Why is this still a controversial topic?: The Apollo 11 mission and the US space program

This last spring's Eurovision Song Contest had an interesting entry from Italy. A man in a clown costume sang a collection of disjointed thoughts, at one point saying, "E che le lune senza buche Sono fregature." (https://eurovisionworld.com/eurovision/2025/italy#google_vignette) That translates to, "And that moons without craters/holes are frauds."

I went back and looked at stills of the moon landing by Armstrong and Aldrin in 1969, and I didn't see any craters. I did see a dune in the background, which seems a bit odd since dunes form from the action of repeated gusts of wind; the moon doesn't have an atmosphere, so it doesn't have gusts of air that could form dunes.

I wasn't going to blog about this topic. Moon landing questions are heavily discouraged in our culture, and I do enough digging into less mainstream possibilities already. However, I think it is important to sometimes ask questions about things that seem to merit a few. A world where questions are off-limits is an ever more unpleasant place. And Italy practically begged the western world to ask a few questions about the 1969 moon landing!

I am blogging about the topic now because I was reading, how to, a book by the creator of xkcd. (If you have never read it, xkcd is a very clever comic that one often needs a background in math and science to understand. See https://xkcd.com/ .) In describing the aircraft that was used to carry the Space Shuttle orbiter around, the author of how to said, 

To carry the Space Shuttle orbiter, the carrier aircraft has a special mount that protrudes from the top of the fuselage. This mount fits into a socket in the belly of the Shuttle orbiter. Next to the mount is an instructional plaque, which features the single best joke in the history of the aerospace industry:

ATTACH ORBITER HERE

NOTE: BLACK SIDE DOWN

My father worked in the aerospace industry--specifically on anthropomorphic tank suits for pilots at one point--on and off for decades, and I assure you that he never joked about this writing on the Shuttle orbiter carrier. 

My curiosity raised, I looked up whether the Shuttle orbiter carrier really said that. There was a photo showing that it did. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuttle_Carrier_Aircraft#/media/File:Shuttle_mounting_point.JPG .) The word "NOTE" was in red font, while the rest of the instructions were in black. I decided to try doing doubles-cancellation on the black font part of the message and got this result: trlakswn. I tried a few possibilities for reading it and saw that if one reads it backward, it is "nw skal rt" or "No-scale art." 

"No-scale"? As in a reference to weightlessness? And then it was followed by the word "art", which can be the abbreviation of "artificial". What was going on at NASA that a hint of faked weightlessness somehow got painted on the orbiter carrier? Surely someone in the organization knew of the ever-present conspiracy theories about the space program and would have been careful to avoid feeding them.... Wouldn't they?

These are questions I will never be able to answer.

[Update 7/15/2025: It doesn't help simplify matters when a headline says the following:

The Pentagon Disinformation That Fueled America’s UFO Mythology

U.S. military fabricated evidence of alien technology and allowed rumors to fester to cover up real secret-weapons programs

Is that a tabloid headline?!

No, it's the Wall Street Journal, last month. See https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/ufo-us-disinformation-45376f7e, June 6, 2025. Hardly a wild-eyed news source.]

Something going on with eggshells heated with aluminum?

I am experiencing possible weight loss again from an experiment. Only time will tell if this one really works, but as usual I'm posting my procedure. This blog is easier to read than my handwritten notebooks and so makes a good research record. 

This variation uses eggshells that have been boiled with aluminum foil and roasted banana ash; after peeling and drying the eggshells, I pulverize them and use them as a powder. See procedure below:

1) At least one day ahead of time, boil some washed eggs in distilled water together with aluminum foil strips and a little roasted banana leaf ash. After the eggs are cool, remove shells; remove as much membrane from the eggshells as possible, then pulverize the eggshells in a blender.

2) In the morning, on an empty stomach, drink some celery leaf/roasted banana leaf ash/distilled water (strained with nylon mesh). Wait an hour. Eat a little raw green cabbage then do the next 8 steps.

3) Microwave for 60 seconds 4 or 5 raw juniper berries and some dried parsley leaves in a plastic IKEA children cup. Press the juniper berries into a small amount of salted butter on the tines of a personal blender.

4) Microwave for 60 seconds around 20 raw juniper berries in a dry, white mug with beer salt (for the silicon dioxide in it)/a little cream of tartar (for the potassium ions)/aluminum-ash-eggshell powder (from step 1 above). Swirl the mug a bit immediately after, and press around 4 of the juniper berries into a small amount of salted butter on the tines of a personal blender.

5) Grate some cinnamon bark into the step 4 mug, swirl it, then microwave it for 60 seconds more. Press around 4 of these juniper berries into the salted butter, too.

6) Microwave step 5 mug 30 seconds, then put in some Hershey's cocoa and swirl it, Press around 4 of these juniper berries into the salted butter, too. Puree the distilled water, salted butter, and all the juniper berries (just to mix, so not for long).

7) Microwave 60 seconds some dried dill weed on Hershey's cocoa in a Classico pasta sauce glass Mason jar, then stir in (with plastic) some just-sliced small pieces of washed Roma tomato.

8) Microwave 60 seconds in a mug a little roasted banana ash on a little homemade onion powder on Hershey's cocoa, and pour some of the step 6 puree into it. Stir with plastic.

9) Mix step 8 into the DCT (with plastic).

10) Eat part of step 9. Put in some distilled water in which dry soybeans have been soaked overnight and eat more of it. Put in some raw green cabbage and eat the rest.

[Update 7/16/2025: I'm getting progressively, tentatively more hopeful about using aluminum-treated eggshell powder. I started to put hydrogen peroxide (3% H2O2 from the store) in the cooking water (distilled H2O) for some hard-boiled eggs (which I washed first) along with some aluminum foil, then I cooled the eggs and peeled them, removing the membranes from the eggshells and pulverizing the eggshells.

I think I might be making calcium peroxide, strontium peroxide, or barium peroxide. The sulfur from the egg would be helpful in forming intermediate sulfate to allow their formation as chemical products. Perhaps the aluminum is a catalyst.]

[Update: 7/17/2025: Down in weight again today! Here's the chemistry book page that makes me think that calcium/strontium/barium peroxide could be a key ingredient in weight loss:

Elements of Chemistry, 1943, Brownlee, Fuller, Hancock, Sohon, and Whitsit.]

[Update 7/23/2025: Never mind about the hydrogen peroxide. That seems to be going nowhere.

Looking over my records, I see that consumption of red cabbage, which is actually purple, might have been involved when I thought it was the hydrogen peroxide. So many possibilities, so many that don't pan out. 

I'm starting to wonder how Thomas Edison only experienced "several thousand ways that didn't work" when he was inventing the light bulb. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/07/31/edison-lot-results/]

Undercurrents in today's society

One might wonder why I am so convinced that there are undercurrents in our society when it comes to hidden chemicals and technology. I now accept as proven that there are underground movements and efforts to hide them and profit off of them that go back for some time.

Back in 2016, I found out that molybdenum (especially as the compound molybdenum glycinate available in molybdenum supplements on the market) was extraordinarily effective at treating migraines and nausea/vomiting. Yet almost no one seemed to know anything about it outside of some chiropractors and alternative medicine websites. I sent emails to hundreds of norovirus and migraine researchers, but almost nothing I sent seemed to even get through their email filters.

Then in 2017/2018, a man started emailing me and my relatives, claiming he was a lost-long half cousin who had found us via my father's website, which had a lot of genealogy on it. Because I have done a fair amount of family history myself, I was the family member who befriended him. He seemed legit, but he did some odd things. For instance, he dug for information about my grandfather, who was born in China, and what Taoist medical secrets he might have learned. He also offered to write a movie script with me and said it would make us millions of dollars, but that I couldn't talk about the script with other people since they would get greedy and want some of the money. 

I actually met him in person. He arranged to meet me in the Bay Area when I was visiting a relative there. This wasn't just an internet creation; a real person presented himself as my cousin and even took me and my relative out to dinner! He eschewed drinking any alcohol, much to my alcohol-enjoying relative's disappointment.

I haven't emailed with him for years now, and I now believe that he used the information on my father's website to gain my trust and engage in extensive correspondence with me. But, unlike most fraudsters, he didn't ever ask me for money. He asked me for medical secrets and offered me a potential of a great deal of money (over six figures) if I would work with him on a secret project.

The timing of his appearance in my life, so soon after discovering molybdenum--a little-discussed element in the medical field--could be extremely effective at treating nausea and migraines, is suspicious. It is especially suspicious given his promises of secret money and digging for more medical secrets.

Quantum spin fluids and consumer access

Quantum spin fluids are an advance that can put new quantum physics technology inside a water bottle or a liquid pesticide.

See  https://www.nature.com/articles/srep37925: 

Large anisotropic exchange in 5d and 4d oxides and halides open the door to new types of magnetic ground states and excitations, inconceivable a decade ago. A prominent case is the Kitaev spin liquid, host of remarkable properties such as protection of quantum information and the emergence of Majorana fermions. Here we discuss the promise for spin-liquid behavior in the 4d5 honeycomb halide α-RuCl3.

Yadav, R., Bogdanov, N., Katukuri, V. et al. Kitaev exchange and field-induced quantum spin-liquid states in honeycomb α-RuCl3. Sci Rep 6, 37925 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/srep37925

I have noted an increase in tasty almond butter creations in stores in the past decade or so, and almond consumption has been going up in the USA. California is where all those almonds are grown. 

Thirty-five years ago, I visited an uncle who had his own small almond farm in central California. He didn't get rich doing it, but I always thought that it was cool.

According to one website, five pesticides are used on almonds in California:

Ziram, Oryzalin, Glyphosate, Paraquat Dichloride, and Clarified Hydrochloric extract

https://www.mynspr.org/news/2017-10-30/what-pesticides-are-sprayed-on-almond-orchards-and-are-they-harmful-to-those-who-live-nearby

Clarified hydrochloric extract? Why does HCl need clarification? Does clarified hydrochloric extract sometimes contain 4d5 honeycomb halide α-RuCl3 or a similar halide? 

Pesticides have often inspired distrust in many people, yet it would still make sense to use them to introduce quantum-information-using advances in unsuspecting consumers. It's just so hard for farmers to make a profit without pesticides.

Nature is rather variable, but farmers must all buy their chemicals from the same big companies. Putting a quantum spin fluid in an almond pesticide could be a very effective way to get our entire country to ingest the fluid.

How I would like to have resources to investigate intriguing possibilities like the above!

Artificial Intelligence programs use measurements of people's faces and other emotion indicators

I just read an interesting paragraph in the book Artificial Intelligence for Dummies:

Humans output an enormous number of clues while performing tasks. Unlike the average human, an AI actually pays attention to every one of these clues and can record them in a consistent manner to create action data [italics in original text]. The action data varies by the task being performed; it can include info like interactions with a device, sequences for making selections, body position, facial expression, manner of expression (such as attitude), and so on.

Our wearable tech and the sensors in all the other tech we use and live around can collect a great deal of information--the kind detailed above, as well as heart rates, blood oxygenation, facial feature changes, neural activity, eye tracking, etc. 

Nearly all of us have been forced into clicking "accept" on vague terms and conditions that software companies can claim constitute "permissions" for them to utilize such personal biological information. But have we really given any kind of meaningful consent when companies have intentionally made it appear that they aren't collecting such data or using third parties to collect it? I don't think we have.

This is where there needs to be consumer and government pushback via revocations of consent and imposition of penalties and fines for unconscionably sneaky behavior.

[Update 06/06/2025: As I continue to read in the same book, I am learning very interesting things about newer AI-using technology. For instance, it can be used to do something called "sensor fusion," which is where data from various sensors is combined "to obtain a unified measurement that's better than any single measurement" (p.273-274, Artificial Intelligence for Dummies). 

Common sensors in cell phones and our wearable tech include microphones (some of which can capture infrasound or ultrasound), cameras (utilizing a range of light wavelengths), and motion sensors. 

Cell phones can also produce magnetic fields in ranges that can now be harnessed to perform magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). See "Hybrid ultra-low-field MRI and magnetoencephalography system based on a commercial whole-head neuromagnetometer." Magn Reson Med, 69: 1795-1804. https://doi.org/10.1002/mrm.24413. Vesanen, P.T., Nieminen, J.O., Zevenhoven, K.C.J., Dabek, J., Parkkonen, L.T., Zhdanov, A.V., Luomahaara, J., Hassel, J., Penttilä, J., Simola, J., Ahonen, A.I., Mäkelä, J.P. and Ilmoniemi, R.J. (2013). 

The Vesanen paper above, already over a decade old, talks about successfully using only 22 mT (milliTesla, a measurement of magnetic field strength) to do an MRI. The surfaces of Airpods, Iphones and Apple smartwatches have magnetic fields that exceed 22 mT. See "Magnetic field interactions between current consumer electronics and cardiac implantable electronic devices." Xu, K., Sengupta, J., Casey, S. et al. J Interv Card Electrophysiol 65, 133–139 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10840-022-01241-w.

Imagine the information that can be collected and processed about our body's actions and current mental and physical states if sensor fusion is done using a combination of microphone (including ultrasound) input, camera (including visible light and infrared) images, location and motion tracking data, and MRI information!

Two other interesting items mentioned in this book are telepresence and teleoperation:

Telepresence is being in one place but it seeming like you're in another. The book's example of telepresence is virtual sightseeing. But wearable tech collects much more than just images of pretty scenery. I don't like to think about the level of voyeurism possible with the data obtained by the intrusive use of sensors (which we are usually forced into blindly accepting) and fusion of the data from all the sensors. But someone needs to think about this issue because there are bound to be wolves among the IT sheep.

Teleoperation is an even more pressing issue. Teleoperation is when a person is able to interact with an environment distant from them through another device or object. The book gives the example of acting through a "robot-like device," and I think at least one of the authors is hinting that humans can be distant objects through which teleoperation is done. There is a ten-year-old TED video demonstrating the use of wired technology to allow one person to use their brain activity to command another person's arm to move. The video is "How to control someone else's arm with your brain." by Greg Gage, online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSQNi5sAwuc. If something can be done via wires, it usually can be done wirelessly, too.

As I read recent headlines about Joseph Biden's apparent diminished mental state at the end of his time as U.S. President, I have to wonder whether some people were taking advantage of him as a "robot-like device" for teleoperation purposes. We could be dealing with something much more serious than inappropriate use of an autopen machine. I think teleoperation of humans is already going on in the US and likely in other countries. I have personally observed at least two people involuntarily react physically in robotic-looking ways--typically suddenly bending forward partway--when they heard me talk about some of the unusual "conspiracy theory" or "hidden technology" items that I have posted on my blog. It seems as though there is a "background computer process" that is triggered or called up from a remote location in order to cause them distress when they hear about specific items that are being kept "in the shadows."

Why hide such cool technology? Teleoperation technology would help stroke victims and others to move again. However, wouldn't you be furious to find out that your body and mind are being subjected to secretive nudges and commands? I think most people would be very angry and would respond appropriately with boycotts and lawsuits....big lawsuits which I think they would win easily due to the refusal of tech companies to be open about what is possible with powerful new algorithms and sensors.]

A new direction to search in - eutectic metallurgy

In the 1940s, most younger Americans were quite slim. Look at photos and newsreels from back then. 

It wasn't just cigarettes keeping them skinny. There are many, many smokers who are unable to lose weight just by calorie restriction.

It's now very noticeable how even little children are no longer so slim. Too many athletic teens remain overweight and often injure themselves because of the extra weight they carry. Our military is having a hard time recruiting young people with healthy body weights. It's clear we aren't getting a healthful food supply in some ways. Instapundit frequently said, "You can't outrun a bad diet."

I think some food chemistry-related information has been hidden from us in the intervening decades. Yesterday I found a 1940s chemistry book. I look forward to seeing what it contained that now is no longer taught in general ed chemistry.

My first investigation direction will be eutectic alloys, something not even mentioned in my modern college chemistry book despite being important to metallurgy.

My old dictionary does include eutectic...right after a reference to Christmas:

[Update 06/07/2025: My 1943 chemistry book mentions serpentine, saying it is an anhydrous magnesium silicate. The combination of "anhydrous" and "silicate" caught my eye. I looked in my huge 1960s dictionary, and it did not state in a straightforward way that serpentine was that compound. I'll have to look into what happens when I make anhydrous magnesium silicate in my kitchen.]

Exposing the current lie about Joseph Smith supposedly getting his theological ideas from his brother Hyrum

A current effort by historians to explain away the Book of Mormon and other theological products of Joseph Smith is the claim that there was supposedly a long period of tutoring that a convalescing-from-leg-surgery Joseph Smith received from his older brother Hyrum, who had been away for a while at a boarding school. Here is the claim:

Hyrum's education at Moor's school provided a tutor for unschooled Joseph. Hyrum's exposure to Dartmouth's theology, cosmology, ancient language studies, architecture, Ethan Smith's son Lyndon, and Solomon Spaulding's nephew James Spaulding from Sharon, Vermont, who was attending the Medical School, all provided discussion material for tutoring Joseph during his long recovery from leg surgery that kept Joseph at home on crutches until the Smith family reached Palmyra. 

https://bhroberts.org/records/rqHlnb-hmznMb/hs_had_access_to_dartmouth_educational_ideas

This morning I was reading from a 1974 reprint (the 12th reprint) of a 1952 book called The Story of Our Church for Young Latter-day Saints, authored by Emma Marr Petersen. The information in it 1) contradicts claims that Joseph Smith had a long convalescence and 2) shows that Joseph would have only been around six or seven years old when he had leg surgery. 

Regarding his convalescence, the book says on page 3:

After the operation, Joseph quickly became well enough to get out of doors. The family thought he would recover much faster if he could go down to the seashore, so they took him to stay for a time with his uncle, Jesse Smith, who lived at Salem, Massachusetts. The sea air was good for him, and it was not long until he was entirely well again.

As to Hyrum tutoring Joseph in the ideas he would later use in allegedly authoring the Book of Mormon, having known many children aged six or seven, I find absurd the idea that young Joseph picked up and retained ideas about "theology, cosmology, ancient language studies, architecture" and so forth at that age. Yet, in "anti-Mormon" circles--where one regularly encounters criticism of the LDS practice of allowing baptism of eight-year-old children who are considered in LDS doctrine to have reached "the age of accountability"--there is an odd willingness to believe that Joseph could have been able and mature enough to internalize his older brother's education. My older brother is really good at statistics; despite talking to him over the years and even taking a college math class with him, I acquired very little from his possession of statistics knowledge.

Below are cropped photos from the history book so people can read for themselves what I have said:

Every generation or two, a new kind of attack is levied on the validity of the Book of Mormon. I think that this latest attack is without merit.

How AI can be used to stifle innovation

In the book Artificial Intelligence for Dummies, I read the following:

Kernel machines are a family of algorithms, used for pattern analysis in [machine learning], that can operate on complex data by transforming it into a simpler form where patterns are more evident....The goal is to use similarity to determine the best solution to a problem. It's the kind of reasoning that determines that using a particular solution worked in a given circumstance at some previous time; therefore, using that solution for a similar set of circumstances should also work. One of the most recognizable outputs...is recommender systems. For example, when you buy a product on Amazon, the recommendation system comes up with other related products you might also want to buy.

Remember that old saying, "If you always do what you've always done, you're always going to get what you've always gotten"? Kernel machines aren't going to help anyone innovate!

My recent experiences on Amazon are that changing up the search terms to try to see other related items is much less effective than it used to be. It seems like the Amazon computer algorithms are pushing me toward looking and buying from a specific group of items instead of helping me broaden my options. 

If the same kind of algorithms are being used in other areas, that's going to limit people's exposure to new ideas and decrease creative experiments and the sharing of the experiments' results in fields of science, nutrition, finance, entertainment, etc.  What a boring, minimally-productive world it will become if we're all stuck in information silos.

A new AI-enabled apartheid

I realized recently that "Apartheid", the South African policy of separating--and using as inexpensive, semi-captive servants--non-white races from the ruling whites, sounds like "Afford-heit." 

As I read the book Artificial Intelligence for Dummies, I'm struck by how the authors alternate between talking about what can be done with AI and then saying how actually doing much of that is yet to come in some distant future. 

I think the authors are lying that some of the more advanced uses of AI aren't being done yet. The AI tools that you and I can access for free/cheap on our computers and phones are certainly far below what AI capabilities exist. AI has existed since the 1960s, and our cars have been using it in their ABS systems for 40 years.

When it comes to AI, I think we're facing an "Afford-heit" era, where the bulk of us are viewed as the "cheap servants" of people and companies who can afford the best AI technology. They still need someone to do the physical labor of society while they collect and use the data that we give away everyday by using tech (wearable tech especially is a goldmine of information to them) and living our lives. And, of course, businesses need customers...lots of them so as to make lots more money!

Nowadays, we are deemed to be giving up information about ourselves by the most commonplace actions. For instance, did you know that you give away much of your privacy merely by walking onto the premises of a Target or Walmart store? Actually, just having your car *near* a Target store means they are likely identifying you as a potential shopper (see Section 10 of the online Target Privacy Policy). There is a lot of value in our bodies' actions when it comes to the fields of data collection and the use of that data by advanced AI. Even if businesses delete the data eventually, they get to utilize it first and often hand it off to third-party companies, too.

Who would enable this new kind of apartheid? Kids of my generation wanted to be the heroes from the movie The Power of One. Sadly, the enablers would have to include a lot of IT and literary people who were likely bullied in their youth for being academically-oriented instead of physically-oriented/socially-oriented. On Instapundit, the commenters would sometimes say, "Some people just want to see the world burn." My response to that is understanding (I was bullied, too) and hope for them to find meaning in their lives again; returning evil for evil is something I long ago learned was pointless and ultimately unsatisfying.

As with many movements, there is likely to be some in-fighting going on in it. There are five tribes within AI machine learning research: Symbolists, Connectionists, Bayesians, Evolutionaries, and Analogists. I noticed that the sinking of the "Bayesian yacht" last year is in the headlines again. Is that a symbol of some AI "tribal warfare"? The yacht's sinking was a bit mysterious, having been preceded by a lack of storm alerts. I wonder what is under the visible tips of the AI-giants' icebergs.

Why I think the story of the prophet Jonah is likely wrongly understood by nearly everyone

The Old Testament of the Bible contains a small book about a prophet named Jona/Jonah/Jonas, who didn't want to go preach repentance to the city of Ninevah. The part about not wanting to preach repentance makes perfect sense to me, for people prefer to hear that they aren't doing anything wrong rather than hearken to calls to change their ways.

Avoiding the missionary call, Jonah runs away in a ship. A storm comes up, and Jonah says to the sailors, "I'm the reason for the storm, so throw me overboard to save yourselves." The sailors don't want to do it, but finally give in to Jonah. Jonah spends the next three days in a "dag gdul," which is Hebrew for "big fish."  ("Dag" means fish.) 

For centuries, people have tried to understand this event as an actual fish or whale having swallowed Jonah, similar to what happened to the fictional Geppetto in the book/movies of Pinocchio. I think that is an unnecessary, faith-risking way of reading the story of Jonah, for it is more plausible that he was in a smaller fish-shaped cargo dinghy, one that could have been towed by the first boat and then cut loose to float where the wind and currents took it. The sailors made it quite clear they didn't want to cause Jonah's death in the ocean, and I think they came up with a compromise where they put Jonah off their boat but didn't leave him to drown deprived of any flotation aids.

Is there a precedent for small fish-shaped freight vessels in that part of the world anciently? Yes. Reed boats come to mind. Often too small to put sails on, but cheap and definitely invented by Old Testament times. (Please look at some images of ancient Mediterranean reed boats, then come back to read the rest of the post. It will make more sense when you can envision the reed boats yourself.)

When Jonah talks about his time in the water, he says,

The waters compassed me about, even to the soul: the depth closed me round about, the weeds were wrapped about my head.

Jonah 2:5, Old Testament, The Bible

If weeds were wrapped around his head and waters were all around him, then it seems Jonah wasn't sitting in a big air pocket inside Moby Dick somehow avoiding digestion (I'm too close to Star Wars Day not to be envisioning a watery Sarlacc right now....). This verse, especially the part about weeds being wrapped around Jonah's head, is logical and believable if Jonah was surviving a stormy sea in a small reed boat.

Another ancient account compares riding across the ocean in small boats to being in sea creatures:

And the Lord said: Go to work and build, after the manner of barges which ye have hitherto built. And it came to pass that the brother of Jared did go to work, and also his brethren, and built barges after the manner which they had built, according to the instructions of the Lord. And they were small, and they were light upon the water, even like unto the lightness of a fowl upon the water. And they were built after a manner that they were exceedingly tight, even that they would hold water like unto a dish; and the bottom thereof was tight like unto a dish; and the sides thereof were tight like unto a dish; and the ends thereof were peaked; and the top thereof was tight like unto a dish; and the length thereof was the length of a tree; and the door thereof, when it was shut, was tight like unto a dish. 

And it came to pass that the brother of Jared cried unto the Lord, saying: O Lord, I have performed the work which thou hast commanded me, and I have made the barges according as thou hast directed me. And behold, O Lord, in them there is no light; whither shall we steer? And also we shall perish, for in them we cannot breathe, save it is the air which is in them; therefore we shall perish. And the Lord said unto the brother of Jared: Behold, thou shalt make a hole in the top, and also in the bottom; and when thou shalt suffer for air thou shalt unstop the hole and receive air. And if it be so that the water come in upon thee, behold, ye shall stop the hole, that ye may not perish in the flood. And it came to pass that the brother of Jared did so, according as the Lord had commanded. And he cried again unto the Lord saying: O Lord, behold I have done even as thou hast commanded me; and I have prepared the vessels for my people, and behold there is no light in them. Behold, O Lord, wilt thou suffer that we shall cross this great water in darkness? 

And the Lord said unto the brother of Jared: What will ye that I should do that ye may have light in your vessels? For behold, ye cannot have windows, for they will be dashed in pieces; neither shall ye take fire with you, for ye shall not go by the light of fire. For behold, ye shall be as a whale in the midst of the sea; for the mountain waves shall dash upon you. Nevertheless, I will bring you up again out of the depths of the sea; for the winds have gone forth out of my mouth, and also the rains and the floods have I sent forth. And behold, I prepare you against these things; for ye cannot cross this great deep save I prepare you against the waves of the sea, and the winds which have gone forth, and the floods which shall come....

Ether 2:16-25, The Book of Mormon 

Note that the people talked about in this account were to be in barges, not inside large animals, and they were being compared to being in whales while traveling the sea.

I can believe in the God of the Bible without believing that Jonah hung out for three days in a cetacean stomach. While God can do miracles, the book of Jonah doesn't appear to be requiring us to accept a Pinocchio scenario. (Anyone who tells you otherwise should check the length of their own noses. :) )

We can all be more curious and cautious when it comes to canonizing less plausible scripture interpretations that don't even fit the texts, especially when too many people are told they must accept one "literal" interpretation or they lack faith in God. God is much bigger than our abilities to put things into words accurately.

[Update: It appears in Mishnaic Hebrew that a dinghy-like small boat was sometimes called a "dugit":

As Rashi notes, the equivalent term for a small fishing boat in Mishnaic Hebrew is dugit (see Bava Batra 73a). Rabbi Dr. Daniel Sperber explains that dugit is derived from the Hebrew word dag (“fish”), and refers to the sort of fisherman’s boat known as a lembus in Greek.

The dugit is also the subject of a halachic controversy: When one sells a sefinah (“main ship”), does one also intend to sell the dugit attached to it? According to Sumchos, since the dugit was attached to the sefinah and was typically towed by the mother ship in the middle of the sea, it is also included in the sale of the sefinah (Tosefta Bava Batra 4:1).

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/of-ships-and-boats/, "Of Ships and Boats", by Reuven Chaim Klein, dated December 11, 2021, 8:50 PM]

Thoughts on thoughts by Hugh Nibley

I was recently reading in Hugh Nibley's book The World of the Jaredites. For those who don't know him, he was a brilliant, extraordinarily well-read LDS scholar.

In talking about the conspiratorial structures one encounters in Asiatic cultures and specifically the Jaredites, an ancient Book of Mormon culture he believed to be both historically real and also Asiatic, he said this:

"[T]he key to control over one's fellow men, i.e., to power and gain, lies in three things: secrecy, organization, and freedom from moral scruples, especially from squeamishness in the matter of shedding blood."

Let's consider these three items in light of current trends and new, not-always-widely-publicized technology.

1) Secrecy has been around since there were two people to share a secret. Nothing new there as far as human nature. But technology has changed; we can write programs to hide and decode secret messages in text (when existing languages get boring, we can even invent new ones!), images, sound files, song lyrics, data headers and artifacts, etc. and transmit them in many different ways. The diversity of mechanisms to share secrets has never been so large as it is now.

To end secret combinations, one logically targets secrecy. Go cryptography experts who use their talents to do good!

The research done in the field of neuromarketing can also be used to see what people prefer deep down. Maybe only God could look on the heart two thousand years ago, but modern technology can allow us to get a much better photo of the heart's outlines than human societies used to be able to capture.

2) Organizations have also been around forever. We start out being born into families. 

Modern technology allows organizations and networks to develop and thrive between people who would never meet in real life. 

Got an ex-wife you want to harass over the internet? Find someone, or more likely some bot-providing programmer, on a "dark" web to do it for you while you're super busy with other things and can look uninvolved. (Sounds improbable? Hmmm, you hang out with a nicer crowd than I have.)

Modern technology can also be used to track down these connections and networks, though. It's only a matter of time till law enforcement realizes how easy the "smart" criminals are to catch and have convicting evidence on, due to the criminals' heavy reliance on the internets. If there's not a quiet market already for scrubbing one's tech activity, there certainly will be.

3) Lastly, lack of squeamishness. That's a tough one because we are currently dealing with a world where hearts have been being hardened. 

There is a temporary feeling of superiority that comes from feeling above taboos. I think it's a sad, ultimately doomed way to feel good, for it inevitably ends with everyone else (even other taboo-breakers) disliking you if you go too far. Those taboos developed for a reason; either nature has selected for them or God put them there, but they are like kite strings that hold us aloft--cut them, and one plummets after an initial upward rush.

Algorithms and technology influence what we see and hear and thus what we think. Our feelings get manipulated regularly to drive us to make decisions in the marketplace, at the ballot box, with respect to social trends, etc.

I don't think we can end algorithmic manipulation of us. But I think we can harness it for good. Most people hate, absolutely hate, being told what to do. But they will obey their paid fitness coaches because they want the results of heeding them.

Organizations and people should be up front about how they manipulate people and let them choose for themselves whether they want that technology used on them. (And vague "terms and conditions" aren't what I am talking about.) I want to be able to find services that help me be more creative (without them being creative instead of me), a better cook, more perceptive in my interactions with others (again, without doing it all for me), less addicted to harmful behaviors and prejudices, and so forth. 

Help me achieve the goals that bring me actual satisfaction, and I will support you in return. I want to see a truly interdependent marketplace of goods and services instead of the one we have now that is too dependent on using each other--maximizing ignorance in order to do so--in exploitative ways.

What if medical care actually cured? What if dating sites helped people find someone they're going to stay with instead of being a repeat client in five years? What if churches were less divisive and heeded Jesus's call to unity? What if life insurance companies didn't reap financial benefit from other companies' clients suffering harm? What if plowshare manufacturing were prioritized over weaponry? What if people were taught how to live peacefully with each other instead of being "radicalized" via tech?

I think we are in a messy time right now where some early developers of new technology decided to use it foremost to make money rather than sharing it publicly. Nothing wrong with earning money honestly, but as so often happens, dishonesty existed side-by-side with honesty and has temporarily won out. Nobody has more to gain from non-disclosure than do criminals.

I hope we get through this time to a brighter future.

[Update 5/11/2025: Another point Nibley makes is that Asiatic and Jaredite wars both tend to be ones of annihilation, often mutual.

The insane wars of the Jaredite chiefs ended in the complete annihilation of both sides, with the kings the last to go. The same thing had almost happened earlier in the days of Akish, when a civil war between him and his sons reduced the population to thirty....This all seems improbable to us, but two circumstances peculiar to Asiatic warfare explain why the phenomenon is by no means without parallel: (1) Since every war is strictly a personal contest between kings, the battle must continue until one of the kings falls or is taken. (2) And yet things are so arranged that the king must be the very last to fall, the whole army existing for the sole purpose of defending his person. This is clearly seen in the game of chess, in which all pieces are expendable except the king, who can never be taken.

To me, this means we should do all we can to prevent having unequal strata of governance, since the people at the top will "sacrifice" others to preserve their lives and positions. 

(I put sacrifice in quotes here because tossing a loved one off a cliff, a la Thanos in the recent Marvel movies, is what I call murder, not the "sacrifice" he claims it was. Thanos is wrong to say he loved his foster child when he was willing to use her as a pawn to get something else. Love goes deeper than the mere fondness he exhibits. Love includes a desire to promote the well-being of the beloved person.)

Government "by the people" as an egalitarian society is a goal we should seek if only for survival, although it has much else to recommend it. :)

The Jaredites' final battle is interesting in that the two opposing sides roughly kept balanced numbers with each other as they fought to the death, kind of like a Frisbee or flying saucer working to stay horizontal as it spins into an incinerator. What philosophies are so convincing that people will forfeit their own futures to be able to kill others? Whatever the philosophies are, they are foreign to the ideals and truths Jesus taught and do not bring happiness, so I think most people reject them.]

My most recent experiment

As I have previously announced on multiple occasions successful weight loss experimentation only to be unable to repeat the success, I am hesitant to keep doing so. However, one day I think I'll succeed, and I'd like to have a record of all the things I tried. It should be good for teaching my descendants the importance of creativity and persistence! 

So here is roughly what I did for the past two days which seems to have potential for helping me burn some fat:

0.5) At least an hour before, drink some celery leaf/roasted banana leaf ash/distilled water (strained with nylon mesh).

1) Microwave for 60 seconds 4 raw juniper berries and some dried parsley leaves. Use a plastic IKEA children cup with a small blue translucent lid so as to keep in any gases formed. Let cool while doing the next 4 steps.

2) Microwave for 60 seconds around 20 raw juniper berries in a white mug with beer salt (for the silicon dioxide in it). Stir with something gold (I use a Black Hills gold earring). Press 2 of the juniper berries into a small amount of salted butter on the tines of a personal blender.

3) Swirl into the (2) mug some roasted banana leaf ash and microwave for 60 seconds more. Stir with the same gold item. Press 2 of the juniper berries into the salted butter, too.

4) Grate some cinnamon bark into the (2-3) mug, swirl it, then microwave it for 60 seconds more. Press 4 of the juniper berries into the salted butter, too.

5) Swirl into the (2-4) mug some dry ash from banana leaves that were soaked in a solution of distilled water and epsom salts and then roasted. Microwave for 60 seconds. Press 2 of the juniper berries into the salted butter. Stir with a silver implement (I used a silver fork handle). Press 3 of the juniper berries into the salted butter.

6) Use the personal blender to make a puree with distilled water and the juniper berries in the salted butter from all the preceding steps.

7) Make "DCT" (microwave 60 seconds dried dill weed on Hershey's cocoa in a Classico pasta sauce glass Mason jar, then stir in with plastic some just-sliced small pieces of Roma tomato).

8) Make "VOC" (microwave 60 seconds in a mug a little roasted banana ash on a little onion powder on Hershey's cocoa), and put some into a room temperature mug ("VOC-lukewarm"). This room-temperature step seems crucial.

9) Pour some distilled water in which dry soybeans have been soaked overnight into both VOC and VOC'. Also pour some of the (6) butter puree into VOC and VOC'. Stir in with plastic, not metal utensils.

10) Pour the two mixes from step (9) simultaneously into the (7) DCT and stir with plastic.

11) Eat half of the (10) mixture. Add some just sliced small pieces of raw green cabbage and eat the rest.

[I tried an additional step with cream of tartar, but I think the potassium in it messes something up.]

[Update 05/04/2025: Leaving out the potassium seems to have resulted in another weight drop over the course of yesterday. Either that or there's a time lag from the day before or the Bertolli's pasta sauce had something special in it...I had three servings of spaghetti at a church fundraiser last night and none of the salad or breadsticks. The pasta was DeCecco's, made in Italy but with added vitamins. The sauce was Bertolli's organic, and I think some ground beef was added to it by the church leaders.

I did do one other thing different yesterday. When I made my broccoli/cacao nibs/gelatin smoothie that I always have with any food eaten after noon, I added into the blender (with the broccoli and cacao nibs) a juniper berry from step one above and a juniper berry from step five above. I had the smoothie at lunch (a low carb lunch of broccoli, cauliflower, and eggs), snacks (some dried cucumber, later an orange, and occasionally a tiny bit of dried chili powder), and dinner (3 plates of spaghetti with sauce). I didn't even exercise yesterday. I hope my scale isn't just messing with me. I really should be using a better bathroom scale if I am going to pay so much attention to it!]

[Update 05/05/2025: I'm down another pound this morning. I'm at my lower weight limit and will have to stop low-carbing for lunch. We'll see what happens next....]

[Update 05/13/2025: I'm not at my lower weight limit, and I haven't been able to recreate the weight loss. (Sigh.) I did have a lovely Mother's Day meal with pasta made by my youngest. Life does go on in many pleasant ways. :)

Because of a possible clue about "jet in toast" and previous successes years ago with heating stevia/silicon dioxide with cinnamon, I'm looking at whether an edible version of "jet glass" (made with silicon dioxide, calcium/sodium ashes, and iron) might be helpful; I'm using the broiler on the oven to "sinter" the silicon dioxide with other things that might have the needed elements to make jet glass. 

Now that I think about it, I have seen toast associated with noticeable adipose tissue depletion before. Several years ago, we were learning about the Netherlands. At breakfast I toasted wholegrain bread for my two youngest, buttered it, then put chocolate sprinkles from the Netherlands on the toast. I also gave them yogurt to eat alongside the toast. Within a week, my two little girls, who weren't overweight, were looking "hollow-cheeked" from something in the breakfast combo.]

[Update 05/15/2025: For some reason, I have been overlooking hafnium, which co-occurs with zirconium and is in foods like spinach beef, and eggs. Based on my experiments and the standard reduction potentials of various ions, a dry microwaving of a source of aluminum, a source of hafnium, a source of lanthanum and hydroxide ions, and silicon dioxide should allow me to make the hafnium (+4) ion, which is tricky to get and must be done with no water present. Hmmm, how to get it: Garlic peel for aluminum, banana leaf ash for hafnium, cocoa for hydroxides and lanthanum, and dried dill weed for silicon dioxide. Yes, cocoa and garlic together....luckily I'm not a picky eater when it comes to strong tastes and smells.]

[Update 05/19/2025: The cocoa and garlic were...interesting. I don't think the combination helped, though.

I'm now looking at what elements can be more easily affected in weight-loss promoting ways when mercury is present. 

Not only can water be used to make solutions at room temperature, but so can liquid mercury. Perhaps mercury is valuable as a medium, but not as an end product. Given prior noticeable weight loss from canned fish noted by me and an adult daughter, together with mercury's reputation for being in canned seafood, this makes sense as the next possibility to try.

Right now, due to previous successes with Scandinavian juniper berries, I'm going to look at scandium. I am specifically going to focus on whether potassium ions in mercury (I think mercury is present in alloy form in some flatware) can help ionize scandium in productive ways.]

[Update 05/23/2025: New direction (well, a prior direction with renewed attention): If I put my silver and Thai bronze flatware in a mixture of powdered eggshell and hydrogen peroxide and then, while they are wet, put them in a 500 degree oven right under the heating element until they are hot and totally dry and then let them cool on the countertop, using the flatware in some of my usual experiments seems to make a difference! 

What am I making? MgO, CaO, SrO, or BaO? A less usual alloy of silver or bronze that relies on annealing? I don't know.

But this is a much better direction than wondering about mercury. First, it's supposed to be safer not to mess around with mercury, Second, I don't have access to deep sea fish, and our US food supply doesn't have any other source of mercury. So, trying different ways of treating the tableware will be my new direction for some time.

An irony about this new direction is that when I was just 17, I worked for two months in the dishroom of a BYU cafeteria, so I have a little experience with just how hot flatware gets in large commercial dishwashers. I wonder if all-you-can-eat buffets and college student cafeterias get some sort of weight-related benefit for their customers from their dishwashing equipment, depending on the flatware and detergents they use. Our new, energy-efficient in-home dishwashers wouldn't be as able to make as much of a difference in alloys or chemical compounds because they don't get dishes as hot.]

[Update 05/29/2025: I think I might be making solid barium (plain Ba), which apparently has to be stored in oil to keep it from becoming oxidized. I seem to be getting small but cumulative weight loss results from 1) heating at 500°F a silver fork handle dipped in a mixture of powdered eggshell and diluted hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) and letting it cool at room temperature and 2) then, in the course of microwaving mixtures with beer salt and juniper berries in my experiments, including potassium tartrate (cream of tartar, and a source of potassium ions) at least once and stirring the mixture with the room-temperature silver fork handle.

When I look at a table of standard reduction potentials, steps 1) and 2) both could alter barium compounds such as to create solid barium. I have noticed that my experiments all seem to require some sort of hydrophobic substance (wax, oil, etc.) to be present or they never result in any weight loss, per my years of records.]

[Update 05/30/2025: Never mind about using the diluted hydrogen peroxide (H2O2). The results taste "off", so something in it might not be safe. I'll try using tap water with its fluoride ions instead. This being Colorado, the tap water could contain trace amounts of gold, too. Fluoride and gold can also be involved in changing between BaO and solid barium. Kitchen science has way too many possibilities going on....]

[Update 06/02/2025: Never mind about never minding about using the diluted hydrogen peroxide (H2O2). I'll find a way to make sure it's safe, maybe by making it myself with electricity, but it appears to be necessary.

One thing that isn't necessary is magnesium sulfate. Using even a tiny bit of that seems to ruin every experimental possibility, per my records.]

Thoughts on how to exploit good students to provide cover for criminals

I've been looking in magazines published by the LDS Church and its universities, and there does seem to be a pattern where illustrations that show variations of "bug on a jar", including "book or Bog (Bog=God in some Slavic languages)) on a jar or ajar (meaning slightly open)" yield possible "clues" with deeper meanings when doubles are cancelled and then the key TSHV (see my post on April 10, 2025) is applied.

Key TSHV:

A    B    C   D   E    F   G    H    I    J    K   L   M

                                           S    R   Q   P   O   N

                                           T

                                                 U

                   Z   Y    X   W   V

I recently came across such an illustration with the caption "The Gospel of Jesus Christ," an often-repeated phrase in church meetings and publications. Doing doubles-cancellation and the key TSHV on "The Gospel of Jesus Christ" yielded, after applying one more key ("IR"), two possible clues. One appeared to refer to using cuffs as a sign (DP-LC-J-B-CUF = deep L's hook be cuff). The other yielded a "new key" (XFU) together with a reference to Akish, the founder of secret combinations in the Book of Mormon (WKOX-QY-XFU = Akish-key-XFU). See Ether 8:13-16:

13 And it came to pass that Akish gathered in unto the house of Jared all his kinsfolk, and said unto them: Will ye swear unto me that ye will be faithful unto me in the thing which I shall desire of you?

14 And it came to pass that they all sware unto him, by the God of heaven, and also by the heavens, and also by the earth, and by their heads, that whoso should vary from the assistance which Akish desired should lose his head; and whoso should divulge whatsoever thing Akish made known unto them, the same should lose his life.

15 And it came to pass that thus they did agree with Akish. And Akish did administer unto them the oaths which were given by them of old who also sought power, which had been handed down even from Cain, who was a murderer from the beginning.

16 And they were kept up by the power of the devil to administer these oaths unto the people, to keep them in darkness, to help such as sought power to gain power, and to murder, and to plunder, and to lie, and to commit all manner of wickedness and whoredoms.

After applying another key (X) to WKOX-QY-XFU, I got more possible "clues", that read "ZK GPA" ("seek GPA"?), "KOE NY" (Company New York?), "XGQ HW" ("pirate GQ is ho?) and "IEO FU" (missing "AU", or gold, means messed up?). 

The first and last possible clues seem to have clear meanings to me. 

"Seek GPA": I think the Honors Program at BYU had a relatively high percentage of closet pretend-faithful church members when I was there. I still remember how a third of my Honors Freshman English class, when told to write an essay about a traumatic experience in their lives, wrote about finding out their parents had lied to them about Santa Claus. I thought they were being straightforward about Santa Claus, but more recent experiences have helped me see that some were probably using it as a metaphor for finding out that their parents didn't actually believe in a divine Jesus. I still remember the one time I tried to hang out in the Honors reading room; I was put off by the mocking, denigrating things I overheard students in there saying about faithful people and never tried studying in there again. I can see why non-faithful people would send their children to BYU, for the tuition is a great deal compared to other universities, and the substance-free, goal-oriented lifestyle is a good way to raise youth. Still, couldn't they be less hypocritical? It's a big world out there and no one forces adults to stay members of the LDS church. Like any social organization, there is social pressure to remain, but I don't understand being happy to live a pretense just to save "face" and money.

Missing Au, messed up: Years ago, I realized that hydrogen peroxide buildup in the mouth and nose is likely contributing to dementia onset (as well as graying hair). Gold helps break down hydrogen peroxide to harmless water, and people used to have gold in their fillings. But now it's almost all silver or composite fillings, and the store shelves are stacked with peroxide-filled whitening toothpastes and mouthwashes; dementia is simultaneously occurring sooner than it used to across the population. Yes, there are other factors contributing to dementia, but very little can break down hydrogen peroxide easily (go look at a chemistry standard reduction potential table to verify it for yourself) except for gold.

An interesting thing is happening as I engage in decoding possible messages. My culture and education allow me to see meaning in what would look like random letters to someone else. Is a group of people actually putting secret messages in church publications or are they using media (and now search result algorithms) to make "decoded" letter combinations appear meaningful afterwards? I think a combination of the two is happening. 

The more background knowledge people possess, the more likely they are to find meaning where it was not intentionally put. Thus, it makes sense to recruit high GPA students to shadowy movements when one realizes that this phenomenon of meaning-finding doesn't work as well with low GPA students. Honors students aren't actually being recruited because they're highly intelligent so much as because this method of making them suspicious of others is far more effective on them.

We hear so much in the headlines about AI--artificial intelligence was already being programmed over thirty years ago, and much could have been done in that time to make people think that there are a lot more conspiracies floating around with a lot more people involved than there actually are. To what end? To hide actual wrongdoing. 

Obfuscation, diversion, distraction, and framing others are all effective ways to keep people blind to actual crimes. The existence of many wrong conspiracy theories don't mean that no one is engaging in conspiracies. "Conspiracy" is a just a fancy way to say that two more more people work together to do something criminal. As our incarceration statistics attest, there is no shortage of criminality in our country.

One might say, OK, if there are people or companies engaged in actual criminal behavior who are able to use their super-computers and IT consultants to create the appearance of numerous conspiracies, then how are insignificant bloggers like me able to see through the smoke and mirrors while CNN and NPR stay silent on the subject?

Remember the movie Fight Club? It teaches that the one main rule is "Don't talk about fight club."

Conspiracies that don't want to be exposed naturally view as enemies those people and companies that insist on truth, transparency, and freedom. Sometimes, the removal of the truthtellers is violent, like recently happened with Maria del Carmen Morales and her son in Mexico (https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/25/americas/mexican-activists-killed-jalisco-intl-latam/index.html). But overt violence is messy, which draws attention and possible exposure. Sometimes the removal is as easy as removing opponents' platforms. How do I know there aren't hundreds of other people out there noticing the same thing that I am but who have no way to spread the message effectively? Google isn't going to show me what they're posting on their little webpages when they can't pay to appear higher up in the search results.

Modern technology offers ways to contract out the silencing of truthtellers, as well as other opponents, in plausibly accidental ways: vehicular accidents, heart attacks, destructive intrusive thoughts, strokes, aphasic episodes, PTSD attacks, medication errors, emotion manipulation, destruction of reputations from long ago documents/posts, etc. I know that my blog has been deemed worthy of "blocking" by the internet filter at my local public library, but I can't imagine what in it is actually offensive. (As you see above, I'm not even comfortable using the words for the abbreviation FU.)

Conspiracies to maintain silence, no matter how justified they might seem, are causing great harm to our society. Failure to share information makes everyone more vulnerable to real criminals, who have technology at their disposal that was unthinkable in the time of our grandparents. One would hope that high GPA people would have figured out by now that they are being used....I guess this is why we get warned against pride, for it keeps people thinking that they are just too smart to be fooled.

Another interesting thing about this phenomenon of meaning finding is that it can be exploited in any language. I wonder to what extent it is going on in other cultures.

[Update 5/15/2025: After considering the importance of continued secrecy to the maintenance of criminal conspiracies, I have come to the conclusion that they will utilize every single philosophy/rule/law/tradition/practice/tradition/circumstance they have access to in order to keep their secrecy intact: deplatforming, diversion, website/email blocking, making the whistleblowers look crazy/unpleasant, getting rid of evidence, pretending to have a legitimate or merely coincidental cause for the harm they do to whistleblowers, "memory holing", etc. This causes me some sadness, for my husband and my older children are witnesses to my sudden recovery from extreme fear and debilitating delusions after eating matzoh imported from Israel in 2020, which makes them "evidence" and thus probably on some digital blacklist somewhere. There is nothing I can do to change that. I can't live my life cowering in fear, though. What happened, happened. We are told to raise our voices in warning to try to protect others. Being a Good Samaritan surely includes trying to warn of the thieves around the corner before another person gets set upon. 

As long as I can speak about my experiences, I will, if only to help whoever comes next along a path similar to mine. Perhaps I can convince some who know more about what is going on with quiet uses of newer technology to speak up while they can do so. If enough people speak up, thieves lose their secrecy and then their power, for they only offer relative advantages and by their nature cannot promote a society of improvement, intelligence, and beauty. 

The scriptures talk about putting on the armor of God. See https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/new-era/2009/01/the-armor-of-god. Part of that armor is truth and speaking the truth. I think being a follower of Jesus entails talking about what happened to me in 2020, for Jesus would have spoken out, too.]

Ingredient scarcity and weight-related food experiments

I can't find good baking cocoa in the grocery stores. I don't recall any news headlines about that being an issue, but there simply isn't any on the shelves. That's going to drastically change what I and now my teenage daughters do in the way of weight loss experiments.

Also, I have run out of red raspberry seed powder. I won't be buying more. It's expensive and hasn't had the same effects as batches of the same brand bought and used several years ago. 

Have you noticed that "superfoods" don't stay super?

Because of my recent (and lasting) two-pound weight loss from expensive deli meat (Boar's Head) with just four ingredients--sodium phosphate, turkey, water, and sugar--I'm wondering if there are some helpful gas molecules produced in processing the meat and sugar on special equipment that has been cleaned with certain chemicals. Remember decades ago when we all got told to beware of cleaning with both chlorine bleach and ammonia together? What if they, used sequentially on food processing equipment, actually were beneficial to making needed chemicals in food?

For now, I'm looking at different things that happen chemically in the kitchen with beryllium (especially as Be(2+) ions), gold, iodine, and possibly ruthenium or bromine (especially as BrO3(1-) ions before H is bonded to them), particularly in combination with phospholipid-type molecules that have arsenic/bismuth/antimony instead of the phosphorus atom.

[Update 4/23/2025: I don't know whether it's related to weight loss, but today I repeated an experiment from a month ago that brought on "hot flashes" (especially in my back, where we tend to have brown fat deposits) then and now. Quite unexpected. Sure, it could be hormones or perimenopause, but I don't recall ever having had those sensations besides those two times, and the "heat" today didn't start until I consumed exactly the same things that I did a month ago; a partial copying was insufficient. Caffeine, which sometimes gets partially blamed for hot flashes, alone wasn't enough. Here's what I ate/drank that seemed to bring on the heat both today and a month ago:

Item 1: My usual celery leaf/distilled water/roasted banana leaf beverage just after waking. 

Item 2: A little raw green cabbage on and off before, during, and after small experiments.

Item 3: Sips of a slightly varied version of my snack and mealtime broccoli smoothie:

Prepare in a jar a little beef gelatin powder mixed with room-temperature distilled water.

In a high-speed blender, blend some fresh, rinsed broccoli florets with rinsed raw cacao nibs and distilled water.

Pour the blender contents once pureed and steaming (that takes about 50 seconds in my Blendtec at its top speed) into a second jar with some distilled water and a couple tablespoons of the beverage listed as Item 1 above (strain out the celery leaf and ash with a plastic mesh strainer). Then pour that into the first jar of gelatin-water. Mix together in the jar.

Dilute with more distilled water to a pleasant drinkable texture.

Item 4: A new kind of juniper berry/soybean smoothie:

Microwave 4 raw juniper berries with dried parsley uncovered in a ceramic mug for about 1 minute. Press the juniper berries into some salted butter on the blades of a small personal blender. 

Microwave around 8 raw juniper berries with powdered white eggshell and beer salt (as a source of silicon dioxide) in a mug uncovered for about 1 minute. Stir with a small golden earring (I used a "Black Hills gold" earring because that is what I have on hand). Add ash from toasted banana leaf and a little just-grated cinnamon bark; swirl in and microwave for 60 seconds more, then stir with the handle of a silver fork. Press the juniper berries onto the same salted butter in the blender.

When everything on the blender blades is at room temperature, make a puree with the treated juniper berries, the salted butter, and distilled water.

In a different personal blender, puree distilled water and 1 dry soybean.

Pre-mix some of the two purees together into a plastic container. Keep at room temperature.

In an IKEA plastic cup, microwave dried dill weed and home-ground chili powder (made from inexpensive Walmart-brand red chili flakes) about 2 minutes. [Hmmm....I tried to recreate this later on the same day, and it looks like, based on my log, that the correct combo is actually gelatin powder on dill weed on Hershey's cocoa powder. I'll try again in the next few days.] Pour the mixture of purees into the IKEA cup and swirl to mix. Drink it all.

Until I made Item 4 with the specific juniper berry treatment above, I did not get any feelings of heat. I used cocoa powder three times for various experiments sort of like Item 4 this morning with no apparent results, which is why I think that caffeine alone is insufficient. 

I noticed the heat in my back an hour ago, fifteen minutes after consuming Item 4, and it has continued to be noticeable since then even though I am wearing light clothing and sitting a place where I usually feel chilled.

I don't know what molecule(s) might be connected to this feeling of heat; I will have to repeat these specific food tests to see whether I get the same sensations. Wouldn't that be useful to find a clear food trigger for "hot flashes"!]

[Update 4/24/2025: I haven't been able to recreate yesterday's feeling of "heat." The only differences I can see between what I've been doing today and what I did yesterday is that the experiment that was most likely the one connected to the warmth was done by microwaving gelatin, dill weed, and cocoa in an old Classico spaghetti sauce Mason jar, which cracked during the one minute I had it in the microwave; it didn't break, so I used the result, but I didn't recreate the experiment exactly because I didn't want to break another jar. Perhaps there is something about needing a specific kind of sheared crystal structure as a catalyst. I guess I could break some quartz and try that as an ingredient, as that should mimic having fractured glass.

I tried the fractured quartz and didn't notice anything. Thinking back to the stevia/silicon dioxide that my daughter successfully used for weight loss years ago, I wonder whether there was something in the stevia that "doped" the silicon dioxide to make it do what it did for her. Glass jars do have sodium and sometimes aluminum or boron in them, from what I've read. Stevia is a leaf, and I already have roasted banana leaf ash on hand, as well as roasted banana leaf that was first soaked in magnesium sulfate. Maybe the roasted banana leaf has sodium or a similar element (lithium, rubidium, etc.) in the right form. I'm trying microwaving a combination of roasted banana leaf, gelatin, and dill weed in a ceramic bowl and then stirring in some sulfured-roasted banana leaf. I'm also trying the same combination but with a combination of roasted banana leaf, gelatin, home-ground chili pepper and dill weed (this second one seemed to cause a slimming feeling right afterwards, while the previous one did not, but I also put some sulfured-roasted banana leaf in with the pre-made mixture of purees, so I didn't isolate the variables sufficiently).]

[Update 4/25/2025: Years ago, I came across a big chunk of glass in a can of canned salmon. I laughed a little, remembering headlines about people suing companies for scary things found in processed food, and then threw it away without making a fuss since it was obviously too big to go unnoticed and thus not dangerous to me. While it would be dangerous to a child, young children don't tend to operate can openers and wouldn't be opening this brand of cans. The mere existence of big chunks of glass in or next to food is not dangerous. We eat food out of glass jars and vessels all the time. Just don't ingest glass pieces that could hurt you.

Today I microwaved four recently-fractured chunks of food-grade glass in a ceramic bowl together with cocoa, dill weed, red chili powder, and gelatin powder; those last two are included because apparent interference by sodium chloride with the silicon dioxide in my beer salt, as well as the often-added boron and aluminum in store-bought glass jars, makes me think that perhaps I want to combine beryllium or strontium with heated glass to make a catalyst.

After microwaving, I mixed in the two purees from above and consumed the liquid part of the mixture (being careful to remove all four glass chunks because I'm curious but not stupid), I did feel a new sensation in my thighs and my fingers seem to feel thinner. I would like to retry this experiment with roasted banana leaf ash and/or cinnamon bark in place of the chili powder, but I'm out of purees for today. One batch suffices for a day. I want to consume real food, too!]

[Update 4/26/2025: I saw Hershey's cocoa back on the shelves, but it looks repackaged, as if the labels had been reglued on for some reason. Odd.]

[Update 4/27/2025: Now that I'm out of red raspberry powder, I'm experimenting with using beef gelatin powder in place of it, i.e., microwaving a mug with a little gelatin powder on a little roasted banana leaf ash on a little onion powder on some Hershey's cocoa. I might have gotten a "cooling" sensation from that. I think it would be from making tetrahedral bismuth/antimony/arsenic given the ingredients.]

[Update 4/30/2025: Temperatures when mixing ingredients look like they might be important. Yet another variable to track....]

Bugs/Divinities on jars and manufactured "secret messages"

A couple of weeks ago, I noticed that in my 1982 LDS "triple combination" scripture index, the entries for various names of Jesus (e.g., Wonderful, Counselor, Eternal, etc.) seem to have possible "encoded messages" found by doing doubles-cancellation on the regular-font letters of each of the entries and then doing a V-type manipulation of the results (i.e., taking the letters before and after the V--or another symmetrical noun or concept spelled in the results--in alternation, moving outward from the "V").

Most people think of a goat as a medieval depiction of the devil, but Jesus is talked about as being a scapegoat who bore our sins. So I did a doubles-cancellation on the entry for "Goat." It gave me BKYUGONAJRTSHV, which did not have anything symmetrical contained within it. But then I noticed that if I pulled out "KY" (often used to denote possible decoding keys), I got "BUG ON A J[A]R  TSHV." I decided to look for LDS media with depictions of bugs over jars and use the key TSHV on doubles-cancellations of their accompanying text.

Key TSHV:

A    B    C   D   E    F   G    H    I    J    K   L   M

                                           S    R   Q   P   O   N

                                           T

                                                 U

                   Z   Y    X   W   V

The very first one I tried was the not-in-quotes portion of the title of an official LDS news release about this spring's general church conference, which news release had a painting of Jesus over a large jar. Now, in Slavic languages and languages that incorporate them (e.g., Yiddish), "bug"="god". Even for non-Slavic-language speaking American audiences, the Men in Black movie equated bugs with superhuman, highly-evolved beings. So that painting fit the "bug on a jar" phrase. Doing doubles-cancellation on "Finding...through Jesus Christ this Easter season" gave a result of "FPJCRSN", and applying the TSHV key resulted in "XZQCUITVHM"; that appears to be saying "execute" and two initials that might be HM or MR (I think the latter is correct due to the V, or Roman numeral five, possibly indicating to shift the following letters forward five letters). If the Church President, Russell M. Nelson, who is 100 years old, dies in the next six months, I guess this will be a perfect example of the manufactured (possibly self-fulfilling) prophecies that I think have been being put in (or made reality afterwards) in some church publications.

I have continued to look in church publications and the "bug on a jar" motif seems to be a genuine, repeated sign. The 2008 version of the illustrated New Testament Stories has a picture of Mary holding baby Jesus over a jar on page 18. Doing doubles-cancellation on the regular text under it, I got VGCKULOSEINT; applying the TSHV key to that gave me HSTWCPIROLTVHYRUMVHS, which immediately drew my attention because it spells out Hyrum, best friend and brother of LDS Church founder Joseph Smith. If one takes the V's as indicators of reading in a different direction, this could be read as TL O RIP CWT SH - HYRUM - SH, which read phonetically is "Tell 'O' R.I.P.  Cot Shhhh Hyrum Shhhh." That looks like a threat to not talk about cipher-ring-related things on pain of death, which Hyrum might have run afoul of by telling them to Joseph in connection with a cot. Odd, right? Especially since Joseph and Hyrum were later murdered together.

In the last few years, an unusual story has been being circulated that Hyrum Smith attended an elite boarding school and came home and told Joseph all about what he learned there while Joseph was laid up in bed recovering from a serious illness. That isn't a church history story that circulated until recently; I think it might have been manufactured or inflated to fit this supposed "encoded message."

It's too easy to put or find garbled messages in texts with macros. How is a person supposed to know whether such messages are legitimate claims, especially if false stories are later circulated to make the messages look legitimate?

Ring Wars and better uses of neuroscience advances

As you might have gathered from some of my posts over the past five years, I think secrecy is overrated.

I just saw something that could be interpreted to mean that oaths, covenants, and confidentiality agreements could be used to set up a circular war, a "ring war."

Instapundit used to mockingly talk about "circular firing squads" and the prisoners' dilemma (a hypothetical where prisoners can get a shorter sentence by all confessing but a longer one if they are the only wrongdoer who confesses, so they all stay quiet).

How do we end secrecy-dependent ring wars? Since people are going to respond to rational incentives, society needs to be change the prisoners' dilemma. Genuinely repentant wrongdoers should be given a lesser penalty for being the first to confess, especially if they help identify their co-conspirators. It should be a race to confess first.

How do we discern who is actually repentant from who is merely manipulative and insincere? There is a large body of neuromarketing research now on how to find out what people prefer. Use it in law enforcement. Also, use it in security clearances! If someone shows a preference for service to fellow humans, they should get jobs that need people with such a preference (as opposed to a preference for wielding power to use others). All that brain activity research should be put to uses more important than finding out which kind of cola we prefer.

Song title word "games"

Last year, the Eurovision submission from Israel was a song called "Hurricane." Cancellation of doubled letters turns that song title into "Hui Cane." Eight days after the Eurovision finale, Iran's president and foreign minister were killed in a helicopter crash. The helicopter was a Bell 212, which appears to be the kind of helicopter known as a "Huey." "Cain" is the first recorded murderer (see the book of Genesis in the Bible), something which would have been common knowledge to both Iranians and Israelis, despite their many differences.

If the 2024 song title was an announcement of an intended attack via helicopter crash, then we should all scrutinize the 2025 Israel song title being submitted to Eurovision now: "New Day Will Rise"

Doing cancellation of doubled letters on "New Day Will Rise" results in "NDA Y RS." 

An NDA is a non-disclosure agreement. "RS" is pronounced "ars," as in crafts and skilled arts. "Y" looks like a drover's rod for herding cattle. 

I've posted some articles recently that point to the development of technology that can "read" and "nudge" people's minds (see https://petticoatgovernment.blogspot.com/2025/02/mind-reading-can-be-done-by-technology.html cancellation), and I think someone in Israel is using this song title to tell the western world that this kind of technology is being used to herd us and that many who know about it are unable to openly discuss it due to non-disclosure agreements.

(As you look at Israelis demonstrating to show disgust and anger at their leaders for bombing tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza, remember that some of those Israelis likely know about any psy-ops being used to stoke conflicts but are prevented from saying anything about them. Violating confidentiality agreements in the military can result in prison and possibly worse consequences. Most Israelis are good people, and they need to be freed from their own captors.)

A scripture passage that was fulfilled despite looking on the surface as though it wasn't

In the Book of Mormon, 3 Nephi 21:9-10 says

For in that day, for my sake shall the Father work a work, which shall be a great and a marvelous work among them; and there shall be among them those who will not believe it, although a man shall declare it unto them. But behold, the life of my servant shall be in my hand; therefore they shall not hurt him, although he shall be marred because of them. Yet I will heal him, for I will show unto them that my wisdom is greater than the cunning of the devil.

This statement appears to be about Joseph Smith, Jr. But it says he wouldn't be "hurt," and Joseph Smith, Jr. was murdered by a mob in 1844 in Illinois. So wasn't this prophecy not fulfilled? Also, how can one be "marred" yet not "hurt"? That seems logically impossible.

The meaning of "mar" is 1) to ruin or diminish the perfection or wholeness of : spoil; 2) (archaic) a) to inflict serious bodily harm on; b) destroy. (See https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mar.)

Joseph Smith, Jr. repeatedly had serious bodily harm inflicted on him. He was never "perfect," so the first definition about "diminishing perfection" seems inapplicable to him.

My enormous old dictionary, in its etymology and meanings for the word "hurt", points to a lesser-known definition of "to hurt" as meaning "to check" or "to hamper" (see the 2b definition):

As we know from hockey, checking is blocking, not necessarily injuring (see definitions 5 and also 6):

The inclusion of abating as a synonym of checking is interesting. "Abate" is a strong word in its most common legal and construction usages, meaning to nullify or get rid of. See https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/abate.

The "check" meaning of "hurt" is kept in the first definition of "hurter":

I think this Book of Mormon passage above is saying that Joseph Smith, Jr. would be marred--both in the sense that he would suffer serious physical injury and that his work would be tarnished and slowed down, including by his unjust death--but that he and his work would not be entirely blocked. It has taken 200 years now, but his main work--the bringing forth of the Book of Mormon--still continues. The Book of Mormon tells the world that Jesus was divine and that he really rose from death (not just a chemical stupor like the fictional Juliet in Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet) and visited his "other sheep," i.e., people in the Americas.

Men in Black and Marbles

The news has been hot about President Trump yelling at President Zelenskyy in the White House recently. One tidbit stood out:

Volodymyr Zelenskyy was wearing black slacks, boots, and a black sweatshirt with an embroidered Ukrainian trident...."You're all decked out today," Donald Trump remarked mockingly.

https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/world/did-zelenskyys-outfit-at-the-white-house-tick-off-donald-trump-heres-what-he-was-wearing-as-the-president-took-a-sarcastic-dig-at-him/ar-AA1A3xQS?ocid=BingNewsSerp

Zelensky was all in black, including a sweatshirt, for a very formal kind of meeting. What is the symbolism he was going for? To some people, "men in black" are pirates (who might be good guys underneath), as we see in The Princess Bride movie.

To others, "men in black" are super cool defenders of the universe from the really bad creatures out there.

But, as the movie and its rap song spell out for us, "Men In Black" equals "M.I.B."

Here come the Men In Black

It's the MIB's, uh, here come the MIB's

Here come the Men In Black, Men In Black

They won't let you remember*

Nah nah nah.

The good guys dress in black, remember that

Just in case we ever face to face and make contact

The title held by me, MIB

https://www.lyrics.com/lyric/3529257/Will+Smith

I was intrigued to find in my huge, old dictionary that "mib" means "mig" in the sense of a marble used for playing marbles. See https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mib.

Do you remember how, at the very end of the first Men in Black movie, the earth and our universe are portrayed as being inside a marble that an alien hand is playing marbles with? I don't think that was a lucky vocabulary coincidence. Is that final movie scene saying that the men in black are being "played with" just as much as everyone else? If so, who is playing everyone else? The technology we see and know about is like the visible tip of an iceberg, and I have felt myself "nudged" to do or say things in the past few years that I wouldn't have otherwise thought of doing or saying.

Of course, a "Mig" is also a USSR-era fighter jet.

So, when Trump makes a big deal out of Zelenskyy showing up dressed as a "mib"....what is really going on? There's so much that is unclear in international politics right now.

* If mind reading and altering technology has been being researched and patented since the mid-1970s (see https://patents.google.com/patent/US3951134A/en) then there has likely been progress on helping induce forgetfulness in targeted ways. Perhaps the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was only partially science fiction.

[Update 05/15/2025: Like most people, I notice more that which is salient to me (salient = of notable significance, standing out). I think that the reaction in our brain to that which is salient has been researched and most likely reverse-engineered so as to induce the reaction, possibly even in a heightened way, with new technology in order to nudge us in specific directions when we read news, ads, memes, etc. Try paying attention to what seems to stand out on your cell phone or computer screen and then to what seems to just sort of sit in the background without grabbing your attention; is there a difference?

Technology that can make some images and words salient while others on the same screen seem unimportant can be used to deliver messages, including messages that increase sadness or anxiety, in plausibly deniable ways. With AI doing the work, computer programs could mess with people's emotions and thoughts in ways that wouldn't even look harmful to other observers. 

Surely I'm not the first person to realize this kind of messaging could go from the realm of science fiction to reality, too. Maybe there is already widespread use of such tech and it partially explains why our society has become so polarized: some are pushed to feel threatened by a trend, and others are pushed to view is as a trivial or even positive change.]