Member Skype #14 Warmup – ‘The Weird and Whacky’
UPDATE 16-Apr-2018: Member Skype #14 now available here.
Introducing Warmup Threads
From now on I will be posting a ‘Warmup’ thread for each upcoming Member Skype Call.
These Warmup threads will give participants a chance to get up to speed with the week’s topic, and also get a read on the perspectives of others prior to the call.
My hope is that the threads themselves will generate insightful discussion in and of themselves, while also improving the quality of the calls themselves.
Soon I will be releasing the preliminary/nominal schedule for the next three months worth of Member Skype calls, as per this post.
Call #14 will take place on Sunday morning, April 15 (Australia time), which is of course Saturday night, April 14, US time.
Topic #14: The Weird and Whacky
The topic for MSC #14 shall be ‘the weird and whacky’.
I was inspired to select this topic after recently being contacted by a former member of the site, Danny Blitz, who left on good terms some months ago.
He had heard me in a recent Fakeologist call explaining that I do not believe in chemtrails, and so took the time to send me the following photos.
The following is copied verbatim from the email:
Hi John,
I heard you say on a recent audio that you don’t believe in chemtrails. I’m not sure exactly what you mean by that but I have attached some photos I took yesterday of some clouds made by planes in the sky above my town.
I was out of town for the moment the plane left the biggest trails initially, but the first photo shows the result of two earlier trails and another one being created over on the right. the second photo is a few minutes later. I also shot some footage if you want to see it. Years ago i had a lot of photos of this stuff and other phenomena in the sky but that material is on old hardrives in storage.
While it has been quiet lately, this was a very common occurrence some years ago over Ballarat. Often we would have no cloud cover at all for days if not for the planes trails spreading out and becoming it.
I don’t think these are contrails, which I have seen, and that dissipate quite quickly, this is something else.
Just thought you might be interested as you don’t seem to have witnessed these things yourself.
Many thanks to Danny Blitz for taking the time to share his perspective, and evidence, with me like that.
It is certainly true that I do not believe in chemtrails, if the term ‘chemtrails’ means what I understand it to mean:
Chemtrails: intentional, cloud-like formations produced by toxic chemicals emitted from visible aircraft in the skies above.
It might be that some chemtrail believers have different ideas or understandings of what the term means, to them and/or to others.
This is one of the key distinctions between the work and thought process of critical thinkers and the regular masses. Critical thinking involves defining key terms and concepts at the outset, so that time is not wasted ‘talking past’ one another, or equivocating on meaning, or devolving into semantic arguments.
I encourage you to check out my (dry but informative) video series Thinking 101 for a further exploration of the importance of key terms and concepts.
In any event, the upcoming call will be a place for us to discuss topics like chemtrails and other topics of a similar bent. I am sure that this site is home to at least one or two members who believe in chemtrails, and I would love to hear what they have to say.
I also know for a fact that at least one or two members here are also interested in topics like the one I personally call ‘geographical apophenia’. Example below:
This is based only on inference, but I would also be willing to bet that at least one or two members here believe in aliens and/or ‘outer space’.
Perhaps there are a few who also believe in ghosts/poltergeists.
So these are the kinds of topics we can discuss here and during the call proper.
Some people might see my choice of title as a little bit too cheeky, maybe even condescending, but this is not my intention. For one thing, I am open to renaming the topic if anybody has a worthy suggestion to put forward. For me personally, I see the topic title as inviting those who may have been staying quiet about their own alternative views to come forward, without concern about it not fitting in with the general skeptical vibe of the site. I will obviously maintain my own skepticism, but this is one call where I will try to take a back seat and let those with ideas and opinions to share do just that.
Once upon a time I was against what I would call ‘speculative’ discussions, but now I see that for many (most? all?) people, their sense of wonder about this thing we call the universe is maintained/satiated by these kinds of speculations. I can’t ‘prove’ that Sync is a ‘real’ thing and yet it has enriched not merely my intellectual understanding of certain phenomena but life in general. While I would not put ‘chemtrails’ in the same category as sync, others might, and this goes to the heart of the matter: these things are subjective.
What is important one person may be meaningless to another; and vice versa.
So, before I have released the nominal schedule for the next 12 weeks worth of calls, I say we throw the floor open to what I would personally describe as the ‘weird and whacky’.
Chemtrails, aliens, poltergeists, geographical apophenia, whatever floats your boat.
Note 1
I will maintain my skepticism and am sure that others here will, too. Please do not get offended if you believe in things which other people find to be ridiculous.
Remember that I have largely made my name in this scene by ridiculing things like the Cavendish experiment. Ridiculing is part of my shtick, and I accept that being ridiculed back — often by functional retards — comes with the territory. A thick skin is a precious trait to develop and utilise not just online but ‘in real life’.
Note 2
Related to Note 1, let’s all continue to treat others with respect. Friends can mock friends without causing or meaning offense, because it is all taken in good spirit. This is how I will treat others here and hope that others can treat me, too.
Note 3
These ‘Warmup’ threads will be made available to the public, while the calls themselves will continue to be for Members only. If you want to keep your cards close to your chest, save them for the call proper. My hope is that by publicising the warmups, more people will feel inclined to sign up to the site and take part in the conversations.
In one of the first calls I was in i remember mezzie mentioned something about a guy who had allegedly taken the DNA of a rock and determined that it was “human”, or some strange claim like that. I am probably remembering it a bit wrong, it was a sort of ridiculous sounding claim iirc.
When she told about the guy making the claim, I immediately thought back to one day earlier when I was listening to “Man on the Moon” by REM. I had listened to it the day before and it blew my mind, for the first time I felt like I had understood what “Andy” was saying. So when Mezzie told that story and what that “scientist” had discovered, I immediately thought of “Andy”.
https://youtu.be/1hKSYgOGtos
Within a minute JLB posted a link to the wiki page of “apophenia”, i read the first example of apophenia and it said the phrase “man on the moon”.
Maybe it was a couple minutes? Who knows with skype time
And I thought of that as a sync, even though I was trying to avoid seeing syncs, because seeing syncs sort of makes me feel crazy.
I didnt just think of that song, I imagined going off on an Andy/motm tangent
i dunno, man – i really enjoy hearing about your syncs (and welcome anyone else who cares to share theirs).
right after we were comparing notes re: last year’s eclipse, the randomized screensaver on the computer i use at work switched to a pic of an eclipse, and i found that pretty damn sync-y.
and it’s interesting that Jim Carrey (aka, Truman) also played Andy…ladder to sirius? ascension?
or just the continuation of an esoteric narrative that began with Carrey’s immediately prior starring role, wherein he meets the Man in the Moon, aka Christof?
I have also had a syncy experience with that song by REM. I suppose the track lends itself to that.
It is amusing how out in the open the ‘moon landing’ hoax is. ‘If you belieeeve they put a man on the moon’…
The list of your supporters, its shaped funny.
funny, but justified 😛
Very good.
Yeah I kinda got sick of constantly updating that widget. People had been coming and going on a daily basis.
Plus I thought it was kinda cool to have Big Dave taking up a whole line to himself.
Lately things seem to have stabilised, so I have updated it the widget. Now it should look more ‘normal’.
Roger, from the The Mudfossil Universtiy claims “100% Identity to Human Mitochondrial DNA 100bp” is reported in mud fossils that over 10 times normal human size. Cat scans and now conclusive DNA.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpA-RfcqijU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wevv-S5-vUg
It certainly is interesting.
Chemtrails seem worthy of consideration. “Spraying” the population could be a part of the Epsilon agenda. If TPWRTS are chemically retarding the population through food, water, and other pollution, why would they stop at this. They often end up creating a big percentage of total cloud cover, turning into significant haze that lasts all day. “Contrails” of just water vapor wouldn’t do that, I don’t think. There is also speculation that geoengineering is a reality or at least a goal.
On the other hand, who knows? I have no primary sources. I have biases–like a bias to fear TPWRTS. Or at least “not to put it past them” with things like this. This could easily be just noise from conspiritards or worse, deliberate distracting disinfo.
But I also don’t have any good primary sources arguing that chemtrails are just contrails. It will be interesting to hear what you all think.
The folks that allegedly spray the chemtrails, wouldnt they be spraying it on everyone they care about, including themselves?
I think some “chem trails” are kind of pretty.
The folks that allegedly spray the chemtrails, wouldnt they be spraying it on everyone they care about, including themselves?
This is something which puzzles me about the 'chemtrail' theory. I suppose that chemtrail believers might retort that TPTB have some kind of antidote to annul the toxicity of the chemtrails.
The other thing to bear in mind is that many chemtrail believers do not seem to believe that the trails themselves are toxic, but are instead used for other purposes, such as 'geoengineering'.
This is one of the big problems facing the ACT realm and many different beliefs within it: the key terms and concepts are either undefined, poorly-defined, or rarely-defined. A whole heap of people can find themselves willfully joining/defending groups of fellow believers, even though their beliefs are in fact rather different from one another.
A chemtrail believer who thinks it is all about 'geoengineering' is coming at this from a VERY different perspective to a believer who thinks it is all about poisoning people like bugs. So much so that there is, in my opinion, no sane reason why the former should even want to be associated with the latter.
This reminds me of something. Here in illinois the gasoline blends change based on the time of year, and I believe this because of conversations I had with an operator from a refinery in Wood River, IL. He said that when it is cold that they have to switch to a “lighter” blend because in the cold winter air the heavier/cheaper gasoline will hang in the air much longer and make smog. I ride a bicycle everywhere, and so I am exposed to auto exhaust more than most people. Sometimes there will be a day in late summer or fall that is exceptionally cold, and the exhaust will hang around much, much worse, I assume this is because the fuel in people’s cars is still on the summer blend despite it being very cold. I could imagine exhaust hanging around/coagulating pretty bad in the upper atmosphere if it is cold like they say. But who knows?
The only empirical evidence we have access to, as far as ‘chemtrails’ are concerned, is what we can see in the sky. I have heard people try to claim that they have had these trails chemically tested: yeah, I’ll believe that when I see some evidence. Until then, all we have is the persistent contrails, which some people describe as (and believe to be) ‘chemtrails’. It is not clear to me that these persistent contrails are unique from others, but for the sake of argument I am happy to assume that they are. And then what? This does not necessarily imply that they are intentional, let alone harmful.
This is why chemtrails are, in my opinion, the perfect domain for the conspiratard mindset: the entire ‘theory’ rests on speculation and conjecture, two of the conspiratard’s favourite things in the world to engage in. Add to the mix an ‘us vs them’ mentality, and a persecution complex, and a few too many bong rips, and you have a recipe for spiritual disaster.
Of course, I am happy to scrutinise any evidence which is brought forward to support the chemtrail contention. And I would not be the least bit surprised if there were some form of ‘geoengineering’ going on (although I doubt even this). Those who seek to spread fearporn, however, will have their work cut out for them, especially on this topic. And what is more fearporny than telling people that they are being sprayed like bugs?
Now I don’t believe they are spraying us with toxins since they and their families are breathing the same air as we but they are definitely doing something in the skies. I have watched the skies and “chemtrails” for 10 years and have noticed that in Estonia for example the amount of trails in the skies have decreased in the last few years. Around 2013 the local skies here were criss-crossed daily and the trails turned into hazy clouds. Since 2015 or so the spraying has almost stopped, we sometimes get the spraying days but heavy spraying has stopped for sure.
When I was living in QSL Australia back in 2010-2012 I didn’t notice that many trails in the sky, however when I went to the States in 2011 for a vacation, the LA & Miami skies had considerable trails in the sky. In 2013 I visited London and saw heavy “spraying” and trails in the skies constantly. In 2014 I visited Thailand for 4 months and didn’t see any trails in the skies there.
In 2013 I collected rain water in Estonia during and after “spraying” & took it to the local lab to have the water tested for aluminium, barium etc chemicals that are in the chemtrails according to specialists.. Well, the lab didn’t find anything wrong with the water. A friend of mine also collected rain water and had it tested with no results.
So it is a mixed bag in my opinion – I can’t really put my finger on it.
A supposed chemtrails whistleblower Kristen Meghan has been openly talking about geo-engineering for years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSxtbLdMpo4
I think Chem trails, like many things in this world, are what you make them. Our minds are extremely powerful and that means if you consume the fear porn of the conspiratards, you are likely being effected negatively. Basically, the placebo/nocebo effect that JLB speaks about.
On another side of “Weird and Whacky”, I had a very strange “experience” one time when I was in my early 20s that I remember vividly. I lived in a house near downtown west palm beach that was old by south florida standards (1937) and there was a sun room off my bedroom that led to the back yard. The door from the sun room into the bedroom made a very distinct sound when opened. I was laying in bed awake one night facing away from that side of the room and I heard that door open. At first, I thought it was a drunk friend that was looking to crash. After a couple of seconds, I noticed that I didn’t here any footsteps. Just as I was realizing that something weird was going on, I felt what I can only describe as a cool wind blow over my body. For a second or two, it was as if I was outside on a cold windy night but I was wrapped up in my blanket. It was probably the single most terrifying moment of my life. After what felt like eternity laying there terrified, I rolled over and there was nothing there. I have no idea what it was but that event is what keeps my mind open to the possibility of ghosts/spirits/poltergeist.
I’m looking forward to this call as I have been a big believer in the power of the mind even before discovering the ACT scene and I believe that is why these things can be so real to so many people and at the same time completely ridiculous to others. In my mind, they may both be right, if that makes sense.
JLB, I understand the lack of primary source evidence or hard proof of chemtrails and I understand your skepticism of the conspiritard mindset.
I also understand that fear porn is attractive to conspiritards, and useful to TPWRTS (“Is your child in danger? News at 11!” and “Nukes! You need a bomb shelter!’)
However, I humbly suggest that we should keep an open mind here.
There seems to be ample evidence to suggest that our environment is regularly poisoned. As with the medical black pill, it may we “we the people” (as opposed to TPWRTS) doing a lot of the poisoning. But we “know” (we think), that there are a lot of unhealthy additives in food and water. So why not air?
It turns out that hops, a key ingredient in beer, are highly estrogenic and make men who drink beer fatter, more feminine, and more docile.
It turns out that flouride is added to the water supply almost everywhere in the U.S., which amounts to medicating the population without consent in a dose-uncontrolled way. Flouride is a key ingredient in rat poison. And intake of flouride even at the low levels in the water supply appears to be associated with lower IQs. The Epsilon agenda, perhaps? Flouride is an industrial byproduct of aluminum production. The “scientist” who “discovered” that flouride prevents cavities was on the Alcoa payroll at the time of his discovery. And the PR man (Bernays) who promoted flouride and arranged all the dentist endorsements was also hired by Alcoa.
Maybe these “facts” are fake fear porn. But if they are true, flouridation of the water supply seems to me to be even more destructive than even the worst fears I’ve heard about chemtrails. If flouridation is indeed destructive and real, it makes automatic skepticism of chemtrails a less reasonable stance.
JLB, you say “Those who seek to spread fearporn, however, will have their work cut out for them, especially on this topic.” I humbly submit that your statement reminds me of this framework of belief you described: “The ‘true until disproven’ paradigm. Those who operate with this system will accept the commonly-accepted narrative until somebody else disproves it.”
I myself do not accept the narrative that the sky is filled with harmless contrails which are the natural result of jet planes, because I have not seen a convincing case for it. On some days the sky is completely clear of trails, on other days clear skies fill with clouds and haze just from a few planes flying by. It doesn’t make sense to me that a bit of exhaust and water vapor from a few planes could cloud up the entire sky. If that IS possible, then it looks like geo-engineering is extremely easy!
If we want to apply extreme open-mindedness and extreme skepticism to the question of contrails/chemtrails, we shouldn’t go in with strong assumptions. And it seems from what you’ve written above, JLB, that you may be making some assumptions on this topic. (Please forgive me for my OWN assumptions here regarding what I THINK you are assuming!) Your assumptions might possibly include: 1) The official story about contrails makes sense and should be accepted until disproven; 2) People who are open to the possibility of chemtrails are conspiritards addicted to fear porn; 3) TPWRTS are probably benevolent and “wouldn’t” spray us like bugs; 4) Even though there may be an Epsilon agenda to retard people, it probably doesn’t involve spraying.
I don’t know enough about the conventional wisdom on contrails–maybe it is really compelling. But until I see that compelling argument, I’m just as skeptical of the “it’s completely normal for a bit of airplane exhaust and water vapor to fill the sky with clouds on some days but not others” argument as I am of the “chemtrails are deliberate” argument. (I do acknowledge, though, JLB’s point that geo-engineering and population poisoning are two very different versions of the “chemtrails” story.)
Two other possibilities—1) it’s just like skywriting. They are harmless, but they are deliberately placed there to feed fear porn.
And 2) it’s just a way to dump pollutants and spread them everywhere. This is similar to what happened with flouride. Miles Mathis made the argument here, on the bottom of page 4 and most of page 5: http://mileswmathis.com/chem2.pdf His argument sounds reasonable, although…it’s just another story!
Anyway, I don’t know what to think and haven’t seen much evidence on any side of this question. It’ll be interesting to hear what others think.
I completely agree about keeping an open mind. If there is one thing I pride myself on, it is having a genuinely open mind (in contrast with those who claim to be open-minded but inevitably get triggered by one topic or another).
It turns out that hops, a key ingredient in beer, are highly estrogenic and make men who drink beer fatter, more feminine, and more docile.
I am familiar with this claim but, like many claims and popular beliefs, have not yet taken the time to dig into the sources and empirical evidence used to support it.
Have you? If so, what did you find?
It turns out that flouride is added to the water supply almost everywhere in the U.S., which amounts to medicating the population without consent in a dose-uncontrolled way. Flouride is a key ingredient in rat poison. And intake of flouride even at the low levels in the water supply appears to be associated with lower IQs. The Epsilon agenda, perhaps? Flouride is an industrial byproduct of aluminum production. The “scientist” who “discovered” that flouride prevents cavities was on the Alcoa payroll at the time of his discovery. And the PR man (Bernays) who promoted flouride and arranged all the dentist endorsements was also hired by Alcoa.
I am against the fluoridation of public drinking water. I have seen evidence that there may be a correlation between water fluoridation and lower IQ. Regardless, it is mass 'medication' without consent, and without any kind of dosage control. It is absurd at the outset.
With that said, you have made a couple of claims here which I have not seen evidence for:
i) Man who 'discovered' fluoride's alleged benefits was on Alcoa payroll ii) Edward Bernays was hired to promote fluoride
In time I hope to come back to these claims and see if I can find primary evidence to support them. Is this a process you have already undertaken yourself? If so, what did you find?
Your assumptions might possibly include: 1) The official story about contrails makes sense and should be accepted until disproven; 2) People who are open to the possibility of chemtrails are conspiritards addicted to fear porn; 3) TPWRTS are probably benevolent and “wouldn’t” spray us like bugs; 4) Even though there may be an Epsilon agenda to retard people, it probably doesn’t involve spraying.
1) I am not saying the official story of contrails ought to be accepted. One may remain skeptical of both the official story and the alternative story. There is no need to commit one's mind to either story.
2) There is nothing wrong with being open to a possibility. Those who hold a strong conviction about 'chemtrails' being a form of toxic spraying are, in my opinion, trapped in a toxic mindset, and from what I have seen in this scene over the past four years, there is a definite correlation between chemtrail belief and general conspiratardism.
For one example of this, consider the audience of YouTube 'truther' Peekay22. Chemtrails are a large part of his overall shtick. He even <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/life/travel/jet-pilots-fear-chemtrail-attacks/news-story/19fb843a35518ff4955d38c83dda90c6?sv=a1f36123e9b1bd11117f7a11440a15fa" rel="nofollow">made it into our major newspapers for his chemtrail activism</a> back in the day. I would suggest that the typical Peekay supporter has an IQ roughly one standard deviation below the population mean. This opinion is based on my anecdotal observations of Peekay and his supporters over the past few years. These people tend demonstrate all of the common symptoms of conspiratardism: victim mentalities, persecution complexes, poor social skills, low emotional intelligence (i.e. poor temperaments), etc etc.
What I am suggesting here is that a certain mindset is attracted to the doomporn elements of the ACT realm. This does not in any way disprove 'chemtrail' theory. I am making a very different point. I am saying that the theory is attractive to people who, for directly-related reasons, do not generally have a positive outlook on life, and rarely if ever demonstrate any capacity or propensity for genuine self-reflection or internal skepticism.
3) If they are happy to allow the lower-caste humans to vaccinate their own children, and send them children to school, there is no reason to assume that TPWRTS necessarily would not 'spray us like bugs'. Maybe they would. Why not? My own opinion about the general benevolence of TPWRTS would change markedly if I were to see genuine evidence that 'chemtrails' are real and toxic and negatively impact human health on the micro and macro levels.
4) I have seen no evidence that they are spraying toxic chemicals from planes. Again, I am more than happy to inspect any evidence which people might like to share. That is exactly what I am doing with this thread, and the call on Sunday. Danny Blitz shared the photos with me, and I am sharing them more widely here, and encouraging people to discuss the topic.
P.S. All that said, my openness to the chemtrail theories is, I have to admit, evidence that I am still clearly influenced by / drawn to fear porn. Something I need to be aware of and careful about. Truth seeking shouldn’t be about finding enemies to blame when so much of my happiness and well-being is in my own control and I poison myself plenty.
Guys, take a look at this – I had people all over Estonia send me chemtrail photos back in 2014 – this was coined “as the heaviest chemtrail day in Estonia”
https://www.telegram.ee/nwo/lugejapildid-ja-video-geoinsenerlus-ule-eesti-28-martsil
This type of spraying was going on a few years ago quite often in Estonia but since 2015 or so our skies have been pretty clear compared to that, with few exceptions of corse.
Thanks for the link, Hando.
If I saw this going on above me…
…I would naturally think there is something going on.
Are these photos taken near an airport? Is there any other explanation for why there would be so many of these contrails near one another, in this pattern?
If not, then I would infer that there is some kind of deliberate cloud generating operation going on.
Now the question would then become, why? Why is this going on?
My first instinct would not be to assume that the clouds/trails are toxic (although I remain open to the possibility).
This specific photo was taken in a town called Pärnu, closest airport is approx 100 km away. As I mentioned these photos were all captured on the very same day all over Estonia, we only have one airport which is considered tiny compared to major airports.
Don’t know what is going on..
Here is a link to a documentary about Chemtrails called “What in the world are they spraying?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFQ2_0QNiks It is worth a watch for those of you who are interested in the topic of chemtrails.
My communication skills have not increased lately, despite smoking tobacco. I have been having lots of good conversations out at the smoking bench at work, while playing a slightly new character (in their eyes), but that isnt saying much.
A few years ago I used to make “synchy” sorts of posts about news stories, almost in the style of Terran Downvale, and I remember I really enjoyed that. Maybe I need to start doing things like that again, except with video.
When I was a kid I sort of had a knack for editing audio and video. And for many years afterwards I would spend hours each day in bed listening to music while imagining make believe music videos in my head, and other make believe situations. Maybe I should try to communicate the things I think about that way, through music videos and a format like that.
Probably nobody would understand what I was saying, but I feel like I cant help but let it out, and ‘preach’. The format of producing videos might be a better way for me to let that out.
Until i do it, it is all talk