First Ocean, 12th Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Helios): Time is existence, according to Zen Master Dōgen, and all existence is time. When we are waiting for someone, an hour can seem very long, but when we are pressed for time, an hour can fly right by. The passage of time is relative but we still measure it as exactly 60 minutes per hour and sixty seconds per minute. 

It's commonly assumed that time always moves forward at the exact same rate, one second per second, and this happens everywhere, always, in all instances. You can set your watch by it. If one hour seems excruciatingly long and another seems to zip right past, we assume it's our perception, not time, that's been altered. But if time is existence as Dōgen asserts, and existence is subjective and relative, then time is actually our subjective experience of it, and some hours, minutes, and seconds are truly longer than others. One hour doesn't merely seem longer than another; one hour is actually longer than another.

Einstein proved time is relative to the observer by mathematics that I don't understand, but I can summarize my interpretation using the old joke about the chicken crossing the street. 

I don't know why the chicken crossed the street, but there was a time when the chicken existed on one side of the street, another when it existed on the other side of the street, and a time when it existed somewhere  in the middle of the street. We can think of time as a linear process, a series of instances that arrives at the present moment and then moves on. That sequence of instances exists now, and our existence occurs in that "now."

We can see time as that linear progression, but since existence is time and vice versa, the chicken's existence and time were always one and the same. Time never "arrived" at the chicken's existence, which is to say, the chicken never existed outside of time. Assuming it didn't get hit by a car or something and it still exists, time never left the chicken. Time does not come or go from existence, and when we see time as a constant, as opposed to a linear progression, then even a continuous process, like crossing the street, is seen as the present moment.

Let me try putting it another way: the chicken on the other side of the street was in the past and no longer exists except as a memory. The crossing of the street only exists in my mind, which put together a string of memories and observations, and since my mind is always in the now, the chicken's crossing is an instantaneous moment, occurring right now.

 

The Ecstatic Alarm, 11th Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E.: The Stable Genius is reportedly pissed that the oil companies aren't excited about the opportunity to take over Venezuela's oil industry because of the high cost of modernization, security concerns, political instability, and the current low price of oil which would make turning a profit take decades. 

It's almost as if he hadn't thought it all through. 

It's bad enough this country is turning into an authoritarian shithole. It's all the worse that it's being done by some of the stupidest people this country's ever produced.

 

Quartz Day, 10th of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Deneb): The faster we go, the slower time passes. Einstein proved this with mathematics I don't pretend to understand, but imagine this: you're on a spaceship traveling at near-light speed, say 99% the speed of light. You turn on your "headlights." What happens? Does light move ahead of your spaceship at 186,282 miles per second, the speed of light? Or since you're already moving at 184,419 mi/sec, 99% of the speed of light, does it move ahead at "only" (186,282 - 184,410 =) 1,863 mi/sec? 

Here's the head-scratcher: relativity, as I understand it, says "no," you will perceive the light moving ahead at the full 186k mi/sec, but if a stationary observer were somehow watching all this, they would see the light "slowly" moving forward from your ship at 1.86k mi/sec.

Einstein surmised that the reason this can happen, that light can be moving forward at both 186k and 1.86k, is that time is passing more slowly to the people on the spaceship relative to the stationary observer. The speed of light is constant but time is not. 

To that photon emitted by the spaceship's headlights, traveling at the full speed of light, time is so slow that it actually stops and time doesn't exist at all. To the photon, no time passes between being emitted from the headlamp and arriving at whatever planet or other body with which it eventually collides. 

The star Deneb, a supergiant in the Cygnus constellation 200,000 times brighter than Helios, our Sun, is 2,600 light-years from Earth. When we observe Deneb, we're seeing light emitted 2,600 years ago, around the time of the Buddha. We're seeing Deneb as it existed in 574 B.C., but to a photon emitted from Deneb back then, no time has passed during its long trip to Earth. To the photon, it was emitted and instantaneously arrived here. The passage of time does not exist to something traveling at the speed of light.

Of course, all this is further complicated by the fact that we're not really stationary. We're on a spinning planet traveling around Helios at 67,000 mph, which itself is moving through the Milky Way galaxy at 447,000 mph. You'd have to be some sort of Einstein to take all that into consideration. 

So, what is time, if it can speed up and slow down, or simultaneously exist and not exist? 

The Chinese Zen Master Yaoshan Weiyan was born in 745 A.D., or when the light we now see from Deneb was halfway between the distant star and us, and wrote a poem about time:  

Time is standing atop a soaring mountain peak

Time is plunging to the bottom of the Ocean

Time is a three-headed, eight-armed deity

Time is a golden sixteen-foot statue of Buddha 

Time is a monk’s staff or his ceremonial whisk

Time is an outdoor pillar or a stone lantern

Time is your next-door neighbor or a man on the street

Time is the whole of the earth and of boundless space

The stanzas of Yaoshan's poem compares time to the highest of highs and the deepest of deeps, to demons and saints, to the sacred and the commonplace. I think the point of the poem comes in the last line - time is not a "thing" but is in fact everything. Time is space and space is time. Yaoshan  (745-834) and Einstein (1879-1955) got there by very different means, but I don't think their understandings were far apart. 

To take this one step further, time is space and space is time, and all things exist in space-time and cannot exist outside of space-time, so all things, in effect, are manifestations of time. The present moment is the only point in which our existence comes together with time and all things exist only in this present moment. On the other hand, time is required for all actions and time can only be realized through action. 

Today, this present moment, is a walking day but the forecast is a 100% chance of rain, so I'm staying inside instead, and see what happens in my mind when it doesn't have a long walk or 90 minutes of sitting mediation to occupy it?

Basalt Day, 9th of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Castor): “I don't need international law.” In a interview with the New York Times, the Stable Genius boasted about his reputation for unpredictability and willingness to resort to military action. "Let them hate me, so long as they fear me," he told the Times.

No, just kidding, that second quote is from the Roman Emperor Caligula, the insane, murderous tyrant who demanded and received worship as a living god (the first quote was the Stable Genius). Caligula delighted in humiliating the Senate and nominated his horse to be a consul. Over the course of his short reign, he became increasingly self-indulgent, cruel, sadistic, extravagant, and sexually perverted, and not unlike the Stable Genius, he had a fondness for grandiose, costly building projects, intended to entertain the masses but considered by many to be wasteful.

Asked if there were limits on his authority to strike, invade, or coerce other nations, the Stable Genius told the Times, “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.” When pressed on whether the U.S. still had to follow international law, he shrugged it off, saying “It depends what your definition of international law is.” 

When asked why he felt he needed to acquire Greenland, he said, “Because that’s what I feel is psychologically needed for success. I think that ownership gives you a thing that you can’t do, whether you’re talking about a lease or a treaty. Ownership gives you things and elements that you can’t get from just signing a document.”  

Even nuclear arms control didn’t faze him. Asked about the imminent expiration of a key treaty with Russia, he shrugged: “If it expires, it expires.”

After a surprise military raid on Venezuela, threatened attacks on other countries, and yanking the United States out of dozens of international agreements, the Stable Genius is openly saying the rules only apply to him if he feels like it. His interview made perfectly clear that he views laws as optional and alliances as expendable, and that power flows from only one source - him.

As his mind dissolves, the malignant narcissism that characterized him in his first term has descended into full-blown megalomania. We've gone from rule by mad King George III to Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, also called Caligula.

Granite Day, 8th of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Betelgeuse): Blood on the streets of downtown Caracas, blood on the streets of Minneapolis. Her name was Renee Nicole Good, but does anyone know the names of the estimated 80 persons killed by U.S. troops in the raid to capture Maduro? 

And now for your moment of Zen:

Nanyuan was once asked by a monk, “On top of this lump of red flesh sits a sheer cliff of a thousand feet. Isn’t this what you said?”

Nanyuan said, “It is.”

The monk then lifted and turned over the meditation bench.

Nanyuan exclaimed, “Look how this blind ass acts!”

The monk started to speak.

Nanyuan hit him.

The sheer, thousand-foot cliff represents the barrier to our understanding. Nanyuan says it's on top of us because it is us - it's the barrier of our mind trying to grasp the ungraspable.

The monk thought he had come up with a clever means of direct action to show his teacher an understanding that went beyond words and ideas, but the teacher saw that the premeditated action was just another idea, not a spontaneous expression. He calls out the monk with an insult and when the monk begins to spontaneously respond with words (language), Nanyuan strikes him (direct action) to show him he's on the wrong track. Besides, almost all the Nanyuan koans end with, "he hit him." Zen masters back then often behaved more like Moe Howard than Gandhi.

Although it does not appear in the Blue Cliff Record, the Book of Serenity, or the Gateless Gate, Zen Master Dogen including this story in his anthology of 300 koans. However, Dogen does not discuss or quote this story in any of his other writings. It has been translated into English by Andy Ferguson (in Zen's Chinese Ancestors) and John Daido Loori includes it in The True Dharma Eye.

 

Luminous and Ashen, 7th of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Aldebaran): The Stable Genius says that Venezuelan oil will be sold at market price, "and that money will be controlled by me, as President of the United States of America." More evidence, as if it were needed, that the irresistible lure of Venezuelan oil isn't as an energy source to the U.S. or elsewhere, but as a means of propping up the failing U.S. petrodollar.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military announced that forces had seized the Marinera, a Russian-flagged tanker, in the North Atlantic between Scotland and Iceland for allegedly violating U.S. sanctions. The ship, which was not carrying oil, had previously tried to sail to Venezuela to pick up crude and had been eluding U.S. forces for more than two weeks. The Coast Guard separately intercepted another tanker that was under sanctions, the M Sophia, in a pre-dawn operation in the Caribbean.

Meanwhile, the Stable Genius is renewing his threats to acquire Greenland either through purchase from Denmark or by military force. Little Marco, his Secretary of State, National Security Advisor, and Viceroy to Venezuela, said he will be meeting with Danish officials regarding a potential acquisition, but isn't ruling out use of military force. Obviously, an invasion would be another and even more egregious violation of international law, as we would be going to war with a NATO ally, which would effectively be the end of a 70-year-old, highly successful alliance. All for the delusional whim of a malignant narcissist. Be sure to reset your doomsday clock before going to bed tonight.

Meanwhile, ICE thugs killed a woman, apparently a bystander, in Minneapolis today,  shooting her multiple times as she was in her car. ICE, Republicans, and of course, the Stable Genius have branded the woman a "domestic terrorist," but the mayor of Minneapolis called ICE's account, "bullshit," and told ICE to "get the fuck out of Minneapolis. We do not want you here.”

Meanwhile, the Stable Genius announced that he was withdrawing the U.S. from the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, the bedrock international agreement established in 1992 that was the legal foundation for the Paris agreement and forms the basis for countries to rein in climate change. Also, the White House Council on Environmental Quality rescinded the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires federal agencies to consider a project's possible environmental impacts before it is approved. In essence, Environmental Impact Statements are now a thing of the past. A spokesperson said, "NEPA's regulatory reign of terror has ended."

Meanwhile, the Stable Genius today halted more than $10 Billion for childcare and family assistance funds in California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York, citing concerns about fraud and misuse. Can't help millions of families get by if someone, somewhere is misusing some of the money now, can we?.  

We're not even at the one-year anniversary of the Stable Genius' second term yet, and already both the country and the world are going off the rails.

 

Morning and Evening Asylum, 6th Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Helios): The first week of this 526th year on the Modern Era is now complete, and the world is already a far different one than it was in the last week of 525.

It's not just that the U.S. invaded Venezuela and kidnapped its president and his wife. It's that in so doing, the U.S. showed the world that it's abandoned any and all pretense of abiding by international law or diplomacy, and the Stable Genius showed that he feels he's no longer answerable to anyone but himself. Not to Congress, not to the Courts, certainly not to the American people. "Yeah, I did it for the oil," he freely admits to anyone who'll listen. "We're going to keep the oil, and I'd do it again." Meanwhile, the sycophants around him are warning that Greenland, Columbia, Cuba, or Panama could well be next. 

His malignant narcissism, so dangerous before, has turned worse and now he's full blown delusional. His delusions of grandeur have moved him from Commodus to Nero, and now, after this week, he's in Caligula territory. It's as if we're getting both mad-king George III and the extravagant and lascivious George IV at the same time. It's both fascinating and horrifying as we watch his mind disintegrate before our very eyes. 

Horror grips us as we watch you die

All we can do is echo your anguished cries

Stare as all your human feelings die

We are leaving, you don't need us.

Yes, the Stable Genius, old mad King Caligula George III/IV himself, invaded Venezuela for its oil, as he keeps telling everyone. But the Stable Genius isn't as independent as he wants us to believe and there are powerbrokers and megadonors around him to manipulate (bit don't control) his actions. He may have ordered the invasion for the oil, but the U.S. attacked Venezuela to protect the petrodollar.  

As described yesterday, all OPEC and virtually all other oil is bought and sold in US dollars. This arrangement keeps the U.S. currency afloat and allows the U.S. to print unlimited money to fund its military, entitlements, and deficit spending. Countries that try to buck this system generally find their leadership replaced by the United States. 

When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, Daddy Bush used the U.S. military to drive him back to Iraq but left him in power, albeit with sanctions. When Hussein started selling petroleum on world markets in dinars and other currencies to skirt the sanctions, Bush Junior stepped in, had him deposed, and let disgruntled Iraqis hang him. The lesson was it's one thing to invade another country but another to sell oil without U.S. petrodollars. 

When Gaddafi proposed a gold-backed African currency for oil trade, Obama had Libya bombed and Gaddafi killed.

The BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) are pursuing payment systems that bypass the U.S. dollar. The Stable Genius has placed large, double-digit tariffs on three of the countries (Brazil, India, and South Africa), and has a testy relationship, to say the very least, with China. He loves his Putin, but Russia has been selling oil in rubles and yuan since it invaded Ukraine, and the one and only time the Stable Genius ever criticizes Russia is over sales of sanctioned oil. 

BRICS has expanded to now include Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. Iran has been trading in non-dollar currencies for years to get around U.S. sanctions and the Stable Genius has already bombed Iran once last year, and is now throwing gasoline on the flames of the current civil unrest there. He's bombed Nigeria, which isn't BRICS or an obvious enemy of the petrodollar, but is in OPEC and a significant oil producer and the bombs may have been a warning, a brush-back pitch in baseball jargon. 

Venezuela, another OPEC member, isn't BRICS either, but wants to be. Brazil blocked their application over democracy, or lack thereof, but Maduro has independently threatened that Venezuela would free itself from the petrodollar. It's probably no coincidence that Venezuelans were among the very first groups of immigrants that the Stable Genius singled out for deportation when he started his second term. 

The surprise over last weekend's invasion wasn't because he struck at Venezuela but because of the timing and how unilateral the decision was. Everyone, especially Maduro, knew G.I.s were going to arrive in Caracas eventually. They just needed to look at the flotilla offshore, or talk to the widows of the 100+ boaters the U.S. military had already killed.

I'm not saying oil wasn't a factor in the invasion - of course it was, the Stable Genius is freely admitting as much. But the invasion is also a part of a long pattern of deposing heads of state or otherwise punishing nations that sell oil outside of the petrodollar system. A nearby, oil-rich nation with a leftist, virulently anti-U.S. government was always going to be a potential target, but selling petroleum to the Chinese in yuans all but sealed their fate. 

It was inevitable.  

Sun Quarter Pass, 5th Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Electra): The real reason the U.S. invaded Venezuela has nothing to do with drugs, HOSCA claims. Venezuela accounts for less than 1% of the cocaine entering the U.S. and virtually none of the fentanyl. It's not about fighting terrorism, either; there's zero evidence that Maduro runs a "terror organization." And it's certainly not about preserving democracy - the US supports a Saudi royalty which doesn't tolerate or allow any elections. 

It's not even about oil, at last not directly. HOSCA claims it's about preserving the value of the U.S. petrodollar system and maintaining a 50-year-old agreement that lets the U.S. print money and has kept it the dominant economic power for half a century. 

In 1973, Nixon and Kissinger got the Saudi royal family to agree that America would provide military protection for Saudi Arabia's oil fields in return for the Saudis pricing their oil exclusively in U.S. dollars. The Saudis were to refuse all other currencies, except the dollar, as payment for their oil exports in exchanged for the military protection. Since the signing of the agreement, all OPEC oil is quoted in US dollars.

The agreement created an artificial, global demand for U.S. dollars. Every country on Earth needed dollars to buy oil. This allowed the U.S. to print unlimited money to funds the military, entitlement programs, and deficit spending. The petrodollar is more important to U.S. hegemony than aircraft carriers.

But then in 2017, Maduro threatened that system by announcing that Venezuela would "free itself from the dollar" by implementing a new international payment system using other currencies, including the Chinese yuan, the Euro, and the Russian ruble. Venezuela's petroleum ministry began listing oil prices in yuan rather than U.S. dollars for the first time.

The proven oil reserves in Venezuela are the largest in the world, totaling 303.3 billion, more than Saudi Arabia's 297.7 billion barrels. For the first time, some 20% of the globe's petroleum preserves were available for purchase in yuans, not dollars.

The U.S. takes that kind of challenge to the dollar's supremacy seriously. In 2000, Saddam Hussein announced that Iraq will sell oil in euros instead of dollars. This was the real reason Bush Junior invaded Iraq and had Saddam deposed and killed. Not terrorism, not WMD's, not to finish what Daddy had started. After the war, Iraq's oil switched back to dollars and the WMDs were never discovered because they never existed.

In 2009, Gaddafi proposed a gold-backed African currency for oil trade. In 2011, Obama had NATO bomb Libya. Gaddafi was killed and his African currency died with him.

Then Maduro, with five times more oil than Saddam and Gaddafi combined, started actively selling petroleum in yuan. Now he's on trial in Manhattan for whatever charges the DOJ comes up with. 

The world is watching a sovereign nation get invaded for trading outside of the dollar. Russia, China, and Iran have already denounced the invasion and kidnapping as "armed aggression."  

The deeper problem is the petrodollar is already in decline. Due to U.S. sanctions, Russia has been selling oil in rubles and yuan since it invaded Ukraine. Iran has been trading in non-dollar currencies for years to get around U.S. sanctions. Saudi Arabia is openly discussing yuan settlements, and the BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) have expanded to include Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, and are actively pursuing payment systems that bypass the dollar entirely.   

Every country now clearly sees that if you threaten the dollar's hegemony, you get invaded. The U.S. has shown its hand. The invasion is an admission that the dollar can no longer compete on its own merits. 

If you have to bomb countries to keep them using your currency, your currency is already dying.

 

Pre-Dawn Chart, 4th Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Deneb): As much as I detest New Year's resolutions, my vow for this year is to be kinder.

I spent a lot of time over the past several days on social media sharing comments and memes about the college football bowl games and playoffs. I enjoy trash talking as much as the next guy, maybe more than the next guy, but I saw comments on Facebook that went way beyond, "Your quarterback throws like a girl." The comments insulted not the teams playing or even the general fan base of the team, but the very person who posted something about a game ("You're fucking stupid if you think State will win!"). A woman who posted a simple, anodyne "Cheering for my Tigers" comment with a photo of herself in a team sweatshirt got several "likes," but was also subjected to several dozen insults about her appearance, her intelligence, and even her presumed sexual orientation.

I saw a great many posts not praising or wishing luck for a team, but putting down fans of the opposing team, or rubbing salt in the wound following an opponent's loss. "You're team has been EXPOSED as the no-talent losers they are," someone said after an unranked team lost by just a few points to a highly ranked contender. "You SUCK!!!," they continued.

I don't know if these kind of comments are a result of the corrosive affect of anonymous online posting or the crude braggadocio of the MAGA movement, but it seemed crueler, cruder, and angrier than I remember from years past. 

It also made me reconsider things I've posted or said to others before. Statements may not seem to be mean or cruel to the person saying them ("just joking, bro)," but can feel more hurtful to the ones receiving the words.  

Right Speech is a part of the Buddha's famous eight-fold path. Right Speech is speaking truthfully, kindly, and beneficially, while avoiding lying, divisive talk, harsh language, and idle chatter. Does it do anything to make the world a better place to tell a fan whose team just lost the big game, and is probably sad about that loss, "Your team sucks so go back home, you ugly dyke!"? No. Does it console the losing fan? No. Does it elevate the winning team or their fans?  No, it doesn't. It's just performative ugliness, cruelty for cruelty's sake. 

For the record, my trash-talk comments weren't those kind of personal attacks. But does posting "Atlanta 28, New England 3" (the score during a Super Bowl game before New England rallied and won the game) to a comment by a Falcons fan promote harmony? I don't think it does. Reading those comments by others, and then rereading some of my own comments while imagining myself in the recipients' shoes, made me reconsider my behavior. I should be kinder, not only online, but in real life, too.  

All cruelty comes from weakness, according to the Stoic philosopher Seneca. Harming others stems from internal insecurity. It takes true strength to be kind and patient. Cruelty is a display of inner fragility; the need to dominate stems from self doubt and weakness. It takes true strength to demonstrate confidence. 

So my vow is to be kinder. There's no need to be divisive or to sow discord. I can exercise self-control and restraint. 

This vow, however, doesn't extend to the Stable Genius. Fuck that guy.

Realm of Violent Dream, 3rd Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Castor): Early this morning, the Stable Genius ordered the military to invade Venezuela, bomb its capital, Caracas, and kidnap its president, Nicolás Maduro, along with his wife, Cilia Flores. The administration claims the two are now on board a U.S. battleship stationed in the Caribbean and will be taken to New York to stand trial.  

HOSCA strongly condemns this morning's actions and considers them a cold-blooded attack on a major civilian center. Three million people live in Caracas, five million in the metro area. It's one of the densest cities in South America. The invasion was not authorized by Congress and there was no imminent threat to U.S. soil that justified the use of force under international law. Article 2(4) of the U.N. Charter forbids the use of force against another state’s territorial integrity or political independence unless it’s self-defense or authorized by the Security Council. There’s no evidence either condition applied here. 

Yet the Stable Genius has been building up U.S. military presence in the Caribbean for months, deploying aircraft carriers and troops, and blowing up random boats and murdering the occupants. He has designated Venezuelan institutions and gang networks as terrorist organizations to pave the way for this military intervention.

To be clear, HOSCA does not condone or support Maduro or his incompetent, corrupt, and repressive regime. Maduro’s brutal rule has shattered Venezuela’s economy, causing millions of its citizens to flee overseas. In the 2024 election, although ballots from voting machines showed a massive defeat for Maduro, his national electoral council declared him the winner hours after the polls closed without providing any detailed vote counts to support their pronouncement. 

Although HOSCA does not consider Maduro to be the democratically elected president of Venezuela, it does not recognize the U.S.'s authority to intervene in the internal affairs of a foreign nation. The Stable Genius has declared, “We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition.” The U.S. has no legal authority to unilaterally decide to run another country. The Stable Genius provided few details of what that rule would look like, but there were ominous suggestions that U.S. oil companies would have a role in the transition.

This latest attempt to oust a government through force is merely a continuation of the United States' long history of destabilization in Latin America, including in Chile, Cuba, Guatemala and Nicaragua. It  comes after the U.S. spent some 20 years trying to create a stable government in Afghanistan. The war in Iraq turned out to be a disaster which continues to have negative effects across the entire Middle East, and displacing Gaddafi in Libya only resulted in a fractured state. 

It’s not about drugs. The excuse that this was about “drug trafficking” or “narco-terrorism” is nothing but a manufactured alibi. This is happening within weeks of disbanding a DOJ task force that took on drug cartels and the Stable Genius pardoning the former president of Honduras, who was imprisoned here for cocaine trafficking on a grand scale. 

It's not about democracy. The Stable Genius never cared about democracy. He's sanctioned Brazil for prosecuting its former President, who tried to overturn the free and fair election that ousted him from power.  

It's not about illegal immigration. The Stable Genius claimed, without evidence, that Maduro and Venezuela have been emptying its prisons and asylums and sending the inmates to the U.S. But destabilizing Venezuela will only cause more  Venezuelans to flee, and immigrate to Columbia, Central America, and eventually the United States. Regime change and destabilization will only make illegal immigration worse. 

It's a power grab - the Stable Genius wants to be able to declare war on anyone he labels an enemy. He's willing to plunge the hemisphere into chaos and is breaking his pledge to end wars instead of starting new ones just to show he can act without congressional approval or the buy in of the public, even if it undermines opposition to China seizing Taiwan, or Putin's invasion of Ukraine. 

It’s about oil. Venezuela sits on the world's largest proven oil reserves, and its economic and geopolitical position has long made it a target of U.S. political and economic pressure. The Stable Genius had previously complained that the U.S. should have seized the oil after defeating Iraq, and his domestic energy strategy, such as it is, centers exclusively around fossil fuels and can be summarized by the motto, "drill, baby, drill."       

It's about distraction. The Stable Genius needs a big, red-white-and-blue military spectacle and a show trial to distract the public from his sinking approval ratings, the Epstein scandal, skyrocketing health-care costs, and an overall affordability crisis.

HOSCA protests, HOSCA disapproves, and HOSCA has no intention of ignoring this latest affront to the sovereignty of South and Central America. Hands off! No blood for oil!

 

The White Fleet's Landfall, 2nd Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Betelgeuse): I forgot to mention yesterday that as long as I was coming up with a fantasy calendar, I might as well renumber the years, too. After not a whole lot of consideration, I decided to reset Year 0 from the birth of you-to-who to the year 1500. The peak of the Renaissance, just before the Age of Enlightenment, just after the discovery of the Americas. That seemed as good a point to start a "Modern Era" as any, although I could just as easily have picked 1776 if I was feeling patriotic, or 1954 if I was feeling egotistical. A case can be made for 1619, and 1938 would be a good candidate, too, as it was the year that both nuclear fission and LSD were discovered. This would be the year 88 of a nuclear, psychedelic era. But the math is so much easier converting the current year to my fantasy year with 1500 that it wins, hands down.

I walked an 8.3-mile Van Buren today. Okay, so what does that mean? Last year, I started naming my walks by the U.S. President corresponding to the number of miles after I saw a pledge drive asking people to walk 39 miles in a month in honor of Jimmy Carter, the 39th President. I could knock off 39 miles in a good week, but the  pledge drive made me think which President's number I walked each day. So, a one-mile walk is a Washington, two is an Adams, and so on to 47 being a Stable Genius (he whose name I shall not say). It's silly, but it had the added bonus of finally getting me to memorize the names of all the Presidents, in order. It also made watching the miniseries Death by Lightning more interesting, as I would always get bogged down sometime around the Hayes-Garfield-Arthur sequence (you know, right after the easy Lincoln-Johnson-Grant sequence and before the mnemic-friendly Cleveland-Harrison-Cleveland). 

 

 

 

Ways to the Deep Meadow, 1st Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Aldebaran): Happy New Year, friend! May this incoming year find you safe and contented.  

It's been a while since I've discussed all this or tried to explain myself, but you might be wondering what the hell is going on here. Someone coming to this blog for the first time or returning after a long absence is excused from thinking I've lost my goddamn mind. I may have, but that's another story and has little to nothing to do with what's happened to WDW.

First of all, you might ask what's with all the AI slop at the top of each post? Actually, I have issues with the term "AI slop." I'm not denying its existence or saying that AI slop is not a problem (it is), but all AI content is not automatically "slop" just because it was computer generated.

For over 20 years, since this blog first started in May 2004, the format has always been a picture at the top of each post and text below. My problem was that not being an artist or graphic designer, I had no way of  producing the pictures I needed. I would have to "appropriate" images from the web, trying to be reasonably mindful of not violating copyright beyond fair use, but I can't deny the fact that each day I was using someone else's artwork without explicit permission. 

I tried using my own photographs for a while, but very quickly burned through my backlog of useable pictures and then ran out of ideas of new daily photos. When you're posting a picture of your coffee maker for the third time, you know you've exhausted your imagination.

But two or three years ago, when AI image generators started getting better, I finally had a source of pictures that wasn't exploitative of others and wasn't relying of my few and frankly tired attempts at photography. 

Also and for the record, despite the images, none of the text posted here is AI generated. None. Not a word. I wouldn't want to read someone else's daily AI output, and beside, I enjoy expressing myself here and do this because there are things I want to say. I'm not trying to fill some random space with text copy and I don't want to relinquish my soapbox to a machine. 

Okay, then what's with those weird lead-in lines beneath the pictures? What the hell does "Ways to the Deep Meadow, 1st Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Aldebaran)" mean?

Short answer is it's the date according to my New Revised Universal Solar Calendar. Several year's ago, I came across a spoken word performance by the musician and artist Angus MacLise titled Universal Solar Calendar. I had no context for the piece and no idea what it was or what it meant, but a Google search showed me it was a reading of the 365 days of the year in an alternative calendar that MacLise had invented. His actual calendar is actually a piece of calligraphic art - instead of a grid of days arranged in rows of weeks, each season is laid out like a wheel, with the names of the days radiating out from the center like spokes. There are five season in MacLise's USC, like in the Discordian calendar, starting with Childwinter, then Spring, Summer, Autumn, and finally, Hagwinter. Each day of the year has its own unique and poetic name, starting with the first day, Ways to the Deep Meadow. 

Cool idea, but the calendar is difficult and impractical to read and use.  You have to turn it upside down to read half the days, and MacLise's calligraphy isn't always easily legible. So I decided to make a version of his USC in a grid format, and I also wanted a calendar that doesn't start on a random day of the week each year. Every year should start  and end on the same day of the week, so you wouldn't need a new calendar for each year. Since 365 isn't evenly divisible by 7 days a week, I came up with the idea of a 366-day year by including Leap Year Day in the calendar and shortening the week to six days. 366 days divided a six yields 61 six-day weeks.

The revised week needed new names for the days of the week, and since this was a solar calendar, it seemed appropriate to name the ultimate, final day of the week Helios for the Sun. I then named the preceding five days for other suns/stars in alphabetical order: Aldebaran, Betelgeuse, Castor, Deneb, and Electra. So the "(Aldebaran)" in the first line above is the day of the week on which the 1st day of Childwinter falls.

All that being said and done, "Ways to the Deep Meadow, 1st Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Aldebaran)" is sort of the equivalent of saying "New Year's Day, 1st of January, 2026 A.D. (Thursday)." I list my New Revised Universal Solar Calendar date at the start of each post because I can't figure out how to change the dates in the Blogger templates. 

It's all less complicated than it sounds. Here's the calendar grid for Childwinter for your reference.

Leap Year Day (February 29 of the Julian calendar) is the 60th day of the year. I added it to MacLise's original names as "Fifth Twelve" (60 = 5 x 12) since he already had a "Second Twelve" on the 24th day of the year. To keep the 366-day calendar in sync with the Earth's orbit around the Sun, Fifth Twelve is simply skipped on non-Leap Years and one goes directly from Electra to Aldebaran those years without recognizing Helios. That might sound odd, but is it any odder than instead inserting an extra day into the calendar every four years?

All of this was an evolving process, not some sudden flash of insight or inspiration. I took some other liberties with MacLise's calendar although I tried to keep MacLise's poetic names as much as possible. But I moved some names around to better fit the six-day grid and to align with some of the underlying logic and patterns I sensed in the original. That's why if you try to read the calendar above along to the recording of MacLise reciting the names, they don't always align. 

Back to that AI slop those pictures above. Another one of the evolving ideas was to use MacLise's day names as prompts for the AI images. And when the Midjourney generative AI introduced the "--cref" prompt (later replaced with the "Omni Reference") to have consistent characters appear in images, I developed avatars for each season, the Winter Child, Spring's Earth Mother, the Summer Girl, Autumn's Retired Old Man (which is a version of my own face), and the Winter Hag.  The picture above was generated by Midjourney based on the prompts, "Ways to the Deep Meadow," "Childwinter," and my new (this year) Winter Child avatar. I don't consider the result "AI slop" because I go through many iterations, refinements, and edits before selecting the one I want to post. It's not like I'm just typing some words into the computer and posting whatever random picture the AI spits out. 

That all may be way more information than you wanted or needed, and it may have had the opposite effect of what I intended, that is, that I haven't lost my mind. But it's a new year and a new season, and it seemed like this is as good a time as any to explain what I'm doing.