To the person who sent an anonymous message about 2007: I’m so sorry. This sounds terrible.

I won’t post the comment to preserve the reader’s anonymity but I’m very very sorry this happened.

Our less sophisticated brethren are taking the dishonest reporting about Trump’s bloodbath comments seriously because they still think that if it’s on TV, it has to be true.

The somewhat more cognitively capable know that they are being lied to but find convoluted ways of justifying the con:

No, Trump didn’t promise to drown people who won’t vote for him in blood. Yes, he was simply describing the state of the US automotive industry. But still, the lies are justified because he’s dangerous.

Why is he dangerous?

Because he makes scary comments.

Which ones?

Well, the one about the bloodbath.

But he didn’t really make it.

Yes, but still.

Totally makes sense.

I’m not very interested in what Trump says because his words and actions rarely intersect. But I’m very interested in the workings of propaganda.

2007 seems to have been a great year for couples. N and I are one of the several couples I know who will be celebrating their 17th anniversary this year.

N told me today that his life only truly began when he met me, and I feel the same. About my life, too, and not only his.

And what great things happened to you in 2007?

The municipal authorities are fixing the road at both entrances to our campus. Gigantic traffic jams are created as a result. People miss exams, presentations, and meetings. What’s even worse, they get home 40 minutes later than usual after class or work.

This has been going on since last week. Traffic delays get worse when we have visitors on campus, like we did on Friday when 600 prospective students and family members arrived. And then tried to leave through the same jammed road.

I haven’t been in one of these traffic jams, though. Not even once.

You know why?

There’s a road that goes parallel to the one being fixed. It’s wide open and completely traffic-free. I take it instead of the usual one and avoid the congestion. That parallel road is visible from the jammed one.

You can see it.

With eyes.

It’s right there.

Still, people keep congregating in the traffic-jammed road. There’s an easy, obvious alternative (and it’s actually one of several) but they aren’t taking the alternative paths because it’s not what they usually do.

There’s nothing a human brain dislikes more than newness. People would suffer great discomfort before looking for a new solution. The usual is pleasing. The different is painful. That’s how human brain works.

Even our student newspaper has reposted the stupid lie that Trump promised a bloodbath if he loses the election.

The information age, you know? Anybody could go and watch what he actually said at any time. It would take all of 30 seconds. But why do that if you can be lied to and manipulated instead?

These are students, they aren’t supposed to care which old dude wins some boring election at all. They should be rebellious and care about stuff oldsters don’t know exist. Instead, they are being subservient and meek. It’s all very sad.

There’s this video game called 2248. You create strings of numbers by multiplying them by 2. I had no idea this could be such a deeply enjoyable activity. I’m up to 274 billion in my current game.

I guess it exercises some dormant part of the brain, and the brain is grateful for it.

Here’s a great article on why so many people around the world so eagerly and easily believe the clearly idiotic narrative about a Palestinian genocide at the hands of Israel:

The Soviet Union and subsequently the current Russian regime have developed and propagated a fabricated narrative and recruited, trained, planted, and supported a network of agents to carry out a wide-reaching campaign of deception and ideological subversion with the intent to advance their geopolitical interests in the Middle East and beyond — and that this Russian effort is at the heart of modern day global antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment.

https://profound.af/the-invisible-weapon-acade58e7c3f

Everything that includes the “decolonization” narrative has roots in the Soviet propaganda of the Cold War era.

In what concerns Israel, Stalin helped create it but then was mortally wounded when Israel aligned itself with the US. He started a massive anti-Israel campaign which continued after his death:

In 1964, as a brilliant counter to a strengthening state of Israel, the KGB created the PLO, mirroring other guerrilla Marxist-Leninist “liberation” movements the Soviets were supporting or launching elsewhere to expand global influence and control and to counter the US.

Russia has taken over where the USSR left off:

The global mindshare of the “Palestinian liberation” movement is an extremely valuable Russian political asset, utilized as a mechanism for leverage not only against Israel, but in the greater Middle East and even the West as a strategy in their fight against US dominance.

In its support of Hamas, Russian propagandists use the same methods as they did during the BLM riots:

“Russian operatives created hundreds of fake personas on social media platforms and then posted thousands of advertisements and messages that sought to promote racial divisions in the United States. This was a coordinated propaganda effort.” — Virtual Hatred: How Russia Tried to Start a Race War in the United States, William J. Aceves

Obviously, there are enough useful fools right here in the US (and other Western countries) who chant woke slogans of their own free will. But they didn’t spontaneously arise out of ether. They were trained up by Western institutions infested by Soviet agents since 1930s.

Read more at the link.

Scholarship in the UK is in the deepest, ugliest anal cavity imaginable. Today I listened to a 40-minute talk of a British scholar about how wonderful and free Cuba is. She told us that there’s no censorship in Cuba and repeated the old, hoary lies about the success of the Cuban literacy program. The worst part was that the talk was given to an audience of Ukrainian hispanists. The absolute tone-deafness of praising Cuba to people who are at this very moment under assault by troops that Cubans joined and support was shocking.

The British scholar is so utterly ignorant that she said that the de-colonization discourse is the opposite of Soviet ideology. In reality, of course, the post colonial discourse was heavily controlled and promoted by the USSR during the Cold War. Today, Russia is using it to justify its war against Ukraine. This discourse states that colonialism is what developed countries do to underdeveloped countries. The colonial presence in Ukraine, according to this line of thought, is what the US is “doing to Ukraine”, while Russia is trying to “liberate” Ukraine from the US colonialism. “Decolonization” equals anti-Western, anti-US mentality. This is why we keep hearing about “decolonizing” the classroom and “decolonizing” knowledge, which simply means discarding modern science and all Western civilizational achievements.

My blood pressure went up a mile while I listened to this propagandistic garbage. This was the third presentation by a UK scholar that I’ve attended as part of this program, and they aren’t simply woke. They are the most primitive, inane kind of woke. It’s very sad.

I’m participating in another British conference next week, and I have a feeling I’ll need heavy blood pressure meds to sit through it.

The cover of the book has been released:

It’s so cool, and the color scheme is perfect. We managed to stay under 400 pages without cutting any content.

I hope to hold a physical copy in my hands for my birthday.