Moving the Mountain

I keep having this idea for a movie- it's necessarily an international movie, since it would probably take place in Japan, and be mostly in Japanese, but it would be French in it's outlook. The French, as the saying goes, never resolve anything in their movies. And given what I want to present, resolution would just be pointless.

The basic idea is this- a Christian- one who certainly still believes, but is highly disaffected from his fellow Christians (gee, where would I get this idea?) goes to a small seaside resort in Japan. Being Japan, there's a mountain right near this resort. And during this Christian's stay, the god of the mountain comes down and asks to be baptized by the Christian.

I don't know enough about Shintoism to know how well it would work for Japanese audiences. Obviously, a lot of Christian audiences would have problems with it too.

But I do know enough about modernity to know that the god of any particular mountain might notice, after a while, that people are leaving his mountain. They go to the city, and get eaten up by modernity, and don't have children. It's just possible the mountain might feel bad about that, and look into what's been going on in the wider world.

The Christian would, of course, have even more experience with modernity- suffering from it, and likely not having any children either. Not to mention fed up to the gills with his fellow Christians imagining a false and hollow world of evangelism. I think of it like an algae bloom- they imagine this sudden change, many converts, but no infrastructure, no real place for anyone to live or practice.

So, obviously, the movie would be mostly a telling of something really big happening, and us mere humans doing little more than reacting. Because both the mountain, and God are bigger than us. But the trick of modernity is to consume us, while making us imagine we can move mountains and live like gods.

Nassim Taleb's Sixth Sense: He Sees White People

I must admit a tiny bit of trauma seeing a guy I was basically a fan of taking out a giant can of fail and drowning himself in it.

So, naturally, I wondered why. Why would an intelligent man ignore several basics facts and try to convince us IQ is no good?

I noticed immediately that he was writing as if the halls of academia were filled with high IQ people. He doesn't like these people.
On the surface, you'd think that would be an area of agreement. I don't like many of these people either. They do poor research. Most aren't even as smart as me, much less Taleb, and even should you find one with high IQ there- if he has a high IQ and a successful academic career, he'd have to be a sociopath.

Non-sociopath high IQ people can't assent to the narrative. They can't try to make you fear CO2, or pretend plant based protein is superior to animal protein. They couldn't abide the communists in the English department, and might feel the need to drown the entire economics department in the nearest body of water.

High IQ people can't put up with such nonsense. Often to the point of their own detriment. Indeed, this is why another one of Taleb's nonsensical statements is so dangerous- the same tendencies that would provide us with people capable of generating hypotheses and testing them also provides us with people capable of dying early due to a variety of unfortunate circumstances. His insistence that survival is somehow relevant to this debate is idiotic.

So why would he make such mistakes? Racism. Yep. Taleb looks at the paper-pushers, the academicians, etc...- and he sees white people.

He also sees a lot of us who argue that IQ is real are white.

What his racist mind won't let him see is that we are different.

Who are the white people in academia?

People who assent to the narrative.

Children of people who are rich or connected.

A small collection of oddballs who, politically speaking, are perceived as eunuchs by the mainstream left.

It's a rigged game and the high-IQ people aren't allowed in it. Ask the Chinese. Of course, I am not advocating for IQ to the exclusion of all else. We need to take care of our own people, for example. Which is another thing American academia needs to be reigned in to do, because they have some extremely perverse incentives. They make a lot of money letting people who should never be their take out loans to go. And they make a lot of money catering to foreign students.

But since Taleb can't distinguish between white people and... other white people, he's just given aid and comfort to the very people he doesn't like.

'Educating' Meaning Out of the People

If I understand correctly, there's a succession taking place in Japan. Old emperor wants to retire, so they need a new emperor. And, in order to become emperor, the new guy has to perform an ancient Shinto rite which consists of bringing a tithe of the nation's rice to the gods at a particular shrine.

The nation's government has funded this rite, which has appeared to set off some people, and I think it is a display of the poverty of mind that having the bureaucrat at the apex of society engenders.

It is a fundamentally error to assume this is a private act of worship for the Emperor and his family. Even so far away as I am from Japan, I can see that this is a public act of worship for the people of Japan.

Now, I am a Christian, but that doesn't make it impossible for me to understand this. It was, in fact, the way public Christian worship worked, until the bureaucrats got into control and started insist that things happen the way they happen in Rome, or wherever. Or the sometimes fashionable Protestant idea that pagan liturgical elements are evidence of evil pagan influence- this is foolishness. The people would incorporate various elements in their public worship because that was how they understood things. There would be similarities to wherever your evangelists came from, but when developing a liturgy in a particular place, you incorporate things well understood by the locals. Otherwise they will be just as confused as if you insisted on speaking a foreign language.

But now, it is completely alien to the minds of bureaucrats, especially their special little pupils, the journalists. They are deaf. If they were not, they would prefer money being spent on some rite, instead of all the horrible things bureaucrats spend money on. If there is theft, or misuse of money, it is clearly on the side of the bureaucrats- both the Emperor and the people have more of a claim on the national budget than the bureaucrats do. Indeed, it is a pity the Emperor cannot hold various people accountable in the government, for we have seen the public seldom can.

If I Were An Heir To The Throne

The solidarity I feel with the people? Well, it is interesting, because it is my house, my family, my possessions that were first stolen. And now the people see they are being stolen from too. They are taxed, but not only that, foreigners are invited to come in, to take land, money, and even to vote. And they will be encouraged to even until the French people are no more.

So, perhaps at these times- perhaps the people can see this is a Republic of thieves. Thieves who stole from my house in the name of the people, and now they steal from the people in order to create a new people. When will it end?

Some of my ancestors are not without blame. The pretense of divine right led to monarchs using experts- bureaucrats- to manage government affairs rather than abiding by ancient agreements made among the nobility. What seemed like a seductive concentration of power was instead a hollowing out of the monarchy, turning supposedly great kings into mere signatories of a malignant state.

This very same class, the bureaucrats, saw in revolution a way to keep themselves in control. They destroyed the aristocracy, destroyed the monarchy, and used the new ideologies, as well as whatever they could steal, to mollify the people. Yet their greed has always been too great- how many republics have there been? Thieves cannot govern- inevitably they steal too much.

There was once a principle known in France- repentance.

If you are in a yellow vest, surely you have noticed the thieves have done you no good. If you become strong, the thieves will try to tempt you, telling you they will give you what they steal. Once they are fully in control again, they will return to stealing. They will steal from your children, and you grandchildren will have to rise up to threaten them again.

There is only one way to end this cycle. We must repent of this theft. We must reject the thief and his promise of ill-gotten gains. What is rightfully ours must be returned to us.

Fourth Generation Prophecy Coming True in France

4th Generation Warfare Handbook by William S. Lind and Gregory A. Thiele, isn't just a book about war.

It's intent was to give the American military enough of an understanding and framework to provide them with an ability to actually win on the ground.

And it's lessons also work for every polity.

It also explains why Paris is burning.

For my entire life, the French system has been far more leftist than most Americans could imagine. Everyone, communists, socialists, and every faux conservative afraid to be callled a fascist, conspired to keep anyone named Le Pen from running the country. It is not actually clear how right wing they actually are, and it is unlikely that they are the answer to this particular situation. But, one presumes a term or two of something less globalist than administrations past may have defused the populace.

But the boiled frogs aren't going to take it anymore. The temperature is now rising to fast. Their government is dedicated to importing people who are not French, taxing the French in order to achieve non-French goals, and following the mandates of the EU.

In doing so, the French government is invalidating itself. Everyday it harms its own legitimacy. Because everyday it reaffirms a commitment to all sorts of things, but just not the French people.

The French government is now in the same position as the U.S. Army was in some Iraqi town. It is a misbehaving occupier, and the number of people who see it as illegitimate is spreading like wildfire.

Why Mass Shootings Don't Help The Gun Control Argument

One of the anarchists- I believe it was Bakunin- advocated for terrorism because he felt if violence fell indiscriminately, it would eventually de-legitimize the state. If there is a high likelihood that you are going to get blown up by some random terrorist bomb whether you obey the state or not- you stop caring so much about the state.

I don't like Bakunin's strategy, but it does have some logic to it. Leftists have been contradicting this logic. They either apply terrorism or take advantage of something that might as well be terrorism, and then insist we ban guns. But the terrorism erodes at the state- the very state one would have to use to ban guns.

So the people end up thinking- man, I need a gun, because this stupid state can't protect me.

And I can tell you, gunshots in your neighborhood don't make you think gun ban. They make you think you need camera's outside, perhaps a couple of dogs, and most certainly some sort of weaponry.

This is a small part of a larger whole- the de-legitimization of the modern state. But I think this logical mistake of using terror in an opposite manner to what Bakunin suggested indicates very clearly why the modern state will probably be eroded away. Because, at this point, the left's only logical solution is to rehabilitate the government's image. And I suspect it wouldn't be that hard to do with Trump as president because Trump isn't particularly ideological. But throwing out all the nonsense they've got up to and getting down to proper governance seems unlikely for people who think things like trans-whatever-ism is progress.

Additionally, I find their problem almost contradictory. When they fight, they forget they are establishment and need, first and foremost, to keep some credibility for these very levers of powers they want to keep playing with. Bakunin had it easier- he just wanted to burn it all down.

When they try to govern, however, they have the full weight of all the idiotic things that have been done. Empire, the destruction of health-care, 37 genders, the fascism in the workplace that goes by the name of HR...

Both contribute to less and less trust, and more of a sense of a need to do things ourselves.

Fat For Breakfast

Association between skipping breakfast in parents and children and childhood overweight/obesity among children: a nationwide 10.5-year prospective study in Japan

I learned of this study from episode 494 of Iron Radio.

So, basically, what I want to say is, they've got the association flipped. People do not get fat because they don't eat breakfast. They tend to stop eating breakfast as they get fat. Why?

Sleep is a period of fasting. If you have an excessive number of calories stored, your body will liberate some of that fat and burn it for fuel. You will awake less hungry than your skinny little next door neighbor. The neighbor has fat stores too, because the body always wants some fat stores, the difference is in degree. Thus, the neighbor is more strongly urged, via hunger and cortisol, to go find food, while you may not find yourself hungry for a while.

This is a piece of the puzzle I learned back in my fat loss days- don't eat when you are not hungry. A lot of these breakfast studies, as well as some of the circadian rhythm studies tend to encourage people to draw conclusions, which basically come down to getting people to eat breakfast, eat most calories earlier in the day, etc...

No. Lose the weight first, then do those things.

Depending on what you eat, if you eat breakfast, you'll probably be hungry again more quickly. If you wait until you genuinely feel hunger, and then eat something (preferably low-carb) you've burned fat the whole time you haven't eaten, you've shortened the window in which you will be eating, and you've reduced the likelihood that you will increase hunger.

It isn't just calories, or carbs that you need to worry about, but the interplay of flavor profile and calorie/nutrition payload. The reason processed food is so fattening is that it is a consistent flavor and a consistent payload. Although it is a simplification, generally speaking- more flavor equals more hunger.

But, again, this changes. As you become successful, you become hungry in the morning because you no longer have as many fat stores. If you are successful you'll probably catch yourself trying not to eat- trying to keep the habit that made you successful. It is important to be aware of the need to change- and this is were I think these breakfast stories are useful- yes, the healthier, thinner people eat breakfast- they have to. It is very likely that you will have to too, once you are thin, because you won't have all those extra calories around your waist.