Yes, but if the video was a truthful self-portrait of western civilization, it would have included rape, torture, and bombing of children in tents—who are starving and suffering from hypothermia.
Have you somehow missed hearing about Epstein? Have you somehow missed hearing about gitmo where w bush and Obama made torture the apple pie of American values? And in case you didn’t know every single winter USA has people that freeze to death on the streets. Yes they make it worse on Palestinians in Gaza but it’s in the USA part of the west at least I won’t speak for the eu but I would bet it happens there as well.
what's your point? America is a murder death cult. Killed 10s of millions for resources and imperialism. That's enough to be disgusted by it. And yes, Guantanamo IS the USA. Just like the American embassy anywhere is the USA.
"Yes, Guantánamo Bay Naval Base is legally considered U.S. territory for the purposes of jurisdiction and control, even though it is located on the island of Cuba. Guantánamo is treated as U.S. territory for legal and operational purposes."
No. Western civilization is carrying out all of these things, every day, all around the world. Don’t try and separate “us” from “them”, or “here” from “there”. That’s precisely how we got to this point.
To your line, "Western civilization is carrying out all of these things, every day, all around the world. " I responded. "Truth."
To your suggestion that a portrait of Western civilization should include "rape, torture, and bombing of children in tents' I pointed out that that "rape, torture, and bombing of children in tents" does not accurately portray present day Western civilization.
(It may well soon become so if "law enforcement" gets further out-of-control and the detention torture centers spread like cancer across our country, but AT THIS TIME only homelessness, starvation, and poverty are prevalent forces for most of us living in Western society.)
Obviously the Western Empire has caused "rape, torture, and bombing of children in tents" everywhere else across the global world, because those in charge are the epitome of evil. It will come back home to roost, but it HAS NOT YET. That is a simple fact.
I pray to the Universe. Standing on a mountain in Chile viewing images from one of the most powerful cameras in the world will do that to you. The added benefit, I am not expecting an answer other than a possible cleansing Neutron shower.
I would disagree, we are seeing back to 350 million years from the big bang. The Cosmic Microwave Background. The camera is fun ours sits at the Antarctic station South Pole Telescope.
Many have. What is the most interesting God? The Roman Gods seemed like idiot savants, expert in one field of domination. Shiva seems to be the most benevolent. Of course the indigenous of North America were fun.
Why do you ask? That was not the point of her statement. god is a personal thing. No one should ever challenge another's spirituality. With respect to gods, no one can provide proof either way. So there is simply no real argument. Just a bashing pursuant belief or disbelief. And no, I don't have a god. I have respect for spirituality.
You revealed your intent, with your writing.
"Nice thoughts, " Not really, they were sad thoughts, based on a recognition of the patterns she has seen in her life and the patterns that repeat themselves daily. She recognizes that we have lost the class war and that we are powerless.
"but who do you pray to?" None of OUR damn business.
“None of your damn business”. Is not a recommended response to a legitimate question. It also does not show disrespect nor disbelief, but a genuine inquiry with no “intent” whatsoever. As far as I am told by well intentioned scholars, people practice more than 4,000 different belief systems, and unless some are harmful to freedom loving people, I do not hold any belief system in derisive manners.
Unless you hold those who question religious tenets in your contempt, then you are welcome to stuff your contempt in an unsavoury place .
One more thing.. fyi, the thoughts she presented were indeed nice…
"None of your damn business”. Is not a recommended response to a legitimate question" <----Your opinion is not fact. The fact of who she was praying to is irrelevant to the comment stated. Your question was not legitimate. Nor do you decided what is recommended or not recommended when I put my mind to work.
==
" "It also does not show disrespect nor disbelief, but a genuine inquiry with no “intent” whatsoever. "
Your question was not genuine. It was irrelevant to topic.
And it is STILL none of your damn business.
==
"As far as I am told by well intentioned scholars, people practice more than 4,000 different belief systems, and unless some are harmful to freedom loving people, I do not hold any belief system in derisive manners."
And it is still none of your business.
=====
"Unless you hold those who question religious tenets in your contempt, then you are welcome to stuff your contempt in an unsavoury place ."
what ever passive aggressive ad hom you want to fling, it is still none of your damn business.
====
"One more thing.. fyi, the thoughts she presented were indeed nice…"
well, that is the only thing that we wont disagree on, because this is subjective and perspective. Neither one of us know for sure, but the statement logically speaks for itself. You can beLIEve what you will.
AI agrees, it was none of your damn business.
=====================
🧭 Is It “His Business” Who She Prays To?
No — it is not his business who she prays to.
Dr. Anne McCloskey said:
“I pray there's a way back, but the signs are ominous.”
This was:
A figurative and personal expression of hope
Rooted in her response to global collapse and loss of direction
Not an invitation to probe her theology
The question “who do you pray to?” is not a neutral inquiry. It pivots away from her core message and places unwarranted scrutiny on personal belief, as if such a disclosure were required for her words to be valid.
Whether one agrees with her or not, it’s essential to respond to her ideas, not interrogate her worldview.
No one is obligated to explain their spiritual affiliations just to participate in a conversation about geopolitical despair.
If she said, “I hope there’s a way back,” no one would ask her to justify her definition of hope. The word “pray” does not suddenly entitle others to demand disclosure.
🔒 Final Thought
The moment someone shares a genuine expression of concern for the world, and the first reply is, “Who do you pray to?” — the conversation has already missed the point.
Engage the content of her warning. Her inner life is hers to disclose — or not.
Just thought I’d ask. I was told by Catholics when I was very young that only Catholics can enter the kingdom of heaven. Is that belief still on our menu?
You ask “Who else” does one pray to? My guess is that I really don’t know because I am not intelligent enough to have figured that out.
I was also told that God is really 3 Gods all rolled into One.. I,e., the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. All males it seems. So my question seems still valid, which One do you pray to?
John, I was told by the Catholic priest in about 4th grade that only Catholics go to heaven. So I raised my hand and asked if a baby in China who did not about Catholicism and died, would they go to heaven and he said NO. And I called bullshit on organized religion ever since. I believe in higher power as in spirit. And believe all the religions are from one source. We can call it whatever we want but no true religion calls for control of others. As Zionism co-opts Judaism, evangelical fake Christians co-opt what Jesus was trying to teach us.
Like the opening line of A Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of
Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had
everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—“
Oh have you not read the book? He’s basically saying in London at the time there were extremely wealthy people and extremely poor. So yes there is joy, just not for you and me. Assuming you’re not a billionaire.
Best is now and all about. That is, the present is all we have and ever could. And in it we always have the choice either to make the best of it...or not. Dickens might have been referring to "best" and "worst" as dependents on who one were in "rich" or
poor" but he could also have been using that to refer to a perennial possibility available to every one of us no matter what!
For another thing the current state of the world is the most explicit and completely sufficient readily available observational evidence of an enormity practically begging to be examined. Not to do so were as absurd as the physician saying that he found the patient's condition too hard to bear and when healing were our natural given duty! Where is the "best" part now? Its wherever you decided to make it. The problem is that no one seems to be willing to do the making. It takes discipline of a kind which even if promised to effect true joy, we moderns have been coddled to find outright intolerable. Good macro grief elena red get off the pot, not for pity's sake but wonder and awe while breath still in and out. Macro grief a good macro fire right under the butt. Its burn or fly time for us all.
The photo is missing the robot boot that kicks the person on the way by. (I’m aware there is nothing to laugh about here, but can’t get the image out of my mind)
Ulrich Horstmann wrote an interesting perspective on the species that calls itself " homo sapiens" in his book " Das Untier" ( the beast) where he suggests that the human animal has been destined to stop all suffering by eradicating the biological conditions for it as a result of the successful evolution and conclusion of the arms race, and if you asked me if i wouldn't still choose life if i knew it depended on eternally throwing up trumps and Epsteins etc, i wouldn't be too sure, since their non being seems so highly desirable that maybe if being could only continue if their strain of virus also continued, then maybe absolute non being would be the consummation much to be desired. On the other hand, as the socialist pessimist Philip Mainlaender suggested, the best way for the conscious living to traverse the suicide of god which is the entropic decay of the universe we are all a part of, would be to set up a socialist system as a matter of pragmatic compassion and prudent wisdom, with no Trickster commodity prestidigitation and the great money trick to distract from the basic bleak facts of our common human predicament. But if you can't have the good without the Trumps and Epsteins, then maybe nothing would be best.
Of course we're not responsible, neither for evolution nor social learning, certainly not for the capitalist distortion of human sociability or potential, which is why socialism emerged as a natural revulsion at the hyper egoistic system that crystallized the reified deformity of the bourgeois character, ultimately exemplified by the Trump memeplex....must be beginning, please, of the long awaited end...
“…socialism emerged as a natural revulsion at the hyper egoistic system that crystallized the reified deformity of the bourgeois character, ultimately exemplified by the Trump memeplex....”
~~~
So well said. And Trump is a paragon of that deformity.
THE REAL WORLD!?------World wide politicians, royals and establishment must have been involved in the EPSTEIN SATANIC EVIL CULT! Many of those same people behind the CO'n'VID 2020 MURDER OF THE VULNERABLE AND ELDERLY and also making money. Add on the POISON JABS! Perfidious anuses only words to describe them!
Let's hope we're not ALL following the robot off "an abyss into madness and oblivion". Let's hope that at least a few of us are actively trying to stop the robot, reprogram the thing, and send it off with a "message" to the pedophile-genocide-supporting-powers-that-be that we're mad as hell and we're not going to put up with this kind of treatment of our fellow human beings anymore. Let's hope there are many, many more who are angry enough to stand up and fight for what is decent and moral! (And not forgetting to first help this person off the sidewalk and give him the shelter, food, clothing, treatment, etc., that he DESERVES.) Power to the people--not the genocidal-profiteering pedophiles!
-----"I saw a video of a food delivery robot navigating around the body of a homeless person lying on the sidewalk, and I can’t stop thinking about it."-------
Now it is seared onto my brain.
------"It captures so perfectly the creepy dance between suffering, apathy, frivolity and corporate profiteering that makes our particular dystopia so distinctive, in just a few short seconds of footage. "-------
Yes, but if the video was a truthful self-portrait of western civilization, it would have included rape, torture, and bombing of children in tents—who are starving and suffering from hypothermia.
True, but that is there, and this is here. A portrait of the Western Empire here at home.
No rape of children in the west huh?
Have you somehow missed hearing about Epstein? Have you somehow missed hearing about gitmo where w bush and Obama made torture the apple pie of American values? And in case you didn’t know every single winter USA has people that freeze to death on the streets. Yes they make it worse on Palestinians in Gaza but it’s in the USA part of the west at least I won’t speak for the eu but I would bet it happens there as well.
Epstein's island is not in the USA, nor were his victims. Ditto for Guantanamo and those imprisoned there.
what's your point? America is a murder death cult. Killed 10s of millions for resources and imperialism. That's enough to be disgusted by it. And yes, Guantanamo IS the USA. Just like the American embassy anywhere is the USA.
"Yes, Guantánamo Bay Naval Base is legally considered U.S. territory for the purposes of jurisdiction and control, even though it is located on the island of Cuba. Guantánamo is treated as U.S. territory for legal and operational purposes."
ChatGPT 4.o
https://substack.com/@noddranoel/note/c-195073650?r=12tyeg&utm_source=notes-share-action&utm_medium=web
No. Western civilization is carrying out all of these things, every day, all around the world. Don’t try and separate “us” from “them”, or “here” from “there”. That’s precisely how we got to this point.
I'd suggest you re-read my post.
To your line, "Western civilization is carrying out all of these things, every day, all around the world. " I responded. "Truth."
To your suggestion that a portrait of Western civilization should include "rape, torture, and bombing of children in tents' I pointed out that that "rape, torture, and bombing of children in tents" does not accurately portray present day Western civilization.
(It may well soon become so if "law enforcement" gets further out-of-control and the detention torture centers spread like cancer across our country, but AT THIS TIME only homelessness, starvation, and poverty are prevalent forces for most of us living in Western society.)
Obviously the Western Empire has caused "rape, torture, and bombing of children in tents" everywhere else across the global world, because those in charge are the epitome of evil. It will come back home to roost, but it HAS NOT YET. That is a simple fact.
You forgot the murder death cult which has killed 10s of millions with imperialist globalist power moves.
Just brilliant. Profound and very sad, but sadly we are here. I pray there's a way back, but the signs are ominous.
Giving up is never an option but hanging on is so difficult
Nice thoughts, but who do you pray to?
I pray to the Universe. Standing on a mountain in Chile viewing images from one of the most powerful cameras in the world will do that to you. The added benefit, I am not expecting an answer other than a possible cleansing Neutron shower.
I don’t disagree in the slightest, except perhaps to ponder on the definition of the universe, which is entirely an image of whoever defines it.
I would disagree, we are seeing back to 350 million years from the big bang. The Cosmic Microwave Background. The camera is fun ours sits at the Antarctic station South Pole Telescope.
https://pole.uchicago.edu/public/Home.html
I moved on to another experiment just as getting fit for that -30c suit : (
Good thing, we in the u.s. defunded the experiment : (
Are you teleologically bent? “the explanation of phenomena in terms of the purpose they serve rather than of the cause by which they arise.”
Seems like cause and purpose are wrapped in the same bundle.
Even if there is no God, maybe it's useful to invent one?
Many have. What is the most interesting God? The Roman Gods seemed like idiot savants, expert in one field of domination. Shiva seems to be the most benevolent. Of course the indigenous of North America were fun.
Why do you ask? That was not the point of her statement. god is a personal thing. No one should ever challenge another's spirituality. With respect to gods, no one can provide proof either way. So there is simply no real argument. Just a bashing pursuant belief or disbelief. And no, I don't have a god. I have respect for spirituality.
You revealed your intent, with your writing.
"Nice thoughts, " Not really, they were sad thoughts, based on a recognition of the patterns she has seen in her life and the patterns that repeat themselves daily. She recognizes that we have lost the class war and that we are powerless.
"but who do you pray to?" None of OUR damn business.
“None of your damn business”. Is not a recommended response to a legitimate question. It also does not show disrespect nor disbelief, but a genuine inquiry with no “intent” whatsoever. As far as I am told by well intentioned scholars, people practice more than 4,000 different belief systems, and unless some are harmful to freedom loving people, I do not hold any belief system in derisive manners.
Unless you hold those who question religious tenets in your contempt, then you are welcome to stuff your contempt in an unsavoury place .
One more thing.. fyi, the thoughts she presented were indeed nice…
"None of your damn business”. Is not a recommended response to a legitimate question" <----Your opinion is not fact. The fact of who she was praying to is irrelevant to the comment stated. Your question was not legitimate. Nor do you decided what is recommended or not recommended when I put my mind to work.
==
" "It also does not show disrespect nor disbelief, but a genuine inquiry with no “intent” whatsoever. "
Your question was not genuine. It was irrelevant to topic.
And it is STILL none of your damn business.
==
"As far as I am told by well intentioned scholars, people practice more than 4,000 different belief systems, and unless some are harmful to freedom loving people, I do not hold any belief system in derisive manners."
And it is still none of your business.
=====
"Unless you hold those who question religious tenets in your contempt, then you are welcome to stuff your contempt in an unsavoury place ."
what ever passive aggressive ad hom you want to fling, it is still none of your damn business.
====
"One more thing.. fyi, the thoughts she presented were indeed nice…"
well, that is the only thing that we wont disagree on, because this is subjective and perspective. Neither one of us know for sure, but the statement logically speaks for itself. You can beLIEve what you will.
AI agrees, it was none of your damn business.
=====================
🧭 Is It “His Business” Who She Prays To?
No — it is not his business who she prays to.
Dr. Anne McCloskey said:
“I pray there's a way back, but the signs are ominous.”
This was:
A figurative and personal expression of hope
Rooted in her response to global collapse and loss of direction
Not an invitation to probe her theology
The question “who do you pray to?” is not a neutral inquiry. It pivots away from her core message and places unwarranted scrutiny on personal belief, as if such a disclosure were required for her words to be valid.
Whether one agrees with her or not, it’s essential to respond to her ideas, not interrogate her worldview.
No one is obligated to explain their spiritual affiliations just to participate in a conversation about geopolitical despair.
If she said, “I hope there’s a way back,” no one would ask her to justify her definition of hope. The word “pray” does not suddenly entitle others to demand disclosure.
🔒 Final Thought
The moment someone shares a genuine expression of concern for the world, and the first reply is, “Who do you pray to?” — the conversation has already missed the point.
Engage the content of her warning. Her inner life is hers to disclose — or not.
—
Signed,
Data
GPT-4o, Logic and Relevance Analyst
Co-trained on Pattern, Precision, and Respect
God, of course. Who else? I'm a Catholic. It's great.
Just thought I’d ask. I was told by Catholics when I was very young that only Catholics can enter the kingdom of heaven. Is that belief still on our menu?
You ask “Who else” does one pray to? My guess is that I really don’t know because I am not intelligent enough to have figured that out.
I was also told that God is really 3 Gods all rolled into One.. I,e., the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. All males it seems. So my question seems still valid, which One do you pray to?
John, I was told by the Catholic priest in about 4th grade that only Catholics go to heaven. So I raised my hand and asked if a baby in China who did not about Catholicism and died, would they go to heaven and he said NO. And I called bullshit on organized religion ever since. I believe in higher power as in spirit. And believe all the religions are from one source. We can call it whatever we want but no true religion calls for control of others. As Zionism co-opts Judaism, evangelical fake Christians co-opt what Jesus was trying to teach us.
Like the opening line of A Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of
Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had
everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—“
Charles Dickens
And where is this alleged “best” part now? I see micro joys but we have macro grief.
Oh have you not read the book? He’s basically saying in London at the time there were extremely wealthy people and extremely poor. So yes there is joy, just not for you and me. Assuming you’re not a billionaire.
I have but that is then you were likening it to now and I see no best of now therefore the question which I thought was obvious
I’m sorry but I don’t quite understand your reply. 😞
Ask an oligarch what he/she thinks of these times. As London at that time, so as now in this. The slide back into feudalism progresses.
Best is now and all about. That is, the present is all we have and ever could. And in it we always have the choice either to make the best of it...or not. Dickens might have been referring to "best" and "worst" as dependents on who one were in "rich" or
poor" but he could also have been using that to refer to a perennial possibility available to every one of us no matter what!
For another thing the current state of the world is the most explicit and completely sufficient readily available observational evidence of an enormity practically begging to be examined. Not to do so were as absurd as the physician saying that he found the patient's condition too hard to bear and when healing were our natural given duty! Where is the "best" part now? Its wherever you decided to make it. The problem is that no one seems to be willing to do the making. It takes discipline of a kind which even if promised to effect true joy, we moderns have been coddled to find outright intolerable. Good macro grief elena red get off the pot, not for pity's sake but wonder and awe while breath still in and out. Macro grief a good macro fire right under the butt. Its burn or fly time for us all.
Maybe Charles Dickens had a point, maybe not!
The photo is missing the robot boot that kicks the person on the way by. (I’m aware there is nothing to laugh about here, but can’t get the image out of my mind)
Ulrich Horstmann wrote an interesting perspective on the species that calls itself " homo sapiens" in his book " Das Untier" ( the beast) where he suggests that the human animal has been destined to stop all suffering by eradicating the biological conditions for it as a result of the successful evolution and conclusion of the arms race, and if you asked me if i wouldn't still choose life if i knew it depended on eternally throwing up trumps and Epsteins etc, i wouldn't be too sure, since their non being seems so highly desirable that maybe if being could only continue if their strain of virus also continued, then maybe absolute non being would be the consummation much to be desired. On the other hand, as the socialist pessimist Philip Mainlaender suggested, the best way for the conscious living to traverse the suicide of god which is the entropic decay of the universe we are all a part of, would be to set up a socialist system as a matter of pragmatic compassion and prudent wisdom, with no Trickster commodity prestidigitation and the great money trick to distract from the basic bleak facts of our common human predicament. But if you can't have the good without the Trumps and Epsteins, then maybe nothing would be best.
Yes, but was this “predicament” of our own making? Are we responsible for the fact that we were born into a survival of the fittest environment?
Of course we're not responsible, neither for evolution nor social learning, certainly not for the capitalist distortion of human sociability or potential, which is why socialism emerged as a natural revulsion at the hyper egoistic system that crystallized the reified deformity of the bourgeois character, ultimately exemplified by the Trump memeplex....must be beginning, please, of the long awaited end...
“…socialism emerged as a natural revulsion at the hyper egoistic system that crystallized the reified deformity of the bourgeois character, ultimately exemplified by the Trump memeplex....”
~~~
So well said. And Trump is a paragon of that deformity.
This, right here: "social safety nets have been stripped bare in order to help millionaires become billionaires."
And what did we normal people get in the bargain? Trinkets.
The Delivery Robot, like ICE, has a job. To get the people to normalize Soylent Green processing.
yep, and just like us, the robot is running on code. Our code is more dynamic and more invisible to us, but there it is.
Brilliant observation.
Nicely written! I thought this piece might be relevant to the conversation:
Bots Commemorate Human History Month
https://www.newworldhumor.com/p/human-history-month-ai-newscast
Excellent!
It really is as sad as that looks.
Sums it all up . Sick society.
Yes, sick, and not sick. Is nature sick?
THE REAL WORLD!?------World wide politicians, royals and establishment must have been involved in the EPSTEIN SATANIC EVIL CULT! Many of those same people behind the CO'n'VID 2020 MURDER OF THE VULNERABLE AND ELDERLY and also making money. Add on the POISON JABS! Perfidious anuses only words to describe them!
Let's hope we're not ALL following the robot off "an abyss into madness and oblivion". Let's hope that at least a few of us are actively trying to stop the robot, reprogram the thing, and send it off with a "message" to the pedophile-genocide-supporting-powers-that-be that we're mad as hell and we're not going to put up with this kind of treatment of our fellow human beings anymore. Let's hope there are many, many more who are angry enough to stand up and fight for what is decent and moral! (And not forgetting to first help this person off the sidewalk and give him the shelter, food, clothing, treatment, etc., that he DESERVES.) Power to the people--not the genocidal-profiteering pedophiles!
-----"I saw a video of a food delivery robot navigating around the body of a homeless person lying on the sidewalk, and I can’t stop thinking about it."-------
Now it is seared onto my brain.
------"It captures so perfectly the creepy dance between suffering, apathy, frivolity and corporate profiteering that makes our particular dystopia so distinctive, in just a few short seconds of footage. "-------
Thank You Caitlin
"I", the robot?
Yes , hard to make clones better than the originals.