OT WE 28 MAY 25 ~ The Maze

Submitted by QMS on Wed, 05/28/2025 - 5:59am

It is amazing people are still finding their way thru this maze of confusion.

Perhaps it is more of a haze we are navigating. It kinda rhymes anyway. Unless you were
born with some inherent omnidirectional compass, finding one's way has become a
process of trial and error, a learning process. The signs seem to morph more rapidly.

What was right is now left. One-way streets appear suddenly. As they say in Maine:
'Ya caint get theya from heaya'. Blindly stumbling into the next wall gets a bit tiring.
Retracing your steps sometimes helps, but will not get you thru to the other side.
Going in circles feels like movement as opposed to rooting in one spot. Watching
the world pass you by. It's a peculiar conundrum.

There is no route out of the maze. The maze shifts as you move through it,
because it is alive.
-- Philip K. Dick
~

Knowledge is awareness, and to it are many paths, not all of them paved with logic. But sometimes one is guided through the maze by intuition. One is led by something felt on the wind, something seen in the stars, something that calls from the wasteland to the spirit.
-- Louis L'Amour

How how do you navigate your way thru this modern matrix?

Credits ~
Ana Brecevic’s Assemblage of Ocean Plastics
https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2025/05/ana-brecevic-plasticum/

Open thread, so leave a string to find your way out.

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Open Thread

The maze

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Comments

Submitted by QMS on Wed, 05/28/2025 - 7:41am

Hey, good morning

Unable to come up with anything but
absurdity in the news, just standard fare
from the production companies. If it resembles
x, then it must be y today and z tomorrow.
It was never x to begin with. Confusing.

Hope your hump day is tolerable.

—

Zionism is a social disease

Submitted by on the cusp on Wed, 05/28/2025 - 8:39am

Good morning, Cap'n!

@QMS I figure the "good" will bleed out quickly.
I read some news about an accident on Grapevine Lake, and I was curious how far away the lake was from here. I did a Google search for Grapevine. Here is what popped up: Grapevine. Human settlement in Texas.
In a generation, the population will produce some scary doctors, airline pilots, engineers, etc...
Thanks for the OT, dear friend!

—

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

Submitted by QMS on Wed, 05/28/2025 - 8:58am

Yeah, it is scary how AI is transforming

@on the cusp
once accepted modes of reasoning.
Human settlement? Guess that makes
it real. Next it will map virtual places as well.
Human off-ramps and hallucinated rest stops.

Good luck and have fun!

—

Zionism is a social disease

Submitted by earthling1 on Wed, 05/28/2025 - 4:27pm

I wonder

@on the cusp
if someone in California (Hecate?) did a google search for Grapevine and it come up with the Interstate 5 portion rising up out of Bakersfield and over the mountain toward Los Angeles. It was coined the Grapevine in the book "The Grapes of Wrath" and was notoriously dangerous iirc.
In other words, is Google search location sensitive?

—

Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.

Submitted by on the cusp on Wed, 05/28/2025 - 4:51pm

I had just read an article about

@earthling1 some crime in the area. A manslaughter in the Grapevine Lake in Texas. I guess that triggered the search results. Who knows?
We watched that movie a few weeks ago. What a difficult time that was for poor folk.

—

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

Submitted by Lookout on Wed, 05/28/2025 - 7:58am

Good Morning...

Another rainy one here. Fortunately Florida was dry through the festival as it rained here. We got one day at home and now are off for the old band reunion. I'll finally get back home this weekend. At least there's been lots of music over the last week.

Plenty to do when we get back home. Yesterday harvested lots of broccoli. Blanched it this AM, and will freeze it before we leave.

I couldn't believe my ice blocks survived 5 days of Florida heat. I've got a red neck Yeti contraption using reflectix... under around and over the cooler. I was surprised it was so effective. We do carry most of our food frozen when we leave, and that helps too.

So no rest for the weary. Off again today. See y'all Sunday. Thanks for the a mazing OT!

—

“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Submitted by QMS on Wed, 05/28/2025 - 8:50am

Happy music making times

@Lookout
.
Can almost picture the notes flying
out of the windows as your tour evolves.
Thanks for popping in!

—

Zionism is a social disease

Submitted by soryang on Wed, 05/28/2025 - 9:23am

Louis L'amour- East of Sumatra

My ex had a trove of these novels which my son took a liking to, scores of them, and I borrowed a few. L'amour's westerns were entertaining. Although criticized as formulaic, they gave an impression which was semi-autobiographical on his part, of rough and tumble life in the US. I did read Last of the Breed and can't remember anything about it.

I'm afraid the books did influence me in some way. When one effort fails, simply move on to the next. 無為; simplified: 无为; pinyin: wúwéi

I found his own characterization of the film East of Sumatra, (from his merchant marine days?), funny:

In his memoirs, L'Amour called it "my first motion picture":

The story was of tin mining, and made a bit of sense as written. A big company was rushing in to exploit an island, ruled by a Rajah ... He wanted a hospital, medicines, and doctor for his people. The Company wanted to get in and get the tin and get out with as little trouble as possible. The idea was good, the cast was capable – and instead of a meaningful picture, the producers or somebody turned it into a sex and jungle epic. In any jungle picture with a beautiful native girl, you can be almost be [sic] sure that before long you will find her swimming naked or nearly so in a pool, usually with a waterfall, and there the leading man comes upon her. He is often in the pool himself and it leads to what is expected to be a titillating scene. So it was in this case. The sincere young Rajah is largely forgotten; he doesn't get his medicines and his hopes and the picture go down the train.[3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_of_Sumatra

Distracting myself this morning with two videos on differences between Cantonese and Mandarin. The first one is amazing, how he says it was determined that Cantonese is more authentic to classical Chinese using the example of rhyme in Tang dynasty poetry. How do they know what it sounded like? I thought you might be interested.

China Is Quietly Erasing Its Last Link to Ancient Chinese

Why Chinese Killed Easy Words (And Made Everything Harder...)

—

語必忠信行必正直

Submitted by QMS on Wed, 05/28/2025 - 11:03am

The oil boats carried a stash

@soryang
.
of Louis L'amour western novels. Didn't realize he
wrote other things until much later in life.

Also took me awhile to figure out the difference
between Cantonese and Mandarin.

Thanks for the links!

My ex had a trove of these novels which my son took a liking to, scores of them, and I borrowed a few. L'amour's westerns were entertaining. Although criticized as formulaic, they gave an impression which was semi-autobiographical on his part, of rough and tumble life in the US. I did read Last of the Breed and can't remember anything about it. I'm afraid the books did influence me in some way. When one effort fails, simply move on to the next. 無為; simplified: 无为; pinyin: wúwéi I found his own characterization of the film East of Sumatra, (from his merchant marine days?), funny: In his memoirs, L'Amour called it "my first motion picture": The story was of tin mining, and made a bit of sense as written. A big company was rushing in to exploit an island, ruled by a Rajah ... He wanted a hospital, medicines, and doctor for his people. The Company wanted to get in and get the tin and get out with as little trouble as possible. The idea was good, the cast was capable – and instead of a meaningful picture, the producers or somebody turned it into a sex and jungle epic. In any jungle picture with a beautiful native girl, you can be almost be [sic] sure that before long you will find her swimming naked or nearly so in a pool, usually with a waterfall, and there the leading man comes upon her. He is often in the pool himself and it leads to what is expected to be a titillating scene. So it was in this case. The sincere young Rajah is largely forgotten; he doesn't get his medicines and his hopes and the picture go down the train.[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_of_Sumatra Distracting myself this morning with two videos on differences between Cantonese and Mandarin. The first one is amazing, how he says it was determined that Cantonese is more authentic to classical Chinese using the example of rhyme in Tang dynasty poetry. How do they know what it sounded like? I thought you might be interested. China Is Quietly Erasing Its Last Link to Ancient Chinese Why Chinese Killed Easy Words (And Made Everything Harder...)

—

Zionism is a social disease

Submitted by Socialprogressive on Wed, 05/28/2025 - 9:52am

I depend on humor

to keep me sane while stuck in the maze.

—

MAGA
Morons
Are
Governing
America

Submitted by QMS on Wed, 05/28/2025 - 11:10am

Chuckles

@Socialprogressive

Drivers do seem impatient these days.
Dangerously so at times.

—

Zionism is a social disease

Submitted by usefewersyllables on Wed, 05/28/2025 - 10:51am

It seems, at least in the

short term, that the way to achieve less unhappiness is to embrace the suck.

This is "The Revolution of Lowered Expectations", writ large.

—

Twice bitten, permanently shy.

Submitted by enhydra lutris on Wed, 05/28/2025 - 11:02am

Good morning Cap'n Q. I find it disturbing when the mariner

asks for assistance with the navigating, I mean, really?

Whoo, Trucks looks like a kid up there, heh.

I note, in particular that you say

Retracing your steps sometimes helps, but will not get you thru to the other side.

The traditional solution, of course, depends on your traditions:

Soryang posted the answer above - "wúwéi", which takes us right back to any way the wind blows, alternatively, at any time, the way out is up, far above the maze (or maize should you prefer), all is clear.

be well and have a good one

—

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Submitted by humphrey on Wed, 05/28/2025 - 3:43pm

First it was send in the Kenyans now we get this.

https://apnews.com/article/haiti-kenya-gangs-mission-us-58a8297e9e495ad0...

Updated 3:49 PM EDT, February 6, 2025
Share
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — A fourth contingent of Kenyan police arrived Thursday in Haiti to help repel violent gangs as officials brushed off concerns over a halt in some U.S. funding to the U.N.-backed mission.

The 200 police officers from the East African country join more than 600 other Kenyans already working alongside Haiti’s National Police as part of a multinational force boosted by soldiers and police deployed by countries including Jamaica, Guatemala and El Salvador.

“We are reaching close to our full strength so the mission can start giving results,” Godfrey Otunge, the mission’s force commander, said as he greeted the new officers at Haiti’s main international airport, which remains closed to commercial flights because of ongoing gang violence.

The U.S.-appointed Haitian regime has hired Blackwater founder Erik Prince to stamp out the armed rebellion in the slums of Port-au-Prince.

Prince is deploying drones, hiring mercenaries and shipping weapons.

200 people have reportedly been killed by drones already. pic.twitter.com/5zgM3IKp3X

— Dan Cohen (@dancohen3000) May 28, 2025

Maybe they will have to resort to the Clinton Foundation once again.

https://www.clintonfoundation.org/clinton-global-initiative/action-netwo...

ABOUT the Haiti Action Network
In 2008, President Bill Clinton called for action to address Haiti’s needs after four hurricanes devastated the country, leading to the formation of the Haiti Action Network. After the 2010 earthquake, the network focused on long-term development in agriculture, cultural preservation, education, energy, enterprise development, health, shelter, and water, sanitation, and hygiene.

With rising gang violence, political instability, and the continued threat of extreme weather, the Haiti Action Network remains focused on locally-led solutions for sustainable recovery.