escaped  a horrible fate and that life as we know it and freedom was spared not by our wits, or our military strength, or meticulous planning, but by the grace of a single mans gut feeling, sheer luck and chance not for our wits if not for some unknown even accidental savior. I don't believe in reliance on fortune nor that prudence is any sin. If it's not as dire as I'm making things out to be, then that changes nothing. Because theres nothing lost in overshooting the mark to be safe, no shame in being too well equipped, and no such thing as too many backup plans, and theres everything wrong with losing.

And you have to find balance generally but not always sometimes you look at the picture and say you know what, I like fashion and wild creativity and thematic stuff but in an absolute decision, Where I take all or none, I'm going to say I take none of this. You have to look at what the furthest extreme of a group is judge them each by their worst day and the worst ambassador representing and choose the lesser of the two evils. In looking at the patterns My own perspective I'm seeing what I've often thought I wanted to be 'a little bad' a trifle too satanic, a bit of debauchery and take tea at 3. But it works better on a Rolling Stones Album than it does in schools, and in as a collective ethos. It's a celebration of excess, and descent of morality which when you ponder it is always a degredation of respect to ones self, others, or both. And rather than adjust behavior to restore and increase the respect with which one is viewed, instead the answer is so often to merely change the rules to where whats bad is now not bad. By this logic we can solve the murder epidemic in the inner city with ease, we just call it something hip instead of murder, wrap it under a campaign of conflict 2.0, guilt the the people who inevitably are going to say theres anything wrong with this, and get it into the schools as early as possible Like Kamala HArris says children need to have a larger voice in democracy and we need to increase their political activity. Think of the children! You get it? It's just like we're going to do with marriage (despite a failure to launch) with some concerted effort and resources permitting, we're going to stop calling it "cheating" and now call it "marriage 2.0" See? Everyone cheats but at the same time really, nobody is cheating because we just, well cheated! We change the rules. We make bad good then everyone is good no matter what and isnt that good? Are we honestly going to advocate the merits of shame, guilt, like imparting all these "fascist" rules are something we willingly opt to incorporate into our progressive forward moving society?

Well, yes for fuck's sake. We should. Because equality is cruel and resists realities that should be embraced. Rewarding effort  and successes celebrating excellence and achievement is how we encourage it, so by default discourage the alternative and it can only happen by measuring the difference between us. Would you watch a race where every runner always hit the finish line at the exact same time? Or amybe they didn't but we handicapped the contestents of any game so that the score is always the same and always a tie? If we took the best team on their best day in a hundreds years, and the worst team on the worst day of anyones career and at the end they both get a score of 5, no winner or loser, who is that more cruel to? Celebrate excellence and with consideration and healthy restraint call failure failure. the only equal should come from equal opportunity to be not equal. Even when people we are their worst o part of what makes , Shortcutting effort 'round to reward, we ultimately devalue the reward and don't win anything, in fact we lose in so many ways. The worst of which is running the risk not realizing we are doing this. We may think we won and decide that the prize for this pseudo effort is rather overrated because we don't realize what it would otherwise have been. This is how the faithless cynics take joy from our lives systematically.

In a lame attempt to assuage their guilt they impart an irrational oppressive policy its , its justified as policy because they project it onto everyone assuming we all to one degree or another are similarly cursed and thus deserving of punishment of all forms. That is the nature of the cynical, and the faithless. And in a way it has nothing at all to do with god. This is something that after many years of atheism I am struggling to reconcile, but I can see for some reason why being able to have faith blind or otherwise is not necessarily weakness, or lack of intelligence, or a dangerous delusion. It can and many times is all of those things but it is also a tremendous gift and enviable quality, if that sounds absurd to the more logical among us, the engineers, think of it as the way we revere and envy childhood innocense because its quite similar to that universal (somewhat), understanding. In fact for all I know it might be the same thing. When I look at this guy, I don't know if they are separate things, a common pairing, or what but I know I see all that and more looking at this guy for instance. 

We could even forget why certain institutions were ever of value, or ever existed and in this way lose that forever. Imagine lying, cheating, and hurting people as being so acceptable we don't remember a time long ago when we had sincerity or mutual affection, selfless sacrifice for another as ways to show our devotino and respect, our love of another. Imagine not being able to get it back because we didnt remember what it was in the first place, just stumbling around with a certian feeling gnawing at you that something feels off but having no idea what it is and that being the last dying gasp of the goodness of humanity. We aren't born angels and we don't die angels and whether or not there's a god I think theres little support that there are any angels at all in the spaces inbetween. So I don't necessarily see except for maybe some arbitrary triggering of an optional component to evolution where life may decide to develop in such a way that we alter course and at a genetic level exhibit some notinos of goodness as deemed to be imperative for our survival but that's a stretch. And so for the atheists among us real onens not the hipsters, the ones who toook on believing in the harshest of realities because we reject delusions and denial we have to confront the fact the goodness may one day be a buried and forgotten relic of a bygone age. A concept we cannot remember or understand. And that's I guess some rambling early morning thoughts on why we shouldn't print instructionals on swapping gender and sharing with prepubescent children the preferred best techniques for anal sex and praising satan.  

to heighten the To which the answer is too often rather than   tha to each we are  Because the same components that make it so, exist. And so this is their nature they will do wh  its about a very real *them*the kind of thing 'they' would do, because it's the kind of thing they 'have done' They are out there, they are in the referenced community, and exert tremendous influence as they inflict on the masses their depravity, and all manner of misplaced devotion. Golden Calf, old story right? You may feel anxious to 'do something' about it. But what? Personally I can't help with that.

I will say, be honest and virtuous in your endeavors. One ill act or remark and a little bad timing and you can be a tremendous liability to your cause. Plenty of that is going around. So check yourself, police your own. 

by me :shipit:
@deadflowers @rkooyenga @rayantony

#### Incidental

## :radio_button:The source is biased
Russia does have an agenda as well obviously. From our former SecDef's leaked remarks on 'handling' Putin to kicking out the Rothschilds, to Ukraine and the EU, to their self dubbed claim as protectors of orthodox christianity, yes they have generally speaking, a perspective to look out for. None of it bothers me really (except abkhazia), but I don't lose sight of it, self delusion and clinging to biases, and attending University, can all quickly blind you to truth. 

## :radio_button:The News' importance, and lack thereof
However disagreeable it makes a certain sense and when you understand it, you don't need the articles anymore, and see them as just the details of the "pawn chronicles" file it as entertainment or sport, just as trivial. Like falling dominoes the interesting part is setting the stage its only logical and thus a bit tedious and indulgent to watch logical or inevitables play it out. The more notable things are not any one article but how they correlate and what that says, or when they differ and understanding that. The larger patterns, an abstraction of the news, is far more interesting and important.

But occasionally something is so bad or so big you just have to know right? So read them and from all sources to keep yourself honest and aware. 


## :radio_button:Foresight through hindsight
Grown up rule number 1, you lose by default, and death is mostly inevitable. Do something, something enough to win or you still lose. Winning requires trying hard. Think hard, reflect constantly, theorize, predict, check your scores, grade yourself and adjust accordingly. Think of world events and cultural trends like fantasy football for grown ups. Get good at it. Because some battles you may win, many you'll definitely lose, don't be surprised, thats where the war is lost. Always see it coming. Whatever you do about it is another matter entirely. Don't forget that. 

## :radio_button:agenda inc.
None of it is a surprise, and the 'agenda' is oozing from every syncronized outlet, as if there was a meeting and all in attendance went off to there respective posts in the case of media or teachers unions, Viacom, or HBO corporate, and notes in hand shovel a steaming load in time for the evening edition, all of them. Same hot load, same bs, different mediums. Sure wish I could do something significant to contribute to turning the tide.

## :radio_button:Who? Why?
Great power corrupts + idle hands... :shrug: you know how it goes, you may know who some of them are. And you can feel it because it's in the air. Best I can tell, we are a disease in large numbers beyond a certain point. I think we are to be a collection of fragmented republics. Life becomes miserable everywhere at a certain density. Chicago is no different from Mexico City, the common denominator is population. There may be and likely are others, but that one I know for certain. 

This became clear to me after I lost unfairly a succession of million dollar companies I had built not because of the economy but well long story. Then I lost that last seeminlgy small thing that made me snap. i took the money I had and jumped on a plan somewhat randomly, and after sleeping christmas morning on the floor of the guadalajara airport with M16 carrying guards stepping around me I eventually made it to nearly the bottom of Mexico, and on a beach in Oaxaca I slept in the sand, deflected the most convincing tranny ever's advances, drank a ton of mezcal and meditated with a homeless guy to whom I gave the Ipod I had never used. I forgot to tell him it was hacked to play FLACs and also I didn't have a charger for him :sad: Anyway I met a girl in the capital who lived in Mexico City, I flew (in the cockpit!) of a rickety 6 seater and well anyway concluded whatever god is you won't find out within 300 miles of a place like that. In contrast to coastal oaxaca where for instance and maybe not so surprisingly in the case of Puerto Escondido the locals have long said that God himself has a house there. Why? Not everything can be explained in words alone, I'm not vain enough to think I can change that, nor dumb enough to try.