Last week I tried communicating the astral influences abstractly, allocating no alphabetic allegories to muddle the mystic meanings. I was accused of “phoning it in.” While I was initially angry at such Phillistinery, it occurs to me that perhaps not everyone is as connected to cosmic conditions as I am, otherwise you’d all be casting your charts yourselves. Perhaps music and gun reviews were too pointed of parables to perceived by the peanut gallery.
So I should say stuff simpler. I need a knack of knowing what to whisper into the inner ear of the lacking listener. What medium could there be that speaks so succinctly, that communicates so completely, so infinitely innately immediately understandable than interpretive dance?
With the moon in Aquarius, we have two powerful water/femininity confluences resulting in enhancement of tides, the color blue, and zaftig burlesque dancers.
I’ve warned previously about the meaning of Saturn and Mars in Capricorn, but with the two planets coming into conjunction, you really should pay attention.
And, while this video really was more apropos when Venus was in conjunction, it still works as long as the Sun and Mercury retrograde are doing their thing in Aries.
And in continuing good news for our phallophillic glibs, Venus remains in Taurus.
Today’s planetary alignment: Sun, Mercury (retrograde), Earth, Moon. With both the full moon and Mercury retrograde, prepare for some craziness. Like really crazy, people-rising-from-the-dead crazy. Furthermore, the full moon is bringing its destabilizing effects to Libra, further disrupting the natural order of things. Expect lots of practical jokes and hoaxes.
Everything else remains the same as last week, celestial-influencewise.
Since even I, paragon of laziness, can’t leave a submission at sixty words, I’ve decided to cast a horoscope for Glibertarians.com, the website. Now since this is the first time I’ve done such a thing for a entity that is artificial, electronic, abstract, collective and incorporeal, the interpretations will be a bit… unrefined.
Since the first post was by OMWC, I’m using the horizon as (would be) seen from Chicago for the reference. So there’s one strike against ol’ Glibby already.
Some of the standard phrases for this horoscope are pretty damn funny:
Conservative (no, goddammit, not conservative! Libertarian! There is a fucking difference!)
You get bored with the status quo and are generally open to new things and ideas. An individualist and a free spirit. (Yes, but how does that square with conservative?)
When you feel insecure or threatened, you become overly sensitive to criticism. (*koff* *koff* Yeah, not touching that one.)
You tend to be very opinionated — you have strongly felt notions about things and are quite vocal about expressing and defending them. Yet you are also an original thinker — you enjoy shocking others with your offbeat, original thoughts. You appreciate and need mental and intellectual stimulation. Your judgment is usually fair and impartial — you can be a good critic because you can remain objective and unemotional about most things. For you, as well as for the rest of your peers, the issue of personal freedom is not just an abstract issue that can be discussed and then forgotten. You feel very deeply the loss or threat of loss of your ability to remain unrestricted and independent. And you will react vigorously and vociferously to defend your right of self-expression, no matter what the cost. (God DAMN but astrology is an exact science.)
Seize your destiny, Glibs!
Now that’s all well and good, but you have to look at the chart as a whole. Frankly there’s a lot of aggression and stubbornness in this chart (particularly sexual), and a surprising amount of prudishness. Yeah, I don’t have that figured out, either. Maybe because of Eddie’s presence in the beginning? If Glibertarians.com were a ruler, it would be a fair and just one.
But what of… Destiny? What fate awaits our happy little home? When will it end? How will it end? Will it fade away as people get bored with it, or will it flame out in an explosion of egos and hurt feelings?
Well the stars can answer the last one: Glibertarians.com is going out with a bang, not a whimper. Now as to when the spectacular glibocalypse will happen, the chart is empty. Like literally empty. Like there’s not a frigging thing in there about longevity. Sometimes the sky is a bitch that way. There is bad news about the life Glibby is expected to experience: the signs point to collectivism ascending, and freedoms diminishing. A very odd and discomforting alignment indicating destructive change and/or rapid loss. This is another reason why astrologers are alcoholics.
The big astrological news this week is the infamous MERCURY RETROGRADE. So you know, chaos, gremlins, dogs and cats living together, bad made-for-TV-movies, all that sort of thing.
However, the fortunate thing is that Ceres (in Leo) went station direct by the time you read this, so if you’ve been having difficulties with griddle-cooked breads (pancakes, crepes, tortillas, crumpets etc.), this week you should have better results.
Jupiter (planet of rulership, happiness and good fortune) has been retrograde for a while and will remain so until July tenth or thenabouts, so expect about four more months of general political wackiness. But this week, we get a Sun-Mars-Jupiter alignment (in Scorpio-Pisces-Capricorn respectively), so expect a military fuckup on a rather grand scale. This relates to an existing war, so don’t misread this as [insert boogeyman here] starting WWIII.
That Mercury-Venus conjunction in Ares? This week, the sun joins them, energizing everything and making this week the Best. Week. Eva… You know what, this joke has gotten really played out. This is the problem with astrology – the planets move SO GODDAMNED SLOWLY that you’ve got the same fucking thing set up week after week, and it just gets BORING. This is why professional fortune tellers are all alcoholics. You’ve got to constantly come up with new gibberish to keep the suckers clients coming in, and that imagination needs a lot of lubrication.
Where were we? Oh, yes. Something NEW. This week we do have that. The moon is in Cancer, which–being the ruler of that house–means we get that whole exaltation thing that gives you a +1 stacking bonus to secrets, emotions, variability, and horrible, incurable, terminal diseases.
A holdover from last week (sigh) is the conjunction of Mars and Saturn in Capricorn. Fighting for stupid reasons leads to loss. Not bad advice generally.
Re: last week’s prediction of a political assassination? Nailed it. I honestly should have made the poisoning prediction, what with Scorpio being involved and all, but it’s been so long since I’ve done this I was pessimistic about my prognositcatory prowess.
So, we’ve got most of the planets lining up: The Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Venus with Mercury in opposition. This indicates that people with power get the best sexual partners, and that this condition is unlikely to change. No shit? Thanks for the insight, celestial sphere. No really, I can’t wait to see what you have to tell me next. Maybe something about the relationship between water and wetness? Fire and heat? Progs and progging? Honestly, there are times when it just isn’t worth it to drag the star charts out, much less look up.
That’s no mo–
The sun is (still) in Pisces, but nothing else is. So all you Pisceses out there, just keep being y’alls double-fishy selves and enjoy it while it lasts.
We still have Jupiter retrograde in Scorpio, but with Mars moving out of Sagittarius into Capricorn, we don’t have the immediate threat happening. Instead, this is looking less like sabotage and more like Leaders being general rake-stepping fuckups. With extra belligerence, because…
As I mentioned before, we have Mars in Capricorn. This bodes well for Battlestars, and cautions everyone else that maybe they are the ones being an asshole this week.1 Doubly so because Saturn (exalted) is also in Capricorn. Bad luck, loss, destruction… fighting is bad m’kay? Postpone any planned fights.
Now, for the one thing that you were all interested in last week’s revelation: yes, this week both Venus and Mercury remain in Aries. But joining it is the moon. Not only does this increase all the influences of the conjuncted planets, but with the Moon’s pull on the heartstrings and emotions, you are much more likely to form a deep, spiritual bond with your wooly lover (though why you would want this, I have no idea since I’m not a dirty kiwi.2,3,4) Also everyone knows: moon means anal.
1 This week? 2 Or Scot 3 Or Welshman 4 Or a lawyer who’s initials might be A.A.W.
As a published authority on bullshit and the most prolific linker of astronomy/cosmology youtube videos, it seems only natural that I should cast the horoscope for the Glibertariat.
Please note that this is not going to be a table of sun signs. That would take too much effort and bore me too much to find anything interesting to say, as the truth1 is that for most signs, absolutely nothing of interest is happening at any given time. There are only seven heavenly bodies that have regular influence and twelve signs. The fact that people have been able to get away with the tabular format for so long is a tribute to the gullibility and innumeracy of the general public. Therefore, I’ll give you insights2 into the celestial influences at large, and let you make your own freely-arrived-at decisions about how to use the information.
Obviously, the sun is in Pisces. The interesting thing is that the moon is in Capricorn. Combining these two means that for the next week or so, glitter-related endeavors have a much higher chance of success. So go ahead and craft or enter that drag contest. Do remember that this is Capricorn we’re talking about, so visits to strip clubs will leave evidence that is more resistant to cleaning than usual.
With Mars in Sagittarius, we have promising signs for bow-hunting. However, since we’re talking Mars and not the Sun (or the moon ascending), this looks more directly related to the Jupiter (retrograde)/Scorpio interaction which means… political assassinations. Yeesh. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you where or who, or if this is a warning or an imperative. 3,4
The big news this week is that we have a conjunction of Mercury and Venus in Ares, which means this is the very best5 time to try sheep-fucking, or if you are already sheep-fucking, to try fucking the other sex of sheep. I am not making this up6, this is what the heavens say. 7
1 For a certain value of “truth” which contains astrology 2 As footnote 1, but for “insights” 3 No, goddammit, this is not a true threat! Put the subpoena down! 4 Other reasonable readings of this would be “the stillbirth of a Kennedy” or “Steve Bannon’s corpse exhumed by a necrophiliac.” 5 “very best” is a relative, not absolute value statement 6 As footnote 1, but for “making this up” 7 If you are already a bisexual oviphile, try a different position this week. You’ll like it.
I was going to start this off with a Google[1] Ngram of the usage of “reality-based,” but it only goes to 2008, so it doesn’t confirm my gut feeling that the term has been tossed around an awful lot in the past election cycle. It does show a surge starting in the reign of Bush the Elder, increasing throughout the Clinton years, and peaking with GWB.
I think that we all know that most of the time that “reality-based” is used, it is a synonym for “someone who is my political ally.” But maybe we can try to give it some actual meaning? Is there such a thing as a “reality-based” community? Is there a “reality-based” mindset? I think there is, I think I’ve seen it, I think I can describe it.
In 2011, I moved to Upstate New York to open up a semiconductor fab. Most of the people involved were brought in from all over the world, since the local talent pool was almost nil. We did have some new college graduates from RPI and SUNY Albany and watching their transformation was…entertaining. During one of the earliest operations meetings, an NCG from the module responsible for classifying the finished dies was asked how the product was yielding. He answered, “it sort of yields.” This brought down great vengeance and furious anger from the person running the meeting. “What do you mean it sort of yields? Can you play video games on it or not?” (The product at the time was the CPU/GPU combo for the Xbone.) This leads me to an observation:
If you can talk your way out of it, it is not reality-based.
Reality doesn’t care about your opinion. It can’t be bargained with, it can’t be reasoned with. It does not feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop. Ever. Until you are dead. Having said all of that, while reality will always win in the end, it’s not actually the most important thing out there. An awful lot of really great things are all about opinions, attitudes, and various human happy delusions (like natural rights *ducks*) so do not consider this some sort of attempt at setting up a hierarchy with “Reality” at the top and “Opinion” at the bottom. That’s not what I am trying to do. Though in the Glib Spirit® of encouraging conflict and snark, I will refer to the realm of opinion as “Bullshit.”
Although the unfortunate young’un at the ops meeting was presented with a binary choice, categorizing communities/mindset results in three:
1) The Bullshit community. This is a very easy community to live within, and might be the most populous community in the industrialized world. If the success/failure of your endeavor depends totally (or nearly so) on the opinion of other people, you are a bullshitter. This includes such fields as:
Entertainment
Politics
Law
Bureaucracy
Services
You can live quite a comfortable lifestyle while remaining completely within the bullshit bubble. Again, this is not necessarily a bad thing. Even non-Bullshitters benefit from or require the application of bullshit from time to time. Sales and marketing, interface design – these are all matters of popularity and opinion. They are the bullshit that enriches the fertile fields of consumer choice!
2) The reality-adjacent community. These are people who have at least a nodding acquaintance with reality but whose work often deviates from it, or relates to it in such a way as to prevent reality from interfering too much with the results. Mathematics is a reality-adjacent field. It can model reality amazingly well when it isn’t being used to determine how many ways you can pack nine-dimensional spheres. Pure sciences can also fit into this category. If the work purports to describe reality but cannot be tested (M-theory) or relies on simulation to confirm it (climate science) then it is reality-adjacent. Likewise archaeology, history and pretty much all of the social sciences are reality-adjacent, excluding those disciplines that are bullshit. Actually, it’s the reality-adjacent people that scare me. The ability (or habit) of accepting premises as a given (spherical cows with a radius of 1 meter anyone) and then accepting that the logical conclusion is correct because the logic is correct, makes them prime candidates for all sorts of appeals to “the greater good.” I mean, there’s not too much wrong with the logic of Marx or Malthus; it’s their premises that are faulty.
3) The reality-based community. If your work can be definitely said to be successful or unsuccessful, regardless of the opinion of the observer [2], then you are working in a reality-based field. This includes, but is not limited to:
Trades
Sports
Manufacturing
Veterinary and some fields of human medicine
You can play video games using the chip, or you can’t. The fitting leaks, or it doesn’t. The engine starts, or the javelin travels 110 meters [3], or the crops grow. You may attempt to explain away the result, but you’d be being literally absurd. There is an enforced honesty in the reality-based world. A hellish, panopticon-like traceability of one’s work actions. The clash that comes about when a bullshitter tries to bullshit in the reality-based world can be hilarious. One of the labs in our group will do checks on the various process chems to verify material integrity and blender performance. Almost all of our process chemicals look identical (49% HF, 31% H2O2, 25% TMAH, 96% H2SO4, etc.) but respond very differently (potentially dangerously) when being prepared for analysis. So when some jackhole drops off samples that are labeled with the wrong chemical label they get very irate. When the lab manager complained, [insert Litigious Industrial Supplier here] demanded to know how we were so certain that they had mislabeled the chemicals. Let me repeat that: they asked the people in the chemical analysis lab who are being paid vast sums of money to analyze chemicals…how we knew what chemical was in the bottle.
For those that would say that reality is itself a matter of opinion (but, like, that’s just your opinion maaaan) [4] I would respond thusly: if there ever comes a point where you, armed with your metaphysics can defeat me, armed with a baseball bat then I will consider that you may have a point. Until then, go STFU and do a bong rip with the maharishis.
_____________
[1] Google is an excellent example of a bullshit company that pretends to be reality-based.
[2] While the outcome of a play is determined by a referee’s ruling, the actual physical result of the play is a real fact. This is why officiating that is divergent from reality is known as a “bullshit call.”[5]
[3] Gorram Frenchies polluting my healthy sporting endeavors!
This will be quite a bit less thorough than my last writing, primarily because of the subject matter. The earlier piece was easier to come up with examples for, as it is so transparently obvious that the metric system is more overrated than any other system, with the possible exception of Urban Meyer’s spread. [Note to editors, please remove that bit if Oklahoma gets crushed in the first round of the playoffs. Likewise, if the Sooners take the whole thing before this gets published, feel free to add “Booya!” or “Oh no he di-in’t!” or similar. Also, definitely include this clip. Editor’s note: I have no idea what happens in sportsball-world, so I left this in for the lulz]. At the end of this article I expect to receive an offer for a tenured position in Whiteness Studies.1
I hereby proclaim my theory of whiteness based on two indisputable facts: first, that whiteness (as specified below) increases over time (at least until very recently) and second, that “mighty white of you” was a compliment. Now when I am talking about whiteness, I mean that term as it applies to the United States (sorry Rufus). I doubt I need to recap but maybe for Pie, there was a time when in America, the White Race was the English Race. Even the Germans were considered non-white by Ben Franklin. Ponder that for a moment.2 Even as late as the 20th century, “true whites” were also referred to as WASPs (anyone else find it odd how that term seems to have completely vanished?) or White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (remember how the KKK hated Catholics). Now here is the thing: “white ethnics” never went away. Which leads me to my first point:
Whiteness is not an ethnicity; it is a meta-ethnicity.
I didn’t see this much growing up in Indian Territory, but when I moved to upstate New York, I entered a place were white ethnic enclaves are still a thing. The local paper’s sports section has a story titled “Danes Defeat Dutchmen” and as God is my witness, I can tell people from those towns apart by sight. Ditto those descended from Poles. And the Irish, and the Eye-ties and… There is enough endogamy going on up here that the various white ethnicities maintain their physical and cultural (expressed through styles of dress) differences that I never expected to see from my few decades living in the south-central part of the country. There is no conflict between someone being “white” and being “Italian,” because they are separate categories of taxonomy.
A helpful guide to tracking your white heritage
But what about me? I am a white man[citation needed]. I don’t really have access to an actual ethnicity. I’m all mutted up. I have a German (maternal) grandmother (Northern German, she would stress, not one of those silly southern Germans), but all I really have of a heritage from her is a smattering of verbal imperatives and the ability to play this on the accordion. (Side note: none of the women in my family descending from that grandmother, including my sister and her daughters have pierced ears. Proper German girls don’t piece their ears. That’s for those Polish trollops.) My father’s mother’s mother’s mother was of the (((tribe))). That left me the ability to correctly pronounce “kibitz” and “chutzpah,” but the inability to remember more than half of the Sh’ma Yisrael at any given time. One of my grandfathers managed to do a genealogy going back to the Norman invasion, but the other only made it back a few generations since most of them were actively trying to change their identities as they *ahem* sought greener (or at least less jail-filled) pastures. Yeah, they pretty much fucked anything that would let them. Oh, and in my only defense of Elizabeth Warren ever, I can confirm that every child born in Oklahoma is told that they are descended from a Cherokee princess. Apparently they looooved the D.3
Anyway, if Albion’s Seed is correct, the Borderers (Scots-Irish, Border Reavers, “Scum of Two Nations,” whatever) brought their tendency to eschew any cultural identity with then when they settled in the US. I’d guess this would be why there is a large portion of the country that has no real interest in an ethnicity and therefore are “white by default” as Ozy Franz would never say.
Now about this mutting process, is it the case where I do have a “real” ethnic identity, but I just don’t identify with it? I… don’t think so. My mother almost never made strudel. I think she made spätzle once. She did make pork meatballs in sauerkraut on a fairly regular basis and liked to cook pork ribs with onions and apples, but you couldn’t really call her cuisine “German” outside of some ironclad rules on meal preparation (each supper needed a starch, a meat, a yellow vegetable, a green vegetable, and a salad). She cooked pots and pots of chili. Mountains of meatballs with enough spaghetti to consume the entire harvest of Ticino. Corned beef and cabbage. Pinto beans and cornbread (did I mention she was born in Milwaukee?). And those unfortunate culinary relics of the pre-Carter era which need not be spoken of. The point is, my culinary “heritage” is a hodge-podge of things that tasted good to my mom that she learned to cook, just as my genetic heritage is a hodge-podge of those people my ancestors liked to bang.
So how is it that nowhere people like myself and also pureblood ethnics all fall under the rubric “white?” Because…
Whiteness does not refer to your ethnicity; it refers to your relationship with other ethnicities
If your ethnic culture is in a state of mutual intelligibility (and I would say respect) with the dominant ethnic culture, you are white. That’s it. If the WASPs understood and tolerated the way another group lived, and that group reciprocated, they became less “other,” especially in comparison to TGOT. This is not to say that this understanding is deep or even accurate. It’s just enough that the other cultures are grokked as being comprehensible, even if not currently comprehended. This is why whiteness expands. Groups experiencing a cultural exchange (appropriation!) and especially those living close enough to intermarry will inevitably gain mutual understanding. Unless, of course, you make an effort not to.
Any group that does not actively resist becoming white, will become white
“I can has culture?”
There is a good example of a (((group))) that made an effort to keep itself separate and isolated from the larger society that it lived in, and it worked in maintaining otherness for a couple of millennia. In the US, that’s rapidly changed. I can’t speak for other parts of the country, but in Austin, people of Mexican descent are white. So are Vietnamese, though the average gringo in Austin knows a lot fewer words of Vietnamese than they do Spanish. I think this trend may be happening nationwide, as I’ve heard Jews and Asians referred to in the derpverse of reddit/twitter/tumblr as “Schrödinger’s POCs.” About that term–POC, I absolutely loathe it. It is as wrong as a term could possibly be. It creates false connections where none exist and disregards those similarities that do. Any mindset that can claim that my US-born and raised coworker of West Indian descent has less in common with me than he does with a subsistence yak farmer in Tibet is simply diseased. It’s as insulting as telling a political lesbian that her sexuality is defined by her lack of desire for penis4. I do understand why the term exists, though; it’s a deliberate attempt at destruction. Everyone got their aluminum foil ready? *takes a drink of water, inhales* Whiteness expands, since it’s just the ever-increasing understanding of one’s neighbors. Capitalism expands because it works. A certain worldview which has a penchant for red flags and brass ornaments equates both of these as hegemonic movements. *Voice changes to O’Brien’s.* Action needed to be taken to stop the cisheteropatriarchical albumkyriarchcapitalistic5 forces. Whiteness is a state of mutual understanding. That needed to be broken. So, break the culture. Eliminate the canon. Make sure that the only books that an entire generation has read is Harry Potter. Make the educational system focus on literature that is recent, so there won’t be any intergenerational touchstones. Ensure that the only common references available are from mass media, and ensure that you can determine what makes it into the mass media. Emphasize differences. Emphasize slights. Emphasize hurts. Let nothing pass unremarked, no aggression is too micro to not demand an apology for. Make sure that apologies demand humiliation so that you may inspire resentment. That’s the genius of POC. Whiteness is a state of commonality. POC is the definition of difference. It’s an identity based on opposition to that idea of mutual understanding. Prevent cultural exchange, make it a new sin, call it “appropriation.” Abolish the word “normal.” Everyone’s identity must be broken down to as many different axes of oppression as possible, for each axis is another attempt to demonstrate just how alien we are to each other, another potential fault line. Eventually, the only thing that people should have in common is their subservience to the state.
I can has grant monies nao?
1 I do not actually expect this to happen.
2 “You know who else didn’t consider Germans white?” may be the first time where the game cannot actually be answered.
3 An alternate interpretation is that there is just a whoooole lot of inbreeding going on.
4 Do not actually attempt to do this. It will not go well.
5 Fun fact: randomly mashing on a keyboard generates leftist academic concepts.
This week we have an alignment of the prime light (Sol) with TWO retrograde planets (Jupiter and Mercury) all sorts of evil shit is going to happen in a desert place.
Jupiter (planet of rulership, happiness and good fortune) has been retrograde for a while and will remain so until July tenth or thenabouts, so expect about four more months of general political wackiness. But this week, we get a Sun-Mars-Jupiter alignment (in Scorpio-Pisces-Capricorn respectively), so expect a military fuckup on a rather grand scale. This relates to an existing war, so don’t misread this as [insert boogeyman here] starting WWIII.
Obviously, the sun is in Pisces. The interesting thing is that the moon is in Capricorn. Combining these two means that for the next week or so, glitter-related endeavors have a much higher chance of success. So go ahead and craft or enter that drag contest. Do remember that this is Capricorn we’re talking about, so visits to strip clubs will leave evidence that is more resistant to cleaning than usual.
