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Just for fun: the random, useless announcements thread!
After the Zen honeymoon, one has to bite the dire dust reality can offer to the voracious "YOU" !!
1
personDon't believe everything you thinkThe liminal spaceVeteran
Today I showed up at my job and the lady who I've done lots of work for in the past was on the phone saying her computer had been hacked and that it was bad. She was obviously worried, I heard the person on the phone asked who was there and then started work while she went to her bedroom for some privacy.
Pretty quickly I thought that a computer hack is usually just the first step and then they want to get you on the phone to reel you in and my customer is very trusting. So I decided to go knock on her door to ask who she was talking to, she said it was Apple support and that she checked to make sure. I then went about my business but something didn't sit right with me. I've done work for her sister and brother in law too who live close, so I texted him and said what was up. He called and we talked for a bit then he said he was coming over. I figured even if there was nothing fishy, she was distraught and could still use some emotional and tech support.
She basically told him the same thing and continued the call, but eventually the "tech support" wanted her bank info and she said she was going to vomit and hang up. She then checked with her banks and everything was alright, she didn't give them anything bad.
Just something that happened today, that I feel good about having the knowledge to spot a problem, the willingness to listen to my gut and the motivation to let someone else know.
4
JeroenNot all those who wander are lostNetherlandsVeteran
edited August 3
Seems the Fentanyl epidemic is going from bad to worse in the States and Canada, they’re now lacing it with a horse tranquilliser to make the effect last longer. 100k people dying each year from overdoses, the leading cause of death for 19-49 year olds.
Yes, it would seem that drugs are winning the war on drugs, a war the US has been waging since 1971. Over 50 years later, it drags on with no real victory in sight. Meanwhile, someone is making a heap of money the longer this war continues.
From private prison operators and arms manufacturers to law enforcement contractors and even pharmaceutical giants, there are powerful interests who stand to profit as long as the system keeps cycling people through courts, jails, and rehab centres, without ever addressing the root causes.
2
JeroenNot all those who wander are lostNetherlandsVeteran
And the motivation for the War on Drugs was primarily political, it was a mechanism for the Nixon administration to target left wing hippies and young black people and send them to jail. But it’s basically the scenario from Prohibition years, where gangs were enriching themselves by smuggling liquor and it was found to not work.
But the whole drug trade is even useful to the CIA. There was a story Terence McKenna told, about how at a certain point in the 1980s the US market was flooded with lots of excellent quality Afghani hashish, because the CIA were bringing it in by the boatload and bypassing customs in order to generate untraceable income for the agency.
JeroenNot all those who wander are lostNetherlandsVeteran
@marcitko said:
I've been working towards losing weight. As of today, I'm officially under 90kgs (-5 kgs) and going by BMI, not obese anymore, just overweight!
That’s a significant milestone worth celebrating! Congrats.
There was a "Dip for Peace" event on the beach this morning. The local group "Mums for Peace" had organized the event to raise awareness and funds for the "Children are not numbers" charity.
It was 7C this morning, the temperature is just starting to warm up now.
I was going to participate, but decide not to. It was a good turn out of locals. Some of the young mums also attend the weekly rallies.
I attended the Palestinian solidarity rally on Saturday. The young Palestinian women sang,
The song is a protest song, speaks of the sadness and tears for Palestine that have endured over many years. It calls out the Arab world for “being asleep” and failing to take action, and it criticises the Arab nation’s sickness, caused by troubles and corrupt governments, which leaves people in misery and uncertain about the future. It is a call for awakening, unity, and action not just sympathy.
1
JeroenNot all those who wander are lostNetherlandsVeteran
It’s interesting, in the US some voices are starting to be raised about pro-Israeli control of the media…
1
JeroenNot all those who wander are lostNetherlandsVeteran
I just got served a video by YouTube which was thought-provoking. It was about how Arab states use the Palestinian question as a weapon against Israel, by keeping their borders closed against Palestinian refugees. And how the Palestinian leadership is complicit in this, by teaching their children slogans such as “from the river to the sea”, and keeping terrorism alive.
I’m not reposting the video, because it was unnecessarily inflammatory. But it did awaken more sympathy for the Palestinian people, and more dislike for Hamas.
I just got served a video by YouTube which was thought-provoking. It was about how Arab states use the Palestinian question as a weapon against Israel, by keeping their borders closed against Palestinian refugees. And how the Palestinian leadership is complicit in this, by teaching their children slogans such as “from the river to the sea”, and keeping terrorism alive.
I’m not reposting the video, because it was unnecessarily inflammatory. But it did awaken more sympathy for the Palestinian people, and more dislike for Hamas.
I find it disturbing when people throw around the label “terrorist” without doing any homework. In Israel, children are taught from a young age to see Palestinians as bad and untrustworthy, a fact well documented by Israeli scholars such as Nurit Peled-Elhanan and Dan Bar-Tal. Western media often ignore this, reinforcing an unconscious colonial bias by framing Israel’s actions as “self-defence” while branding Palestinian resistance as “terrorism.” Without Britain’s betrayal, there would be no Hamas, no Fatah, and no PLO, only a Palestinian people denied their homeland and forced into resistance.
Organised Palestinian resistance began after the 1948 Nakba, when over 700,000 Palestinians were displaced. Early fedayeen carried out raids from neighbouring Arab countries. The PLO was officially founded in 1964. Later groups emerged as circumstances changed, including Hamas (1987), initially calling for Israel’s destruction, which moderated some of its language in 2017. All of the Palestinian resistance groups shared a common goal of defending Palestinian land and asserting self-determination.
Hamas’s original 1988 charter called for the destruction of Israel and the establishment of an Islamic state across historic Palestine, “from the river to the sea.” This mirrors, in a sense, David Ben-Gurion’s vision of a Jewish state spanning all of historic Palestine, free of Arabs. Both reflect maximalist visions of territorial control, though from opposing national perspectives. Ben-Gurion planted the expansionist seed as early as 1920, while Palestinian resistance groups seek to stunt that expansion. Israel, by contrast, has not changed its maximalist stance, continuing policies and rhetoric aligned with the Greater Israel ideology.
Meanwhile, Israel itself grew from Jewish terrorist groups, as the British described them, including the Irgun and Stern Gang. They carried out bombings, assassinations, and massacres of Palestinians, including Deir Yassin in 1948, and destroyed hundreds of Palestinian villages. These terrorist groups were later absorbed into the Israeli Defence Forces.
The “Greater Israel” concept, rooted in Revisionist Zionism, envisions Israeli control over all historic Palestine. Netanyahu has echoed this ideology, referencing Israel stretching “from the river to the sea.” This framing normalises occupation while dismissing Palestinian resistance and is an example of unconscious colonial bias. At times we are all guilty of it; some are aware, many are not.
As the UN spokesperson once said when referring to the events of 7 October "Nothing happens in a vacuum"
0
JeroenNot all those who wander are lostNetherlandsVeteran
I think it’s fair to label any attack by an armed group on civilians as terrorism. Whether they are some nations military or an independent group shouldn’t matter.
0
Fosdickin its eye are mirrored far off mountainsAlaska, USAVeteran
@Jeroen joined me in a dream the other night and we traveled together for a bit before losing each other and continuing on our separate ways.
This is recurring dream of seeking, in which I am most often trying to get back to the University, or to the Library, or just to find my car after having exited a very large building through the wrong door. In this case, we were both trying to find the University and traveling through a confusing and labyrinthine urban landscape of large buildings, ditches, rock piles, huge warehouses with similarly labyrinthine interiors, houses, fences, and hedges. We both know where the University is, but getting there is an endless and difficult process.
A dream version of Samsara, a poor man's iteration of the Journey to the West. First time in this dream that I've seen an identifiable individual whom I haven't actually met in person.
JeroenNot all those who wander are lostNetherlandsVeteran
@Fosdick said: @Jeroen joined me in a dream the other night and we traveled together for a bit before losing each other and continuing on our separate ways.
This is recurring dream of seeking, in which I am most often trying to get back to the University, or to the Library, or just to find my car after having exited a very large building through the wrong door. In this case, we were both trying to find the University and traveling through a confusing and labyrinthine urban landscape of large buildings, ditches, rock piles, huge warehouses with similarly labyrinthine interiors, houses, fences, and hedges. We both know where the University is, but getting there is an endless and difficult process.
A dream version of Samsara, a poor man's iteration of the Journey to the West. First time in this dream that I've seen an identifiable individual whom I haven't actually met in person.
Wonderful! I’m flattered to have been dreamed about… I’ve often wondered about virtual connections as opposed to real-life connections, whether there is something about the mental realm which allows people to “find each other”.
JeroenNot all those who wander are lostNetherlandsVeteran
edited October 13
Have you heard about the AI homeless man prank? This is a kid taking a bunch of pictures of his empty family home and asking AI to insert a homeless man in them, and then dispatching them to parents in some kind of escalating order…. Homeless man at the door, homeless man in the living room, homeless man in parents bed.
Apparently this has parents so freaked out that they call the cops… multiple times the police helicopter was called in… Now the police have kindly asked kids to stop pulling the AI homeless man prank!
In USA, you just need to dress as a frog, be brown or in a poncho and all mayhem ensues...
Sadly they do not have kindly policing at the mo.
1
Fosdickin its eye are mirrored far off mountainsAlaska, USAVeteran
edited October 28
First snowfall of the season here. Only about 1 inch, but more will inevitably follow. Winter comes and the snow falls by itself - no need to stress over it.
Saw a squirrel on the bird feeder today, doing shikan taza for about 20 minutes - equal to my own average session. How is this different from human shikan taza? For one thing, the squirrel is not likely to be thinking about whether human shikan taza is the real thing or not. No monkey mind there?
I had a friend who held that squirrels would give rise to the next dominant life form on earth, after the humans die off from their own mistakes. I'm not sure that they will be any wiser than we are, unfortunately. They seem to be at least our match in delusional egotism.
4
JeroenNot all those who wander are lostNetherlandsVeteran
18 innings in Game 3 of the World Series.
Ohtani goes 4-for-4 with 2 HRs, 3 RBIs and 5 BBs. Which is amazing.
Freddie Freeman becomes the only player with multiple walk off homers in the World Series.
I think it’s fair to label any attack by an armed group on civilians as terrorism. Whether they are some nations military or an independent group shouldn’t matter.
Exactly so. Here is a flag in case you need a wave...
0
JeroenNot all those who wander are lostNetherlandsVeteran
The Dodgers won the World Series, taking game 7 by a score of 5-4 in 11 innings.
Beautiful late Spring day...just off to protest outside our Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade buildings near the downtown ferry terminal... That's Rangitoto Island in the video. A dormant volcano, which if it decides to blow its top, it would take out most of Auckland city and the surrounding islands, including the one I live on....
Update...
Miscommunication about time and place....So I'm on the ferry home... There's always next week....
Just now, a small sparrow visited my air-conditioning external unit. James, to give him a nice and honourable name, lit up my heart with his generous visitation. The moment I took out my phone to take a picture of him for you guys, James flew away. I think I shall put out a bird-house for James and his family and keep some food there in the winter.
ANNOUNCEMENT
For the past 15 years, I have tried this pain and suffering thing. I hereby declare the results of my experiment: It DOES NOT work!
THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS IMPORTANT MATTER!!
MRCTKO
My worst kitchen nightmare came true. I blended a whole beetroot, a small carrot and coconut water into a bright blood-red potion. The moment I started pouring it, quietly telling myself not to spill any, it exploded across the kitchen like a low-budget crime-scene reenactment.
Yesterday morning I was on my way to meet up with my Dharma friend and her dog for a walk along the beach, when I spotted some dolphins and orcas in the bay. They were a fair way out so I had to use the zoom. My friend got to see them when they were closer to shore. The orcas may have been after the manta rays which frequent the bay.
Today ( not a dolphin or orca in sight) I decided to do some earthing on my way to and from work...I feel the earth move under my feet ....As you can tell, it was quite windy today.
Well it's mid November and I still have not had a skinny dip yet ...Mental note to self, make sure to go for a dip next week ...
Comments
After the Zen honeymoon, one has to bite the dire dust reality can offer to the voracious "YOU" !!
Today I showed up at my job and the lady who I've done lots of work for in the past was on the phone saying her computer had been hacked and that it was bad. She was obviously worried, I heard the person on the phone asked who was there and then started work while she went to her bedroom for some privacy.
Pretty quickly I thought that a computer hack is usually just the first step and then they want to get you on the phone to reel you in and my customer is very trusting. So I decided to go knock on her door to ask who she was talking to, she said it was Apple support and that she checked to make sure. I then went about my business but something didn't sit right with me. I've done work for her sister and brother in law too who live close, so I texted him and said what was up. He called and we talked for a bit then he said he was coming over. I figured even if there was nothing fishy, she was distraught and could still use some emotional and tech support.
She basically told him the same thing and continued the call, but eventually the "tech support" wanted her bank info and she said she was going to vomit and hang up. She then checked with her banks and everything was alright, she didn't give them anything bad.
Just something that happened today, that I feel good about having the knowledge to spot a problem, the willingness to listen to my gut and the motivation to let someone else know.
Seems the Fentanyl epidemic is going from bad to worse in the States and Canada, they’re now lacing it with a horse tranquilliser to make the effect last longer. 100k people dying each year from overdoses, the leading cause of death for 19-49 year olds.
Yes, it would seem that drugs are winning the war on drugs, a war the US has been waging since 1971. Over 50 years later, it drags on with no real victory in sight. Meanwhile, someone is making a heap of money the longer this war continues.
From private prison operators and arms manufacturers to law enforcement contractors and even pharmaceutical giants, there are powerful interests who stand to profit as long as the system keeps cycling people through courts, jails, and rehab centres, without ever addressing the root causes.
And the motivation for the War on Drugs was primarily political, it was a mechanism for the Nixon administration to target left wing hippies and young black people and send them to jail. But it’s basically the scenario from Prohibition years, where gangs were enriching themselves by smuggling liquor and it was found to not work.
But the whole drug trade is even useful to the CIA. There was a story Terence McKenna told, about how at a certain point in the 1980s the US market was flooded with lots of excellent quality Afghani hashish, because the CIA were bringing it in by the boatload and bypassing customs in order to generate untraceable income for the agency.
I've been working towards losing weight. As of today, I'm officially under 90kgs (-5 kgs) and going by BMI, not obese anymore, just overweight!
Today is a winter's day 13C
That’s a significant milestone worth celebrating! Congrats.
There was a "Dip for Peace" event on the beach this morning. The local group "Mums for Peace" had organized the event to raise awareness and funds for the "Children are not numbers" charity.
It was 7C this morning, the temperature is just starting to warm up now.
I was going to participate, but decide not to. It was a good turn out of locals. Some of the young mums also attend the weekly rallies.
I attended the Palestinian solidarity rally on Saturday. The young Palestinian women sang,
The song is a protest song, speaks of the sadness and tears for Palestine that have endured over many years. It calls out the Arab world for “being asleep” and failing to take action, and it criticises the Arab nation’s sickness, caused by troubles and corrupt governments, which leaves people in misery and uncertain about the future. It is a call for awakening, unity, and action not just sympathy.
It’s interesting, in the US some voices are starting to be raised about pro-Israeli control of the media…
I just got served a video by YouTube which was thought-provoking. It was about how Arab states use the Palestinian question as a weapon against Israel, by keeping their borders closed against Palestinian refugees. And how the Palestinian leadership is complicit in this, by teaching their children slogans such as “from the river to the sea”, and keeping terrorism alive.
I’m not reposting the video, because it was unnecessarily inflammatory. But it did awaken more sympathy for the Palestinian people, and more dislike for Hamas.
I find it disturbing when people throw around the label “terrorist” without doing any homework. In Israel, children are taught from a young age to see Palestinians as bad and untrustworthy, a fact well documented by Israeli scholars such as Nurit Peled-Elhanan and Dan Bar-Tal. Western media often ignore this, reinforcing an unconscious colonial bias by framing Israel’s actions as “self-defence” while branding Palestinian resistance as “terrorism.” Without Britain’s betrayal, there would be no Hamas, no Fatah, and no PLO, only a Palestinian people denied their homeland and forced into resistance.
Organised Palestinian resistance began after the 1948 Nakba, when over 700,000 Palestinians were displaced. Early fedayeen carried out raids from neighbouring Arab countries. The PLO was officially founded in 1964. Later groups emerged as circumstances changed, including Hamas (1987), initially calling for Israel’s destruction, which moderated some of its language in 2017. All of the Palestinian resistance groups shared a common goal of defending Palestinian land and asserting self-determination.
Hamas’s original 1988 charter called for the destruction of Israel and the establishment of an Islamic state across historic Palestine, “from the river to the sea.” This mirrors, in a sense, David Ben-Gurion’s vision of a Jewish state spanning all of historic Palestine, free of Arabs. Both reflect maximalist visions of territorial control, though from opposing national perspectives. Ben-Gurion planted the expansionist seed as early as 1920, while Palestinian resistance groups seek to stunt that expansion. Israel, by contrast, has not changed its maximalist stance, continuing policies and rhetoric aligned with the Greater Israel ideology.
Meanwhile, Israel itself grew from Jewish terrorist groups, as the British described them, including the Irgun and Stern Gang. They carried out bombings, assassinations, and massacres of Palestinians, including Deir Yassin in 1948, and destroyed hundreds of Palestinian villages. These terrorist groups were later absorbed into the Israeli Defence Forces.
The “Greater Israel” concept, rooted in Revisionist Zionism, envisions Israeli control over all historic Palestine. Netanyahu has echoed this ideology, referencing Israel stretching “from the river to the sea.” This framing normalises occupation while dismissing Palestinian resistance and is an example of unconscious colonial bias. At times we are all guilty of it; some are aware, many are not.
As the UN spokesperson once said when referring to the events of 7 October "Nothing happens in a vacuum"
I think it’s fair to label any attack by an armed group on civilians as terrorism. Whether they are some nations military or an independent group shouldn’t matter.
@Jeroen joined me in a dream the other night and we traveled together for a bit before losing each other and continuing on our separate ways.
This is recurring dream of seeking, in which I am most often trying to get back to the University, or to the Library, or just to find my car after having exited a very large building through the wrong door. In this case, we were both trying to find the University and traveling through a confusing and labyrinthine urban landscape of large buildings, ditches, rock piles, huge warehouses with similarly labyrinthine interiors, houses, fences, and hedges. We both know where the University is, but getting there is an endless and difficult process.
A dream version of Samsara, a poor man's iteration of the Journey to the West. First time in this dream that I've seen an identifiable individual whom I haven't actually met in person.
Listened to the Death Dhamma podcast 'One By One'
Wonderful! I’m flattered to have been dreamed about… I’ve often wondered about virtual connections as opposed to real-life connections, whether there is something about the mental realm which allows people to “find each other”.
Granada is beautiful!
Have you heard about the AI homeless man prank? This is a kid taking a bunch of pictures of his empty family home and asking AI to insert a homeless man in them, and then dispatching them to parents in some kind of escalating order…. Homeless man at the door, homeless man in the living room, homeless man in parents bed.
Apparently this has parents so freaked out that they call the cops… multiple times the police helicopter was called in… Now the police have kindly asked kids to stop pulling the AI homeless man prank!
Thanks for the tip @Jeroen
In USA, you just need to dress as a frog, be brown or in a poncho and all mayhem ensues...
Sadly they do not have kindly policing at the mo.
First snowfall of the season here. Only about 1 inch, but more will inevitably follow. Winter comes and the snow falls by itself - no need to stress over it.
Saw a squirrel on the bird feeder today, doing shikan taza for about 20 minutes - equal to my own average session. How is this different from human shikan taza? For one thing, the squirrel is not likely to be thinking about whether human shikan taza is the real thing or not. No monkey mind there?
I had a friend who held that squirrels would give rise to the next dominant life form on earth, after the humans die off from their own mistakes. I'm not sure that they will be any wiser than we are, unfortunately. They seem to be at least our match in delusional egotism.
18 innings in Game 3 of the World Series.
Ohtani goes 4-for-4 with 2 HRs, 3 RBIs and 5 BBs. Which is amazing.
Freddie Freeman becomes the only player with multiple walk off homers in the World Series.
Exactly so. Here is a flag in case you need a wave...
The Dodgers won the World Series, taking game 7 by a score of 5-4 in 11 innings.
Well Summer's just around the corner ...Bloody about time too.
I've spent the entire winter here, the first time in 3 years .
Beautiful late Spring day...just off to protest outside our Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade buildings near the downtown ferry terminal... That's Rangitoto Island in the video. A dormant volcano, which if it decides to blow its top, it would take out most of Auckland city and the surrounding islands, including the one I live on....
Update...
Miscommunication about time and place....So I'm on the ferry home... There's always next week....
Short morning jolk up the back of the property before work ....
The added music is to mask my puffing and wheezing my way up the hill
Just now, a small sparrow visited my air-conditioning external unit. James, to give him a nice and honourable name, lit up my heart with his generous visitation. The moment I took out my phone to take a picture of him for you guys, James flew away. I think I shall put out a bird-house for James and his family and keep some food there in the winter.
ANNOUNCEMENT
For the past 15 years, I have tried this pain and suffering thing. I hereby declare the results of my experiment: It DOES NOT work!
THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS IMPORTANT MATTER!!
MRCTKO
My worst kitchen nightmare came true. I blended a whole beetroot, a small carrot and coconut water into a bright blood-red potion. The moment I started pouring it, quietly telling myself not to spill any, it exploded across the kitchen like a low-budget crime-scene reenactment.
Yesterday morning I was on my way to meet up with my Dharma friend and her dog for a walk along the beach, when I spotted some dolphins and orcas in the bay. They were a fair way out so I had to use the zoom. My friend got to see them when they were closer to shore. The orcas may have been after the manta rays which frequent the bay.
Today ( not a dolphin or orca in sight) I decided to do some earthing on my way to and from work...I feel the earth move under my feet ....As you can tell, it was quite windy today.
Well it's mid November and I still have not had a skinny dip yet ...Mental note to self, make sure to go for a dip next week ...