Sigh – I wish I had more juice left in my battery to type with, but I’ve been working on band stuff, IMT stuff, Life stuff… arguing against the concept that NASA is spraying lithium in controlling doses across the American population… you know… important stuff!
So – yeah, the Snopes article attacks the logic that IF : the government would spray for mosquitoes THEN : the government would totally spray mind control drugs in the atmosphere – and it also points out that there are public white papers on NASA’s website going back for over 60 years on using lithium as the released element in sounding rockets – but you’re right, it doesn’t really attack the central thought that NASA’s release of lithium into the higher ranges of the atmosphere – because it freely admits to doing this. I guess that’s sort of like Ford “admitting” to releasing hundreds of thousands of tons of carbon monoxide into the air. HOWEVER, the idea that lithium is being sprayed out there as a mind-control or calming element should be looked at more from the practicality of it : a daily “controlling” or soothing dose of lithium is (actually highly variable, but on the LOW side, 600mg a day) – let’s say you’re soothing a city like Baltimore. You know, to make sure we’re calm and would never riot, protest, or shoot one another. 600,000 people times 600mg – do the math and you’re releasing about 800lbs of lithium into the atmosphere a day, NOT accounting for the fact that the wind is dispersing it… let’s say we’re not even going for a calming dose, but a maybe just one quarter of that to take the edge off – and that somehow you’re assuring it doesn’t waft out into the ocean, get neutralized by radiation in the upper atmosphere, get breathed by rats, whatever (force fields, amirite?) – what with Tesla pushing the price up (batteries), you’re looking at spending close to $10,000 a day on this element, somehow aerosoling and dispersing some 200lbs of lithium every day – not every once in a while via a rocket… you could MAYBE try to argue that that’s what the mosquito trucks are a’sprayin, but the NASA theory is simply not practical. Think like an evil genius – there’s better ways to do this.
Later on I got involved in a discussion of having a centrist position. Someone kept posting gifs of Futurama characters denouncing neutrality and undecidedness…
I THINK I’m being trolled – but just in case anyone in this feed actually believes that a centrist position is the same as being undecided or neutral – and that this will lead to the world, nation, or simply Old Bessie going down in flames : no, it means that I believe in kindergarten principles like “we take turns and listen to one another speak” and American principles like “United We Stand, Divided We Fall”, free speech – and even the right not to listen.
It means I believe in free elections and a legal system that shouldn’t be for sale to the highest bidder, nor should it be revoked at the whim of a king or fuhrer. It means you can Love blue, and YOU can Love red – and though I Love purple and believe SO strongly that we all got together we’d see it the same way, I’m not going to hold a gun to your
head for believing in something else.
Quite frankly – humans see in spectrums, only animals see things in black and white. To buy into the idea that a “centrist” idea is the same as not having a legitimate opinion is to fall prey to the divisive rhetoric of “us against them”, “if you’re not for us then you’re against us” and xenophobia.
Maybe I shouldn’t fall back to Dune romanticism for my species : maybe to be human is to be tribalist and frightened of things that are other or alien, and to deride those things in the hope of controlling or obliterating that which isn’t understood. But as a nation and as a species we need to rise above these human failings, and you do that from the centre, where you can at least see (if not agree with) all sides.
So – thanks for bearing with me. These will one day soon vanish into Facebook, and though Facebook will keep my thoughts pristine and saved for generations to come, only Facebook knows how one would access it. You can see I’ve been arguing with people. Not necessarily successfully, but there are definitely nights when I simply can’t sleep until I’ve typed something out. Maybe I should pick bigger battles. I almost certainly SHOULD pick bigger battles – like I should DEFINITELY be calling out my cousin who was calling for protestors to be shot in Charlotte, NC – because, you know, she’s so fucking AMERICAN. And yet, it’s not just triage of people, but triage of time and my sanity. Pick your battles, pick your hills. I don’t think everyone can be saved. Currently she’s sharing memes like “if you’re arrested you should lose all government benefits” which… well, I could agree with part of that AFTER they’ve been convicted of a crime, and I can grasp how that would settle someone’s desire for appropriate vengeance (though I’d argue that if you just keep them in jail, financially you’re supporting them even more than if they were on the streets drawing on welfare) – but getting beyond the assumption on the poster’s part that the black man pictured is on some sort of government assistance (and whether through the EIC or probably the more direct SNAP assistance that she’s no doubt envisioning) cause… you know… he’s BLACK – well, then what? How is that helping him NOT be on the system? You going to just HOPE that sans job, unable to GET a job because of the criminal record, unable to get any baseline assistance to exist, that he’ll just curl up and die and not be a problem anymore? Yeah… you’re not thinking that through. I guess she’s hoping that he’ll either get shot by a cop or a citizen – just as long as SHE’S not paying for it.
Anyhow, here I am sitting in idyllic Glastonbury, CT, having walked down to a favourite coffeeshop and spent the day doing band work and Institute of Musical Traditions work, being angry and being encouraged and being happy and being discouraged – and worrying that if I wanted to pacify a nation I wouldn’t try to impractically aerosol them with lithium but would invent some kind of massive information-gathering system that would a) harvest all their personal information while b) giving them a place to vent and give them the feeling that they’d accomplish something almost as legitimately as if they’d gone out and voted. Extra points for this evil master plan if you don’t spend any government money doing it, maybe even make a PROFIT with it – extra, extra points if you can convince rob Hinkal to take time away from his Journaling to post quickly-forgotten social media posts of no import.
Yeah, way more effective to do it this way.
