I’ve used Evernote since about 2005 or so. I collected over 6000 notes in that timeframe. I’ve found those are rookie numbers. Some people have tens of thousands of notes. But these are mine. They’re websites I’ve clipped for future reference. Journal entries. Planning. Ideas.
I left Evernote at the end of 2016 when they said they’d allow employees access to notes in personal accounts. I have some very personal notes in there, and that spooked me. I switched to OneNote, but came back to using Evernote in 2022.
Bending Spoons bought Evernote since then. That didn’t bother me. Then they laid off all the original Evernote staff. Then it seemed like they were neglecting the product, which had gotten very slow. A lot of users fled for other products like Notion or Obsidian during this time.
Bending Spoons eventually started providing updates, and sent out a communication that they had to overhaul Evernote’s foundations to make it future proof. It got much more responsive. But they also jacked up the price to $129.99 a year for a Personal account, which is the plan I’ve been on for many years. It used to be around $30, then got raised to around $60.
I was due to renew in January. At first I thought about keeping it because I’ve been with the product for so long and it does its job well. But then Evernote started crashing on my iPad when I tried to edit any note. I reached out to support, but they stopped responding after I sent my activity logs. For my workflow, I’ve got to have a product that works on my iPad.
I attended a Meetup for a professional topic and tried to take notes in the browser. When I got up in the morning, I had a note with a title and no content. At least I took screenshots of the slides so I could stick them in the note along with what I could remember. But this was an intolerable failure of the product.
But where to go? There are many options available. The Keep Productive YouTube channel maintains a Toolfinder website: https://toolfinder.co/ Take a look and see how overwhelming this can be.
I tried to get Notion to import from Evernote earlier last year. It only imported about 400 of my notes in my main notebook. I tried to get another import. It actually did it twice, but with a complete export of Evernote I use Notion now. The webclipper doesn’t work (at least on Safari) but so far I’ve been able to copy and paste anything I went to keep into Notion.
I started exploring Tiago Forte’s PARA methodology. Notion seems to work well with it. I think Tiago also completely left Evernote for Notion.
If you’re curious about Notion, there are more videos on YouTube about it than you could hope to get through in this lifetime. It’s a very powerful product. Maybe it’s overkill for my needs, but I can grow into it.
It has come to my attention that many Christians are deeply weighed down by anxiety because they are glued to “the news”. Common advice is “Then stop watching the news!” But Jesus says we’re supposed to watch for signs of the times. How are we to know what is going on in the world without “the news”? I’ve done it for decades. I don’t watch any of the fake news networks and I haven’t for many years.
How You Consume Information Matters
Let me make my case with a few assumptions. First is a concept I got from Rabbi Daniel Lapin. Your eyes are connected to your emotions, and your ears are connected to your intellect. Reading counts as hearing according to the rabbi. Based on that, most of the information I consume is in written format. I prefer this. It’s much easier to scan, and I can skip ahead if I’m already familiar with the subject. I’m very selective about the video content I watch. I usually stick to people like Mark Dice who write scripts and convey the information in an efficient manner. I don’t have the patience to listen to somebody babble aimlessly, or spend 20 minutes explaining how to click the red button to subscribe.
The Nature Of The Organizations And People
Second is to understand the nature of fake news. We have a maxim to describe social networks: If you receive a service for free, you are not the customer. You are the product. All of the news networks operate like this. Just 6 companies control 95% of the media in the United States. It’s the same for Fox News as it is for CNN. A mega conglomerate owns it and uses it for its own purposes. Rupert Murdoch didn’t start Fox News because he cared about Conservatives having a reliable news source. He’s a left wing as they come. He saw that all of the other fake news networks were left wing and he had absolutely no competition in the right wing space, so he planted his flag there and already had a built in audience. But the shows tend to be very left wing or neoconservative. The easiest way to explain neoconservatives is that they’re liberals who get excited at the prospect of sending other people to die in wars. Consider Sean Hannity and Ben Shapiro. Both clamor for a war with Iran. But neither of them, nor their friends and families will have to die in a war with Iran. My children could be drafted. Children in the student ministry I serve in could be drafted. As a veteran (US Navy) who has been in a war zone, I have a lot more skin in the game than the neocons.
This is actually outdated.
While these fake news networks are all owned by mega conglomerates, they are loss leaders. There isn’t money in news. But there is influence. They can steer you to their advertisers and they can tell you want to think. During the “COVID” crisis, fake news broadcast were “brought to you by Pfizer”. Do you seriously believe Pfizer would have given them money for advertisements if they were anything but positive on Pfizer’s products, including their vaccine?
Brought to you by Pfizer
What They’re Not Telling You
Third is every single viewpoint out there has its own editorial position. This is why I prefer to get my information from a variety of sources with slightly different viewpoints. I like to look at things from different angles. Sometimes I have to piece things together myself, but that’s what makes it interesting. I don’t understand why Christians can’t see the lack of wisdom in only getting information from a single source that is known to not tell you many things, including the truth. Fox News will tell you WHAT to think. All of them have no interest in telling you HOW to think; how to gather and process information and come to a conclusion. Have you ever heard of Uranium One? Ever? I’m sure you think you know a ton about Trump/Russia collusion, but why didn’t the fake news networks talk much about Uranium One? Why don’t they talk about negative effects of their precious “COVID-19 vaccination”? Oh, right, the news is “brought to you by Pfizer.” Now, consider this: is there a possibility that the pharmaceutical advertising creates an interest in keeping you anxious? They have a solution to your anxiety, after all.
“The News” Is Literally Propaganda
The Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 prohibited the US government from broadcasting directly to the American people. However, the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 attached to the National Defense Authorization Act of 2013 removed those prohibitions. The media can now propagandize us and they’ve been able to legally do it for over a decade.
I didn’t see anything change substantially in 2013, but I don’t follow the news. I suspect they were violating Smith-Mundt all along. Laws are only as good as the will to enforce them. If the government won’t enforce a law, then the law doesn’t matter.
So I should just switch to Newsmax, right?
No!!!!!! A thousand times, no! This is part of the problem. You have completely outsourced all responsibility and accountability of your information consumption to a 3rd party. You sit in front of the television and let them decide what you should know, and how you should feel about it. Take an active role in the process. Take some responsibility over the information you consume, and take an active role in the process of analyzing that information. It’s not actually that hard. And don’t tell me you don’t have time. Time and money work the same: we spend them on the things that matter to us. If you spend hours watching sportsball, you have time.
Sometimes we just get caught up in the river of life and spend time where everybody around us does, essentially wasting it. Let me ask you this: do you prefer to sit in front of Fox News, or would you prefer not to have anxiety? You don’t have to tell me, but please be honest with yourself. If you could keep up with what is going on without the anxiety, would you rather do that?
How To Think and Intellectual Self Defense
We are told by Jesus to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Mind and strength seem to get left out a lot. We are supposed to worship God with our intellects too. We are also supposed to pursue Truth, and sitting in front of a news program that deliberately lies to you is not pursuing truth. Sure, not everything they say is a lie. That would be too blatant and easy to detect. So they mix lies with truth, but your understanding of the world is still based on lies.
First, you need to understand what a logical fallacy is. A logical fallacy is an error in reasoning. Sometimes they’re intentional; something not. You can start learning about logical fallacies here: https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com . That site is a great resource. If you want to go deeper, many resources are available. The Ayn Rand Institute sells a course in logic, including the fallacies, for about $10.
One of the more common logical fallacies is the ad hominen attack. https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ad-hominem. It’s Latin for “against the man”. This is where you don’t respond with logic and reason; you deliberately attack the person. For instance, I ask “why do we allow so much illegal immigration?” and you respond with “You’re a racist!” That is an attack on me. It’s typically used to get me to disengage and start muttering something like “But I have a black friend!” I don’t fall for it. One of the things I loved and respected about President Trump is he didn’t either. When Megyn Kelly tried telling him he “hated women”, he didn’t crumble like a typical Republican. He fought back. I didn’t take him seriously until that moment.
A typical ad hominem attack is “conspiracy theorist”. This one was invented by the CIA in the 1960’s to use against people who thought the narrative about the Kennedy assassination didn’t add up. “If a single bullet was used, it would have had to hang in the air for over a second before hitting the Texas Governor.” “Shut up, you’re a conspiracy theorist!” If you’re concerned with the truth, you can’t be concerned with being called stupid names. If they’re calling you stupid names, they can’t refute your argument. Or if they can refute your argument, they won’t because it would reveal things they don’t want you to know. That’s why they call you stupid names. You’re supposed to shut up and crawl away in shame.
Another logical fallacy commonly used is the strawman https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/strawman. This is where you construct a weak copy of your opponent’s argument and attack it, easily destroying it. Did you know that Capitalism didn’t exist before Karl Marx? Marx created Capitalism as a straw man against which to compare Communism. It kills me that we’re fighting to defend an economic system that is nothing more than a strawman that was created by our opponent. We need a better defined and named system, but I lack the economic knowledge and influence to make one.
There are many logical fallacies: Begging The Question, Appeal to Emotion, Appeal to Ridicule; the list goes on and on. Start paying attention to this. If the mainstream “news” figures start calling somebody names like racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, and so on, it typically means that person has some message they don’t want you knowing about. It doesn’t mean the person is right, but if the argument was that easy to defeat with logic and reason they would have just done that.
Another logical fallacy you need to become familiar with is the false dilemma fallacy. This is where you’re given an artificial choice between only two options. Republican or Democrat. You’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists. Israel or Palestine. This one is used often. Watch out for people trying to trap you into a binary choice.
Maybe I take my resistance to this one a little too far. Children have learned not to play “Would you rather?” with me because I reject all choices. That’s that game where they have cards asking if you would rather do one or another unpleasant task. The last time my children tried this it was in an app. This is a false dilemma. Would you rather work all weekend or gargle vinegar? I’ll just binge watch something. I’m not playing.
Learn To Spot Patterns and Contradictions
We keep hearing that sea levels are rising. People like Barry (Obama), John Kerry, Al Gore, Bill Gates, etc. seem awfully convinced that sea levels are rising. Then why do they all own ocean front mansions? Barry owns two: one in Martha’s Vineyard and one in Hawaii. Why didn’t the banks and insurance companies tell him it was an unacceptable risk and they would not sign off on the deal? Why doesn’t a single bank or insurance company track rising sea levels as part of their risk management strategy? Why can you compare pictures of locations on Earth with pictures of the same location from 100 years ago and the sea level is in the exact same place? This is a contradiction. Facts and behavior do not line up with the Narrative.
The nature of the news cycle requires being the first to report. Often, when something happens they’ll jump on the story to get it out there. Any time a shooting happens, the media immediately starts screaming “It was a white supremacist Trump supporter!” before any facts are in. As the facts roll it, it turns out to be an opposite: a lifelong Democrat who is anything but white. This is a pattern, and it happens every time to the point that it is predictable.
Also, every single shooter was known by police and often the FBI to be dangerous. Yet they universally do nothing. Every shooter has a Naval Intelligence officer involved in his or her life. Every shooter was seeing a psychiatrist who was chosen by the Naval Intelligence officer. Most of them have an FBI agent involved in their life. It is so predictable.
If you’ve ever heard of #pizzagate, they told you it was thoroughly debunked. A significant percentage of “journalists” who swore it was debunked have been arrested for possessing child pornography. This is yet another pattern.
Learn to Check Into Backgrounds and Track Records
The “media” likes to bring on experts to back up their Narrative. Since you’re passively glued to the news network, you probably take them at face value. You assume they are chosen because they truly are experts in a subject and can provide a balanced perspective. They aren’t. They’re essentially prostitutes who are paid to read a script backing up the Narrative the news network wants you to believe. If an “expert” deviates from a script, said expert will never appear on the network again.
Often, if you follow up, you’ll find the “expert” does not have a good track record. Things do not happen the way the expert predicted. In my opinion, they have no expertise. Again, they’re essentially prostitutes. Look at “experts” like Jim Cramer. He’s supposedly an investment expert. But any time he says a stock is rock solid, it collapses the next day. Consider Bear Sterns in 2008. He’s essentially an actor reading a script. They all are. They are not worthy of your attention.
So How Do I Keep Up Without The News?
What I’ve done over the years is I’ve rolled my own news. I follow a variety of independent sources that have a good track record. Every person has their own bias, but by following a variety you can start putting pieces together. I also collaborate in a few places with like minded people. We wrestle with the information and what it means. Everybody brings a different piece. One person may have a link to a report that helps you understand. Another may be able to suggest a book that will help. Somebody else may have expertise in the subject. And it is a lot more fun than passively watching Fox News as they manipulate your emotions and don’t tell you what you need to know.
Email
The first tool I use is email newsletters. My favorite tool is RSS (Really Simple Syndication). RSS was invented by Aaron Schwartz in the early 2000’s. Aaron allegedly killed himself. He got sued for trying to free content from behind a paywall and allegedly took his own life, but things don’t add up. You’re welcome to look into that as a practice run for researching things for yourself.
Not everyone provides RSS, so signing up for an email newsletter is a somewhat lower than the second best alternative. Of course, beware that not every newsletter honors unsubscribe requests. Some of them turn out to not be useful but you can’t unsubscribe. I just route them to spam. I also use Sane Box, so I can send them to a black hole. World Net Daily is one such. I signed up for it years ago, but they send way too much email and won’t honor my unsubscribe requests. I send it to the Sane Black Hole.
RSS
My favorite tool is RSS. Many applications are available for RSS. I use Feedly https://feedly.com . They have a free plan that allows you to follow up to 100 sources. It’s perfect for getting started. You can subscribe to any site with an RSS feed and they’ll all show up in one place. Often you can subscribe to a feed within Feedly by searching. I like it because most of my information comes to me in one place. I start at the bottom and read up using hot keys. When I’m done reading an article, I press k to move up. J moves down. L marks it to read later. Very easy and efficient. Feedly also provides boards so you can save articles on related subjects.
Telegram
Another tool I use is Telegram http://telegram.org . Telegram is a Russian messaging app that allows you to follow channels and chat with people. You can also comment. I rarely interact in the comments because scammers will create fake copies of channels and reach out to you. I think they’re trying to sell you crypto. I block them immediately. Plus it’s fruitless to argue with idiots and shills in comments. It’s not what our Lord called us to do and I don’t have time for it. The Telegram channels I follow and recommend are below in Sources.
I follow few “mainstream” sources. I’ll occasionally share links to Fox News articles when they’re useful, but I find them through other people because I don’t watch Fox News or read their website. Most of the sources I follow are alternative or independent. I’ll provide a few below to get you started. This is not an exhaustive list of everything I follow, but a starter list.
Remember, this is YOUR information, so follow independent and alternative sources that align with your interests. Add and remove them mercilessly. Some publish too often and it’s too much to keep up with. I look for sources that provide reliable information but aren’t a firehose. I’m not going to spend hours each day keeping up and I don’t expect you to either. I will periodically evaluate where I spend my time and give lower value sources the ax.
Sources
Websites
The New American: https://thenewamerican.com . Note that I don’t subscribe to their RSS feed because it is a firehose and I can’t keep up with it. I subscribe to the magazine. It’s published by the John Birch Society. I’m sure you’ve heard they’re fringe “conspiracy theorists”, but that’s the Fake News talking. TNA has an amazing track record. You can read a TNA article from years ago and it will read like it was written next week. They provide amazing news and analysis and it’s well balanced. Many of their writers are Christian (specifically Catholic), but their writing is applicable to most Christians. They have YouTube and Rumble channels, and now they even have their own news network. I have the Roku app installed, but I’ve never used it because I focus more on written content than video for reasons stated above. But if you can’t give up your watching the news habit, I recommend TNA to Fox News. At least TNA aren’t wolves in sheep’s clothing. They genuinely want to return the US to a Constitutional government.
Not The Bee: https://notthebee.com . In addition to their satire (more like prophesy) site, The Babylon Bee also runs a news site. Considering how dark and preposterous the world is, we need to keep our humor up. Not The Bee crafts their headlines to make fun of the world. It’s nice to have something to laugh at. They also report on positive and uplifting stories. If you get anxiety from Fox News, you’ll get the opposite from Not The Bee. They are Christians.
The Babylon Bee: https://babylonbee.com . Allegedly a Christian satire site, The Bee’s satire often happens in real life, which is why I call it prophesy. It used to take a few weeks to happen, but now it’s down to hours at times. And some stories are so absurd, I suspect they say “We need more content on our satire site. Put it there.” Some of their articles are just designed to laugh at what is actually happening. So flee your anxiety and embrace satire. You’ll feel better.
Anonymous Conservative: https://www.anonymousconservative.com//blog . Anonymous Conservative has written several books. His blog started out as a companion to his first book “The Evolutionary Psychology Behind Politics”, but around 2017 he started doing a daily news brief. His primary focus is the surveillance state, but each morning he publishes a brief of a collection of articles of interest to Christian conservatives. He provides enough commentary on each link that you don’t have to actually read the article. AC’s site is one of the few where I will interact in the comments. We have a wonderful community there. AC heavily moderates comments so people coming there to attack and disrupt are blocked. His site occasionally goes down. We don’t know if somebody is hacking in trying to silence him or not. Funny things happen on his back end. His site is completely down this morning as I write this post, but it happens periodically. (Update: it came back by lunch. His host didn’t renew his certificates on time.)
AC also provides an RSS feed for his comments, making them much easier to keep up with. A slight warning: AC and many of his commenters occasionally use profanity. But don’t let that stop you. AC and many members of his community are Christians.
Vox Day: https://voxday.net . I’ve read Vox Day for more than 20 years. VD is many things. He’s an author, a game designer, an economist (he’s been on Chinese TV), an editor, a publisher, a strategist; the list is almost endless. I skip over his sports posts, but they’re few and far between. VD provides news and analysis on a variety of subjects. He’s constantly drifting into new areas and he drags me along with him. I’ve learned a lot over the years from him. Unlike the “experts” on Fox News, VD has an amazing track record. He predicted the 2008 housing crash when the “experts” said it was going to keep growing. VD predicts the breakup of the USA by about 2034, so keep an eye on that. VD is a Christian.
The Real Climate Science Blog: https://realclimatescience.com Tony Heller is an actual scientist. He posts topics related to what I call “Climate Terror” (which I got from a Nick Cole short story). He digs up articles from over 100 years ago showing the same inaccurate predictions we have now.
There is no “science” in climate science. It’s all apocalyptic fan fiction and bad computer models. There has never been a single predication associated with Global Warming, Global Cooling, Climate Change, or any other subject that proved accurate. They have all been wrong. Consider what I said above about detecting patterns. They keep resetting the 5/7/10/12 “years to save our planet” clocks because it didn’t happen. Greta recently had to delete a 2018 tweet claiming it would be too late to save the planet by 2023 because nothing has actually changed. So please, consider alternate perspectives to the mainstream if you want to walk in truth.
Badlands Media: https://badlands.substack.com . Badlands Media is a collection of several alternative media personalities. They publish a daily analysis of the news. They also provide long form analyses of various topics going on in the world. They have a pretty good track record. You don’t need a paid subscription to read them. There are quite a few other channels on Substack that might be worth reading, and some of them are free to read. You can get a paid subscription if you want to support one.
A brief comment on Infowars: I listened to Alex Jones for several years, but I quit around 2012. A radio show is a poor format for a podcast. I got sick of having to skip through commercials and listening to him repeat himself after each commercial break. I don’t recommend Alex Jones, but I won’t tell you not to listen to him. I still subscribe to the Infowars daily newsletter. I’ve written a blog post on how to evaluate an Alex Jones claim. Basically, if he has tons of documents to put on camera and thoroughly analyzes them, you can more or less believe him. If he just rants “We have the government documents!” without giving you a reference to look up, then ignore him. He’s in propaganda territory.
Some of us think Alex Jones is a Mossad asset. His family is heavily connected to the CIA. While he does good work in some areas, he’s likely to be dismissive in areas the intelligence agencies don’t approve of. Just know that going in. Everybody has their own preconceived biases and Alex is no different. He was right about them putting Atrazine in the water and it turning the frickin’ frogs gay. Alex is a Christian.
Video
There is still some good stuff on YouTube, but many good people have been banished for wrongthink. Alternate video sites are Bitchute https://www.bitchute.com/ and Rumble https://www.rumble.com . Search BitChute for Fall of the Cabal and Sequel to Fall of the Cabal. It will blow your mind.
Suspicious Obervers: https://www.youtube.com/@Suspicious0bservers . Dr. Ben Davidson puts up a short video every morning discussing space weather, cosmology, earth’s disaster cycle, and related subjects. He’s written some textbooks like “Weatherman’s Guide To The Sun”. He has a new book on Earth’s Disaster Cycle coming out soon. He occasionally does livestreams with his audience.
Mark Dice: https://www.youtube.com/@MarkDice . Mark Dice publishes a new video most days analyzing politics and insanity in the world, but specifically the US. His videos are normally humorous and under 10 minutes. He has also written several books and has a new one coming out very soon. He writes about a book a year. I’ve read most of them.
Streaming Services
Unauthorized.tv: https://unauthorized.tv UATV is an alternative streaming service. Its name comes from the fact that most of the personalities are not authorized on mainstream platforms. Vox Day’s almost daily Darkstream videos are there. Owen Benjamin’s comedy is there. Stephan Molyneau is there. The Rageaholic has a program called “The Depths of DS9”, talking about how complex and good Star Trek Deep Space 9 was. It’s a running commentary on the entire series. Professor Rachel Fulton Brown has two programs, Logos and History and The Forge of Tolkien. UATV also produced some of their own documentaries and are working on producing a movie, but the learning curve of corruption in the movie industry is steep and they were set back.
Rise.tvhttps://rise.tv Ben and Rob, formerly The Edge of Wonder channel on YouTube started this service, then combined with a few other people and rebranded as Rise. They analyze weird, mysterious, and wonderful things across the history of the world. It’s entertaining and uplifting. They also have regular analysis of news.
Ickonic: https://www.ickonic.com . Ickonic is another alternative streaming platform started by one of David Icke’s sons. It has some interesting documentaries and regular shows, and is not exclusively David Icke. I know, you’ve heard Icke is a kook. Lizard aliens and all that. I used to believe that Narrative, but then I started reading Icke in his own words and he is very reasonable when he presents his entire case. He has a gift for taking complex subjects and making them accessible. I obviously don’t agree with him on everything, but I find him a valuable resource in understanding the nature of the world and what is going on. And he won’t give you anxiety like Fox News does. Ickonic produces their own content, including documentaries. They also host documentaries from other sources. The platform is not Christian. Most of the personalities skew Gnostic. But if you can eat the meat and spit out the bones, there’s a lot of value in Ickonic. Far more than Fox News, but that’s not a very high bar.
Social Networks
I’m on most of the mainstream social networks, but I act like a “normie” on them. I avoided Facebook for about five years, but went back on because that’s where most of my family and normie friends are and I have to be there if I want to stay in touch with them. I’m not on Twitter. On Jan 8, 2021, Twitter permanently suspended President Trump and 150,000 other users. My account got caught up in all of that. I wasn’t even actively posting, but I followed the former President and some of the other accounts Twitter didn’t want people to see. I tried to appeal. They won’t tell me what I allegedly did (they never do; they just say Terms of Service violations). There are alternative social networks available and I recommend them if you want to have honest conversations about the world. They are also a good way to keep up, as other users will post links and content as well as analysis. These are places where you can collaborate with other users in the comments or in groups as you wrestle with what’s going on in the world and how to understand it. Also, there are some really good memes out there.
Minds: https://www.minds.com . Of all the alternatives, Minds is my favorite. It’s an amazing community, and somehow it flies under the RADAR. While the fake news networks are screaming about the “white supremacists” on Gab, you never hear about Minds so we’re just posting away unmolested. I am able to say what I want on Minds. I won’t tell you my account because I value my semi-anonymity, but if I’m the kind of content you’re looking for you’ll probably find me. Most new users to Minds comment on how nice the community is. I’ve been there since 2016.
One neat thing about the alternative networks is you can get a paid membership. Remember “If you’re receiving a service for free you’re not the customer; you’re the product?” I pay for a Minds+ subscription. It costs me about $60 a year, which isn’t a big deal. I mostly do it so I don’t have to see “boosted” content. Minds has a crypto currency, which you can earn. You can use the cryto to “boost” your posts so they reach more users. To me, it’s like watching commercials which are repetitive and I don’t want to see them. I get some other benefits with Minds+ but that’s my main reason for paying.
Gab: https://www.gab.com . Gab was founded in 2016 by tech entrepreneur Andrew Torba. The heavy censorship started in 2015 and Torba wanted to create a social network based on free speech. Torba is young and Gab went through some very rocky periods but it seems to be running fine now. They’ve experimented with other products. They’re trying to build a parallel marketplace with Gab Marketplace. They used to have a Gab TV. I think it failed. They were building an AI at one point. I haven’t kept up with it. I let my Gab Pro membership lapse and haven’t renewed it yet. It was originally intended as an alternative to Twitter, but it’s more like a Facebook alternative at this point. I don’t use Gab much, but with the heavy focus on free speech you might like it. I prefer the community on Minds.
Social Galactic https://social.infogalactic.com . A little backstory: in early 2016, Vox Day held a livestream where he proposed an alternative to Wikipedia, which is run by about 500 left wing editors. VD wanted an actual user maintained encyclopedia that couldn’t be taken over by a handful of nutjobs. He called it Infogalactic “The Planetary Knowledge Core”. I was an early backer of IG. It grew very slowly and I don’t use it near as much as I should.
Social Galactic or SG grew out of Infogalactic. It is not a “free speech” site. You have to pay to be a member of SG. I got my membership through my subscription to Unauthorized.tv. There are different membership levels. SG enforces civility. They don’t allow profanity. I’m not very active there, but it’s a decent community.
Truth Social: https://truthsocial.com . This is former President Trump’s social network. It launched in early 2022 and had a very rocky start, but it’s stable now. I see a lot of duplication between Telegram and TS. Many of the same personalities post on both.
Telegram
These are some Telegram channels I follow. They post useful content, but don’t post too much. There is some cross posting so you’ll see the same post a few times. I’ve unfollowed several Telegram channels over the years because they post too much or all they do is repost other content I’ve already seen. These aren’t listed in any particular order.
Deep State Mapping Project https://t.me/dsmpnexus The DSMP was started by a graphic designer who tried to map out the Deep State. He posts some valuable and interesting information about what’s happening in the world. I don’t recommend his channel 100%. He’s not Christian and skews Gnostic. He also shills for cypto currencies. But I can eat the meat and spit out the bones and get value from his content.
Praying Medic https://t.me/praying_medic Praying Medic is David Hayes, a former atheist who used to be a paramedic or EMT. He’s become more of a charismatic Christian. This channel has evolved somewhat and is now mostly just his readers asking for prayers or reporting praise from healings. It might be useful to you as you don’t get this kind of content from Faux News.
Praying Medic News https://t.me/PrayingMedicNews This is where Hayes posts his news content. He has quite a few channels, but these are the two I follow.
Paul Joseph Watson https://t.me/pjwnews PJW used to work for Alex Jones at Infowars. He set off on his own several years ago. He started his own site, Summit News. He also has a YouTube channel.
Fall of the Cabal: https://t.me/Fall_of_the_Cabal The two Dutch ladies behind the Fall of the Cabal documentaries. They post news items. I have to warn you, they talk about some dark subjects like Jeffrey Epstein and child trafficking. But, this stuff proliferates because people ignore it. It’s dark and nobody wants to hear about it. How will it stop unless awareness increases? Some content is only for their Dutch readers but most is in English.
We The Media: https://t.me/WeTheMedia WTM is a collaborative effort by a network of people who were banned from Twitter on Jan 8, 2021. They migrated to Telegram and formed a channel together. They cover news and analysis. They post the most content of the channels I follow, but I can keep up with it.
ULTRA Pepe Lives Matters https://t.me/PepeMatter Pepe is a Christian, and covers news and encouragement. I honestly don’t know if this is a man or woman (I believe I’ve heard both), but this channel will provide you with a lot of encouragement in the darkness.
Dr. Joseph Mercola https://t.me/DoctorMercola Alternative health. Western medicine is pretty much centered on drugs and surgery. Some doctors look into alternatives. Mercola is one of them.
Jordan Sather https://t.me/jordansather Jordan used to run with people like David Wilcock and Corey Goode, with all that UFO disclosure and solar flash and secret space program stuff. While he isn’t a Christian (yet), Sather is highly concerned with the truth. He points out infiltrators into our movement, and people just passing off stories without discernment.
Mark Dice: https://t.me/MarkDice I already covered Mark Dice, but he has a Telegram channel. He posts infrequently, once a day or less.
James O’Keefe https://t.me/JamesOKeefeIII Run out of his own Project Veritas, he started O’Keefe Media Group and continues his hidden camera work to expose the darkness and corruption in the world. Project Veritas still has a telegram channel, but I heard they collapsed.
Advanced
If you think you have enough discernment and thick skin, you can attempt “the chans”. There are actually a lot of Christians on “the chans”, but there are many trolls and disrupters. I don’t recommend going to these places before you’re ready. I’ll forgive you for just avoiding them. I visit them infrequently, but if I want to know what’s happening I can go to QResearch to watch people analyzing events in real time. I’ve never actually posted. I just lurk.
A Note About Chan Culture
The culture on “the chans” will be foreign to you. Everybody is anonymous. The term “fag” gets used a lot. If you’re new, you’re a newfag. If you’ve been around a while or are middle aged, you’re an oldfag. If you like to track planes, you’re a planefag. If you’re a lawyer or paralegal, you’re a lawfag. It’s just part of the culture. Everybody is anonymous and therefore more or less equal. It’s almost impossible to build a reputation. Every post is starting from scratch. Some of the anons who have been there for a while may recognize each other by writing style.
Trolls and shills abound, trying to distract discussion. They’ll post images of gore or sometimes even pornography. Or they’ll post lengthy treatises about “the Jews”. We suspect some of them are paid agents of foreign governments, if not our CIA and FBI. The first day Israel got attacked, a lot of it dried up for a day or so, which indicates they’re involved in it. The more over the target you are, the more the trolls and shills will engage.
I describe “the chans” as a place of absolute brilliance and unmitigated depravity, often at the same time. There are some very smart people there. Because everybody is anonymous, you don’t know who you’re interacting with. There was an instance on QResearch a few years ago where an anon posted something like “I’ll be going live in 20 minutes and will be talking about this subject.” 20 minutes later, Laura Ingraham’s show started and that was the subject she began with. They were apparently interacting with a Fox News anchor or at least one of her research staff. The intelligence agencies will lurk and post there.
People address each other as “anon” because they’re all anonymous. When a supposed insider comes in, sometimes that inside status will get attached to them. There has been a Hollywood Anon, FBI Anon, and this is where the “Q Anon” thing comes from. Somebody was posting as “Q” and the anon got stuck on.
Every now and again, an apparent insider will post. Don’t take anything at face value. Many alleged insiders have posted and nothing ever came of it. For others, real world events reflected the insider posts. I have quite a collection of “insider” posts that turned out to be fraudulent.
A word you will frequently see on the chans is “kek”. It may confuse you. It is simply an edgier way to say “lol” (Laugh out Loud). I tend to use kek and it kills me that I can’t use it with “normies” because they don’t understand it. A lot of users post images of Pepe the Frog as kind of a mascot. Then they discovered an ancient Egyptian god named Kek, and Kek’s symbol was a frog. The script looks like a human sitting at a computer. It became part of the culture.
An interesting coincidence: anon is the Hebrew word for cloud.
4 Chan
https://boards.4chan.org/pol/ 4chan is a collection of boards. When I visit, I normally go to the Politically Incorrect board or /pol. If you scroll to the bottom you can select the catalog view which I find easier to work with than the default view. I once spent half a Saturday figuring out how to navigate and read 4chan. You can probably find a blog post or YouTube video telling you how to.
QResearch
https://8kun.top/qresearch/catalog.html 8Kun is another collection of boards. I’ve only been to the QResearch board. You could spend all day there and not scratch the surface of content. I also go there infrequently, but there’s value when I do. Again, you can watch anons analyze events in real time. But don’t let yourself get obsessed with it like you did Fox News.
On the chans, each thread is called a “bread”, and a user known as a “baker” maintains them. The bakers collect “notables”, or links to stories that might prove to be significant. Each bread maxes out at 751 posts so the baker will begin preparing the next bread.
Conclusion
That’s it. That’s how I keep up with what’s going on in the world while ignoring the mainstream Fake News. It doesn’t even take me very long. I use an app called TickTick (stupid name, but great app) which allows me to track how much time I spend on a task. On an average day, I’ll spend a little more than an hour total on email and about another hour on RSS. This is over the course of the day. Telegram is significantly less. Some days there is more long form content and it takes longer. For the YouTube channels I follow, I normally play them in the background while I’m reading my other sources. I do the same for podcasts.
I call this collection of sources my information feeds. I will do sweeps of them throughout the day. I normally start with email, then RSS, Anonymous Conservative’s brief, then Telegram. Then I do my daily Bible reading. I might go back to email around 10 or 11 in the morning. RSS and Telegram normally haven’t built up enough to be worth going through by then, so I check them around lunch. I’ll do another sweep in the afternoon, then around 6 PM, and finally at 9 PM. It doesn’t take a lot of time and I normally get different perspectives on the same issue so I can see them through different angles.
Bible
For my Bible reading, I’ve broken the Bible up into six sections. I know, there are many reading plans available but I like to do my own thing. I took something Dr. Chuck Missler said and made it my own.
Proverbs has 31 chapters and some months have 31 days. Each day, I read the chapter corresponding to the calendar date. Then I’ve broken the Bible up into 6 sections:
Gen-Josh
Judges-Est
Wisdom literature: Job-Song
Prophets: Isa-Mal
Gospels + Acts :Matt-Acts
Epstiles + Rev: Rom-Rev
I read a chapter of Proverbs and a chapter from each of those sections each day. Depending on how many long chapters I have, it takes me between 15 and 30 minutes a day. I can read through the entire Bible in about 200 days. When I finish a section, I start at the beginning of that section again the next day. I prefer to use Logos on my desktop. When they updated to Logos 10, they broke bookmark functionality in the mobile apps and haven’t fixed it yet. The web app is really bad so when I have to work onsite I’ll email a screenshot of my bookmarks to my work address and use Blue Letter Bible in the browser. Then I make a note to advance my Bible bookmarks when I get home.
The Last Closet was not easy to read. The author said it was hard to write, and the editor (Vox Day) said the editing was hard. Even this review was hard to write. I’ve been writing it off and on since I read the book. Castalia House published The Last Closet in 2017. This story needs to be told.
Moira Greyland is the daughter of Marion Zimmer Bradley and Walter Breen. Both were liberals and sexual deviants, including pedophiles. Both are long since deceased.
I’d never heard of Marion Zimmer Bradley until Vox Day started writing about her during his battle with the SFWA (Science Fiction Writers of America). I probably never would have heard of her if I didn’t follow Vox Day. Although I’ve always loved science fiction, I wasn’t into fantasy so I wouldn’t have come across Marion Zimmer Bradley independently. Even though people knew about Bradley’s child molestation, she was a celebrated feminist author. I notice left wing circles don’t have a problem with that.
Breen’s name never stuck in my head until reading this book.
Moira tells the story of both her parents and her own upbringing by them, including the emotional and sexual abuse she suffered under them, starting at an age where she couldn’t possibly understand what was going on. Fortunately, she spared us the technical details, but it was still horrific to read.
Both of her parents came from messed up backgrounds. Bradley’s own father repeatedly raped her. Breen’s parents abandoned him. Some hard core Catholic woman raised him. Breen was molested by priests. Both were fairly intelligent and members of Mensa, but I’ve heard little from people who have been around Mensa and its members to impress me. I’ve heard Mensa members may have high IQs , but many are messed up in the head and usually have body odor. Usually, when I hear “Mensa”, I assume something is wrong already. Most people I know who qualify for membership want nothing to do with Mensa.
Having come from messed up backgrounds, it appears Bradley and Breen passed that on to their own children. Marion wanted Moira to provide her with sexual companionship (apparently starting at age 3), and Breen wanted her to carry his “Grand Vision” forth to the world. This “Grand Vision” involved everybody being naked and having constant sex with each other, which would somehow bring about a “utopia”. Both parents were highly disappointed in her when she failed to live up to their twisted visions. Marion practiced some made-up “New Age” religion, and Moira became a Christian as an act of rebellion.
As an adult, when Moira was raped, upon telling her mom, the only comment Marion had was “You’re getting more action than I am.”
Moira also documents the twisted nature of Breen’s molestation, and how he operated in attracting young boys to himself. Toward the end of the book, she talks about her escape from them, and the decades of her battle with PTSD from which she will never completely heal.
Since reading this book in 2017, a lot of information has come out about child molestation and child trafficking in our society. Many prominent people have been accused of it; some with extensive documentation. While we still don’t have Jeffrey Epstein’s client list (the most secure document in Washington, DC), we have his flight logs. Many politicians, celebrities, and Fake News personalities have flown on his jet to his child molester island (Little St. James). Epstein is now long since dead (allegedly), and his collaborator Ghislaine Maxwell is in prison, but this doesn’t even scratch the surface of how deep this thing goes.
In the years before he passed away in 2021, former CIA Officer Robert David Steele commissioned 5 books extensively documenting child trafficking and molestation in this west. All five can be purchased from Amazon, or read for free online at https://pedoempire.org/contents/. The books are extensively footnoted with hyperlinks and cover Western Europe, the UK, the US, Canada, and Australia. There is a tag cloud you can use to find which chapters certain subjects and personalities are covered in.
I don’t recommend reading The Last Closet or the five Pedophilia and Empire books unless you have a very strong constitution. Unless you’re already familiar with some of this material, you will be horrified and revolted in ways you can’t imagine. You will learn people you admired and respected are involved in this horrific world.
When Apple rolled out Fitness Plus, I scoffed. I figured I don’t need a “guided workout” and mine was good enough.
After years of being lazy and fat, I started exercising in 2021. I began with an indoor walking workout; basically pacing back and forth in my home office and keeping my heart rate around 120. I also started doing 10,000 steps every day. Last spring, I added push-ups, sit-ups, and air squats 3-5 days a week. I started gaining some strength, which was nice. A friend of mine gave me a piece of exercise equipment similar to the Tony Little Gazelle, and I started using that.
This was beneficial. The brain fog I had went away. I have more energy and strength. My thinking was clearer and got more done. I used to say I didn’t have time to work out. Now I realize I don’t have time to NOT work out.
But I had no real variety. About a week and a half ago, I upgraded to the Apple Watch 8. I gave my old 6 to my wife. After my run to Best Buy and setting the watch up, I was already into the afternoon and hadn’t done a workout. I tried to switch things up and run in place for 20 minutes. Then my legs were so sore I could barely walk for 3 days.
I thought what the Hell? I’ve been working out. Yes, but I’d been doing the same two workouts for a year and a half. I should have known better.
Fitness +
I started looking at the 3 month trial of Fitness +, and figured “why not?” I wasn’t sure I’d use it much.
Of course, it only works on three devices: iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV. It does not work in the Apple TV app on Roku or on my iMac. I started using it on my iPad, set up on a tray table in my office. But this setup is sub-optimal. If you are in a workout that includes floor work, you have to pause and move the iPad. I broke down and bought the 4k Apple TV so I can use it on my television.
So far, I find a lot of benefit from Apple Fitness. I could probably handle the more advanced workouts, but I’ve been working through the beginner level. At least I have the conditioning to handle them, although being middle age, my balance on my right knee isn’t so good.
It displays the rings from your watch on the screen, and offers a timer for how long you’ve been doing the workout. Or if you’re in a specific exercise, it will count down. In the HIIT workouts, you’ll do 30 seconds at a time.
One nice benefit is I can pause the workout right from my watch to get a drink or move my mouse. Sometimes on slow days when I’m working at home I’ll do my workout, then if an email or Teams message comes in I can pause and handle it.
The Workouts
Each workout includes three trainers. One trainer will be in the foreground leading the workout. The others stand behind and to the left and right of the leader. They will explain the exercises and form, and offer different ways to the the exercise. One trainer will typically do it lower intensity and the other higher intensity. But it’s helpful and motivating and I like this format.
Conclusion
I’ve completed most of the beginner Strength, HIIT, and Kickboxing workouts. I might try dance or Pilates tomorrow. I’m not going to do Yoga for my own reasons, but there seem to be plenty of workouts available. Today I tried one of the mindful cooldowns. I think this might be a useful service.
I’ve used Linux off and on since 1998 or 1999. I bought Red Hat off the shelf originally and installed it. At the time, my video card wasn’t supported, so I couldn’t get a Graphical User Interface (GUI) to work. I played with the command line for a while, then reinstalled Windows98.
A few years later, I bought SuSE off the shelf. I had enough old parts to build a separate computer, so I installed it on that box. I had a Windows computer and a Linux computer. I don’t remember doing anything extraordinary with it. I browsed with it occasionally.
I’ve tried a few other variants. When Debian released an .exe to install from Windows, I tried it in a Virtual Machine and wrote a blog post about the results. Ubuntu is one of many forks of Debian Linux.
But typically, I found Linux too limited for my use. I guess I’m spoiled by Windows and Mac applications, and if there is an alternative on Linux, it rarely measures up and is not interoperable with Windows and Mac users. Web applications have alleviated that to a point, but sometimes it’s better to just have an app that runs on your own device.
People on Linux forums are generally friendly and want to be helpful, but they are not helpful. Even today, visit a Linux forum and ask “Which version should I use?” You’re likely to get the response “Whatever works for you.” Now, I’m fairly technical and have some Linux experience, and that barely makes sense to me. Imagine some 70 year old Boomer who can barely turn the computer on and doesn’t understand the difference between the operating system and Microsoft Word. How helpful is that going to be? Most people do not want to spend weeks installing Linux distro after distro until they finally land on that magic one that “works for you”. I wish Linux people understood this.
You also hear things like “You should compile your own kernel!” Why would I want to do that? Why would anybody trying to leave Microsoft and Apple want to just jump into that end of the Linux pool? Once you get REALLY good at Linux, sure, compiling your own kernel might be fun, but for the casual user who just wants to use their computer, it’s not fun. It’s very complex, and you need a deep understanding of kernels to do it. I tried it once, and I was lost. I didn’t understand what most of the components were and eventually ran out of patience for Googling them and why I should include or exclude them. If you want to promote Linux adoption, stop telling n00bs they should look at compiling their own kernels.
You can occasionally find posts and videos that will tell you about various distros, but they’re generally of the variety “Here’s this one. You might like this feature. This other one has this other feature. You might like that too.” It’s like they’re trying to be TOO impartial.
You may hear testimonies like “I breathed life back into my old Dell laptop by installing Linux! It runs fast!” So you take an old laptop, install Linux, and cannot duplicate the experience at all. It may run slower than Windows, if it even runs.
I took a Raspberry Pi 3 a friend gave me a while back. I tried running Ubuntu on it, but it was too slow. Ubuntu requires 4GB of RAM, and the Pi 3 has 1 GB. The Pi 4 is out now with up to 8GB of RAM. I got the Pi 3 running with Raspberry Pi OS (formerly Raspian) so I can play with it.
I figure I’ll dig back into Linux and try to find a way to think about it in a way that makes sense to me. Some of it is probably the heuristic Linux is based around. Linux is an x86 port of the Unix operating system. Unix was developed “by programmers, for programmers”. It makes sense to programmers, but not so much for the rest of us. I am not a programmer. I’m technically capable of learning it, but my experience in a Java class for my Bachelor’s degree made me swear off programming. I know enough to work with programmers and to manage software projects, but I haven’t been interested in writing programs since that class.
I’m glad Linux handles hard drive partitioning now. I remember having to manually partition my hard drive before I could even THINK about installing Linux. And Linux required at least 2 partitions, sometimes more.
Unless traveling, I used to walk around only with what I can carry in my pockets. As I progress past my mid-40’s, I’ve started to add a few pieces of gear to help me carry around more useful items. It felt like I was carrying too much in my pockets and I didn’t want to give up anything.
Man Pack
The first item I added is a Man Pack. I bought my first Man Pack at a gun show in 2012. It was in January and was really cold, so I had a sweat shirt and a jacket on. Once I moved inside, I began to overheat and had to take the extra layers off. As I was with friends, I was on their schedule. I began looking for a bag to carry my jacket and sweatshirt in. I stumbled across the Man Pack table. The founder, Aaron Tweedie, manned it himself. He had the sample Man Pack rigged for concealed carry. It seemed cool and useful, so I bought it.
I didn’t use it heavily at the time. The next Man Pack I bought was the Classic 2.0 in 2018 or 19 when I finally got around to submitting my CCW application. The 2.0 and further all have a compartment for carry. I also bought the velcro holster with straps for extra magazines. I later bought the teardrop shaped on. This year, the Op Sac came up, so I upgraded to that one. I passed the other bags down to my children. My 16 year old uses his heavily.
I use my Man Pack, obviously, to carry. I also carry with me a flashlight, solar phone charger, extra cables, and my iPad.
Scott E Vest
Earlier this year, due to my pockets getting heavier and heavier, I added a Scott E Vest. The most useful part of this vest is the ability to clip my car keys into a pocket. One of my cars uses a key fob, but my truck is still key in ignition.
Since I was in the Navy, I’ve kept my keys clipped to my belt loop. All you have to do is stand Duty Fire Controlman and carry the magazine keys around on a signal flag clip to become hooked to this method. But my keys jingle as I walk. Some former Marines I work with have commented “We can always hear you Navy guys coming from your keys.”
The Scott E Vest also has an RFID pocket, and I started keeping my wallet in there so it is not in my back pocket all the time. It fits in the pocket, anyway, but is too big for the RFID bag. But my wallet blocks RFID anyway (Bull Captain). I’ve never had back problems from a thick wallet, but I’m getting to the age where I may have to start paying for it.
I also carry some extra cables and a spare mask in other pockets. I haven’t fully utilized the Scott E Vest yet. One pocket will hold my iPad, but I can’t sit very well with it in there, so it stays in the Man Pack.
The Scott E Vest also has two dedicated phone pockets, so if I have to run out during the day, I can carry both my personal and work phones in the vest pockets.
Ridge Wallet
My final new piece of gear hasn’t arrived yet. I recently ordered a Ridge Wallet. It should arrive sometime between today and Monday. I normally just buy a wallet that meets my needs and use it until it falls apart. The Bull Captain RFID wallet is my third in the last 20+ years. “Minimalism” never had meaning for me, but I also realized I don’t need all the stuff I carry. I rarely have cash; I went as electronic as possible more than 20 years ago when I got my first Visa check card.
It’s easier than trying to find an ATM that works (they all seem to be broken when I need cash). I only need to carry one actual credit card for things like doctors offices and pharmacy drive-thrus and some gas pumps. I use Apple Pay on my Watch for everything else.
I’m looking forward to the Ridge. It should fit easily into the RFID pocket in my Scott E Vest.
I’m also hoping Apple’s idea of adding driver’s licenses to Apple Wallet catches on. The last time I flew, I added my boarding passes there and it was a lot easier.
I’m caught in between my fear of the tyranny of an electronic economy, and my love for what it could be without tyranny.
I first came across Roosh in 2012. My first marriage was on its last legs and deteriorating fast. Around that time, people I read like Vox Day and Matt Forney began writing about something called “game”. I wasn’t sure what I was reading at first, but Vox Day especially has dragged me into subjects I never thought I’d learn, like economics. Somehow, through all that, I found Roosh’s landing page for his book “Bang”.
Game has many negative connotations, although I found it helpful. It helped me to begin understanding she who is now my late ex-wife. I believe it also helped me to meet my new wife and to hold things together in a second, much better marriage.
Like me, Roosh was a shy guy who knew nothing about women. Following advice from his mom lead him to the “friend zone” curse. Roosh is a scientist by training, and as he came across “pick up artist” material, he began conducting experiments and recording his results, which resulted in “Bang”. He began a life of travel and fornication and living off the proceeds of writing books about it. If nothing else, Roosh was always interesting.
I could tell through his writing that Roosh was begining to experience what Solomon called “vanity and vexation of spirit”, and I began to call him the personification of Ecclesiastes, my favorite book of the Bible. I thought if he didn’t become a Christian eventually, he would be a shell of his former self.
Roosh’s conversion in 2019 seemed to come on very suddenly. One week, his podcast was about normal for that stage of his life, and the next week, he had Dr. E. Michael Jones on. I sure didn’t see it coming. Roosh was baptized in the Armenian Orthodox Church, so he returned to that.
After his sister died of cancer and he realized his life in eastern Europe was not going to be fulfilling, he returned to the Washington DC suburbs to live with his mother. Then he launched a car trip around our nation, giving speeches in 23 cities. The trip took 5 months. Each week, he posted a travel log video of the places he’d been and the thoughts he’d had in the prior week. He showed clips of cities and parks and interesting places he’d been, along with commentary about his experiences. He called it “Babylon Road” and the videos are probably still on YouTube. I followed along at home.
Roosh created “American Pilgrim” as a book based on his experiences. Like the videos, the chapters are organized by weeks, beginning with leaving his last city and culminating in the next city. After making a few changes to his routine, Roosh settled into attending church on Sunday if an Orthodox church was available, the exception being attending Joel Osteen’s church in Houston, which was a let down for him. (A common practice; Barbara Ehrenreich also attended as research for her book “Bright Sided“, a very good read. (My Amazon affiliate link is included.))
I’ll include a few thoughts on the book. Roosh encountered many people. Some were open to discussing spiritual things and others were not. Some people may not follow Roosh closely as they showed up to his events expecting to hear about how to bang women, while Roosh no longer wants to encourage sin. He met several people who were happy to hear his new message and encouraged him. Roosh still writes a lot about his fornicating past, but it is part of his testimony and conversion so I don’t see how he could avoid it and remain authentic.
Roosh struggled with being new in the faith. He felt greatly under-qualified to give people spiritual advice, and mostly stuck to his conversion story or how he was able to overcome problems through faith. He stopped at many monasteries and churches and talked to as many priests and monks as he could. He told many of them his story and received advice and blessings. I think his approach is the right one. Many of us Christians get a little too caught up in trying to tell others what to do, when it should simply be “This is my experience”.
I don’t know much about the Orthodox church, but I thought we “Protestants” were bad. Roosh often experienced Greek Orthodox not letting him take communion because he’s Armenian Orthodox, and the two churches are not in communion. At one church, he got a long lecture about how he needs to convert to Eastern Orthodox because the Armenians are wrong. (I’ve been through the “You should come to my church because yours probably teaches the Bible incorrectly” talk myself.)
Roosh also struggled with substituting one idol for another, such as novelty for fornication. None of us are immune from it, but Roosh demonstrates a spiritual maturity for recognizing it. Through the tour, he began to desire living in the mountains, but due to choosing what used to be a drug house, his experience was short lived and he promptly returned to living with his mother.
I personally have given up on thoughts of leaving my area. I don’t hate it, but I don’t love it either. But where would I go? People say South Dakota is free, but I’ve also been told if I hated the insular nature of New Jersey, I would definitely not like South Dakota. I also grew up in the military and somehow got the message that I was supposed to serve in the military and settle wherever I landed, which left me far from home. I’ve begun telling my children that it’s probably time to put down roots, and since I’m stuck here, then this is where our family should settle. I figure if God wants me somewhere else, he’ll drag me there. But last year in the middle of “COVID”, we were able to sell our old house after only 7 days on the market and move into a larger house after one offer and one counter-offer. It was so effortless, God had to have been involved.
I’m surprised to find that some of Roosh’s books are still available on Amazon. I thought they were all banned. You have to buy “American Pilgrim” directly from his store though. Like all of his books, it’s a good read. I guess I could facetiously call it “Jesus and the Art of Challenger Maintenance”, although Roosh only had to pay a mechanic to put a cover back on the underside of his car.
I haven’t posted on my blog for a year and a half. I log in periodically to install updates, but I guess I haven’t had much to say. 2020 was a good and busy year. I completed my Master’s degree, my children live with me now, and we had to sell our little old house and buy a larger new one. We also had to upgrade one of our vehicles. My children are very active in the youth program at our church, and one started his first job (McDonald’s, where I started about 30 years ago.) This requires me to do a LOT of driving.
I used to write a lot of book reviews. Starting around 2008, I began tracking how much I read every year. My best year was over 70 books. My worst year was 22. For 2020, I read 35 books. Since I keep them in a table in Microsoft OneNote, I’ll just paste the table here, then going forward I’ll resume writing reviews for books and posting them. I’m going to adopt the star system Robert David Steele uses for his book reviews. I copied directly from his blog and left his links in place if you want to check out his book reviews. Steele also uses a 7th star for “Cosmic, life altering” books, which I included in my ratings.
Of course, rating books is relative. I might read my first book in a subject and give it 5 or 7 stars, but after reading more on the subject, I may come back and downgrade the first book when I understand it in context.
It turns out my table doesn’t convert to the Internet very easily. This is the best I can do. I’ll go back to writing regular reviews of some books so I don’t have to do this again. I had to set fixed width to get my Notes column to show completely, so it is a long, narrow column.
For 2021, I’m planning to add some structure to my reading. I normally stumble across a book, or I choose from my vast backlog something I feel like reading at that moment. I’m planning a goal of 10-15 books that I will read, which should give me 20 or more open slots that I can get to spontaneously. I’m picking 10 books from Steele’s recommendations, and another 3 for professional development. I especially want to get my mind around a subject Steele talks about “True Cost Economics”.
Last note regarding my “Catholic Project” mentioned in several of my notes. During the summer of 2019, I woke up one day with a strange urge. For some reason, I had a burning urge to reinvestigate Catholicism by listening to what Catholics have to say about it. I listened to some of their podcasts and read several books; mostly from Catholic Answers apologists. It was an interesting project. I discovered some of what we are told about Catholics are lies that have been repeated for hundreds of years. Then there are a lot of misconceptions. I underwent a similar “Freemason Project” in 2016.
Number
Author
Title
Date
Notes
1
Ghost Fleet
3 Feb
Recommended by a Marine Col at an event I went to. I do not concur with his recommendation. Red Storm Rising was better. 3 Stars for a decent story in the context of a war with China with 2015 technology and a flawed (well, “Official Narrative”) understanding of geopolitics. I liked the privateer though. Very busy story with a LOT of threads to keep track of. It both jumped around too fast and not fast enough depending on the story.
2
Trent Horn
Counterfeit Christs
1 Mar
4 stars. Read as part of my Catholic project. Easy read, not very memorable.
3
Tim Staples
Behold Your Mother
6 Mar
5 Stars. Part of my Catholic project; really did help me understand the Catholic perspective on Mary. Very comprehensive; covers topics like “the new Arc of the Covenant”, which I’d never heard before.
4
Michael S. Tyrrell
The Sound of Healing
18 Apr
5 stars. Bought with Wholetones. Comprehensive understanding of music and frequencies. Not the world’s best written book, but very good in its niche. The “Key of David” is tuning A to 444hz.
5
Jimmy Akin
The Fathers Know Best Part 1
30 May
Free from Catholic Answers
6
Fr. Hugh Barbour
Prayer 20 Answers
2 June
Free from Catholic Answers
7
Roger Stone
Jeb! And The Bush Crime Family
13 June
5 Stars. Contains a LOT of information about the family going back to Samuel, the CIA, drugs, the Franklin Scandal, etc.
8
Roger Stone Robert Morrow
The Clintons’ War on Women
17 June
5 Stars. Overlaps with Jeb! And The Bush Crime Family a little bit.
9
Tony Dungy
Uncommon
17 June
4 stars. Read as part of men’s group. Good read on being an “uncommon” man i.e. living Christian virtues in a non-Christian world. Heavy football focus written by a retired coach.
10
Dr. Edward Sri
Praying the Rosary Like Never Before
17 June
4 stars. Part of my Catholic project. Good information. I got bogged down and came back to the book several months later.
11
Gary Michuta
Why Catholic Bibles Are Bigger
20 June
5 stars. Comprehensive coverage of the history and issues surrounding the deuterocanonical or apocryphal books. Part of my Catholic project. I told a Catholic friend about it, and summarized it as “Catholics give you more Bible for your money”. She said she was going to use that.
12
Dr. William Davis
Undoctored
25 June
5 stars. Lots of rehash from Wheat Belly, but the program is good (if I could only get my wife on board…)
13
David Wilcock
The Synchronicity Key
26 June
I’ll give Wilcock 5 stars for this. I bought the book because he said it explained “The Hero’s Journey”. He covers lots of other topics, such as reincarnation, which I’m trying to give a fair hearing to. Also gave some of his own story, at least, how he ended up in California. One comment about Wilcock is that he needs to respect his own ignorance of the Bible. I think he said in 2019, he read the Gospels for the first time. Yet throughout his career, he’s thrown out Bible verses badly misinterpreted. He needs to respect where his knowledge lies and be honest in areas where he’s ignorant, such as the Bible and Christianity. He pontificates here as if he’s studied it as well as the “Law of One” or the alternative science he writes about, and he does not know what he’s talking about. And if he’s going to claim Jesus taught reincarnation, he needs better references. He claims one of the Church Fathers taught it (I think he says Origen), but I’m willing to bet he’s as ignorant of them as he is of the Bible itself. He also claims Constantine held the counsel of Nicaea to lock up Christian teachings and create the Catholic church as a system of religious control, but gives no reference. I think he’s just passing on bullshit he read somewhere that he takes as true, but he is out of his area of expertise here. I’m not saying it couldn’t have happened, but it should be documented somewhere if it did.
14
Christopher Hitchens
The Missionary Position
27 June
5 stars. Acerbic wit, and a contrary position on “St. Theresa”, who had shitloads of money but operated her orphanages in poverty. She also associated with a LOT of unsavory people, including Robert Maxwell. Also took a lot of money from those people. She is NOT the saint everybody thinks she was. I also suspect she was involved in human trafficking, but can’t back that up yet. But she was in the perfect position and had contacts who were.
15
Devin Rose
The Protestant’s Dilemma
29 June
5 stars. Part of my Catholic project.
16
Michael Malice
Dear Reader: The Unauthorized Autobiography of Kim Jong Il
4 July
5 stars. Very amusing and fascinating look into Kim Jong Il’s life. It actually humanized him.
17
Brian Godawa
Enoch Primordial
18 Jul
4 stars. Great fictional account of Enoch’s times. Gets a little repetitive from his Noah book though.
18
Philip Delves Broughton
Ahead of the Curve
23 Jul
5 stars. A journalist attends HBS
19
Peter Theil
Zero to One
2 Aug
4 stars. Bought it years ago through a recommendation. It gives a little insight into Theil’s career and a few things you can do and should consider in yours.
20
Fr. Gabriel Amorth
Memoirs of an Exorcist
4 Aug
4 stars. English translation of the Italian transcripts of an interview with the Vatican’s late Chief Exorcist. Good understanding of Exorcism in Catholicism.
21
Mark Dice
The True Story of Fake News
9 Aug
5 stars. Solid research by Mark Dice, as always. His recent books overlap somewhat, but so does the Fake News and Tech Tyranny, which Robert David Steele calls #GoogleGestapo
22
Mark Dice
The Liberal Media Industrial Complex
15 Aug
5 stars. Solid research by Mark Dice, as always. His recent books overlap somewhat, but so does the Fake News and Tech Tyranny, which Robert David Steele calls #GoogleGestapo
23
Mark Dice
Bilderberg: Facts and Fiction
16 Aug
4 stars. Great work as Mark always does, but I don’t actually remember reading it. I was trying to plan out reading for 2021, saw this, thought “I’ve had that for years; I better read it”, then found it on my record of books I’ve read. This was during one of my spurts where I read several books in a short time frame before going a month or more between finishing a book.
24
Brian Neimier
Don’t Give Money to People Who Hate You
20 Aug
5 stars. Short read. Summarizes the “Death Cult” and the “witches”, who they are, and how and why you should avoid them and their products. How to support independent creators who don’t want to destroy you.
25
Dr. Steve Turkey
The Return of Christendom
22Aug
4 stars; short read. Summarizes how Christendom is coming back worldwide.
26
Robert Kaplan
Asia’s Cauldron
20 Sep
2 stars. I bought it several years ago when I trusted Stratfor and finally got around to reading it this year. It is a decent high-level overview of the players, issues, and histories of Asian countries. I’ll recommend a better work when I come across one.
27
H.A. Ironside
The Four Hundred Silent Years
26 Sep
4 stars. Somewhat dry, but an attempt at a history of what happened during the so called 400 “silent years”, which Catholics don’t consider silent (see “Why Catholic Bibles Are Bigger”). Having read that book first, I found this author’s discussion of the deuterocanonical/apocryphal books to be argumentative and somewhat uninformed.
28
Randolph Richards Brandon O’Brien
Misreading Scripture With Western Eyes
9 Oct
7 stars. Should be required reading for all Christians. Both authors have lived and been missionaries overseas. We tend to interpret the Bible through 21st century American eyes, and that is not how it was written or understood throughout history. The authors discuss this, discuss how the cultures they’ve lived in see things, discuss how the ancient Israelites saw things, and explain several passages and the differences between the ancient culture and how our culture sees them.
29
Anonymous Conservative
The Complete QAnon
25 Oct
5 stars. AC covers the mysterious backchannel Military Intelligence source “Q” from his own unique perspective. He starts with his story; how after he published his first book, two neighbors moved out and an entire surveillance network moved in. He explains what he’s seen of this surveillance network and how it operates. At the end of the book, AC covers Q’s first 400 posts and exposits on them from his unique viewpoint. AC himself is about as mysterious as Q. I’ve read everything he’s written since about 2013, and all I really know about him is I *think* he has a daughter named Amy, he loves guns, he’s a patriot, he’s trained in martial arts, and he lives within a two hour drive of Baltimore. And I think he accidentally dropped that point. I used to think he lived in the mid-west but I had nothing to base that on. He also was apparently some kind of scientist. I don’t even know how old he is. Sometimes I think he’s the same age I am; sometimes I think he’s in his 60’s.
30
Dr. Michael Heiser
The Unseen Realm
20 Nov
7 stars. The definitive work on the subject; best I’ve ever read. Dr. Heiser covers the supernatural understanding of the Bible we should all have, including God’s Divine Council, who all these other “gods” mentioned were, the Nephilim, angels, demons, and so on. I don’t read many books that are life and worldview altering, but this is one.
31
Joachim Hagopian
Don’t Let The Bastards Getcha Down
3 Dec
http://www.redredsea.net/westpointhagopian/index.html Author successfully sued West Point and forced them to abide by Due Process. 5 stars. Free online at the link above. West Point may have once been a great institution, but now it turns out lying, treasonous scumbag Generals who lose wars. It keeps cadets busy on mickey mouse bullshit that has never been proven to produce good officers or leaders. It covers up scandals, such as the West Point childcare pedo scandal in the 1980’s (See Satanism & Pedophilia Book 4), which will be on my 2021 books.) For more on West Point, look up John T Reed, another West Point grad with a lot to say on the subject.
32
Joachim Hagopian
Book 1: A Quarter Million Millenia of Human Enslavement, Child Rape and Blood Sacrifice from Antiquity to the Modern Catholic Church
6 Dec
Book 1 of 5 (four more coming) https://pedoempire.org/contents/ 7 stars. While this should be common knowledge, it is VERY dark material and not for the faint of heart. But if you don’t already know the world is run from the shadows by Satanic pedohiles who drink adrenochrome, you’re better off staying away. I can’t really send you to a 101 level material for this subject. Maybe there should be one. Look for “Fall of the Cabal” on YouTube. But this book series is an exhaustive documentation of people and organizations behind it all, and their methods of operation including blackmail, assassination, brainwashing, gaslighting, and so on. The series traces this network up to the UK as the center with Lord Rothschild as the head. I don’t know if there is anybody above Rothschild. This author did not document, but I suspect there are people or forces above him. The author was a therapist who has worked with children affected by pedophiles and has expertise in the subject. Book 1 introduces the subject, gives some background (Annunaki) and covers high level organizations. Book 2 covers the Royal Family and Jimmy Savile, also the BBC, Parliament, and so on. Book 3 covers Rothschilds and more pedo scandals from around the UK. Book 4 comes back to the US. Book 5 will be about Australia and the rest of the world. All books are available from Amazon or can be read free at the link above, which is how I read them. Book 4 should be out this month (physical) and Book 5 in March. I am currently reading book 4.
33
Joachim Hagopian
Book 2The United Kingdom – The World’s Pedophilia Epicenter
22 Dec
Book 2 of 5 (planned)
34
Joachim Hagopian
Book 3:The Rothschild Illuminati Bloodline and Ties to More British Scandals
29 Dec
Book 3 of 5 (planned
35
Robert David Steele Dr. Cynthia McKinney
#Unrig Election Reform Act
30 Dec
https://phibetaiota.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/2020-UNRIG-Guide-1.2.pdf 5 stars. More of a white paper than a book, but is a comprehensive reform badly needed in US laws. We need to destroy the bifactional ruling party tyranny. I disagree with the section on unions because I view them as corrupt as any other method of Cabal’s control over us. Nice theory; terrible implementation. Hitler had a proposal in Mein Kampf for state unions that in theory were supposed to bring businesses and employees together as citizens. I like that particular idea better than I do the Teamsters and the rest of the system we have.
Every now and again, something bubbles up in the Zeitgeist that can cause us to wonder why we never saw it before. All the talk about writing off student loan debt has some of us pissed off, although as long as the banks, not the taxpayers absorb it, I’m fine with the concept. Screw the banks as they have been screwing us.
The Bible calls for the forgiveness of debts periodically, and it’s even in the Lord’s Prayer (non Catholic version) “And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors”. I knew about it in the Bible, which I’ve read several times, but I gloss over it. I’ve never lived in a society that forgives debts, and I’d rather focus on the fun stuff like stoning adulterers and other sexual deviants.
I heard about this book yesterday while I was listening to one of Vox Day’s Darkstreams. Once I finish the book I’m reading on J Edgar Hoover, I’ll probably read this one. It’s available on Kindle Unlimited.
Though I’ve followed these subjects from a distance for several years, it’s only been recent that I started taking them seriously. One catalyst is my wife somehow got into prepping. She started out watching shopping videos on YouTube and somehow ended up watching preppers. She got me Michael Snyder’s “Get Prepared Now!” for Christmas. She’s also been buying as much dollar store paracord as she can find (although I keep telling her to get the 550 or MILSPEC.)
With my wife’s sudden interest in the subject, I started digging back into it. I even started watching the show “Doomsday Preppers” on Hulu. Some of those people have some off-the-wall fears and plans, but some of them are really smart.
I figured before I come up with a strategy, I should probably know what kind of threats I’m likely to face. There is no sense in prepping for a “zombie apocalypse” that is never likely to happen, although who doesn’t need an excuse to stock up on shotguns? But if you’re going to prep, you should probably give some thought to what you’re up against realistically.
On episode of Doomsday Preppers had me shaking my head and muttering. One guy was prepping for a supposed cyber attack that would entirely take down America. I obviously know more about cybersecurity than he does, and I kept muttering “That’s not how a cyber attack works.” The other guy was prepping for a “Red Dawn” style Russian invasion and somehow he and his two buddies were going to sneak behind enemy lines and stop it.
Some of these preppers live in a cabin on a mountain 2 hours from the nearest (small) town, and are prepping for terrorism and dirty bombs. I’m not sure they understand how terrorism works, but small towns are unlikely targets.
I have some experience in Risk Management, so I applied it to likely threats I could face in my area and the possible responses. This was a brainstorming exercise I did over the course of an afternoon, and very informal. I created a table in OneNote. I was unable to import my table to WordPress with any kind of formatting that made it readable, so I screen-shotted it. Again, this was very informal and while I did anonymize it somewhat, I figured cleaning it up and removing the profanity was probably too much work for a blog I haven’t posted to in over 6 months and probably don’t have readers for.
Green is obviously good. Red is severe. Black is off the charts, yet highly unlikely.
All of these are for my area. I judged the severity of a hurricane as yellow. While hurricanes are serious threats, by the time they get to me they’re just bad tropical storms. I got hit by two of them last year. I had to drive home from work in what was left of Florence. I also forgot to add under tsunami that I’m far enough inland that I don’t think it would affect me.
Now in the event I had to leave, the traffic in my area could be at a standstill for days with everybody else evacuating, so my most likely scenario is to shelter in place.
Having done that analysis, I can conduct some realistic preparations for the more likely scenarios, which are weather related. If I had to bug out, about the only way I could expect to pull it off is to be the first one to know so I can get on the road and out of the area.
