Flies before fireflies

A personal note to my readers before I pray to the Snow God.

I've been catching up and rubbishing things since I posted 'Firefly'. However, my digital decline has been happening for years. Like a Swansea heroin addict improving life with methadone, my intentions have been slow.

It's a difficult being part of the world I despise and am fascinated by. Maybe wanting to be a firefly was too ambitious. A fly on the wall would suffice, but to not participate is to want to be a squashed fly. Most people don't live, they just wait to die, punctuating themselves with complaints they're never going to do anything about.

I'm a parody of them. I gave my all fighting corruption, but the politicians taught me that power is right. I don't want to be useless, but I want to fly away. Oh, the useless paradox.

My brain is that one hand clapping in the forest, the tree falling when no one hears it, that cat that's both alive and dead in the unopened box, and the shit on your shoe that you never realised was there until someone said "What's that smell?".

FIGHTING WITHOUT THEIR WEAPONS

There's hypocrisy in writers I like complaining about Musk and Zuckerberg whilst using their platforms, giving them money through verified ticks and advertising.

It's hard for those with stronger morals having 'might is right' on one's tail, running from Facebook and Twitter to Rumble and Odysee, from WhatsApp to Telegram, from Microsoft to Linux, and onwards (or downwards) to whatever will be crushed next.

If you're an optimist, then you haven't realised that AI is financially unsustainable for the benefit of all. Open AI will lose control to a hybrid of Alphabet, Microsoft, and the Pentagon. AI will become, mostly, a tool against us, made affordable to bankers and their servant governments by our taxes and children fuelling their war profit. The propaganda will be better, and occasionally they'll make a new medicine, and thus we will love them making decisions for us, or moan whilst switching sport channels.

Pity the real journalist being detained at the airport for the crime of truth; the activist imprisoned; the whistleblower exiled; and those shot, starved, stabbed, raped, bombed and poisoned.

How to stand against Israel without hating Israelis; protect Ukrainians from NATO without becoming a Putin stooge; stick up for Chinese accomplishment without excusing citizen privacy invasion; despise racism whilst discriminated against; preach tolerance whilst knowing that religion is problem; hating fake money without becoming fake by needing it.

It's easy for most. They choose a side - a sex, skin, culture, religion, country or gun club - and entrench the divide.

I divide myself. Unlike fractional reserve banking, I get smaller.

FALLING

Awake the dead
that's me
Not a victim or a sinner,
just a one in 8 billion part
of this wicked world’s side

It's a travesty
that I dreamt my reality away,
but the price of ambition
was too high
for the empty pocket in my brain

With a smile and love,
I felt salvation on its way,
gravity defined by lies
when I fell
longer than I climbed

And I'm still falling
… through this life
that doesn't listen
… or the me
that doesn't hear

History honours those that killed the most
whilst religions die to rise in disguise
Lust disrespects population statistics
and tender can only be found in mud

I'm falling…

I've long been off social media but took it further the past month.

My Amazon-owned Internet Movie Database (IMDB) profile is dead, along with years of my reviews and movie lists.

I killed my Gmails and associated Google accounts. The fallout is likely to affect Android apps - I want to totally escape Google Play but then the cell wouldn't work. But I only made 5 brief calls the past month, so don't consider myself a moneymaker for parent company Alphabet.

I'm checking my email twice weekly. That will drop to one.

Many beloved bookmarks have been deleted.

Weekly podcast shows are being ignored because I've got so many old interviews and debates to get through.

It's a struggle to keep up with promises to subscribers, and I forget who I promised, but note that, for 10 hours, I listened to and appreciated David Webb's 'The Gigaohm Biological High Resistance', Jem Bendell on industrial capitalism coming to an end, Mike Benz's 'Inside the Censorship Industrial Complex', Open Debates' 'Is the ICC’s Arrest Warrant for Netanyahu Justified', and the exceptional Blindboy podcast episode called 'The Donkey' (which led to me listening to two more). Although a month old, there's long-time value in listening to Chris Hedges interviewing Israeli journalist Gordon Levy.

Movies are my oxygen mask. I loved watching all of director Trần Anh Hùng's movies.

I haven't gotten to any of your books, such as Owen Jones' 'Chavs', Ryszard Kapuscinki's 'In the Shadow of the Sun', Malcolm Gladwell's 'The Tipping Point', Daisy Bates' 'The Passing of the Aborigines', and Keith Hayward's 'Infantilised - How Our Culture Killed Adulthood'. By listing them, I prove my intention is alive. I also want to win a bet with myself that Whitney Webb's mammoth 'One Nation Under Blackmail' is the decade’s highlight education (but the audiobook requires 36hrs and money).

Although I read a bunch of articles/reports whilst away from you, I've still 65 to go, from neoliberalism and pathocracy to the latest on the OPCW-Douma controversy. Plus, there's almost 300 downloads to sort of which more than half will be more articles. That's nothing compared to the hundreds I've filed as reference for essays I haven't written. I may need another 6 months to clear the backlog.

I've unsubscribed from the majority of substacks, newsletters and newspapers - hundreds - so that I don't receive notifications as replacements for SMSes gone silent. One day, that will apply to all, not because I don't care but because I care too much, and the only way to be fair is for all to think me unfair. However, I again point out that I've listed my favourites/recommendations at Hot Media, and I'm responsible for sending over 1000 subscribers to them, my biggest Substack achievement. I will return to those writers at will, instead of beck and call.

My apologies to the three people who wanted to interview me the past 6-7 months. It's best I obey my corrupt government with silence on those matters.

I've got a lot of personal things needing doing before they become problems.

I'd love to walk for pleasure for the first time since April.

Tearing off petals
- one, two -
making real
the size of me
and you.

In farty manner, I'm saying I'll continue to be here less. I only want to write rare and big articles.

I’ve scheduled small, weekly posts for you at my baby diary substack, but forgive me if I don’t respond to comments. I’m busy building my mental raft (because I've got no money to buy gold and sex dolls).

I'm not forgetting evil. I'm following the wars. I'm just trying to stop drowning, and want to be better educated. I hope to figure out how to contribute to our shared world before the storm intensifies (which it definitely will).

Alternatively, let me be better at being absurd. I'm sure you're in desperate need of a list of the best horror movies the past quarter century.

If I fail significance and ridiculousness, I'll move to a cave in the Himalayas to pray to the Snow God to freeze all wars. Flies and fireflies welcome. Please bring real coffee.

* * * * * *

Here are posts you may have missed:

6. The Democratic Alliance Threatens Me

5. Who controls South Africa? (part 1)

4. Who controls South Africa? (part 2)

3. Who controls South Africa? (part 3)

2. The Devil visited Earth

1. The banned undercover investigative docuseries into the Jewish lobby in the USA

0. What I believe (and what I don't)