August 5. Posted nine days ago to the subreddit, The Failed Assassin, The Dictator, and The Magus. That link goes to the subreddit post, which contains the link to the article. What I find most interesting is that Mussolini survived an assassination attempt, just like Trump did, by making a sudden head motion which happened to dodge a bullet, and getting barely clipped, in Mussolini's case on the tip of his nose. This is a perfect example of the saying that history doesn't repeat but it rhymes.
The rest of the article is about occult mind control, and while I accept the occult, I don't think there's any magical shortcut for control. There are two ways to get someone else to do your will: find someone who already wants to do that thing and organize them, or apply overt social force and overcome stubborn resistance. It's possible that occult rituals could help, or synchronistically line up, with the first of those methods, to give motivation and luck to someone who already wants to do an assassination.
The comment in the post goes deeper into the esoteric beliefs of the American right. What I find most strange is that J.D. Vance and Opus Dei both believe in spiritual evil, and see themselves as fighting against it -- while I believe in spiritual evil and see them both completely serving it. It's almost like serving evil, and fighting evil, are not opposites, but two views of the same thing. Quoting Thaddeus Golas: "The seduction of evil is precisely in that it involves us in trying to eliminate it."
The common thread is compulsive fixation: a narrowing of focus that is self-reinforcing and hard to pull out of. Compulsive fixation looks like evil to everyone whose interests are excluded by that fixation. And if you're prone to fixation, an easy thing to fixate on is something you're against.
August 7. From Ask Old People, why there are no useless degrees. The entire comment:
Because in our day, education simply for the sake of education was a good and desirable thing. Colleges used to have the goal of turning out well-rounded citizens and no education was ever "wasted" because being educated - no matter the degree - was considered an objectively good thing. There were a lot of ways to contribute to society no matter what your degree was.
Now colleges are nothing more than job training programs churning out cogs for the machine, and have no interest in education for its own sake. Society no longer values an intelligent and well-rounded citizenry, either. In a culture where everything is monetized, most degrees will be "useless" if they're not strictly utilitarian.
August 16. What Is a Twin Flame? Lately it's a trendy word for a soulmate, but this 2022 article explains how it started out as something more specific and interesting:
Unlike life partners -- what we consider to be soul-mate relationships or "the one" -- twin flame relationships are intense and challenging relationships that force us to deal with our unresolved issues and, through trials, tribulations, and breakthroughs, become a bigger person. Because of this intensity, it's uncommon for twin flames to be a lifelong partnership. Rather, they are people who enter your life for a period of time to help you grow and steer you on course. "It is common for those relationships to separate because they are very difficult to maintain."
August 22. Scientists reveal a fascinating neurocognitive trait linked to heightened creativity: "Our study found that creative individuals do not perceive unusual information as odd; they process it similarly to typical information." My guess is that creative people perceive all information as odd. More precisely, neurotypicals have an information autopilot mode, which is confused by unusual information. Creative people do not have that mode, and must engage all information with their full conscious attention.