The Poisoned Stream

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Yesterday in one of my hangouts someone brought up the Tartaria conspiracy. This is one of my favorite internet insanity conspiracies, second only to “The dinosaurs are circling the Earth in a spaceship habitat, waiting for the right time to come back.” And I’m not sure it’s second to that, since on the insanity scale the dinosaur one is at least slightly more plausible.

For those who haven’t stumbled on this:

In recent years, a new alternative world history claim has arisen from the Internet — and it’s a doozy. It revolves around an alleged worldwide cataclysm believed by adherents to have taken place sometime in the 1800s, a disaster that wiped out a worldwide advanced civilization and allowed the nations as we know them today to rise up. The event was a “mud flood” in which several meters of mud washed in and buried the ground levels of houses and buildings everywhere. Those cities and towns that were partially buried constituted the worldwide advanced civilization called Tartaria, which had free wireless energy and was populated — at least in part — by giants. It was a civilization “reset”: out with the old, in with the new; and that “new” civilization is us. If this sounds too silly to be worth anyone’s time to even listen to, then consider the fact that of all the hundreds of topic suggestions in the Skeptoid queue, this is the one that I chose for this week. And I chose it for good reason, so attend.

https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4765

Or here: Inside The Empire Of Tartaria, One Of History’s Wildest Conspiracies.

Why do I love this? Let me count the ways: it’s relatively recent history and I keep scratching my head and wondering if none of these people had a relationship with their grandparents, and heard stories of their grandparents’ grandparents. I will grant you that my chronology is super-muddled, as I know some stories are grandma’s, some her grandma’s, and some possibly older, but they all tend to blend together, so I can come across as thinking the Napoleonic wars were in grandma’s living memory. But still, people, I got stuff from there, and if an entire superior civilization had collapsed, I’d know.

And yet it’s there, and it’s all encompassing, and you keep thinking “This is true in an alternate reality. Has to be.” And of course, this is the danger of these crazy conspiracy theories: they spawn novels.

On the other hand, if you really look at it, you feel a chill up your spine. Because the fact that this conspiracy has a lot of adherents, being as crazy as it is, means the official sources of information are viewed as nearly useless.

Put it another way: Regardless of how many people jump on the Tartaria bandwagon because it’s fun, the fact that the theory is all over means that people not only don’t believe a thing they were taught in school, but also are perfectly willing to believe they were egregiously lied to in a coordinated and seamless manner.

To an extent they’re right of course.

I mean, none of us knows the past, and the history we’re taught in school is by necessity canned. As an history geek, I can spend entire months diving down a few months of a country’s history and still know I come away with a “canned” version of it that ignores a million factors. To get a “History of the world” version in school, it means that what we get is canned, tendentious, and ignores most of what actually happened. This doesn’t mean it’s not generally accurate, even if — and this changes depending on when we were taught — it has an obvious slant.

It is the fact that history has to be compressed and facts selected that makes great hoaxes like the 1619 project possible. It’s possible to pick and choose a dozen events to present a bizarre racialist version of history that exists only in the heads of the person telling it and their cultists. And then push it on every kid in school. And it’s recent enough history that most kids will get rolled eyes from someone in the family, or other facts pointed out that make no sense in context. Which weakens their belief in what they were taught.

To make it worse, the progressive project has delighted in tearing down centuries-old accepted history, mostly by casting doubt in stupid ways. Things like “Oh, sure, you say Christianity won the west, but what about forced conversions?” (Which happened, but far less in the case of Christianity than any previous religion.) etc. etc. etc. undermining everything people thought they knew to install the “new word” of Marxism. Mind you a lot of what people thought they knew was indeed wrong, but it was wrong in ways that changed country to country and allowed people who didn’t travel much or didn’t have great curiosity to have a common stratum of “everybody knows this.”

The progressives have further undermined faith in the teaching of history and the information stream with their frantic attempts to hide the gigantic failure of communism and progressivism in general.

So the feeling people get is not that what they learned in school is canned and sometimes goofy and often wrong in details, but that it’s a full lying narrative, often weaponized against their own countries and cultures, in ways their older relatives dispute.

And this opens mind space to “What if they’re lying about everything?”

And then….. things like Tartaria appear, which is fun, but much worse things can appear.

Lest we forget both the Leninist and the Fascist project have their roots in times of just such instability, in the demise of the monarchies and their overarching narratives.

And already we see poisonous narratives appear, some very old like the divine right of kings (no really) and some given a shiny new coat of crazy paint, like the idea that all innovation came from Africa and white people just “stole” it.

The worst part is that the narratives from the top will keep not only fragmenting, but becoming crazier and more disconnected from reality as the once-dominant pseudo-elites try to get back in the saddle. the 1619 project is already a symptom of extreme crazy from above. And the crazier they get, the less they’re believed, and the more they will give rise to crazier and stranger theories that can’t be denied because at least — most of them — are more believable than the mainstream.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is how a civilization loses its history, buried in a mud flood.

Apres nous, le deluge.

162 thoughts on “The Poisoned Stream”

    1. Only the self-aware beings inhabiting blogs like this one. And they’re constantly testing themselves to make sure their eyes aren’t lying to them.

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  2. I would posit that we did have a mud flood … the muddy thinking of Marxism has leaked into too many brains and is clouding clear thought … it plays on the age old human desire for power … too many people think that tearing down the old will usher in a new utopia in which THEY will be one of the folks in power (they being so MUCH smarter than everyone else you know) …

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    1. This us why the great work of the Society for the Liquidation of Antisemites and Marxists should not be longed delayed.

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      1. Their force multiplier being the superb acronym.

        As an addendum, I am not enjoying the term “mud flood,” given the current state of much of Asheville after Helene. Not that I needed more reason for antipathy to this bonkers theory that sounds like something Vladimir Putin thought up while under heavy pain medication.

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        1. “given the current state of much of Asheville after Helene.”

          And the rest of the western 1/2 of the other states in the Appalachian mountains. I cringed too reading “mud flood”. And I’m clear out here in the west.

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          1. Oh. By the way. Besides neighbors helping neighbors, including those who have driven in from other states with donated supplies; Americans helping Americans. FEMA (I will agree that their job is to assist, not do), and the US military (not their fault they were later to the party, they have to follow orders, or else, no matter how itching they are to get to doing their job), who has shown up from the international community? Anybody? Canada? Britain? France? Germany? (Give Israel a pass, they’ve got their own problems.) Australia? Anybody?

            Never mind. I know the answer: Not One. That’s who.

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              1. Good point. I have heard that linemen came from Canada.

                Anywhere else?

                Don’t even have to have been sent by their government …

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  3. The only Mud Flood in the 1800’s I’m aware of was the earthquake that produced the Reel Foot event. And that was in Middle America. There were no great or advanced cities there at that time, much less civilizations. I want some of that weed they are smoking. Gotta be some good stuff!

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  5. “The dinosaurs are circling the Earth in a spaceship habitat, waiting for the right time to come back.”

    .
    Well, they’d likely do it in a really long period solar orbit to clear the neighborhood right around the asteroid(s) coming through, and to let asteroid impact issues and the resulting bell-ring volcanic eruptions on the other side all settle, then they (or their AIs as they sleep) likely took a few extra laps based on observations at subsequent perihelions (periheliae?) because of ice ages and such.

    Anything orbiting that far out would build up ice over the ship core. You know that comet you can just see before dawn right now?

    But really, based on observing Earth these days, would you land?

    I’m going to wave as they go by taking another lap…

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    1. ”That is the sum of our observations, including queries on their internet. We require a Sauroid sentient decision, Senior Captain Hissclick. Do you wish to initiate reanimation and landing procedures?”

      ”Are you frelling kidding me?” Senior Captain Hissclick shook his head, scratching a feather on his neck plume. “No way, no how, am I waking anyone else up to show them this. The civilian leadership would probably make me go land by myself if I did. The decision is N O. I am going back in the hibernation tank.”

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  6. 1619, not 1692?

    anyway. yeah

    Academia now is heavily bonkers, and there are a fair few deeply offensive and suspicious questions it is still pretty reasonable to ask.

    Anyway, what I came here to post about is actually related, in that the crazy wordpress dude being unhinged (1) on business practices, may reflect wider industry and business executive tendencies to being unhinged now as a result of the current, academic, legal, and political environment.

    https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/993895/c0438e0ee9382c5f/

    Possibly I am misinformed, or possibly I am not interpreting the info correctly, but this round of wordpress delenda est seems a wee bit more literal and insane than our usual complants about how poorly the software works.

    (1) allegedly

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    4. 1619, as the year the first African slaves were brought to Virginia. Three things happened that year in Virginia history, but I’ve forgotten the other two.

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  7. So where are the Tartarian trade goods, their cheap knives and beads used to trade with the natives, showing advanced civilizational traits and traces? And their overseas colonies, their ships at sea, and other happened-to-not-be-at-home artifacts?

    A worldwide finely selective material-and-people destroying disaster is pretty tricky o come up with.

    Nope, sorry, sticking with the dinos.

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    3. Supposedly all the neoclassical architecture of the 1800s, and random stuff like the Eiffel Tower and other World Fair monuments, were actually built by the Tartarians. All of Europe and the Americas were part of their overseas empire. They pull up maps of Central Asia (which did have a region called Tartaria) and use this as evidence that their whacko conspiracy version of Tartaria was real. It’s like saying, “Hey, there really was a country in Europe called Prussia, so this proves my theory that Prussia was once a global super-empire with flying cars and magic.”

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      1. And when the mud did its dirty deed, the flying cars they had driven over the ocean to their American possessions ended up displayed where in the then-extant Smithsonian museum?

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            1. Well, the reason there are no artifacts is the Tartarians, being Perfect in Every Way, were also environmentally aware and made everything they created biodegradable. Treading lightly on the planet, and so on.

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                1. Wad? Ist that wh’ I can’t speak clearly?

                  I needed that. The weather has been lovely, mostly, but my frame of mind has been varying from charcoal gray to black.

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  8. The latest one I stumbled across was a guy flying a plane in the 1940s(?) that reset reality or something as part of a military experiment. I just saw the headline and intro and skipped on past on the tube of yous

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    3. Years ago I remember (briefly) perusing something online called “The CINCPAC War,” positing that a false timeline had been laid over the “real” timeline (somehow) in the 1940s. To the extent I can remember, it seemed to be related to the efforts to rehabilitate the reputation of Admiral Husband Kimmel (CINCPAC on 7 Dec 1941).

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      1. Kimmel was a scapegoat, and Stark deserved immediate retirement plus flogging for his foul ups. And don’t get me started on planes-destroyed-on-the-ground-in-spite-of-hours-of-warning, MacArthur.

        It was politically necessary but they consistently fired the wrong guys that first year.

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        1. Oh, I largely agree, and I completely agree with your assessment of Dugout Doug. I really should read American Caesar one of these years, though when I think about it, it feels like a punishment detail….

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          1. I’m going to potential launch a flame war despite knowing that I won’t be reading or replying since I’m going out in about five minutes and probably won’t be online again till Monday.

            MacArthur was the best general the US produced in WWII, possibly ever. he captured more territory with the loss of fewer men than any modern general. He was personally brave, his physical courage was a problem for his staff. His staff now … OK they were largely second rate but then again Kenney, so it wasn’t all bad. To sum it all up in a word from a later war … Inchon. Inchon was pure genius and no one but MacArthur would have the nous and balls to do it.

            I’ve read American Caesar, and Once an Eagle, which is the source of many of the myths. I’ve also looked at the record and read the Australian Official History, which is by far the best and most unbiased history of the SW Pacific, I know the Marines didn’t like him and the Navy had Morrison to write their history, which came out first and all in one go, Also, the commies hated him as did the bulk of the democrat party.

            This probably sounds condescending, but it’s not. Please consider what you know about MacArthur and how much you’ve been told about MacArthur and then investigate the sources. It probably won’t turn you into an admirer, he really was a bit of a d-ck, but dugout Doug is simply BS.

            sorry, but that’s how I see it.

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            1. MacArthur made himself hated long before WWII, when he led the suppression of the Bonus Army. The reason he was in the Philippines was supposedly fallout from that.

              After that, he and Patton were much alike: you either loved him or hated him.

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            2. The Reader agrees MacArthur was a genius on his good days. His bad days however gave the Philippines to the Japanese in a walkover (see December 8, 1941 as the second day that should live in infamy) and regardless of Inchon, he can never be forgiven for Chosin Reservoir.

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            3. Also don’t forget that both Eisenhower and Patton trained under him and were free to develop maneuver warfare under his encouragement and toutelage. A good leader does not get in the way of his star pupils, a great leader encourages and sets them up for success. I contend that Doug did the latter with both those men.

              I have my concerns about some of his actions, but his ability to organize and to minimize deaths in his command while achieving the objective is difficult to argue with.

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        2. Pfft changing history is childsplay. They try to change the now right before your eyes. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.

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          1. …and then next week we were always at war with Eurasia. And Cackling Commula is a brilliant national leader, and Slow Joe Biden is fully aware of what day it is, and what city he’s ranting in.

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  9. Like our fine hostess, I too have just returned from a trip to Europe, Switzerland in my case. Why Switzerland? Well, there’s the Alps, and glaciers, and cows (cow festivals are a whole lot of fun!), and history. For my wife, the history was a key ingredient because one of her seven-great grandfathers was a minister at the Bernische Munster (catherdral in Bern) in the eraly 1700s. He was booted for heresy, although it was really he was too popular among the masses and the establishment didn’t like the competition. At any rate, my wife is a hard core geneaologist, who needs physical evidence before she says “yep, that’s one of my ancestors.” She has that hard core physical evidence for everybody going back to 1700, some even earlier, and there weren’t no mud flood in the 1800s, and there certainly was no evidence of advanced civilations with wireless energy sources back then. (I will say the art from the Baroque era was way more advanced than what we have now, but not because of technology.) I’ll second the motion that Tartaria is even stranger than Atlantis as far as longing for the good old days goes.

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  10. (After following the links and reading about something I had absolutely never heard of before…) Good night nurse – what have these people been drinking? And it must be really, really good, with hallucinogenic properties …

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  11. D-mn and blast, another conspiracy theory to dive into. Rabbit hole. …. Hole Rabbit. Must not go down, must not go down, must not go down. Oh hell, here goes.

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  12. Pfft…

    The dinosaurs aren’t orbiting the planet. They’re still here. But as written by the great heroes Alcatraz and Bastille Smedry, dinosaurs are incredibly annoying. So the Conspiracy of Evil Librarians hide them from those of us who live in the lands that the Librarians control.

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    1. Um…that would be chickens. Pretending to be innocent sources of entertainment, they wait for the day they’ll eat our eyeballs and poop on what’s left.

      Every seen a flock of chickens go after something? Looks just like the running velociraptors in Jurassic Park.

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      1. Heh. A backyard chicken did try to peck my eye out when I was a baby. My mom quickly converted it into dinner.

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  13. Have blessing of coming from literate families. Thousands of books. History books written more than a century ago. Interesting to see how those books tell more about the time they were written than the time they write about.

    Reading David Weber’s latest series, “Governor” and “Rebel”. Set in the future, it reads more like a commentary about today. The rebel is a member of the “500” who are the rich elite, The “rebel” turns against them, doing the right thing. So they have to lie about him, call him one who seeks to lead a revolt. So even tho he does not want a revolution, those who oppose him end up causing it. Sound familiar?

    I have been to a archaeological excavation in San Diego where they located the grave of my great -great grandfather born in 1799. His son married the granddaughter of the second in command of the DeAnza expedition that traveled to California in 1776. They established San Jose and Santa Clara. That great, great, great…, is buried in the Floor of the San Francisco Mission.

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    1. If you’ve read Path Of The Fury, you know that he’s destined to be His Majesty, Emperor Terrence the First, founder of the House of Murphy.

      Even though he only wanted to reform the Federation, not overthrow it. But the Five Hundred like the Federation just as it is, corruption, abuse and all. They believe they can deny reality with impunity forever and rule with terror alone.

      Murphy finds that there is but one greater sin than to be right when those in power are wrong — proving it!

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      1. Sounds like today. Trump just wanted to make a deal to reform things.

        He did not realized how he threatened a lot of rice bowls. Or did he?

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      2. Checked my science fiction selections. Have “Path of fury”. Likely read it decades ago.

        It rings a bell. The fury is a Greek goddess? Fury. When you have read thousands of science fiction books, I don’t remember all of them. That way I can reread them. Need to find someone in Mordor west to pass on thousands of books if/when we have to move.

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          1. Don’t have the expanded version from 2007. So something to look for.

            My favorite Weber is the Safehold series. Hope Weber lives long enough to get to the aliens. He has a lot of incomplete series.

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    1. That reminds me, there is a jackelope (jackalope?) museum in Dubois, Wyoming. And btw, the locals pronounce it dew boys because no one liked the Dubois, the founder of the town. :)

      But the online records from Franche Comté suggest that the Tartarians were able to forge a great many records about a fictional 16th and 17th century milieu and leave them behind for future genealogical researchers.

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      1. Italy, Texas is pronounced “It-lee”. Really not much of a place on I-35 south of Dallas, but the Monolithic Dome factory shaped like a giant catapillar is visiable from the highway.

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        1. Like Kay-row Illinois? (Cairo)

          Or El Do-RAY-do, Arkansas.

          Or (in the 1950s) L’Sangliss, California.

          Or Berdoo, California. (San Bernardino)

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            1. San Pedro, CA is San PEED-roe
              Verdi, NV is VURR-dye
              Tempe, AZ is Tem-PEE

              …or yew ain’t frum here.

              (You say toe-MAY-toe? I say TOMA-too!)

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        2. And in my part of GA there is a suburb called “Martinez.” Of course Mr. Sajak pronounced it the Spanish way. Around here we call it Martn-ez. But that still beats the (Georgia) pronunciation of Butte, MT as “Booty, Montana.”

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  16. They are waking up to the fact that their Marxist world view is built upon lies. Everything they believe is wrong so they grab a hold of new lies to replace the old ones. They are still building sand castles in the sky and deep down they know it. So, all they have left is crazy, I pity them, for they are blinded from the truth by their own delusions.

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  17. Hard to have a “Divine Right of Kings: without having a Divinity. Which at least preserves a belief in God. Of course, if the characteristics and commands of Him are constructed and manufactured to support the Party line, rather than His Commandments; I don’t think He will be very pleased.

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  18. I think an important part of the Tartaria Mud Flood belief structure comes from architecture. Suppose you’re a Millennial, born in 1995 or so. All the new and recent buildings you see are boring boxes, the houses are flimsy, and even big expensive “prestige” projects wind up looking like a pile of titanium-anodized garbage. Everything is cramped and inconvenient, with low ceilings, narrow corridors, and ill-proportioned rooms.

    Then you look at old buildings: Grand Central Station, the U.S. Capitol, English manor houses, the Invalides in Paris, etc. They are beautiful, well-constructed, and spacious. And “old-timey” photos show that once buildings like that were _everywhere_. Even small cities had grand train stations, courthouses, hotels, etc.

    It seems (to our hypothetical Millennial) that humans once could build great buildings but somehow lost that ability. All modern attempts fail in some way. Evidently some higher civilization once existed but disappeared, leaving its great structures behind. And the small-minded incompetent modern societies deny they existed.

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    1. It’s funny-ish, but it’s also enraging. I ran into a Tartaria video about some random Catholic college chapel in Australia, and they were coming up with various Tartarian interpretations (I think humorously meant).

      So I linked to info about who built it, and and who designed it, and who wired it, and who donated to raise the money; and photos of the building in progress, and photos of its consecration as a chapel, and even links to the website of the company that cut the stone (which is still around).

      I know a lot of it is a joke, but it’s the kind of joke that isn’t funny.

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    3. In one of our railroad magazines, there was an article about a guy so filthy rich he commissioned a “studio” on rails. He purchased old rails and had them laid so as to have his studio literally move along rails. It was custom-designed and custom-built, with wheels and motors.

      SERIOUS money. And with all that money invested, the photos showed a sad, modern, look-ma-I’m-an-architect box. Tall, slab-sided, glassy, etc. You’d think with the funds poured into it the designer could have come up with something that kinda-sorta LOOKED like a train car.

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  19. The “everything you were taught is wrong” mentality leads also to the recent explosion of popularity in the flat earth theory, which is hilariously stupid, but I can also see how it’s a satisfying refuge for reactance (“you told me it’s false, therefore it must be true”).

    But they’re not wrong, just about everything they were taught, especially since the late 1980s, in public schools (and most private schools, alas) has been varying shades of lie. Slavery was unique to the USA, for instance. Racism is rampant at all levels of society right now, for another.

    And worse, their ability to teach themselves has been crippled, and deliberately. The teachers’ unions nationwide are uniformly hostile to teaching children phonics, they far prefer the methods of learning to read that don’t work. People graduate high school unable to read, let alone to reason.

    Indeed, the longer I live, the more I believe that the education establishment was taken over by worse than Marxists — by “devouring mother” archetypes who want revenge against the world for not being the way they want it to be. Consider how men were hounded out of teaching elementary level classes due to insinuations of pedophilia. As a body, teachers are actively hostile to the old methods that worked, and always for the latest fad that doesn’t, but makes them Look Important.

    The old methods worked, but they’re not sexy. They’re not trendy. Using them doesn’t gain anyone praise or government grants or prestigious awards.

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      2. Yep. About as sharp as a marble, these ones.

        Aside, I find myself having less and less sympathy for the poorly taught these days. Yes, they’ve been lied to all their lives. Sure, they are surrounded by earnest fools with megaphones and marketing degrees. Might even be they know the cost of stepping out of line too.

        However: It ain’t like the alternative is hidden like a bloody murder mystery. Sure, we’re lied about constantly, but that ain’t a proper excuse. One can bloody well look into us for themselves and make up their own mind. Plenty of folks have done so. And it ain’t like we’re averse to explicating our points of view (of which there are many).

        Those that actually look into Conservatism/Liberty/anybloodything to the right of Lenin, they tend to become more Conservative. Funny how that works out, right? You learn more about those eeebul Conservatards, and suddenly you get more Conservative?

        No wonder they are so frightened of us. We are their antithesis and eventual end. Their ever-changing utopic vision will never arrive. Our ideal is merely freedom from oppression: from excessive taxation, legalese, red tape, bureaucratic burden, crime, invasion, surveillance, and general botheration. The more a person tastes freedom, the more they want.

        Liberty be crack, yo. But it’s good for ya. Promise.

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        1. And wondering how much effect accidental rewiring due to excessive internet use/social media use has had on their ability to retain for the long term and process data. Learning, digging, chewing over things, absorbing older cultural traits … All those take effort, concentration, and building memory muscles. At what age does it become very difficult to develop those mental muscles if they’ve been atrophied or rewired?

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    2. This goes for everything. Local goverents jobs should be confined to maintaining public infrastructure or expanding it as population requires. This is hard to do, very hard. It requires constant attention, can be expensive and is completely u glamourous or sexy. Politicians are about the sizzle. So above the level of a small town we get grinding disasters. Add to this dislocations and evolutions in industries and business and we have what we have

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  20. David Brin wrote a story in the 90s where archeology students digging in an LA trash disposal site in the early 21st century started turning up bodies. Lots of them. Very old people tried to stop the digs. News spread and other groups digging in modern trash heaps started finding bodies.

    The skeletons looked like Neaderthals but were weraing the remains of 50s clothing. From what they found…..essentially everyone alive in the 50s was replaced….Neaderthals with modern humans.

    No one knew why or when or who or how. No records. The time period coincided with all the body snatcher and aliens among us movies.

    Hidden/alternative history at its finest

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    1. My idea for a hidden/suppressed history story was that in about the year 2100 someone digging around a dusty corner of a library stumbles on a box full of books containing official economic & other statistics of the USSR. Finding such a stash of official-looking records totally at variance with the received wisdom of how the 20th century went, he becomes convinced that he’s found evidence of a conspiracy by some economic/political cabal to suppress a high point of human civilization & flourishing.

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  21. I just read about Tartaria for the first time in a different blog a few days ago – a writer was concerned his wife was falling into this black hole of crazy. He reported it from a religious point of view: it all has something to do with the return of Christ in 70 A.D. ? and Satan being in charge of the world, and Christ and the saints have retreated to the North Pole??? And by the way, the Earth is flat. He did not mention mud floods, but saw it as a whole bunch of conspiracy theories tied together with a “Christian theology” angle.

    He claimed their facebook page had 16,000+ subscribers. He was writing asking for help since nothing he has tried so far helps to sway his wife from believing all of it. Is this the same people ? , or a different variation of the same crazy?

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    1. The Christian theology aspect is a new wrinkle to me, and I’ve looked into Tartaria a few times over the years. Compared to what you describe, “Tesla coils powered the entire planet for millennia” sounds almost plausible.

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  22. One part of the problem is that a certain percentage of all of the “conspiracy theorists” don’t believe in the actual conspiracies – they’re just trolls. The people running the Flat Earth Society seem to be from that breed – but they stay close enough to the message to convince weak-minded folks to believe.

    I’ve met people who actually believe in the Church of the Subgenius. Not in a silly and clever way, but for real. Yes, there are some people who are so divorced from reality that they fully believe in a religion that was fake – and loudly so – from its creation.

    I still run into people who believe in Velikovsky, too, and that one’s not even popular any more.

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    1. I will say this much for Velikovsky: the methods he proposed were not insane, as they were represented to be. He did himself no favors by reaching the conclusions he did, of course. But looking for commonalities across cultural myths, and using those as a starting point to determine if there was a common experience at that time was not a terrible idea. Just, you know, not enough to reach conclusions.

      Same deal with Graham Hancock, really. Archaeologists have an unfortunate history of marrying theories based on necessarily-limited evidence, and then declaring that Nothing More Can Be Found. And drumming out of the profession anyone who finds anything to the contrary, for a generation or two. (The Clovis Theory is the most recent example.) I don’t especially hold with Hancock’s conclusions, but his assertion that there is some unknown amount of evidence as yet undiscovered (or even just not yet understood) is quite reasonable.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. I think one small part of the problem is how vehemently (to put it mildly) some archaeologists react when new data are found that challenges their career findings, or that upsets their old thesis. I can sympathize with the initial reactions – I didn’t like having to redo half my MA thesis because of data that I found. But once the initial shock/anger passes, it should pass, and people should be willing to take a deep breath and say, “OK, how does this new stuff fit with my old stuff? Might this bit over here explain that better? Don’t think this other chunk works the way New Kid/ Outsider claims, but what if we jiggle this data and modify his idea a touch …”

        Like taking what of Gimbutas works, looking at some of the climate and language data, adding in new archaeological evidence, and then going from there. While still admitting that there’s stuff we don’t know and probably can’t know. Or being cool with saying “This seems to be an outlier. We don’t know why it is the way it is, yet, but it’s different and neat and let’s see if anything similar survived in the area. No? OK, so why might it have developed this way, and then collapsed or been abandoned and different cultures replaced it. Environmental change? Religion no longer fit the local need? Overpopulation led to resource failures that cast the belief system or political system into doubt?”

        Liked by 1 person

        2. The core of Dorothy Sayer’s Gaudy Night turns out to depend on scholarly integrity. As in, one character found evidence that invalidated their entire thesis and suppressed it rather than start over. And got caught. All off-stage but turns out to be vitally important.

          I think I remember Charles Williams touching on that in Descent Into Hell as well.

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          1. “Touching on that” is putting it mildly. It was the Inciting Incident for one antagonist’s entire (titular)character arc. And then the rival who happened to be right on that one point is an ass and a nonentity himself, further puerilizing the particular character’s feud with him.

            Charles Williams’ novels are nearly all like doing Plato (or Aquinas, or Abelard I suppose, or St. Augustine) as LSD. But never quite a Bad Trip among them.

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    2. Yes, there are some people who are so divorced from reality that they fully believe in a religion that was fake – and loudly so – from its creation.

      Speaking of, I give you: Scientology.

      Don’t thank me.

      There’s a reason Dianetics and Scientology resemble bad science fiction — they ARE bad science fiction. Created by a science fiction writer, no less. Word was though, ol’ Laffy started to believe his own bullshit toward the end.

      Like

      1. Allegedly, L. Ron Hubbard set out to “prove,” you could create the silliest possible religion and find believers.

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          1. Um, no, LRH very definitely lost. He lost his freedom for the last ten years or so of his life, and lost control of his organization to the psychopath David Miscavige. The latter was a direct cause of the former.

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              1. Oh, not at all. In fact, I tend to view it as a model for how all systems and intellectual properties get handled over time. Sooner or later a psycho games the system to gain control and prestige, with little concern for what it is they control. Pretty much every time.

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      2. Not quite. Hubbard created a laughable religion, sure. But he sincerely wanted to part as many believers from their money as possible. And he did it as a religion in part because he lost control of Dianetics for a time through legal shenanigans and also to avoid taxes.

        But he never proclaimed, let alone loudly, that his religion was fake. The closest claim to that I have ever seen, and it is apocryphal (in the sense of having no certain and undisputed source), is that he was asked why he was creating a religion, he smirked and said he was going to sell people “a piece of blue sky”.

        (I may or may not have spent a year in the 1990s doing a deep dive on Hubbard’s history, out of morbid fascination.)

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    3. “…they fully believe in a religion that was fake – and loudly so – from its creation.”

      “Paging L. Ron Hubbard – Mr Hubbard, please come to the fuschia telephone.”

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  23. Some great news!

    HaHa SinNoMore of Ham-ass got smoked. Apparently IDF told a variant of their basic Knock Knock joke, with a tank main gun, and he was the punchline. He was identified by his summer teeth.

    Some ‘re here. Some ‘re there.

    I will be passing out the customary sweets tomorrow.

    POP! Goes the weasel.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13970937/IDF-investigating-claims-Hamas-leader-Yahya-Sinwar-KILLED-Gaza-images-circulate-said-terrorists-body.html

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Story is a called up reservist tanker on foot patrol in his first tour saw some bozo poke his head out of a window and directed the tanks HE thereupon.

      Serendipity indeed.

      Like

      1. A 120mm HEAT or HESH round is quite the punch for “Candygram for Mongo!”

        Of course, there is always “Main gun in the brain pan. Squish!”

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          1. From the damage to the building, HE was definitely involved. Cannister/Beehive is more for troops in the open.

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            1. The IDF has just released drone footage of what it says is the Hamas kingpin’s last moments. The drone flew in to a wrecked house and saw a guy sitting on a dusty sofa, face covered, holding a stick. The drone just hovered in front of him like a freaking bumblebee and then he threw the stick at it (and missed). That’s all they showed. You couldn’t really tell if it was the Hamas guy or not, honestly, but it’s pretty funny nevertheless.

              Liked by 1 person

  24. There is something inherent in the human mind that makes it so easy for conspiracies to take hold. I blame human pattern recognition, the ability to nominally put two and two together and get four…ish…maybe.

    Especially when people want to believe in the conspiracy because now they have something. They possess something powerful and private and theirs. And it can’t be taken away from them because it’s an intangible. It is something in their minds that is theirs.

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    2. They are, truly, committed seethers!

      Zion

      The Doorkeepers of Zion,
      They do not always stand
      In helmet and whole armour,
      With halberds in their hand;
      But, being sure of Zion,
      And all her mysteries,
      They rest awhile in Zion,
      Sit down and smile in Zion;
      Ay, even jest in Zion;
      In Zion, at their ease.

      The Gatekeepers of Baal,
      They dare not sit or lean,
      But fume and fret and posture
      And foam and curse between;
      For being bound to Baal,
      Whose sacrifice is vain,
      Their rest is scant with Baal,
      They glare and pant for Baal,
      They mouth and rant for Baal,
      For Baal in their pain!

      But we will go to Zion,
      By choice and not through dread,
      With these our present comrades
      And those our present dead;
      And, being free of Zion
      In both her fellowships,
      Sit down and sup in Zion —
      Stand up and drink in Zion
      Whatever cup in Zion
      Is offered to our lips!

      — by some Dead White Male Racist Sexist Phobe, probably.

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  27. Yesterday on my way to the grocery store I saw a big pile of burning garbage in the middle of the road, with two fire trucks and a Police Officer Car in attendance amid a great deal of commotion.

    Of course I wondered ‘Who put that pile of burning garbage in the middle of the road?’

    Fortunately it was a frontage road so it didn’t block traffic a whole lot, but one of the fire trucks sort of did. Once I got past the fire truck, I could see a garbage truck parked about half a block up the street and what happened was now clear. The garbage must have caught fire in the truck, and they dumped it out so as not to add a burning garbage truck to the problem.

    As usual, one solution just led to another question: ‘What F-ing idiot put something in the garbage that set it on fire?’ The answer to that one was not apparent.

    Always be careful what you throw in the garbage!

    Liked by 1 person

    1. The first glaring sign to the neighbors that a gent was starting to have problems was when he decided to burn papers in the dumpster. It was still smoking when I started to toss garbage in. I had to use the hose to finish extinguishing the remains. When I asked if he’d noticed anything, he said that he started the fire, but “I put two buckets on it. Should have been out.”

      Like

    2. Our bin a big warning on it: NO HOT COALS

      Sadly, it seems some need that warning…. and/or did not heed such.

      As it’s a plastic bin, not putting hot coals in it seems seems “common” sense. The base problem is that common sense ain’t.

      Like

      1. The year I cleaned up July 4th too soon (that night). In my defense I was smart enough to not put the leavings in the garbage in the garage. They went into a laundry basket on the lawn. In the morning the basket was “gone”. Who steals a laundry basket full of garbage?

        …. (suitable interval for reflection …)

        Um … In my defense, there was only a tiny scorch mark on the front lawn not immediately visible from the front window. Subsequent years not cleaned up for a minimum of 16 hours. Kicked to the curb out of the street, but not picked up.

        FYI. Not uncommon for a house fire to occur early hours of July 5th because someone celebrating cleaned up “too soon” and put cleanup into trash either in garage or alongside house.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. If I had a nickel for every yahoo who put “dead” ashes in a paper bag and left it beside the door, causing a bit of excitement from several minutes to an hour or so later, I could probably invest it and donate my pension to some deserving individual.

          They probably outnumber the other yahoos, the ones who’ve shot themselves with “empty” firearms, by quite a bit.

          Liked by 2 people

  28. The distrust of institutions is like a cultural version of fever. Fever is not directly caused by the disease. It is caused by the body’s attempt to get rid of the disease.

    In our case, the disease is institutions that abuse the trust placed in them. Maybe this means we’re developing cultural antibodies.

    Of course, while fever is generally beneficial, it can still kill you.

    Liked by 1 person

  29. I am about to THROW UP. PBS did a short (12 minutes) about Judy-Lynn Del Rey, back on October 1, that was connected to their American Masters series. It’s on YT.

    Do you know how they blurbed it?

    “The story of a woman with dwarfism who….”

    She was an influential editor, and nobody cared how tall she was.

    Oh, and she was only important because science fiction can “redefine disability.” And of course nobody else in the entire Sf tradition has been disabled in any way; and of course Judy-Lynn just sat there all day at Del Rey, buying nothing but books where people suffer. Because all you can ever be is your checkbox and your oppressedness.

    F them. F them and their entire hateful bunch.

    If it weren’t current-day, I’d desperately want to watch it. As it is, I’m afraid to even see who they interviewed for it, or who does voiceovers. Probably a bunch of creeps who weren’t even alive when she was working.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Gizmodo, of all places, had an article about it by one of the sf professors, but he didn’t really review it because he was a source. He mostly talks about the career of the woman herself. And to his credit, he does talk about the woman, not about her height and genetics.

      https://gizmodo.com/the-woman-who-revolutionized-the-fantasy-genre-is-finally-getting-her-due-2000511317

      I had forgotten that the Hugos never even nominated her for anything Best Editor. But that was back when Del Rey was also getting awarded the Benjamins, and therefore had to be punished. (Or possibly, DAW and other publishers were fiddling with the nominations even then.)

      It’s part of a series of short documentaries (called Renegades), that are all about somewhat obscure but important people who had disabilities. But I mean… that’s a huge number of people. Half of America’s greatest military heroes and generals had serious disabilities. People are always joking about how everybody profiled by Fat Electrician is too blind to read an eye chart, is missing a finger for stupid reasons, or has a permanent head injury by the age of three. When you get into things like the arts, obviously there are even more weird artists out there than weird soldiers, so any disabilities would tend to fade behind all the strong personalities or their work’s quality.

      The idea that you should focus on a person’s disabilities, instead of on their achievements and how they dealt with all their problems, including any disabilities, would seem to be more depressing than helpful to anyone with serious disabilities.

      Liked by 1 person

    2. The woman voicing her is obnoxious, and that’s before looking her up (it’s this person: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm6861035/ ).

      First interview bit is a pinkhair I don’t recognize. (Carded later as Shelly Shapiro, former editorial director at Del Rey, so, fair.)

      Second dude is lispy, but not bad. (Namecard later has him as Dennis Wilson Wise, Ph.D.)

      Third is Toni Weisskopf, looking good and in fine voice.

      And then we get “host”, who has a disability and starts by telling you that. facepalm She is “introduc[ing] you to Disabled Renegades”, because fuck off, that’s why.

      Bujold shows up, and is cogent and reasonable. I don’t know that she ever got edited by Del Rey, but whatever.

      First time I’ve ever seen Stephen R. Donaldson or heard him speak.

      OK, halfway through, and it’s actually pretty good. The host is awful, the voiceovers acting out dead authors and editors are terrible, but they make a point that she was about making SF fun, and appealing to teenage readers, and Donaldson has fun bits about her and Lester’s commitment to silliness in day to day life.

      …aaaaaand now it’s about how DIVERSE and INCLUSIVE SF cons are. But even with the virtue signaling, they’re getting through that it’s nerd spaces, not snowflake spaces.

      Man, this is such a mixed bag. But the good bits are, in fact, quite good.

      Like

    3. I used to watch NOVA. They generally had stuff of scientific or historical or both interest. Then one February (“Black History Month”) they had a show about some black scientist… my first thought was, “Great, finally someone beside George Washington Carver!” (not to belittle Carver) BUT instead of going on about his scientific works, it was naught but “See how he suffered for his skin, see how horrible….” and so on. I don’t recall who he was, and certainly none of his accomplishments. Why? I bailed… on that episode – and that was at least halfway in if not more and they STILL HADN’T GOTTEN TO ANYTHING OF INTEREST!, on NOVA, and on PBS…. and not long after, on television altogether.

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  30. Asimov wrote a fascinating essay, The Relativity of Wrong, exploring the idea that some things are wronger than others.

    For example, it is wrong to say that the United States was founded on the principle of All Men Are Created Equal, and it is wrong to say that aliens secretly control our planet from headquarters in Arcturus. But one of these is much closer to the truth than the other.

    Or, Asimov put it in an argument with John W. Campbell: “When the ancients claimed that the world was flat, they were wrong. When we more recently claimed that the world was a sphere, that was wrong too. But if you think that these two ideas are EQUALLY wrong, then you are wronger than both of them put together!”

    It is common for teenagers to spot a trifling error in what they were taught, and choose to throw out the whole thing. (We used to call this “throwing out the baby with the bathwater”.) Adults should have more common sense about such things.

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    1. “Throwing out the Teenager with the Tantrum”

      or “How I learned to pitch a tent in the backyard”

      ….

      Actually, learned tent/tarp and related bushcraft at age 6 at summer camp, thus near impossible to be truly “homeless”.

      Like

    2. And then there’s what Terry Pratchett referred to as ‘lies for children,’ where you give an explanation that is almost entirely wrong, but makes some surface-level sense because the real answer requires knowledge or reasoning that you don’t yet have.

      The first case that comes to mind is an explanation for how wings work: that they force the air over the top of the wing to take a longer route around the wing, thus that air is more spread out and exerts less pressure, therefore the higher pressure on the wing’s bottom pushes the wing up.

      Except planes can fly upside down. And adding a second (or third, or…) wing mostly just adds drag, not lift; the WWII-era Storch was famous for its ridiculously low stall speed, had been carefully designed for it, and it was a monoplane.

      Which is, of course, why the real answer is that pilots are actually wizards, and the ‘pre-flight checklist’ is mostly just casting the spell that keeps the plane in the air. Bigger, faster planes take more magic to stay up, so longer, more-involved, multi-person ‘checklists.’

      Liked by 2 people

      1. And of course, it’s common knowledge that helicopters don’t actually fly; they’re jus so ugly that the Earth rejects them.

        And Bernoulli’s Principle is correct; it’s just insufficient to explain lift in aircraft wings. Angle of attack does the heavy lifting (NPI).😉

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        1. “Stick your hand out the car window. Now angle it up a bit. Feel your hand trying to fly away? That’s how wings work. They’re bigger than your hand, so they can lift heavier weights.”

          Or, kite flying is another good demonstration.

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      2. And rockets, being the most powerful and complex flying machines yet invented, require an entire chorus doing Gregorian Chant in order to get off the ground safely.

        ”Capcooooom…”

        ”Goooooo.”

        ”All stations are gooooo.”

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        1. It may actually be true that we just don’t have the design art for the larger rockets down yet.

          Perhaps we could improve our knowledge of design and operation for rockets enough that we really could drastically simplify the preflight for a rocket.

          But maybe that is about as possible as really understanding transient turbulent compressible high pressure flow. Or as flying by flapping our arms without the use of additional manufactured wings.

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      3. Pressure I think integrated over surface area is I think force summed. (I could easily have that wrong, before coffee, and I have not done those surface integrations enough for stuff to stick.)

        And, yes, force summed is an approximation that is wrong in some ways, but the kids still should do their free body diagrams, and should for a while while doing those pretend that rigid bodies exist.

        The kids are not wrong, because what they are actually instructed in these days is a toxic mess of evil, and they are both learning that everything is really a conspiracy, and that fantastical conspiracies are possible.

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  31. @ B.Durbin > “Anyway, let me go tour the Old Sac underground from when they deliberately raised the city in the 1860s”

    A similar thing happened in Galveston after the Great Hurricane of 1900 . A gazillion tons of sand was dredged from the Galveston shipping channel to raise the city by pumping it underneath some of the buildings, and in other places laying it on top of the existing streets up to the top of the first floor (American system) and the asphalt re-laid. I’ve toured the old houses where you go in at the current street level onto what was once the second floor, then go downstairs to what is now the basement but was the original entry floor, with the rooms laid out accordingly.

    It’s kind of spooky!

    The Tartarians could have lived there….

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