# rss_item

guid: https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/custodial-crypto-unsustainable-uphold-bat/
title: Never Trust Custodial Crypto
url: https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/custodial-crypto-unsustainable-uphold-bat/
feedurl: https://lukesmith.xyz/index.xml
content:
<p>It should actually be a point of optimism that centralized technology tends to destruction while decentralized tech can survive pressure&hellip;</p>
<p>Some highly attentive people <em>might</em> have noticed that <a href="https://landchad.net">LandChad.net</a> lost one of its articles: that on how to set up a website with the Basic Attention Token (BAT) which is a crypto-currency tied into the Brave Browser.
I can&rsquo;t even tacitly endorse this project due to some recent personal developments that we&rsquo;ll see below&hellip;</p>
<p>I&rsquo;ve used the Brave Browser (in fact, I&rsquo;ve even <em>defended it</em> as a browser), but the BAT project itself is almost a perfect example of a poorly-designed crypto project.
Like most 💩coins, it is constructed to enrich a business behind it, <em>not</em> to truly be an open standard.</p>
<p>To be clear, I&rsquo;m going to talk about BAT, but this isn&rsquo;t really just about it.
It&rsquo;s about any kind of compliance cuck crypto project (i.e. effectively all of them).</p>
<h2 id="the-main-issue">The main issue.</h2>

<figure class="imgfig"><img src="https://lukesmith.xyz/pix/leshilllion.png" alt="/pix/leshilllion.png"></figure>

<p>BAT is a browser-mediated system that allows users to view ads in the Brave browser and collect their BAT cryptocurrency, which they can give to &ldquo;creators&rdquo; (i.e. people with websites or social media profiles registered with them).</p>
<h3 id="forced-kyc">Forced KYC</h3>
<p>The issue is, however, is that the entire system is a centralized one, <em>not
just</em> around Brave, but &ldquo;creators&rdquo; like me with websites cannot actually
receive their BAT earning in their own wallets.
Instead, earnings <em>must</em> go to a centralized Know-Your-Customer exchange that has a relationship with Brave: Uphold or Gemini.
Even the addition of the choice of Gemini is new&mdash;Uphold used to be the only option.</p>
<p>Either way, I made an Uphold account when I registered my sites with Brave.
I would receive a small amount of monthly BAT and after several months, since I am not braindead, I would transfer those funds to non-custodial wallets every once in a while.
I would have liked to transfer them immediately, but Uphold charged obscene withdrawal fees ($15 + some percentage).</p>
<p>Aside from that, I never used Uphold for anything.
I&rsquo;ve never heard of anyone using Uphold for anything other than BAT Rewards anyway.</p>
<h2 id="uphold-emails-me">Uphold emails me.</h2>
<p>After several <strong>years</strong> of being forced to use Uphold for literally no reason, this past month I began getting a flurry of vaguely worded emails asking me for &ldquo;more information about myself.&rdquo;
Here is the most recent (they have all been the same in content):</p>
<style>
blockquote {
	font-style: italic ;
	color: #0B0 ;
}
</style>
<blockquote>
<p>We’re following up on our request for additional due diligence information sent on May 27. As a regulated financial services business, we’re required to perform ongoing risk and compliance reviews. Please note that if we do not receive the requested information, we reserve the right to restrict your account. Please provide the following information at your earliest convenience:</p>
<ul>
<li>Purpose of your Uphold account.</li>
<li>Estimated monthly activity.</li>
<li>You previously mentioned that you are unemployed, please elaborate more about your source of wealth. [sic, lol]</li>
<li>Please explain the purpose of your withdrawals to different crypto wallets and your relationship with them. You have withdrawn funds to X different external wallets.</li>
<li>Relationship with the users you receive funds from, as well as the purpose of such transactions (Include supporting documentation, if any)</li>
<li>Incoming $X &mdash; USD (X transactions from X users)</li>
<li>Is your account used for activities related to a business?</li>
</ul>
<p>Please use the following link to upload your files:</p>
<p>&hellip;</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As the old adage goes, &ldquo;Bitcoin fixes this.&rdquo; Or at least it&rsquo;s supposed to if people actually used it.</p>
<p>As I said before, Uphold is a KYC exchange: they <em>already</em> know who I am and have a picture of a photo ID of mine.
They can also clearly see the origin of 100% of my incoming transactions from &ldquo;Brave Software International.&rdquo;</p>
<h3 id="i-respond-to-this-email-here">I respond to this email here.</h3>
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li>Purpose of your Uphold account.</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p>The reason my account with Uphold exists is because you have some kind of financial relationship with Brave Software International wherein you have nearly exclusive rights to receive BAT payouts.
The reason my account exists is because I can&rsquo;t just receive funds to&mdash;you know&hellip; an <em>actual cryptocurrency wallet</em>, so I have to use your worthless non-service and pay $15+ dollar fees every time I want to turn your fake custodial crypto into my own.</p>
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li>Estimated monthly activity.</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p>You are a centralized custodial exchange so you can easily see my mountly activity and in my case, you will see that it is actually perfectly uniform across months.</p>
<p>Not that this should matter, nor do I appreciate the tacit assumption that irregular and variable income (which is extremely common nowadays) is somehow bad.</p>
<p>I should add that the only other thing I&rsquo;ve ever tried to do is there was one point where I figured I&rsquo;d bite the bullet and buy some KYC Bitcoin to slurp some heckin&rsquo; dipperinos at short notice.
Unfortunately, your site is so broken that no transaction ended up going through.</p>
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li>You previously mentioned that you are unemployed, please elaborate more about your source of wealth.</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p>Could you elaborate on which country you live in where four figures over the course of three or four years in considered <em>&ldquo;wealth&rdquo;</em>?</p>
<p>(Not quite sure when I ever said I was unemployed. I may&rsquo;ve answered that on a questionaire to avoid questions on the level of stupidity I am dealing with now.)</p>
<p>As in the question above, you, Uphold, are a custodial exchange that can clearly see 100% of the transactions into my account come from &ldquo;Brave Software International&rdquo; and considering Brave is Uphold&rsquo;s only reason for existence, I should not have to explain how they work to you.</p>
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li>Please explain the purpose of your withdrawals to different crypto wallets and your relationship with them. You have withdrawn funds to X different external wallets.</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p>I am interested in having cryptocurrency. I am not interested in having pretend custodial crypto funds indexed to the price of crypto which ultimately I have no control over.
I can understand that you are upset that I would like to own my own assets rather than letting you &ldquo;just hold onto them&rdquo; in exchange for an IOU, but the fact that I am receiving this email illustrates why it is important to keep 100% of my assets off of platforms like this.</p>
<p>In the previous case, you could hold my money against me. In this case, I am laughing at you. I have $0 on Uphold and I will continue to have $0.</p>
<p>If the issue here is the fact that I withdraw to <em>different</em> crypto addresses, I suggest you instead contact users who withdraw to the same wallet addresses and chide them for reusing addresses and thus using cryptocurrency in a more privacy-violating fashion.</p>
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li>Relationship with the users you receive funds from, as well as the purpose of such transactions (Include supporting documentation, if any)</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p>As previously established, like everyone else who is forced to use Uphold, I use it for BAT.
As such, I know the identities of <em>literally zero</em> of the people who may have donated to me through BAT.
This should not be an issue for you since you <em>do</em> know these user&rsquo;s accounts and at least can exhaustively track the movement of BAT payouts on your system.</p>
<p>So this is a question I should be asking <em>you</em> out of curiousity, if I cared about it.</p>
<p>In the BAT system, anyone who stumbles onto my website can end up giving me BAT. If you want me track everyone somehow and tell you, you are delusional.</p>
<h2 id="notice-the-questions">Notice the Questions&hellip;</h2>
<p>Notice the issue at work here: they don&rsquo;t just want to have <em>my</em> information, but they seem very interested in:</p>
<ul>
<li>If the addresses I withdrew to are my addresses or someone else&rsquo;s&hellip;</li>
<li>What my relationship with other people on the network are&hellip;</li>
<li>What real-world business interactions might correspond to transactions&hellip;</li>
</ul>
<p>To even answer these questions could put other people&rsquo;s privacy at risk.</p>
<p>This is why people who say &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t care about privacy, I got nothing to hide&rdquo; need to remember that in fighting for free and open, yet private tech is not a war we wage for our own selfishness, but to keep everyone else, including our children safer and more private than we have been able to be.</p>
<h2 id="bitcoin-fixes-this">&ldquo;Bitcoin fixes this.&rdquo;</h2>
<p>What is so pathetic about this email, which represents the wider comply-cuck movement in crypto&mdash;is that it is precisely what Bitcoin was developed to avoid.</p>
<p>The goal of a peer-to-peer currency is to make the &ldquo;due diligence&rdquo; of financial &ldquo;custodians&rdquo; irrelevant since users have every technology sufficient to control, hold and secure their own funds.</p>
<p>The two greatest unfortunate problems in crypto are that:</p>
<ol>
<li>Scammers and &ldquo;developers&rdquo; realize that they can mimic the custodianship in the traditional financial system to control users&rsquo; funds in centralized exchanges.</li>
<li>Most people in cryptocurrency are simply not discerning. They talk about self-custody, privacy and security, but they don&rsquo;t actually do what they need to get any of that.</li>
</ol>
<p>I will just say, it&rsquo;s quite a shame as well how little the overlap between the free software movement widely and cryptocurrency is.
These ideological strands absolutely require each other, but for bizarre historical reasons, they are separate, don&rsquo;t understand each other and it is to everyone&rsquo;s detriment.</p>
<h2 id="on-bat-and-uphold">On BAT and Uphold</h2>
<p>I let my Upload account be closed. Who cares? I have to stand for something and it&rsquo;s easy to do so when it&rsquo;s humiliating to comply.</p>


guid: https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/obvious-technical-solutions/
title: The hardest technical solutions are right in front of your face.
url: https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/obvious-technical-solutions/
feedurl: https://lukesmith.xyz/index.xml
content:
<p>Nassim Taleb had this old anecdote of the sheer absurdity that while the suitcase and other bags had existed for lifetimes, it was only in the 1990&rsquo;s that people had the idea to put wheels on the things so they didn&rsquo;t have to haul them around airports all day with their strength.</p>
<p>It reminds you of the fact that while children in the Incan Empire did indeed have some toys with wheels, apparently no one thought to use the wheel to make a simple cart or wagon to use in town or on the Inca&rsquo;s extensive imperial roadways.</p>
<p>The proper response to hearing this should be the deserved angst that right now, there are make &ldquo;obvious&rdquo; technological improvements we could make to improve our lives significantly.
Even worse, in lieu of these simple and obvious solutions which have lain hidden in plain site for centuries, we have no doubt developed a lot of inefficient technology to fill in the gap.</p>
<p>Since I was recently doing <a href="https://videos.lukesmith.xyz/w/oz4VV8SrnTEACCndxMASZH">tutorials on Hugo</a>, a static site generator, it&rsquo;s funny to think that through the 90&rsquo;s, no one really thought to invent a computationally simple static-site generator as they exist now.
People moved pretty much directly from manually edditing HTML files manually into massive proprietary WYSIWYG editors and web &ldquo;frameworks&rdquo; that regenerate web pages on every single visit.</p>
<p>This lack of vision and inability to see the simpler solution has largely produced the slow-loading, content-minimal web of today and the bizarre culture of modern &ldquo;webdevs&rdquo; whose diets consist in anti-patterns.</p>
<h2 id="the-shame-of-bitcoin">The shame of Bitcoin</h2>
<p>Recently there was <a href="https://videos.lukesmith.xyz/w/7PZGdoF7WdpWVS1UDcwDFz">an interview released of me</a> at Monerotopia with the Crypto Vigilate team.
Unfortunately, the video cut off and doesn&rsquo;t have perhaps the best part which I now remember: our discussion on the possibility of &ldquo;obvious solutions&rdquo; that could conceivably replace proof-of-work in cryptocurrency.</p>
<p>Bitcoin, ultimately is a self-reinforcing behavioral Nash Equilibrium that uses the logic of proof-of-work mining to establish consensus while still remaining decentralized.
The thing is, anyone who is not a delusional fanboy has to look at proof-of-work as some kind of incredible weird and inefficient abomination.</p>
<p>To establish decentralized consensus, we have to have an increasing farm of the world&rsquo;s computers performing computations that do essentially nothing outside of &ldquo;secure the network.&rdquo;</p>
<p>There is no magic force in the universe that has ordained that the only possible way to establish decentralized consensus is Proof-of-Work.
Proof-of-stake is obviously an alternative to it, but one whose long-term game theoretic nature is still an issue of significant controversy.</p>
<p>Regardless, an alien civilization observing us might view the issue of decentralized consensus similar to how we view the Inca who never thought to use wheels to make carts.
It will be pretty absurd if most of the world&rsquo;s computing power will soon be dedicated to proof-of-work mining only for some bratty kid or jaded cryptographer to come up with an &ldquo;obvious&rdquo; other way to establish a self-reinforcing system that can verify decentralized consensus that doesn&rsquo;t require the waste.</p>
<h2 id="take-aways">Take-aways</h2>
<ol>
<li>Technological opportunities are not just everywhere, they are right in front of your face.</li>
<li>The fact that a solution is obvious and simple is not reason for ruling it out because &ldquo;Someone must have thought of that and tried it before.&rdquo;</li>
<li>Never be happy with technology that is inelegant just because there is no obvious alternative now.</li>
</ol>


guid: https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/minimizing-liabilities-is-making-it/
title: Minimizing Liabilities Is Making It.
url: https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/minimizing-liabilities-is-making-it/
feedurl: https://lukesmith.xyz/index.xml
content:
<p>The default way to look at financial &ldquo;independence&rdquo; nowadays is to think that means &ldquo;making a lot of money.&rdquo;
That&rsquo;s understandable.</p>
<p>But then you see stuff like this:</p>

<figure class="imgfig titleimg"><img src="https://lukesmith.xyz/pix/millennial-paycheck.jpg" alt="{map[alt:60% of millennials earning over $100,000 say they&#39;re living paycheck to paycheck. class:titleimg src:/pix/millennial-paycheck.jpg]  /home/luke/work/code/lukesmith.info/content/articles/minimizing-liabilities-is-making-it.md &lt;nil&gt; img true 0  {{} {{} 0} {{} {0 0}}}  {{} {{} 0} {{} {0 0}}} 374 { 0 0 0} &lt;nil&gt;}"></figure>

<p>Or this:</p>

<figure class="imgfig title"><img src="https://lukesmith.xyz/pix/net-worth.jpg" alt="/pix/net-worth.jpg"><figcaption>It takes until 30 for a person to be as rich as they were when they were born. (And this is average net worth, median would be significantly worse.)</figcaption></figure>

<p>The longer you mentally analyze the second picture, the more depressing it will get. Obviously the negative net worth early in life is kids losing around $10,000 a year in value by going to college, but the truly depressing thing is that after that period, their net worth increases only by an average of about $5,000 a year.</p>
<p>That means they might have $5,000 more in the bank or $5,000 paid off of their student loans or $5,000 going to equity in a house, but no combination greater than that.</p>
<h2 id="how-does-this-happen">How does this happen?</h2>
<p>How is it that people alive in the period of the highest and most productive technology are working more than Medieval serfs?</p>
<p>Let&rsquo;s put it in simple terms by defining &ldquo;making it:&rdquo;</p>
<dl>
<dt>Making it:</dt>
<dd>Earning or having significantly more money than you spend or owe.</dd>
</dl>
<p>Or in pseudomath:</p>
<p><math>income - liabilities = comfortability</math></p>
<p>To increase comfortablity, you can increase your income or decrease your liabilities.
This is a simple equation.</p>
<p>By &ldquo;liabilities&rdquo; I mean:</p>
<ul>
<li>the cost of food you have to eat to live</li>
<li>the cost of the place you need to live</li>
<li>the payments for goods and services you actually need (power, or perhaps a car, etc.)</li>
<li>debts</li>
</ul>
<p>The <em>problem</em> I would estimate is that people focus <strong>all of their time, money and interest on increasing their income and focus quite literally none on <em>decreasing</em> their liabilities</strong>, which is actually substantially easier anyway.</p>
<p>In fact, the modern economy, including all the bad advice it gives to people can generally be thought of a system that is desperatly trying to <em>increase</em> everyone&rsquo;s liabilities within it.
Financial libabilities, debt and others, breed even more financial liabilities.</p>
<h3 id="the-lifestory-of-basically-everyone-nowadays">The Lifestory of Basically Everyone Nowadays</h3>
<p>Let&rsquo;s illustrate this with the story of most people you know:</p>
<ol>
<li>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to the best college I can because everyone told me to.&rdquo;</li>
<li>&ldquo;I need to pay off my $40,000+ in student loans, so I need to move to the city and get a good job.&rdquo;</li>
<li>&ldquo;I get paid well, so I need a better car and other stuff to match.&rdquo;</li>
<li>&ldquo;I still have loan debt, car debt and now credit card debt, but now I have a good credit score, so I&rsquo;ll use all my savings to pay 20% of an expensive house I&rsquo;ll be paying off for 25 years.&rdquo;</li>
<li>&ldquo;Oh my boss wants me to humiliate myself for sodomy month or get the Coofid vaccine or the Mark of the Beast to keep my job. I have at least a quarter of a mil invested in my life here, so I can&rsquo;t just leave. Be realistic.&rdquo;</li>
<li>&ldquo;Yeah the economy is really bad and I lost a lot of investments. Either way, this is my career and what I&rsquo;m trained for. It&rsquo;d be hard to retrain. I made the right choices, I just got unlucky.&rdquo;</li>
<li>&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;m 60 and it&rsquo;s time for retirement! Now that my body is broken I can start enjoying life!&rdquo;</li>
<li><em>*Dies of seed-oil-induced heart attack.*</em></li>
</ol>
<p>It&rsquo;d be wrong to singularly blame student loans for all of this, but there is a tangible sense in which opening up any new massive monthly liability to the system encourages people to open up more to cover for it.</p>
<p>No one is ever told that this is the inevitable end of increasing liabilities: you need more and more liabilities.</p>
<h3 id="which-way-millennial">&ldquo;Which way Millennial?&rdquo;</h3>
<p>Millennials come in two financial categories: around 90% of them are extreme consoomers who cannot not spend every penny of their salaries on subscriptions, plastic toys and coffee and seem to view the fact they get calls from collections agencies as some unpreventable outcome of &ldquo;capitalism.&rdquo;</p>
<p>The other 10% are the exact opposite: they are contemplating living in the trunk of their 1990&rsquo;s Corolla parked in the parking lot of their job site so they can save 97% of their income.
When they plan on buying a house or getting married, they are quixotically salivating on how much money they can save on monthly bills.</p>
<h2 id="the-endgame">The Endgame</h2>
<p>I will go ahead and say, I consider the ideal not even to be rich, but to not need money to live a comfortable life because you have put yourself in a geographic and behavioral position where you can survive on as little as possible.</p>
<p>Either way, my mindset (as the second type of millennial) has always been &ldquo;How can I absolutely minimize the amount of money I need to live?&rdquo;</p>
<ul>
<li>&ldquo;What is the cheapest place to rent?&rdquo;</li>
<li>&ldquo;What is the cheapest-per-calorie real food for me to eat?&rdquo;</li>
<li>&ldquo;What &ldquo;needs&rdquo; are not really needs and can I go without?&rdquo;</li>
</ul>
<p>The implicit goal was to live on as little as possible: that&rsquo;s what actually maximizes your life&rsquo;s freedom.
If you can live on less than, say, $500 a month, even working as a part-time wagie, you will be plenty to pay bills, save a significant amount and have lots of free time.</p>
<p>For young single guys in computer science, this is especially ideal, since your hobbey/craft doesn&rsquo;t cost anything to tinker with.</p>
<p>In my late twenties, right before I bought my house, I was living in a college town with a monthly budget <strong>including my rent</strong> of around $400 ($300 was rent $100 was basically groceries). Probably went over that $100 most months, but never by much. This is also when I started <a href="https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/making-free-money-off-credit-cards">churning credit cards</a> to make a significant portion of my little expenditure back.</p>
<h2 id="behavioral-patterns-over-life">Behavioral Patterns over Life</h2>
<p>As you&rsquo;re saving money to buy/pay off a permanent dwelling place, most important is cultivating permanent behaviors that will reduce your need for money and &ldquo;the system.&rdquo;</p>
<p>If you take the &ldquo;high&rdquo;-income, high-liability route, you&rsquo;re going to be establishing wasteful antipatterns your early life and when you need to buckle down and root those out, it will be more difficult because it will be the egotistically trying task of going from showly and &ldquo;easy&rdquo; pleasure spending to a Spartan budget.</p>
<p>It&rsquo;s much easier to have a solid foundation of low spending. I said in that video years ago on getting Trumpbux that all money you earn and spend should be directly weaponized to decrease your reliance on money. Property, tools, plants, skills. These are investments much more substantial than investing in boomer stocks because they lessen your need for money.</p>
<h3 id="worst-case-scenario">Worst Case Scenario</h3>
<p>As a passing remark, I&rsquo;ll add that the other benefit of focusing on minimizing liabilities is that it makes you significantly less reliant on &ldquo;the system&rdquo; and more robust in the case of disaster.</p>
<p>&ldquo;Training&rdquo; to get a highly specific corporate job is not going to help you in all possible scenarios in the way that simple the simple craftsmanship of someone who fixes their own cars and things.</p>


guid: https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/christianity-based-paganism/
title: 'Based' Paganism vs. Christianity
url: https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/christianity-based-paganism/
feedurl: https://lukesmith.xyz/index.xml
content:
<p>I&rsquo;ve been meaning to write about Paganism recently. I will frame it as a response to an email I received within the past day or so:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Hey Luke,</p>
<p>First off, I would like to thank you for all your efforts in making everything
you know accessible to everyone. You have exposed me to some of the most
thought-provoking people on the internet and Varg is one of them. I was
wondering if you can write an article or make a video on what you think about
Varg&rsquo;s Paganism in relation to you choosing Orthodox Christianity. I know that
you briefly talked about it in one of your livestreams, however, I would like
to better understand why you don&rsquo;t practice Paganism yourself. My background is
Serbian and most Serbians follow the Serbian Orthodox Church, but after
watching Varg&rsquo;s videos, I&rsquo;m conflicted. I agree with a lot of what Varg says
about Christianity, but my father long ago told me to follow the Serbian
Orthodox Church if I were to become religious. I&rsquo;m sure that many people feel
the same way after watching Varg&rsquo;s videos, and your thoughts on it would
greatly help people like me make up their minds.</p>
<p>Best,</p>
<p><em>redacted</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>I will sum up my answer to this email in bullet points, then explain what I mean.</p>
<ul>
<li>Modern &ldquo;paganism&rdquo; is not a real thing and has nothing to do with paganism in history.</li>
<li>The most direct cultural link between modern man and antiquity is the Orthodox Christian Church.</li>
<li>Truth matters&mdash;&ldquo;Picking&rdquo; a religion on personal preferences is brain-dead and self-refuting.</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="your-average-pagan">Your Average Pagan</h2>
<p>Many people probably don&rsquo;t know who Varg Vikernes is, but since the email brings him up, I will talk about him as an example of where paganism leads.
Modern &ldquo;paganism&rdquo; is not an authentic tradition handed down over the ages.
It is an attempt of modern disconnected people to recreate or re-engineer a culture, time and place they have absolutely no contact with.
This ultimately makes &ldquo;paganism&rdquo; a modernist Rorschach test where individuals can more-or-less create the religion they want.</p>
<h3 id="paganism-with-modern-goggles">Paganism with modern goggles</h3>
<p>Varg&rsquo;s particular &ldquo;paganism&rdquo; is a kind of scientific euhemerism: he doesn&rsquo;t actually believe in gods in the way an ancient pagan would have, but that the concepts of the gods represent scientific or other knowledge.
(This is where the placenta meme around him comes from after all, when he and his wife related assorted pagan myths and items to the tree-like appearance of a human placenta.)
He has also reduced classical abstract spiritual concepts into hormones and other related things.
In essence, he has created a pseudo-paganism that is compatible with modern materialism.</p>
<p>Varg had cited and recommended works such as Frazer&rsquo;s <em>Golden Bough</em> as influential on his thought which is of a similar vein.
This book was part of a wider movement in the English-speaking rationalist world to rationalize and explain myth.
It goes without saying that I think this all comes from the assumption of modern man that all ancient people underlyingly thought like Neil deGrasse Tyson.</p>
<h3 id="how-long-until-legend-becomes-myth">How long until legend becomes myth?</h3>
<p>More plausible is the viewpoint I&rsquo;ve spoken of in works such as <a href="https://notrelated.xyz/#02.04"><em>Hamlet&rsquo;s Mill</em></a>.
It alleges that <em>one specific</em> prehistoric civilization used myth to transmit scientific knowledge, but being thousands of years out from that civilization, the descendant stories are distorted, partial and can only be related after extensive study.
They allege that &ldquo;Hamlet stories&rdquo; are similar in origin and actually carry astrological information, including the idea of the procession of the equinoxes.</p>
<p>But Varg&rsquo;s quasi-euhemerism makes a much stronger claim, that all our &ldquo;forebears&rdquo; (as he tends to call them) left an entire encyclopedia of scientific knowledge in stories that have remained unblemished and mostly unchanged over thousands or <em>millions</em> of years since the Neanderthals, who he views as the Trve Europeans.</p>
<p>This stronger claim should be absurd on its face, as it assumes that over the millennia, there is little to no addition, subtraction or change of folklore.
The <em>Hamlet&rsquo;s Mill</em> model admits that this does happen, but Varg is dealing with a much longer scale and often makes very specific claims about some myths.
What I think Varg is truly doing when he looks at a pagan myth and sees a placenta, he is seeing statistical noise and fitting that noise to the many possibilities in his head.
(I will also say that this is somewhat the modus operandi of many capital-T &ldquo;Traditionalists&rdquo; in the vein of Evola or Guénon.)</p>
<aside>
This is principally a response to the theories that Varg put forth around 2016-2018 when I would occasionally watch his videos. I'm sure it's very possible that he endorses things very different now, since this "paganism" is not anything concrete.
</aside>
<h2 id="is-christianity-a-departure-from-european-tradition">Is Christianity a departure from European tradition?</h2>
<p>One thing I&rsquo;ve tried to emphasize <a href="https://notrelated.xyz/#02.02">in some places</a> is the general wrongness of the idea of the cultural &ldquo;quantum leap&rdquo; or &ldquo;discontinuity&rdquo; between Prechristian and Christian Europe.
This is a highly important issue for many putative pagans, because they view the &ldquo;change&rdquo; of Europe over to Christianity as perhaps the start of the now constant and perpetual leftist cultural revolution.</p>
<p>This is the idea, which most people and &ldquo;based&rdquo; pagans have even by osmosis, that the Christianization of Europe was a radical break from history and tradition.</p>
<p>This is true only on the Christian metric: obviously the salvation of Europe is a quantum leap.
However, melodramatic pagans will lament that this is when Europe have up its &ldquo;European&rdquo; soul and adopted a &ldquo;Jewish&rdquo; or &ldquo;desert&rdquo; religion which put the continent on a totally different and out-of-touch cultural direction.</p>
<h3 id="pagan-philosophy-and-christianity">Pagan Philosophy and Christianity</h3>
<p>Christian theology, including Trinitarian theology has direct and undeniable &ldquo;pagan&rdquo; analogues and imitators:
Neoplatonism expresses a kind of theological trinity as well (the One, the Intellect and the Soul), albeit one more similar to Origen&rsquo;s trinity where a hierarchy of the three persons exist.</p>
<p>In the cosmogony of the <em>Poemandres</em>, a Hermetic work, shows a pagan creation myth wherein God creates the world via his <em>Logos</em>, as in the first chapter of St. John&rsquo;s gospel, which also has a trinitarian and monotheistic unity with God (differing from Christianity in its panentheism).</p>
<p>As I mentioned in the linked podcast <a href="https://notrelated.xyz/#02.02">episode above</a>, Stoic philosophy is a component needed to understand the opening of the gospel of John and is part of the philosophical backdrop of early Christian theology.</p>
<p>Medieval esoteric doctrines and alchemy viewed all of nature as trinitarian, possessing body, mind, and spirit (salt, sulfur and mercury), which was related directly to the Triune nature of God.
Even specific mystical sects like Mithraism or the many forms of Gnosticism are tied closely to the development of Christianity.</p>
<p>All of these intellectual strands were intertwined with Christianity since the beginning of the written expression of Christian theology.</p>
<p>A pagan now has to ask himself: if Hermeticism or Mithraism had taken over as a universal religion of Europe, would they loathe it like they loathe Christianity and view it as a radical departure from &ldquo;paganism?&rdquo;
Note that Hermeticism had an alleged Egyptian origin, and Mithraism had a orientalist/Iranic origin.</p>
<p>Note that none of my point here is specifically that Christianity influenced or created these other philosophies or that they influenced (providentially) Christianity.
What is important is that looking at it dispassionately, we cannot deem Christianity as some cultural departure from &ldquo;real&rdquo; European culture without also throwing out this entire philosophical tradition as a whole.</p>
<p>Medieval Christians would often look at Greek Philosophy as another covenant of God established to prepare mankind intellectually for the revelation of the Trinity.
(Note also that <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCjX0il3wkc">Dante and others</a> represent Christians who viewed the Roman Empire also as part of a divine plan.)</p>
<p>Ultimately, the Christian religion is non-cultural and thus universal/catholic. There are cultural aspects associated with it, but there&rsquo;s a difference between essence and accidents.
Of those cultural aspects, they are nearly all European, not, as some allege, Hebrew or Jewish.
Most of the New Testament is quite literally an explication of why this religion which accepts the Hebrew Scriptures is markedly non-Jewish and why Jewish practices like circumcision and sacrifice are sacrilegious.</p>
<p>So the view we should get from this is that Christianization was no cultural leap into an alien worldview, but something whose intellectual side happened slowly over centuries and would only be viewed as spiritual, not culturally distinct from its environment.</p>
<h3 id="which-change-is-good">Which change is good?</h3>
<p>Note that even Varg admits that religious interpretation and practice changes with the centuries.
In his interpretation and even in his RPG, MYFAROG (which is really just an expression of his paganism and worldview), characters can have one of two &ldquo;Life Stances&rdquo; or religious inclinations: <em>Seiðr</em> or  <em>Âsatrû</em>.
Seiðr &ldquo;tradition,&rdquo; represents a kind of animism, witchcraft or spell-casting, while Âsatrû represents the worship of pagan gods.
Characters can choose either life stance, but one can only change from Seiðr to Âsatrû, which is a representation of the alleged historical shift in early history from animistic to polytheistic practices.</p>
<p>If we accept this cultural transition as &ldquo;legitimate&rdquo; in terms of cultural continuity, on what grounds could we also mark as verboten a shift from polytheism to monotheism?
After all, the pagan philosophy of Plato and Aristotle even from the earliest was monotheistic at its core, and even today, the world&rsquo;s one remaining &ldquo;polytheistic&rdquo; religion, Hinduism only appears so on the surface, but has at its core its own monad and final cause: Brahman.</p>
<h2 id="tradition-vs-inventing-your-own-religion">Tradition vs. Inventing your own religion</h2>
<p>To learn of Christian theology, thus, is to set oneself down a road of millennia of learning with often with no delineation between Christian and Prechristian thought.
By the same token, learning of secular philosophy, even as an atheist might lead you to Christianity, as was the case with me.
There is no obvious discontinuity, either in thought or practice.</p>
<p>But modern day &ldquo;paganism&rdquo; does indeed have such a gap.
To be a &ldquo;pagan&rdquo; does not involve communing with a centuries-old tradition passed down generation-to-generation from antiquity.</p>
<p>It is modern people imagining based on T.V. shows, books and their own creativity what Prechristian Europe was like and then putting on their own imitation of it.
They might see something they dislike in the world, blame it on Christians and then imagine a world without it.
This invariably comes with retrojecting their own modern values and assumptions on the past.</p>
<p>After all, we Christians can sit down with an Orthodox Priest or grow up in a Orthodox household and have a direct, personal contact with a tradition and understand how people who are part of it think and act.
We have no tangible contact with Prechristian European paganism, even out of intellectual interest.
Understanding how Europeans truly thought and acted is an issue of cultural reconstruction and theory.
Traditional folklore and practices are still very much alive, but they are now decked in a Christian garb.
We do celebrate Christmas for Our Lord&rsquo;s birth, but everyone knows that nearly all of the practices of that season of the many nations of Europe predate Christianization.</p>
<h3 id="the-worst-possible-decision">The Worst Possible Decision.</h3>
<p>All this said, the absolute worst self-own possible would be someone who has direct and easy access to the Orthodox Church and abandons it or leaves it for a false &ldquo;religion&rdquo; that doesn&rsquo;t even exist off of the internet and has no organic connection to reality, like Neo-Paganism.</p>
<p>So my recommendation to the emailer above should be obvious.</p>
<p>Being physically close to the Orthodox Church is a huge asset, but even being able to travel to one occasionally is a massive grace. Everyone should be taking advantage of that as often as possible.</p>
<h3 id="pagan-gurus">Pagan Gurus</h3>
<p>Because it is ungrounded and ahistorical, modern &ldquo;paganism&rdquo; thus naturally exists as a kind of extreme Protestant guru-centered feel-goodery where since there is absolutely no tether to a genuine preserved tradition, a man can make up an unfalsifiable claim about what true &ldquo;Paganism&rdquo; is and sell it as legit.</p>
<p>I mentioned Varg earlier, who has concocted a &ldquo;paganism&rdquo; that consists in claiming that their lore and practice embed scientific information.
He doesn&rsquo;t <em>believe</em> in pagan gods, unless we&rsquo;re talking about belief in a very evasive and meaningless Jordan Peterson kind of way.
If we could actually transport a prehistoric pagan to our day and speak to him, he would probably either be confused or bemused by this very modern worldview, but we can&rsquo;t even do this.</p>
<p>Most pagans are not &ldquo;based&rdquo; like Varg anyway (he lives a minimalist and traditional lifestyle in rural France with an ever-growing family).
Most &ldquo;pagans&rdquo; are leftists who like &ldquo;paganism&rdquo; because they hate God and nature and morality and imagine that pagans were demented sexual perverts like they are.</p>
<h2 id="truth">Truth</h2>
<p>Notice that I had specifically avoided the most important issue: Truth.</p>
<p>I&rsquo;ve done this because when people are asking to convert to something just because it&rsquo;s &ldquo;based,&rdquo; <em>Truth</em> is unfortunately not necessarily their concern, so I&rsquo;ve first addressed issues that do concern them.</p>
<p>The reality is, thankfully, that truth is the most &ldquo;based&rdquo; thing of all&mdash;And it is entirely cringe to believe in something because it sounds cool to you.
If you think you can decide your own truth, you are no different from someone who thinks they can decide their own pronouns, literally.</p>
<p>Even in the email above, he refers to me &ldquo;choosing&rdquo; Orthodox Christianity as if it were an issue of personal taste.
If I liked pop music and people rolling on the ground, perhaps I would be just as justified converting to some Pentecostal sect.
This is silly.</p>
<p>The greatest deception is that religion is this separate category about &ldquo;feelings&rdquo; or &ldquo;preference&rdquo; and not truth.
Atheist and spiritual R*dditor Stephen Jay Gould put this in words in the modern era, calling science and religion &ldquo;non-overlapping magesteria,&rdquo; declaring in a laughable attempt at big-braned centrism that nothing in material reality is relevant to religion and nothing in religion is relevant to material reality.</p>
<p>This is strange because people can research the philosophies I mentioned earlier, Platonism, Gnosticism, Stoicism, Hermeticism and can analyze and critique them and look at them as models of reality perfectly comparable to modern philosophical assumptions and approaches.
But we have been taught to view Christianity as this separate category, that can&rsquo;t possibly be a model of reality, but is a something merely &ldquo;moral&rdquo; or &ldquo;personal&rdquo; or &ldquo;spiritual&rdquo; which are all terms that have been debased to mean nothing at all.</p>
<p>A Christian believes that Jesus&rsquo;s resurrection was a true historical event, and a prelude of a general resurrection to come and that he established a Church and sacraments which are his vehicles for having man recover from sin within this life to prepare for his roles in the next.
The Orthodox Christian Church is an unbroken chain since that period, and oft built on yet older philosophical and liturgical practices.</p>
<p>If you find this alien, or God unbelieveable, you can do yourself the favor of prayer and visit a priest and see what happens.</p>
<h3 id="they-dont-even-believe-it">They don&rsquo;t even believe it.</h3>
<p>To contrast, pagans do not believe in pagan gods. Their brains are 100% modern and materialistic in mindset, and if they ironically say they believe in gods, it is out of some kind of Petersonian fake metaphorical &ldquo;belief&rdquo; in a concept or that &ldquo;Zeus&rdquo; isn&rsquo;t a person, but is some kind of abstraction symbolizing the weather or something silly.
The only thing sillier is for them to claim that people in the ancient world <em>didn&rsquo;t really believe in them either</em>, but practiced entire religions meta-ironically for some social reasons.
If they believe in a &ldquo;spiritual&rdquo; nature, it is not one beyond or above matter, but instead derived from it: it is psychological, hormonal, etc.</p>
<p>Modern paganism is neither a tradition, nor a religion, nor even a belief.
It is just a new identity which supposedly flexes some kind of disposition to the world which is not even consistent across pagans because there is no basis for any of it.</p>
<hr>
<h3 id="real-baste-european-pagans">Real Baste European Pagans</h3>
<p>Christians, however, do believe in pagan gods.
Christians have always admitted the reality of spiritual beings, including the demonic.
You can take the Michael Heiser/Divine Council pill on this if you&rsquo;re interested:
While there is only one Creator and Supreme God, he created many among his heavenly host, and originally appointed them to the different races on earth.
Many rebelled and set themselves up as specific gods of their appointed races.</p>
<p>One of the purposes of Christ&rsquo;s coming was to vanquish these usurpers, and thus paganism/polytheism, which obviously has been successful.
(Note that the <a href="https://lindypress.net/book?pk=6">Book of Enoch</a> in Chapter 10 prophecies that these fallen angels would be judged 70 generations after the Enochian period, which cross-referencing with the Gospel of Luke, it is exactly 70 generations until Christ.)
Now the issues of faith are not so much polytheism, but heresy and then atheism, which is a significant enough change in the cosmic dynamic.</p>


guid: https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/everyone-should-be-avoiding-docker/
title: Basically Everyone Should Be Avoiding Docker
url: https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/everyone-should-be-avoiding-docker/
feedurl: https://lukesmith.xyz/index.xml
content:
<p>I am a well known Docker-non-respecter.</p>
<p>I want to explain why I don&rsquo;t use Docker (so much as possible)</p>
<h2 id="the-real-vs-fake-reasons">The Real vs. Fake Reasons</h2>
<p>I admire the candidness of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Up0dvorzSNM">the developer of BTCPay here</a>.
He says that he chose to use Docker to deploy his project because he was a Windows person doing .NET and didn&rsquo;t want to read up on how to use Linux/Unix.</p>
<p>There are basically only two &ldquo;real&rdquo; reasons to use Docker or containerization more generally:</p>
<ol>
<li>People who do not know how to use Unix-based operating systems or specifically GNU/Linux.</li>
<li>People who are deploying a program for a corporation at a massive enterprise scale, don&rsquo;t care about customizability and need some kind of guarantor of homogeneity.</li>
</ol>
<p>Granted, class 1 <em>should</em> be a temporary state in an ideal world, but we don&rsquo;t live in an ideal world at all.</p>
<p>I would estimate that of those two categories, substantially more than 95% of people are in the first.
If you look at sites and users that endorse Docker or list reasons for using it, they are nearly always for this.</p>
<p>So for my purposes, when I&rsquo;m instructing people on how to set up email servers, personal websites, little services, federated social media, etc., the only reason to use Docker is if you want to make things harder for yourself by having this extra and totally unnecessary layer of abstraction.</p>
<p>People watching my videos already know how to do at least basic Unix things.
Doing things the Docker way is a departure from that, while without doing, you can do things the more familiar way.</p>
<p>I don&rsquo;t give recommendations for people who are professionals deploying enterprise-level homogenous software and I&rsquo;ve never pretended to do that.
Please do not email me telling me you need Docker for some large-scale implementation.
I know you do.
That&rsquo;s not what I do personally, and it&rsquo;s not what people following me do, so I don&rsquo;t do it.</p>
<h2 id="how-does-containerization-make-your-life-miserable">How does containerization make your life miserable?</h2>
<p>On BTCPay, there was a period when I was running a BTCPay server and begrudgingly used Docker as recommended.
This did make setting up all the working parts to BTCPay extremely easy as it can be mostly automated.</p>
<p>But then I ran into some complications:</p>
<ol>
<li>I wanted to change the Monero wallet I had set up with the program.</li>
<li>I had set up the system with Ethereum support as well just to have it, but decided later I didn&rsquo;t want it.</li>
<li>After three months, certbot certificates failed to renew and redeploy.</li>
</ol>
<p>If I had <em>not</em> been using Docker, all three of these typical issues could&rsquo;ve been solved in several seconds.
Even if I were someone who didn&rsquo;t immediately know how to renew a Certbot certificate, it would be easy to look that up.</p>
<p>But since I was using Docker, which is like running a computer video-game inside your computer, they became extremely difficult.
To solve the Monero issue, since there was no GUI option to delete the old wallet, I figured out all I needed to do is delete the wallet file on the Docker container.
That sounds easy, right?</p>
<p>Well, if you&rsquo;re expecting Docker to have a file-system easily accessible, you&rsquo;re wrong&mdash;in fact, that&rsquo;s &ldquo;the point.&rdquo;
I can&rsquo;t use typical commands like <code>updatedb</code>/<code>locate</code>/<code>find</code> to find what I need.
I have to run a command with a massive prefix specific to that container.
I don&rsquo;t have tab completion when running Docker container commands, so when I inevitably mistype while searching for the file or attempting to delete it, I have to re-edit a multi-line command.
After a while, I did, however, delete the file, which allowed me to change the wallet I was using.</p>
<p>You might say that doing such a little operation becomes easier after being more familiar with containerization&mdash;I&rsquo;m sure that&rsquo;s true, absolutely.
But ultimately all I needed to do is delete a single file!&mdash;That shouldn&rsquo;t be something you need to train to do!</p>
<p>I will admit that the other two problems proved insoluble.
The only way to turn off Ethereum support from what I could tell is reinstall the whole thing.
Don&rsquo;t expect to have a config file for a Docker container.
Actually, if you did, you should expect it to be impossibly difficult to edit.</p>
<p>While other people on the internet had had issues similar to the Certbot problem, mine was clearly different and no solutions worked.</p>
<p>All I needed was to run the equivalent <code>certbot renew --nginx; systemctl reload nginx</code>, but that proved too difficult when acting through the impenetrable wall of Docker.</p>
<p>In my old <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DB6UWGeNePk">video on why I don&rsquo;t use Macs</a>, I described them as &ldquo;smart-people proof.&rdquo;
Docker is the same way. It&rsquo;s Common Core for technology: it reduces the good of knowing how to use your operating system to zero.
This might actually increase the convenience to tech-ignorant users accidentally, because developers now have to answer &ldquo;dumb&rdquo; questions about Docker, including saying &ldquo;No, sorry, you can&rsquo;t change that.&rdquo; for most things you can indeed change if you weren&rsquo;t using Docker.</p>
<p>Containerization makes software an opaque box where you are ultimately at the mercy of what graphical settings menus have been programed into the software.
It is the nature of containers that bugs can never been fixed by users, only the official development team.</p>
<h2 id="fake-reasons">Fake Reasons</h2>
<h3 id="containers-are-more-secure">&ldquo;Containers are more secure.&rdquo;</h3>
<p>The reality:</p>
<ul>
<li>Scripts that compromise containerized software/data are no more difficult to write than those that compromise non-containerized software/data. They are merely different.</li>
<li>Containerization places more reliance on developers to keep software, including libraries used up to date.</li>
<li>People mistake &ldquo;It&rsquo;s unintuitive for me to interact or interface with this containerized program.&rdquo; with it being secure.</li>
</ul>
<p>People might know <a href="https://flatkill.org/">flatkill.org</a>, which sums this up briefly, but it&rsquo;s very true.</p>
<h3 id="containers-are-easier-to-set-up">&ldquo;Containers are easier to set up.&rdquo;</h3>
<p>The reality:</p>
<ul>
<li>It&rsquo;s no easier to setup a Docker file than a installation shell script, even one that runs on multiple platforms.</li>
<li>When containerization seems easier, you are getting freetime up-front by paying with hours of headache later on managing the software.</li>
</ul>
<p>Especially when we&rsquo;re talking about &ldquo;Installing on Linux&rdquo; this is silly.
If a program can be easily installed on Debian and (nowadays) installed on Arch Linux, that covers basically all Linux users.</p>
<h3 id="containers-are-easier-to-manage">&ldquo;Containers are easier to manage.&rdquo;</h3>
<p>Containers can only be &ldquo;easier to manage&rdquo; when they strip away all of the user&rsquo;s ability to manage in the normal unix-way, and that is relatively unmissed.</p>
<h2 id="a-third-reason">A Third Reason</h2>
<p>Let me add a sympathetic third reason:</p>
<ol start="3">
<li>You want to export security to a party that might know better than you.</li>
</ol>
<p>Again, let&rsquo;s use BTCPay as an example, since it&rsquo;s a payment processor.
Granted, normally a BTCPay server only has access to your public keys, but none the less, there are substantial liabilities with anything related to money.</p>
<p>So if you set something like BTCPay up <em>without</em> Docker, assembling the required interacting programs yourself, there&rsquo;s a chance you might do something wrong or create a security flaw inadvertently.</p>
<p>Using Docker is a panacea, but it lets you rely on the security acumen of whoever is putting together the Docker image, who in many cases might know more than you.
(In some cases, maybe many, he might know less though, or be less willing to update security protocols, and you&rsquo;ll put yourself in a precarious position!)</p>
<h2 id="conclusion">Conclusion</h2>
<p>Ergo, I don&rsquo;t use Docker and containerization, I&rsquo;m annoyed by them and I don&rsquo;t do tutorials on them.
They are not for me or for people who want to do basic personal sysadmining.
I think enterprise sysadmins would definitely do better doing more for their personal life <em>outside</em> of things like Docker, but again, there are reasons people use these things for many professional use-cases.</p>


guid: https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/blockchain-blasphemy/
title: Blockchain Blasphemy and the Technological Antichrist
url: https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/blockchain-blasphemy/
feedurl: https://lukesmith.xyz/index.xml
content:
<figure class="imgfig titleimg"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqaxQmjsb2A"><img src="https://lukesmith.xyz/pix/akashic.webp" alt="/pix/akashic.webp"></a></figure>

<p>There&rsquo;s a meme YouTube video by Leonardo of Biz (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqaxQmjsb2A">here</a>) where the villainous Bogs refer to their desire to attain something called <strong>&ldquo;The Akashic Records&rdquo;</strong> using blockchain technology.</p>
<p>This random aside not just shows the attention to detail Leonardo gives what would otherwise be silly videos, but articulates something deeply troubling about a war unfolding over Bitcoin, Ethereum and other blockchain technology, but also technology generally.</p>
<p>Most normal people see this comment and ask&hellip;</p>
<h2 id="what-are-the-akashic-records">&ldquo;What are the <em>Akashic Records</em>?&rdquo;</h2>
<p>In the late 1800&rsquo;s, there emerged a group of spiritualists and scammers called <em>Theosophists</em>, principally followers of the eccentric Helena Blavatsky.</p>
<p>This New Age religion was a mishmash of perennialism and invented secret eastern teachings (which Blavatsky claimed to have learned in a fabricated part of her life in Tibet), with significant parallels with other universalist sects like Freemasonry.
It was one of the many spiritual vultures preying on the spiritually empty as the power of Christendom waned.</p>
<p><strong>The Akashic Records were their idea of a cosmic repository of all reality, past, present and future.</strong>
They contain every event of the universe from all past and all future.
Theosophist psychics tried to &ldquo;tap into&rdquo; these records to attain universal and specific knowledge.</p>
<h2 id="blockchain-as-akashic-record">Blockchain as Akashic Record</h2>
<p>To explain aloud Leonardo&rsquo;s subtle joke: blockchains, as they come to maturity, are functioning as Akashic Records of our own invention.</p>
<p>Bitcoin&rsquo;s blockchain is a necessarily public ledger of all past transactions, the origin of their funds, the wallets they interact with and more.
People often erroneously think that the &ldquo;crypto&rdquo; in cryptocurrency means that information about it is somehow &ldquo;cryptic&rdquo; or hidden, but this is just ignorance.</p>
<p>Bitcoin is substantially worse for privacy than even the most corporate credit cards, since even then credit cards don&rsquo;t broadcast your transactions publicly on the internet as bitcoin must do for all submitted transactions.</p>
<p>As time has gone on and projects such has Ethereum have developed, blockchain technology is employing these public ledgers for an ever wide range of tasks:
decentralized computing, contracting and much more&hellip;</p>
<p><strong>If blockchains continue developing as they are, they will gradually record and make publicly available every transaction, action and for that matter&mdash;idle word of every human.</strong>
There are projects and coins for every segment of digital life, including storing and accessing files, watching videos, interacting with the internet of things and more.
A combination of greed, stupidity and neophilia are leading us to disaster world that might not be able to be undone.</p>
<p>The technologization of society is accelerating for most.
Less and less of human life occurs without the filter, approval and overwatch of internet-connected technology.
As more of this becomes part of &ldquo;the Blockchain,&rdquo; more of it becomes an issue of common knowledge.</p>
<p>A normal human reacts in fear at the idea that God the Dread Judge has a Book of Life with all actions and thoughts of all men and will judge them accordingly.
A delusional theosophist might pine for the power that such knowledge would give them over others, but they needn&rsquo;t pine long, since this is exactly the weaponry we are creating and leaving in the open with blockchain technology&hellip;</p>
<h2 id="technology-and-will-to-power">Technology and Will-to-Power</h2>
<p>The greatest threat to good programming, human freedom and humanity itself is the love of technology just for technology&rsquo;s sake.</p>
<p>There is no shortage of visionary programmers who can imagine niche uses for novel technology.
But unfortunately for these people &ldquo;Can I?&rdquo; is a common question, but &ldquo;Should I?&rdquo; is fairly rare.</p>
<p>Pride and lust for power are the true motivations of many visionary programmers.
It doesn&rsquo;t feel like &ldquo;lust for power&rdquo; when you experience it, but there is a very Nietzschean muscle a programmer exercises when he sees a large and exploitable dataset.
When you see masses of metadata, and you know you have the means at your fingertips to create something &ldquo;new&rdquo; with it, the temptation is almost always too difficult to resist.</p>
<p>Only the most mercenary and depraved programmer sets out to write software to enslave.
Still, when even a semi-competent programmer sees an interesting dataset of GPS coordinates, cell-phone metadata, Bitcoin transaction data or something else, there often arises an insatiable desire to deploy this dataset in a &ldquo;clever&rdquo; and &ldquo;useful&rdquo; way.</p>
<p>This is the pinnacle of the &ldquo;useful idiot&rdquo; phenomenon.
In design alone, the technology is morally and socially inert, <strong>but no technology is morally or socially inert in implementation.</strong>
This is even more the case when many evil actors, governments, the media, organized power weaponize &ldquo;clever&rdquo; and &ldquo;useful&rdquo; projects to actualize private and hidden goals.</p>
<p>There is a deep undercurrent in modernity to have &ldquo;smart&rdquo; technology.
Refrigerators and appliances often now connect to the internet and download software patches from their vendors.
Simple finger-operated light switches have apparently been ruled passé, while voice-operated light switches that communicate with Amazon servers are the new thing.</p>
<p>The reason that people like Richard Stallman continue ending up sounding prophetic about the dangerous of proprietary software is because they are serious enough to realize that <strong>programming is the closest mankind has ever come to wizardry and dark arts.</strong>
With such supreme power and with such a lack of oversight (either by writing closed-source code or otherwise), even the most noble programmer can be easily seduced into flexing their Will-to-Power to do the absurd.</p>
<h2 id="the-antichrist-and-digital-hyperreality">The Antichrist and Digital Hyperreality</h2>
<p>As we further encroach creating the Akashic Records by hand,
this all might remind you of that one Voltaire quote&hellip;</p>
<p>You know, that one that millennial gamers will know from the ending of <em>Deus Ex</em> if you decide to merge yourself with the omniscient and omnipotent AI panopticon:</p>

<figure class="imgfig titleimg"><a href="https://lukesmith.xyz/pix/invent-him.jpg"><img src="https://lukesmith.xyz/pix/invent-him.jpg" alt="{map[alt:If there were no God, it would be necessary to invent him. caption:If there were no God, it would be necessary to invent him. class:titleimg link:/pix/invent-him.jpg mouse:If there were no God, it would be necessary to invent him. src:/pix/invent-him.jpg]  /home/luke/work/code/lukesmith.info/content/articles/blockchain-blasphemy.md &lt;nil&gt; img true 1  {{} {{} 0} {{} {0 0}}}  {{} {{} 0} {{} {0 0}}} 6417 { 0 0 0} &lt;nil&gt;}" title="If there were no God, it would be necessary to invent him."></a><figcaption>If there were no God, it would be necessary to invent him.</figcaption></figure>

<p>The zeitgeist of modernity is certainly atheistic, but at the same time, every movement in it seems to bend like pliable reeds to the desire to create a &ldquo;God&rdquo; of its own design.</p>
<p>Positivism rejects or scientifically dismisses the very metaphysical reality of &ldquo;truth&rdquo; and &ldquo;falsity&rdquo; themselves.
It then encourages the assumptive jump from personal or informational subjectivity <em>to the denial of transcendent objectivity altogether</em>.
Since this is an absurd crime even against logic, <strong>we have a natural deep-seated desire to instead create a new layer of reality on which objective and undeniable truth can be restored.</strong>
This is the newly created digital realm.
This is man&rsquo;s electronic equivalent of God&rsquo;s &ldquo;Book of Life&rdquo; which logs all truth in digital databases and blockchains.</p>
<p>Actual reality is messy, organic and is perceived subjectively&mdash;And mankind is only a part of that creation.
But in the digital world, we can arrange our new lives with inviolable programs and smart contracts that have a new enforced objectivity.</p>
<p>Mankind is creator and omnipotent in this lesser reality, but our desire for power is so great that we want to elevate this lesser reality to something greater than reality itself.
Wouldn&rsquo;t it be nice to have the kinds of superpowers we can achieve with computer programming in our waking lives?
If so, why not insert our waking consciousnesses into this reduced reality to wield this fantasy power?</p>
<p>Worst of all, you now have a class of Jordan Petersonian &ldquo;intellects&rdquo; denigrating and obfuscating reality to such a degree as to make the new digital Antichrist sounds like it was what we were talking about the whole time!
God has been reduced to and confused with &ldquo;the idea of God&rdquo; or &ldquo;the most powerful thing in creation.&rdquo;
The mentalistic world of archetypes has become the world of digital imagination, which is now held up as a replacement for the very idea of reality beyond atoms bumping into each other.
We&rsquo;re all theosophists!
We&rsquo;re all Free Masons now!</p>
<p>It is now held as an ideal to <em>create</em> our &ldquo;Creator&rdquo; and imbue digital technology with as much power and omniscience as possible.
People will soon unironically call themselves religious because they worship a created techno-god because they have been duped into believing this is what &ldquo;God&rdquo; always meant.</p>

<figure class="imgfig titleimg"><img src="https://lukesmith.xyz/pix/musk-page-helios.webp" alt="/pix/musk-page-helios.webp"><figcaption>Deus Ex was a dystopian video game, not an instructional manual. (Looking at you, Elon Musk.)</figcaption></figure>

<p>It&rsquo;s naturally common for Christians to interpret the singular final antichrist to be an individual person, but at this point, a much more obvious &ldquo;beast system&rdquo; to marvel at is a technological system in itself consummated in something that looks like God.</p>
<h2 id="transhumanism-and-singularity-as-pattern-extrapolation">Transhumanism and Singularity as Pattern Extrapolation</h2>
<p>This entire budding techno-futurist religion has a simple origin.
The human mind sees patterns.</p>

<figure class="imgfig titleimg"><a href="https://lukesmith.xyz/pix/xkcd-extrapolating.png"><img src="https://lukesmith.xyz/pix/xkcd-extrapolating.png" alt="/pix/xkcd-extrapolating.png" title="Apologies for the use of XKSoyD."></a></figure>

<p>In every moment of history, every society manages to &ldquo;see patterns&rdquo; by extrapolating the past presented to them, just adding on a couple extra steps (also presented to them).
Do not mistake your extrapolation of recent events to be a foundational direction of the universe.</p>
<p>For example, John von Neumann, the most notable polymath of the 20th century took the geometric proliferation of nuclear arms and their Game Theoretics seriously&mdash;<strong>and unironically recommended immediate nuclear war.</strong>
His obituary in <em>Life</em> (Feb 25, 1957; p. 96) says of his thinking the following:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[He] observed at that time: &ldquo;With the Russians it is not a question of whether but when.&rdquo; A hard-boiled strategist, he was one of the few scientists to advocate for preemptive war, and in 1950 he was remarking, &ldquo;If you say why not bomb them tomorrow, I say why not today? If you say today at 5 o&rsquo;clock, I say why not 1 o&rsquo;clock?&rdquo;</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Thankfully most people lacked the iron-clad logic of von Neumann and we avoided nuclear holocaust.</p>
<p>In our modern world, this lazy tendency of extrapolation often manifests in a kind of <em>Transhumanism</em> or belief in technological &ldquo;Singularity&rdquo;.</p>
<p>This is a utopian or millenarian belief that we can eternally extrapolate geometric increases in increased technological or computational power to a point where technological improvement becomes instant, effortless, yet infinite.
Technology seems to have significantly accelerated in human life, so it seems to these people that we should assume it continues to do so, apparently with the idea that there is no factor in human psychology, physiological, neuroscience or even economy that could ever be a principled boundary for this tumorous growth.</p>
<p>Transhumanists, as their name suggests, ultimately believe in what they might glowingly describe as humans &ldquo;transcending their biology and psychology&rdquo; or other cloudy terms.
In reality, these people are pining for the death of humanity, or as some absurdly put it, &ldquo;human civilization surviving [sic] in human-created AI.&rdquo;</p>

<figure class="imgfig titleimg"><img src="https://lukesmith.xyz/pix/having-fun.webp" alt="/pix/having-fun.webp"><figcaption>This is actually the best case scenario of &#39;transhumanism.&#39; If you think this comic is weird, wait until there are Matrix-style warehouses of pod-people hooked up to auto-masturbators. Actually, you should realize in some senses, they&#39;re already here.</figcaption></figure>

<p>They imagine husks of biological humanity, perfectly climate-controlled by vaccines, &ldquo;augmentations,&rdquo; and directly-injected stimulation and entertainment, embedded in a casket of metal for their entire lives.
They imagine human-created robots, then totally de-tethered from their creators, exploring the universe and installing robot colonies on distant planets.
In some perverted way, they call this genocidal conquest of humanity <em>humanity</em> itself, or humanity &ldquo;improved.&rdquo;</p>
<p>This is the Gnostic Heresy reborn, but worse than original Gnostics, who at least believed in the structure beyond matter, and who consistently denigrated matter compared to it.
These new Gnostics believe in creating this realm of ideas, but destroying and mutilating the human mind and body that they believe to be the very metric of value of this new realm.
In a literal sense, they want to destroy nature, mankind and the universe as they know it.</p>
<h2 id="cucked-by-inevitability">Cucked by &ldquo;Inevitability&rdquo;</h2>
<p>Transhumanists take a page from Marx&rsquo;s book in passing of their true desire as being a scientific &ldquo;inevitability.&rdquo;
They argue that singularity <em>will</em> happen, therefore, by some leap of logic, it <em>should</em>, or even its many consequences or birth-pangs are therefore <em>good</em>.
This is absurd.</p>
<p>If, after all, an asteroid were hurdling towards this planet capable of wiping out human life, only a moron refuse to act saying that &ldquo;It&rsquo;s inevitable,&rdquo; or &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the clear direction of history.&rdquo;
At that, the trajectory of an asteroid is an issue of math, while any alleged trajectory of history is an issue of pure fantasy.</p>
<p>I mention this to say that transhumanists often try to pass of their fantasies of the future as being &ldquo;inevitable,&rdquo; when in fact, they are merely titillating ideas that appeal to their imaginations formed for years under the influence of interesting fantasy futurism in film, fiction and modern culture.</p>
<h2 id="so-our-state-of-affairs">So, our state of affairs&hellip;</h2>
<ol>
<li>The influence of technology is at a local high point now. It has become over-encompassing enough to be reminiscent of omnipotence and omniscience.</li>
<li>In our godless age, this power naturally breeds a kind of worship from godless people. It provides not only a pseudo-divinity, but a new arena for a new objectivity that out-classes the skepticism of post-modernity.</li>
<li>There are psychological (and material) incentives for people to continue expanding the power of this technological system, and build it new powers to monitor and control people.</li>
<li>There are utopian and millennialist sects going by various names that concoct rationalizations to expand the power of this technological system, expand its range and shield it from questioning.</li>
</ol>
<p>I will leave for the future why I so quickly dismiss the supposed inevitability of &ldquo;singularity.&rdquo; Perhaps in the next episode&hellip;</p>


guid: https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/no-restaurants-in-2023/
title: Why I Won't Go to Restaurants in 2023
url: https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/no-restaurants-in-2023/
feedurl: https://lukesmith.xyz/index.xml
content:
<figure class="imgfig titleimg"><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a8/Nighthawks_by_Edward_Hopper_1942.jpg"><img src="https://lukesmith.xyz/pix/nighthawks.webp" alt="/pix/nighthawks.webp"></a></figure>

<p>I&rsquo;ve decided after some consideration <strong>to not go to restaurants at all in 2023</strong>.
You can call this a New Year&rsquo;s Resolution.
It&rsquo;ll require at least some sacrifice, pain, annoyance to myself and perhaps others, but I&rsquo;m going to stick by it and I think it will have a good effect.</p>
<p>Restaurants are a drastically over-used creature comfort of the consumerist economy&hellip; even worse, nowadays they&rsquo;re not even comfortable&hellip;</p>
<p>Especially now that portions are smaller more expensive than ever, it&rsquo;s hard to go to a restaurant without feeling cheated.</p>
<p>All of this is fortunate, though, since relying on the ease of restaurants is a vice.
It is now easier than ever to quit it without missing anything but disappointment.</p>
<h2 id="here-are-the-rules">Here Are the Rules.</h2>
<ol>
<li>When I travel alone, I will flatly never eat at a restaurant, no matter what. I will pack food, or prepare food bought at a grocery store.</li>
<li>At time when I might usually offer to go to restaurants out with people, I will serve them at home.</li>
<li>I&rsquo;ll get in the habit of preparing and carrying food&mdash;not snacks&mdash;but food when I will need it. This will include trips.</li>
<li>If I have not prepared food while out, I will go hungry. Oh well!</li>
</ol>
<p>I have even already forewarned people in my life about my adherence to this.</p>
<p>I&rsquo;m not saying I&rsquo;m going to throw a Richard Stallman-style sperg-out when asked to go to a restaurant, but I will find a novel alternative.
If I do go physically to a restaurant with people, obviously I will order nothing and eat nothing, not even free tortilla chips (because it&rsquo;s not just about the money, either).</p>
<h3 id="things-even-worse-that-restaurants">Things <em>even worse</em> that restaurants</h3>

<figure class="imgfig titleimg"><a href="https://lukesmith.xyz/pix/grubhub.png"><img src="https://lukesmith.xyz/pix/grubhub.png" alt="/pix/grubhub.png"></a><figcaption>Obviously take-out counts as a restaurant, in fact, is even worse.</figcaption></figure>

<p>There are some things <em>even worse</em> than restaurants that I don&rsquo;t use now and won&rsquo;t start.
(I say this because some might be tempted to comply with the letter, but not the spirit of the law.)</p>
<ul>
<li>I will get no take-out.</li>
<li>I will buy no food from gas stations, convenience stores or delis.</li>
<li>I will have no junk food.</li>
<li>I will also count coffee shops and other such things as restaurants and thus subject to exclusion.</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="what-not-going-to-restaurants-will-get-me">What not Going to Restaurants Will Get Me.</h2>
<p>The first and obvious advantage is that I will be saving money.</p>
<p>The wider goal is to make sure that I am more comfortable with preparing food for people on short notice, having spontaneous picnics, planning in advance for things and thereby acting less impulsive in food consumption.</p>
<p>It might be weird to unironically suggest in the 21st century that &ldquo;picnics&rdquo; can be an alternative to restaurants, but however corny they may sound to our ears, they are infinitely more social, customizable and economical.
Doing all of this make a new habit to permanently displace compulsive restauranting.</p>
<p>My goal is <strong>not</strong> to minimize alimentary social outings&mdash;but to improve them by minimizing cost and maximizing the possibilities of what I can end up doing.</p>
<h2 id="how-rigorous-will-i-be">How Rigorous Will I be?</h2>
<p>People in real life have questioned how rigorous I will be in this resolution.
I&rsquo;ve said I will reserve the right to go to a restaurant on a highly exceptional occassion which is certainly not a part of everyday habit.</p>
<p>For example, earlier this year, I went out to a nice restaurant with some friends and subscribers during Linuxfest&mdash;this is the kind of outing/event I might exempt.
Even in those circumstances, I want to consider social alternatives to restaurant-going though.</p>
<p>I&rsquo;ve talked to other people and restaurants have become a continuing disappointment to many in the days of shrinkflation.
Since I can barely go to one and be filled for less than $35, I don&rsquo;t think I&rsquo;m going to look back from this.</p>


guid: https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/consciousness-and-materialism/
title: Consciousness and Materialism
url: https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/consciousness-and-materialism/
feedurl: https://lukesmith.xyz/index.xml
content:
<h2 id="humes-parallel">Hume&rsquo;s Parallel</h2>
<p>David Hume has often been quoted for his <em>&ldquo;Is&rdquo; vs. &ldquo;Ought&rdquo;</em> distinction.
The argument is that fact and morality are two different domains, and from no accumulation of statements of fact alone can we ever jump to a statement of morality.</p>
<p>We can say statements of fact such as:</p>
<ol>
<li>To be murdered is potentially painful.</li>
<li>To be murdered is irreversible.</li>
<li>Murder causes social dysfunction.</li>
<li><em>Etc.</em> &hellip;</li>
</ol>
<p>By merely my collecting these, we haven&rsquo;t proven that <em>Murder is evil.</em>
That is an entirely different statement that cannot be inducted from statements about the description of murder.</p>
<p>Certainly we can derive moral statements from <em>other</em> moral statements accompanied by factual statements. For example, if we assume that the moral statement <em>To kill a living being is immoral.</em> we can derive new moral &ldquo;facts&rdquo; from it:</p>
<ol>
<li>To kill a living being is immoral.</li>
<li>Unborn children in the womb are living beings.</li>
<li>Abortion is immoral.</li>
</ol>
<p>Or&hellip;</p>
<ol>
<li>To kill a living being is immoral.</li>
<li>Animals are living beings.</li>
<li>Killing animals is immoral.</li>
</ol>
<p>Whether you find Hume&rsquo;s argument ironclad, it proposes that mere fact and morality are ultimately two domains and substances, and while they can interact, importantly, morality itself&mdash;whatever it is&mdash;is made of different stuff than just empirical statements.
There requires some extra jump.</p>
<h2 id="consciousness">Consciousness</h2>
<p>I bring this up because it is a logical analog to the reality of consciousness.</p>
<p>Some would incorrectly say that the issue of consciousness is the &ldquo;Hardest Problem in Science.&rdquo;
That&rsquo;s premature because it presupposes that science <em>has even</em> begun to properly ask the question, or has any idea of a vector to approach the issue, or any tools to attack the problem.</p>
<p>One funny thing, even&mdash;perhaps especially true about the institutionalized academic venues for the study of consciousness, is that they are rife with &ldquo;pseudoscience.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Go to a &ldquo;scientific&rdquo; conference or institute and however many serious scientists you see, you will find no fewer Hindu gurus.
This is because there are simply no scientific methods for even approaching the issue of the origin and nature of consciousness and many scientists are at least honest enough to recognize they have little to no performative advantage in the field over pagan lore or even esotericist scammers.</p>
<h3 id="consciousness-from-a-humean-perspective">Consciousness from a Humean Perspective</h3>
<p>In the same way that Hume argued that morality must be a different substance from fact, I will state flatly that consciousness, in its essence, must be a totally different substance from matter.</p>
<p>Materialist science is self-limited to what is ultimately the syntactic interactions of atoms more or less bumping into each other, at whatever level of abstraction.
In the same way that Hume could say that no as-of-yet unknown facts could generate a foundational moral statement, I say that no as-of-yet unknown material configuration generates this ontologically new category of self-perception.</p>
<p>Now when Hume, as a skeptic, suggested that fact and morality were different domains, a part of that skepticism is the suggestion that morality, since it is not grounded in fact, might actually just be a worthless enterprise. That &ldquo;solves&rdquo; the philosophical problems of morality by saying it ultimately has no independent ontology, i.e. it doesn&rsquo;t really exist, so we don&rsquo;t really have to talk about it.</p>
<p>Consciousness cannot be discarded in the same fashion.
Consciousness is not just something we observe, but it is <em>the only thing we observe</em>.
It is the basis of all of our other observations and it is the most inexplicable thing.</p>
<h3 id="mere-computation">Mere computation?</h3>
<p>You might interpret my statement here as a denial of the so-called <em>Computational Theory of Mind</em> which, among other things, alleges that consciousness itself is a side-effect of the configuration of the brain to compute and process reality.</p>
<p>After all, computation is merely the processing rules of a formal game.
Saying computational operations can generate consciousness by themselves is no sillier than saying that a game of Monopoly can generate consciousness.
(There are some who have argued themselves into corners where they will affirm that such Monopoly games can be conscious).</p>
<p>It might be that some syntactic configurations might resonate in such a way to &ldquo;summon&rdquo; consciousness from another dimension.
That is not my point, my point is the more obvious one: consciousness itself, qualia, sense in itself are obviously something <em>different</em> than matter.</p>
<p>There&rsquo;s an unfortunate temptation to describe things that consciousness seems to interact with or do or correlate with, mistaking that to be an explanation of the sensation of consciousness itself.
To do that is to forget the question altogether, replacing it with something trivial.</p>
<h2 id="matter-over-mind">Matter over Mind?</h2>
<p>To be clear, it is very obvious that material conditions <em>affect</em> consciousness.
This is no different from how Hume admitted that factual statements can affect derivations of moral statements.</p>
<p>Chemicals can induce other states of consciousness.
Injuries can affect the state of self-perception.</p>
<p>For a while I assumed the error of thinking that because these statements were true, that must mean that consciousness itself must be merely material as well.</p>
<p>This is fallacious reasoning because we can just as easily say that the physical components of the brain are &ldquo;receivers&rdquo; of a &ldquo;signal&rdquo; of consciousness.</p>
<p>In the same way that smashing a T.V. doesn&rsquo;t destroy the signal it receives, damaging the brain or distorting its physical reactions in such a way to affect consciousness doesn&rsquo;t mean the consciousness itself has an origin in the physical brain.</p>
<p>That might sound other-worldly, as if it entails consciousness must be something from another dimension, but it&rsquo;s even similar to the way people approach their <em>non-solutions</em> in the Computational Theory of Mind.</p>
<h2 id="other-worldly">Other-worldly</h2>
<p>I will say that I have come to grips with the idea that consciousness must be something literally other-worldly.</p>
<p>Before pan-physicalists and atheists throw their computers aside in disgust, remember that this is almost a tautology or truism, and it is really the essence of my argument here.
It also doesn&rsquo;t even require any more metaphysics than are required to remain consistent.</p>
<p>Physicalism and materialism assume that the core of the universe is familiar atomic matter and other physical forces and energies.
Consciousness is simply something ontologically apart from these things.</p>
<p>In making philosophically physicalist models for consciousness, we are trying to build paper-flat two-dimensional scaffolding to hold an immensely oblong three-dimensional object.
That might teach us something about consciousness in a pedagogical sense, but the operations of atoms and forces are just different stuff than consciousness and even with clever emergent arguments, never suffice to explain it.</p>
<p>It is one thing to say that complex computational systems can emerge from simple interactions of matter.
This is a mere issue of complexity.
It is a totally different thing to say that the very realm of the cognitive theater, including qualia and sense itself are mere complex atom-bumpings. This is an addition of that same third dimension.</p>
<p>While nearly everything in the universe can be attacked with a materialist model, and even though we can correlate matter with conscious states, the appearance of the qualia of things in the mind is not just something we can reduce to material corollaries, because the material corollaries are not the interesting or crucial aspect.</p>
<h3 id="youre-already-a-dualist-anyway">You&rsquo;re already a dualist anyway.</h3>
<p>There is an obvious sense in which even a rigid materialist should realize the wide scope of the universe is pretty wide, nearly certainly wider than we now anticipate.</p>
<p>Familiar matter and energy has formed the physical sciences, but that in no way means that part of, in fact, most of reality is actually other types of forces and substances.</p>
<p><strong>Remember that modern materialism before used to be &ldquo;mechanicalism.&rdquo;</strong>
Before Newton, many thought that atoms alone were sufficient to describe reality, specifically, atoms exerting direct force on one another.</p>
<p>Newton proposed an elegant theory that was involved an occult force: <em>Gravity</em> that acted counter-mechanically over long distances via an unknown&mdash;and still totally unknown&mdash;means.
The theory solved significant problems and unified much, but its central assumption was other-worldly and totally unjustified and unexplained.</p>
<p>How can a force act over long distances seemingly instantly?
The fact that we don&rsquo;t dismiss gravity immediately as spiritualism is only a testament to the multi-generational coping mechanism has made this new force mundane.</p>
<p>Now Newton&rsquo;s concept of gravity is thought of as being &ldquo;real&rdquo; and &ldquo;physical&rdquo; and within the realm of &ldquo;science&rdquo; despite the fact that it upended the physicalist assumptions of the day of how matter and atoms can interact.</p>
<p>All of this is to say that old-school atomists (Democritus, Lucretius, etc.) promoted a highly obsolete science that not even modern &ldquo;materialists&rdquo; endorse.
At that, new occult and spiritual forces, like gravity, after repeated observations and theories come under purview of &ldquo;science&rdquo; and thus become &ldquo;physical&rdquo; even though they are clearly of a totally different substance than traditional atoms and matter.</p>
<p>That said, the universe has many different substances and forces that are not necessarily commensurable.
They may interact, but that in no ways makes them the same substance.
When we realize that, we have already dismissed philosophical monism.
Some forces are familiar enough to make models of, thus they become unsurprising, regular and subject to science.
Other forces of the universe might be wider than experimental tests can harness, so irregular as to avoid sensible-sounding theories and different enough to still seem miraculous forever.</p>
<p>So in saying that consciousness is a totally different substance, of a non-material reality and cannot be accounted for from narrowly material computation is not an unreasonable statement.
I would say that it is a self-evidently true statement regardless of philosophical assumptions, and I think it would behoove people who purport to study consciousness to acknowledge it as such, rather than attempting to muddy the waters and reduce conscious theater to something it is not, so they can pretend to study it.</p>


guid: https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/searle-dennett/
title: John Searle and Daniel Dennett on Consciousness
url: https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/searle-dennett/
feedurl: https://lukesmith.xyz/index.xml
content:
<hr>
<blockquote>
<p>Below I am here giving voice to a conversation in articles on the subject of <em>consciousness</em> originally published by the New York Review of Books and in John Searle&rsquo;s book <em>The Mystery of Consciousness</em>.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>I find these hilarious.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Here, Searle&rsquo;s adversary, well-known and now late &ldquo;philosopher&rdquo; Daniel Dennett follows the logical train of verificationist modern science to its logical conclusion: the denial of the subjective&mdash;the consciousness itself&mdash;the thing, the only thing that allows perception in the truest sense.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Searle&rsquo;s writing here is very concise and worthy of praise.
I admire that he here grapples with an idea so absurd, yet at the same time dissect it expertly and patiently.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Dennett plays an excellent foil and a strawman&mdash;if he weren&rsquo;t the real thing.
(This is what happens when western philosophy lost its <em>nous</em>.)</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>&ndash; Luke Smith</p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<h2 id="consciousness-denied-daniel-dennetts-account">Consciousness Denied: Daniel Dennett&rsquo;s Account</h2>
<p>by John Searle</p>
<p>Daniel Dennett is a philosopher who has written a number of
books on the philosophy of mind, but it seems clear that he
regards <em>Consciousness Explained</em><sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup> as the culmination of his
work in this field. That work is in the tradition of
behaviorism&mdash;the idea that behavior and dispositions to behavior are
somehow constitutive of mental states&mdash;and verificationism
&mdash;the idea that the only things which exist are those whose
presence can be verified by scientific means. Though at first
sight he appears to be advocating a scientific approach to
consciousness comparable to those of Crick, Penrose, and Edelman, there are some very important differences, as we will see.</p>
<p>Before discussing his <em>Consciousness Explained</em>, I want to
ask the reader to perform a small experiment to remind
himself or herself of what exactly is at issue in theories of
consciousness. Take your right hand and pinch the skin on your
left forearm. What exactly happened when you did so? Several
different sorts of things happened. First, the neurobiologists
tell us, the pressure of your thumb and forefinger set up a
sequence of neuron firings that began at the sensory receptors
in your skin, went into the spine and up the spine through a
region called the tract of Lissauer, and then into the thalamus
and other basal regions of the brain. The signal then went to
the somato-sensory cortex and perhaps other cortical regions
as well. A few hundred milliseconds after you pinched your skin,
a second sort of thing happened, one that you know about
without professional assistance. You felt a pain. Nothing
serious, just a mildly unpleasant pinching sensation in the skin of
your forearm. This unpleasant sensation had a certain
particular sort of subjective feel to it, a feel which is accessible to you
in a way it is not accessible to others around you. This
accessibility has epistemic consequences&mdash;you can know about your pain
in a way that others cannot&mdash;but the subjectivity is ontological
rather than epistemic. That is, the mode of existence of the
sensation is a first-person or subjective mode of existence, whereas
the mode of existence of the neural pathways is a third-person or
objective mode of existence; the pathways exist independently of
being experienced in a way that the pain does not. The feeling
of the pain is one of the &ldquo;qualia&rdquo; I mentioned earlier.</p>
<p>Furthermore, when you pinched your skin, a third sort
of thing happened. You acquired a behavioral disposition you
did not previously have. If someone asks you, &ldquo;Did you feel
anything?&rdquo; you would say something like, &ldquo;Yes, I felt a mild
pinch right here.&rdquo; No doubt other things happened as well&mdash;you altered the gravitational relations between your right hand
and the moon, for example&mdash;but let us concentrate on these
first three.</p>
<p>If you were asked what is the essential thing about the
sensation of pain, I think you would say that the second
feature, the feeling, is the pain itself. The input signals cause the
pain, and the pain in turn causes you to have a behavioral
disposition. But the essential thing about the pain is that it is a
specific internal qualitative feeling. The problem of
consciousness in both philosophy and the natural sciences is to explain
these subjective feelings. Not all of them are bodily sensations
like pain. The stream of conscious thought is not a bodily
sensation comparable to feeling pinched and neither are visual
experiences, yet both have the quality of ontological
subjectivity that I have been talking about. The subjective feelings
are the data that a theory of consciousness has to explain, and
the account of the neural pathways that I sketched is a partial
theory to account for the data. The behavioral dispositions are
not part of the conscious experience, but they are caused by it.</p>
<p>The peculiarity of Daniel Dennett&rsquo;s book can now be
stated: he denies the existence of the data. He thinks there are
no such things as the second sort of entity, the feeling of pain.
He thinks there are no such things as qualia, subjective
experiences, first-person phenomena, or any of the rest of it. Dennett
agrees that it seems to us that there are such things as qualia, but
this is a matter of a mistaken judgment we are making about
what really happens. Well, what does really happen according
to him?</p>
<p>What really happens, according to Dennett, is that we
have stimulus inputs, such as the pressure on your skin in my
experiment, and we have dispositions to behavior, &ldquo;reactive
dispositions&rdquo; as he calls them. And in between there are
&ldquo;discriminative states&rdquo; that cause us to respond differently to
different pressures on the skin and to discriminate red from green,
etc., but the sort of state that we have for discriminating
pressure is exactly like the state of a machine for detecting pressure.
It does not experience any special feeling; indeed it does not
have any inner feelings at all, because there are no such things
as &ldquo;inner feelings.&rdquo; It is all a matter of third-person
phenomena: stimulus inputs, discriminative states (p. 372 fF.), and
reactive dispositions. The feature that makes these all hang together
is that our brains are a type of computer and consciousness is
a certain sort of software, a &ldquo;virtual machine&rsquo;&rsquo; in our brain.</p>
<p>The main point of Dennett&rsquo;s book is to deny the
existence of inner mental states and offer an alternative account of
consciousness, or rather what he calls &ldquo;consciousness.&rdquo; The net
effect is a performance of Hamlet without the Prince of
Denmark. Dennett, however, does not begin on page one to tell us
that he thinks conscious states, as I have described them, do
not exist, and that there is nothing there but a brain
implementing a computer program. Rather, he spends the first two
hundred pages discussing questions which seem to presuppose
the existence of subjective conscious states and proposing a
methodology for investigating consciousness. For example, he
discusses various perceptual illusions such as the so-called phi
phenomenon. In this illusion, when two small spots in front
of you are briefly lit in rapid succession it seems to you that a
single spot is moving back and forth. The way we ordinarily
understand such examples is in terms of our having an inner
subjective experience of seeming to see a single spot moving
back and forth. But that is not what Dennett has in mind. He
wants to deny the existence of any inner qualia, but this does
not emerge until much later in the book. He does not, in
short, write with the candor of a man who is completely
confident of his thesis and anxious to get it out into the open as
quickly as he can. On the contrary, there is a certain
evasiveness about the early chapters, since he conceals what he really
thinks. It is not until after page 200 that you get his account
of &ldquo;consciousness,&rdquo; and not until well after page 350 that you
find out what is really going on.</p>
<p>The main issue in the first part of the book is to defend
what he calls the &ldquo;Multiple Drafts&rdquo; model of consciousness as
opposed to the &ldquo;Cartesian Theater&rdquo; model. The idea, says
Dennett, is that we are tacitly inclined to think that there
must be a single place in the brain where it all comes together,
a kind of Cartesian Theater where we witness the play of our
consciousness. And in opposition he wants to advance the
view that a whole series of information states are going on
in the brain, rather like multiple drafts of an article. On the
surface, this might appear to be an interesting issue for
neurobiology: where in the brain are our subjective experiences
localized? Is there a single locus or many? A single locus, by the
way, would seem neurobiologically implausible, because any
organ in the brain that might seem essential to consciousness,
as for example the thalamus is essential according to Cricks
hypothesis, has a twin on the other side of the brain. Each lobe
has its own thalamus. But that is not what Dennett is driving
at. He is attacking the Cartesian Theater not because he thinks
subjective states occur all over the brain, but rather because he
does not think there are any such things as subjective states at
all and he wants to soften up the opposition to his
counterintuitive (to put it mildly) views by first getting rid of the idea
that there is a unified locus of our conscious experiences.</p>
<p>If Dennett denies the existence of conscious states as we
usually think of them, what is his alternative account? Not
surprisingly, it is a version of Strong AI. In order to explain
it, I must first briefly explain four notions that he uses: von
Neumann machines, connectionism, virtual machines, and
memes. A digital computer, the kind you are likely to buy
in a store today, proceeds by a series of steps performed very
rapidly, millions per second. This is called a serial computer,
and because the initial designs were by John von Neumann, a
Hungarian-American scientist and mathematician, it is
sometimes called a von Neumann machine. Recently there have
been efforts to build machines that operate in parallel, that is,
with several computational channels working at once and
interacting with each other. In physical structure these are
more like human brains. They are not really much like brains,
but certainly they are more like brains than the traditional
von Neumann machines. Computations of this type are called
variously Parallel Distributed Processing, Neuronal Net
Modeling, or simply Connectionism. Strictly speaking, any
computation that can be performed on a connectionist
structure&mdash;or &ldquo;architecture,&rdquo; as it is usually called&mdash;can also be
performed on a serial architecture, but connectionist nets have
some other interesting properties: for example, they are faster
and they can &ldquo;learn&rdquo;&mdash;that is, they can change their
behavior&mdash;by having the strengths of the connections altered.</p>
<p>(Figure 5 omitted.)</p>
<p>Here is how a typical connectionist net works (fig. 5).
There are a series of nodes at the input level that receive
inputs. These can be represented as certain numerical values,
1, -1, 1/2, etc. These values are transmitted over all of the
connections to the next nodes in line at the next level. Each
connection has a certain strength, and these connection strengths
can also be represented as numerical values, 1, &mdash; 1, 1/2, etc.
The input signal is multiplied by the connection strength to get
the value that is received by the next node from that
connection. Thus, for example, an input of 1 multiplied by a
connection strength of 1/2 gives a value of 1/2 from that
connection to the next node in line. The nodes that receive these
signals do a summation of all the numerical values they have
received and send out those values to the next set of nodes in
line. So there is an input level, an output level, and a series of
one or more interior levels called &ldquo;hidden levels.&rdquo; The series of
processes continues until the output level is reached. In
cognitive science, the numbers are used to represent features of
some cognitive process that is being modeled, for example
features of faces in face recognition, or sounds of words in a
model of the pronunciation of English. The sense in which the
network &ldquo;learns&rdquo; is that you can get the right match between
the input values and the output values by fiddling with the
connection strengths until you get the match you want. This
is usually done by another computer, called a &ldquo;teacher.&rdquo;</p>
<p>These systems are sometimes said to be &ldquo;neuronally
inspired.&rdquo; The idea is that we are to think of the connections
as something like axons and dendrites, and the nodes as
something like the cell bodies that do a summation of the input
values and then decide how much of a signal to send to the next
&ldquo;neurons,&rdquo; i.e., the next connections and nodes in line.</p>
<p>Another notion Dennett uses is that of a &ldquo;virtual machine.&rdquo;
The actual machine I am now working on is made of actual
wires, transistors, etc.; in addition, we can get machines like
mine to simulate the structure of another type of machine.
The other machine is not actually part of the wiring of this
machine but exists entirely in the patterns of regularities that
can be imposed on the wiring of my machine. This is called
the virtual machine.</p>
<p>The last notion Dennett uses is that of a &ldquo;meme.&rdquo; This
notion is not very clear. It was invented by Richard Dawkins
to have a cultural analog to the biological notion of a gene.
The idea is that just as biological evolution occurs by way of
genes, so cultural evolution occurs through the spread of memes.
On Dawkins&rsquo;s definition, quoted by Dennett, a meme is
a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation
Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases,
clothes, fashions, ways of making pots or of building
arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene
pool by leaping from body to body via sperm or eggs, so
memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by
leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad
sense, can be called imitation, [p. 202]
I believe the analogy between &ldquo;gene&rdquo; and &ldquo;meme&rdquo; is
mistaken. Biological evolution proceeds by brute, blind,
natural forces. The spread of ideas and theories by &ldquo;imitation&rdquo; is
typically a conscious process directed toward a goal. It misses
the point of Darwin&rsquo;s account of the origin of species to lump
the two sorts of processes together. Darwin s greatest
achievement was to show that the appearance of purpose, planning,
teleology, and intentionality in the origin and development of
human and animal species was entirely an illusion. The
appearance could be explained by evolutionary processes that
contained no such purposes at all. But the spread of ideas through
imitation requires the whole apparatus of human
consciousness and intentionality. Ideas have to be understood and
interpreted. And they have to be understood and judged as desirable
or undesirable, in order to be treated as candidates for imitation
or rejection. Imitation typically requires a conscious effort on
the part of the imitator. The whole process normally involves
language with all its variability and subtlety. In short, the
transmission of ideas through imitation is totally unlike the
transmission of genes through reproduction, so the analogy
between genes and memes is misleading from the start.</p>
<p>On the basis of these four notions, Dennett offers the
following explanation of consciousness:</p>
<blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Human consciousness is itself a huge collection of
memes (or more exactly, meme-effects in brains) that
can best be understood as the operation of a <em>&ldquo;von
Neumannesque&rdquo;</em> virtual machine <em>implemented</em> in the
<em>parallel architecture</em> of a brain that was not designed for any
such activities, [italics in the original, p. 210]</p>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<p>In other words, being conscious is entirely a matter of
implementing a certain sort of computer program or programs in a
parallel machine that evolved in nature.</p>
<p>It is essential to see that once Dennett has denied the
existence of conscious states he does not see any need for
additional arguments to get to Strong AI. All of the moves in the
conjuring trick have already been made. Strong AI seems to
him the only reasonable way to account for a machine that
lacks any qualitative, subjective, inner mental contents but
behaves in complex ways. The extreme anti-mentalism of his
views has been missed by several of Dennett&rsquo;s critics, who have
pointed out that, according to his theory, he cannot
distinguish between human beings and unconscious zombies who
behaved exactly as if they were human beings. Dennett&rsquo;s
riposte is to say that there could not be any such zombies, that
any machine regardless of what it is made of that behaved like
us would have to have consciousness just as we do. This looks
as if he is claiming that sufficiendy complex zombies would
not be zombies but would have inner conscious states the
same as ours; but that is emphatically not the claim he is
making. His claim is that in fact we are zombies, that there is
no difference between us and machines that lack conscious
states in the sense I have explained. The claim is not that the
sufficiently complex zombie would suddenly come to
conscious life, just as Galatea was brought to life by Pygmalion.
Rather, Dennett argues that there is no such thing as
conscious life, for us, for animals, for zombies, or for anything
else; there is only complex zombiehood. In one of his several
discussions of zombies, he considers whether there is any
difference between human pain and suffering and a zombies
pain and suffering. This is in a section about pain where the
idea is that pain is not the name of a sensation but rather a
matter of having ones plans thwarted and ones hopes
crushed, and the idea is that the zombie&rsquo;s &ldquo;suffering&rdquo; is no
different from our conscious suffering:</p>
<blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Why should a &ldquo;zombie&rsquo;s&rdquo; crushed hopes matter less than
a conscious persons crushed hopes? There is a trick with
mirrors here that should be exposed and discarded.
Consciousness, you say, is what matters, but then you cling
to doctrines about consciousness that systematically
prevent us from getting any purchase on why it matters.
Postulating special inner qualities that are not only
private and intrinsically valuable, but also unconfirmable
and uninvestigatable is just obscurantism, [p. 450]</p>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<p>The rhetorical flourishes here are typical of the book,
but to bring the discussion down to earth, ask yourself, when
you performed the experiment of pinching yourself were you
&ldquo;postulating special inner qualities&rdquo; that are &ldquo;unconfirmable
and uninvestigatable&rdquo;? Were you being &ldquo;obscurantist&rdquo;? And
most important, is there no difference at all between you who
have pains and an unconscious zombie that behaves like you
but has no pains or any other conscious states?</p>
<p>Actually, though the question with which Dennett&rsquo;s
passage begins is intended to be as rhetorical as the ones I
just asked, it in fact has a rather easy correct answer, which
Dennett did not intend. The reason a zombies &ldquo;crushed
hopes&rdquo; matter less than a conscious persons crushed hopes
is that zombies, by definition, have no feelings whatever.
Consequently nothing literally matters about their inner
feelings, because they do not have any. They just have external
behavior which is like the behavior of people who do have
feelings and for whom things literally do matter.</p>
<p>Since Dennett defends a version of Strong AI it is not
surprising that he takes up the Chinese Room Argument,
summarized earlier, which presents the hypothesis of a man in a room
who does not know Chinese but nevertheless is carrying out the
steps in a program to give a simulation of a Chinese speaker.
This time the objection to it is that the man in the room really
could not in fact convincingly carry out the steps. The answer
to this is to say that of course we could not do this in real life.
The reason we have thought experiments is because for many
ideas we wish to test, it is impossible to carry out the
experiment in reality. In Einstein&rsquo;s famous discussion of the clock
paradox he asks us to imagine that we go to the nearest star in
a rocket ship that travels at 90 percent of the speed of light. It
really does miss the point totally&mdash;though it is quite true&mdash;to
say that we could not in practice build such a rocket ship.</p>
<p>Similarly it misses the point of the Chinese Room
thought experiment to say that we could not in practice design
a program complex enough to fool native Chinese speakers
but simple enough that an English speaker could carry it out in
real time. In fact we cannot even design programs for
commercial computers that can fool an able speaker of any natural
language, but that is beside the point. The point of the
Chinese Room Argument, as I hope I made clear, is to remind
us that the syntax of the program is not sufficient for the
semantic content (or mental content or meaning) in the mind
of the Chinese speaker. Now why does Dennett not face the
actual argument as I have stated it? Why does he not address
that point? Why does he not tell us which of the three premises
in the Chinese Room Argument he rejects? They are not very
complicated and take the following form: (1) programs are
syntactical, (2) minds have semantic contents, (3) syntax by
itself is not the same as nor sufficient for semantic content. I
think the answer is clear. He does not address the actual
formal argument because to do so he would have to admit that
what he really objects to is premise (2), the claim that minds
have mental contents.<sup id="fnref:2"><a href="#fn:2" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">2</a></sup> Given his assumptions, he is forced to
deny that minds really do have intrinsic mental contents. Most
people who defend Strong AI think that the computer might
have mental contents just as we do, and they mistakenly take
Dennett as an ally. But he does not think that computers have
mental contents, because he does not think there are any such
things. For Dennett, we and the computer are both in the
same situation as far as the mind is concerned, not because the
computer can acquire the sorts of intrinsic mental contents
that any normal human has, but because there never were any
such things as intrinsic mental contents to start with.</p>
<p>At this point we can make clear some of the differences
between Dennett&rsquo;s approach to consciousness and the
approach I advocate, an approach which, if I understand them
correctly, is also advocated by some of the other authors under
discussion, including Crick, Penrose, Edelman, and Rosenfield.
I believe that the brain causes conscious experiences. These are
inner, qualitative, subjective states. In principle at least it
might be possible to build an artifact, an artificial brain, that
also would cause these inner states. For all we know we might
build such a system using a chemistry totally different from
that of the brain. We just do not know enough now about
how the brain does it to know how to build an artificial
system that would have causal powers equivalent to the brains
using some different mechanisms. But we do know that any
other system capable of causing consciousness would have to
have causal powers equivalent to the brain&rsquo;s to do it. This
point follows trivially from the fact that brains do it causally.
But there is not and cannot be any question whether a machine
can be conscious and can think, because the brain is a machine.
Furthermore, as I pointed out earlier, there is no known
obstacle in principle to building an artificial machine that can be
conscious and can think.
Now, as a purely verbal point, since we can describe
any system under some computational description or other,
we might even describe our artificial conscious machine as
a &ldquo;computer&rdquo; and this might make it look as if the position
I am advocating is consistent with Dennett&rsquo;s. But in fact
the two approaches are radically different. Dennett does not
believe that the brain causes inner qualitative conscious
states, because he does not believe that there are any such
things. On my view the computational aspects of an artificial
conscious machine would be something in addition to
consciousness. On Dennett&rsquo;s view there is no consciousness in
addition to the computational features, because that is all
that consciousness amounts to for him: meme effects of a von
Neumann(esque) virtual machine implemented in a parallel
architecture.</p>
<p>Dennett&rsquo;s book is unique among the several books
under discussion here in that it makes no contribution to the
problem of consciousness but rather denies that there is any
such problem in the first place. Dennett, as Kierkegaard said
in another connection, keeps the forms, while stripping them
of their significance. He keeps the vocabulary of
consciousness, while denying its existence.</p>
<p>But someone might object: Is it not possible that science
might discover that Dennett was right, that there really are no
such things as inner qualitative mental states, that the whole
thing is an illusion like sunsets? After all, if science can
discover that sunsets are a systematic illusion, why could it not
also discover that conscious states such as pains are illusions
too? There is this difference: in the case of sunsets science does
not deny the existence of the datum, that the sun appears to
move through the sky. Rather it gives an alternative
explanation of this and other data. Science preserves the appearance
while giving us a deeper insight into the reality behind the
appearance. But Dennett denies the existence of the data to
start with.</p>
<p>But couldn&rsquo;t we disprove the existence of these data by
proving that they are only illusions? No, you can&rsquo;t disprove the
existence of conscious experiences by proving that they are
only an appearance disguising the underlying reality, because
where consciousness is concerned the existence of the appearance is
the reality. If it seems to me exactly as if I am having conscious
experiences, then I am having conscious experiences. This is
not an epistemic point. I might make various sorts of mistakes
about my experiences, for example, if I suffered from phantom
limb pains. But whether reliably reported or not, the
experience of feeling the pain is identical with the pain in a way that
the experience of seeing a sunset is not identical with a sunset.</p>
<p>I regard Dennett&rsquo;s denial of the existence of
consciousness not as a new discovery or even as a serious possibility but
rather as a form of intellectual pathology. The interest of his
account lies in figuring out what assumptions could lead an
intelligent person to paint himself into such a corner. In Dennett&rsquo;s
case the answers are not hard to find. He tells us: &ldquo;The idea at
its simplest was that since you can never &lsquo;see directly&rsquo; into
people&rsquo;s minds, but have to take their word for it, any such facts
as there are about mental events are not among the data of
science&rdquo; (pp. 70-71). And later,</p>
<blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Even if mental events are not among the data of science,
this does not mean we cannot study them
scientifically. &hellip; The challenge is to construct a theory of
mental events, using the data that scientific method permits.
Such a theory will have to be constructed from the
third-person point of view, since all science is
constructed from that perspective, [p. 71]</p>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<p>Scientific objectivity according to Dennett&rsquo;s conception
requires the &ldquo;third-person point of view.&rdquo; At the end of his
book he combines this view with verificationism&mdash;the idea
that only things that can be scientifically verified really exist.
These two theories lead him to deny that there can exist any
phenomena that have a first-person ontology. That is, his
denial of the existence of consciousness derives from two
premises: scientific verification always takes the third-person
point of view, and nothing exists which cannot be verified by
scientific verification so construed. This is the deepest mistake
in the book and it is the source of most of the others, so I want
to end this discussion by exposing it.</p>
<p>We need to distinguish the epistemic sense of the
distinction between the first- and the third-person points of view,
(i.e., between the subjective and the objective) from the ontological sense. Some statements can be known to be true or false
independently of any prejudices or attitudes on the part of
observers. They are objective in the epistemic sense. For
example, if I say, &ldquo;Van Gogh died in Auvers-sur-Oise, France,&rdquo; that
statement is epistemically objective. Its truth has nothing to
do with anyone&rsquo;s personal prejudices or preferences. But if I
say, for example, &ldquo;Van Gogh was a better painter than Renoir,&rdquo;
that statement is epistemically subjective. Its truth or falsity
is a matter at least in part of the attitudes and preferences of
observers. In addition to this sense of the objective-subjective
distinction, there is an ontological sense. Some entities,
mountains for example, have an existence which is objective
in the sense that it does not depend on any subject. Others,
pain for example, are subjective in that their existence depends
on being felt by a subject. They have a first-person or subjective
ontology.</p>
<p>Now here is the point. Science does indeed aim at
epistemic objectivity. The aim is to get a set of truths that are free
of our special preferences and prejudices. But epistemic
objectivity of method dots not require ontological objectivity
ofsubject matter. It is just an objective fact&mdash;in the epistemic sense
&mdash;that I and people like me have pains. But the mode of
existence of these pains is subjective&mdash;in the ontological sense.
Dennett has a definition of science which excludes the
possibility that science might investigate subjectivity, and he thinks
the third-person objectivity of science forces him to this
definition. But that is a bad pun on &ldquo;objectivity.&rdquo; The aim of
science is to get a systematic account of how the world works.
One part of the world consists of ontologically subjective
phenomena. If we have a definition of science that forbids us from
investigating that part of the world, it is the definition that has
to be changed and not the world.</p>
<p>I do not wish to give the impression that all 511 pages of
Dennett&rsquo;s book consist in repeating the same mistake over and
over. On the contrary, he makes many valuable points and is
especially good at summarizing much of the current work in
neurobiology and cognitive science. For example, he provides an
interesting discussion of the complex relations between the
temporal order of events in the world that the brain represents and
the temporal order of the representing that goes on in the brain.
Dennett&rsquo;s prose, as some reviewers have pointed out,
is breezy and sometimes funny, but at crucial points it is
imprecise and evasive, as I have tried to explain here. At his
worst he tries to bully the reader with abusive language and
rhetorical questions, as the passage about zombies above
illustrates. A typical move is to describe the opposing view as
relying on &ldquo;ineffable&rdquo; entities. But there is nothing ineffable about
the pain you feel when you pinch yourself.</p>
<h2 id="appendix-an-exchange-with-daniel-dennett">APPENDIX: An Exchange with Daniel Dennett</h2>
<p>Following publication of the original article on which this
chapter is based, Daniel Dennett and I had the following exchange in
The New York Review of Books.</p>
<h3 id="daniel-dennett-writes">DANIEL DENNETT writes:</h3>
<p>John Searle and I have a deep disagreement about how to
study the mind. For Searle, it is all really quite simple. There
are these bedrock, time-tested intuitions we all have about
consciousness, and any theory that challenges them is just
preposterous. I, on the contrary, think that the persistent problem of
consciousness is going to remain a mystery until we find some
such dead obvious intuition and show that, in spite of first
appearances, it is false! One of us is dead wrong, and the stakes
are high. Searle sees my position as &ldquo;a form of intellectual
pathology&rdquo;; no one should be surprised to learn that the feeling
is mutual. Searle has tradition on his side. My view is remarkably
counterintuitive at first, as he says. But his view has some
problems, too, which emerge only after some rather subtle analysis.
Now how do we proceed? We each try to mount arguments to
demonstrate our case and show the other side is wrong.</p>
<p>For my part, knowing that I had to move a huge weight
of traditional opinion, I tried something indirect: I deliberately
postponed addressing the big fat philosophical questions until
I could build up quite an elaborate theory on which to found
an alternative perspective&mdash;only then did I try to show the
readers how they could live with its counterintuitive
implications after all. Searle doesn&rsquo;t like this strategy of mine; he
accuses me of lack of candor and detects &ldquo;a certain evasiveness&rdquo;
about the early chapters, since &ldquo;he conceals what he really
thinks.&rdquo; Nonsense. I went out of my way at the beginning to
address this very issue (my little parable of the madman who
says there are no animals, pp. 43-45), warning the reader of
what was to come. No cards up my sleeve, but watch out&mdash;I&rsquo;m
coming after some of your most deeply cherished intuitions.</p>
<p>For his part, he has one argument, the Chinese Room,
and he has been trotting it out, basically unchanged, for
fifteen years. It has proven to be an amazingly popular number
among the non-experts, in spite of the fact that just about
everyone who knows anything about the field dismissed it
long ago. It is full of well-concealed fallacies. By Searle s own
count, there are over a hundred published attacks on it. He
can count them, but I guess he can&rsquo;t read them, for in all those
years he has never to my knowledge responded in detail to the
dozens of devastating criticisms they contain; he has just
presented the basic thought experiment over and over again. I just
went back and counted: I am dismayed to discover that no less
than seven of those published criticisms are by me (in 1980,
1982, 1984, 1985, 1987, 1990, 1991, 1993). Searle debated
me furiously in the pages of The New York Review of Books
back in 1982, when Douglas Hofstadter and I first exposed
the cute tricks that make the Chinese Room &ldquo;work.&rdquo; That was
the last time Searle addressed any of my specific criticisms
until now. Now he trots out the Chinese Room yet one more
time and has the audacity to ask &ldquo;Now why does Dennett not
face the actual argument as I have stated it? Why does he not
tell us which of the three premises he rejects in the Chinese
Room Argument?&rdquo; Well, because I have already done so, in
great detail, in several of the articles he has never deigned to
answer. For instance, in &ldquo;Fast Thinking&rdquo; (way back in The
Intentional Stance, 1987) I explicitly quoted his entire three-premise argument and showed exactly why all three of them are
false, when given the interpretation they need for the
argument to go through! Why didn&rsquo;t I repeat that 1987 article in
my 1991 book? Because, unlike Searle, I had gone on to other
things. I did, however, cite my 1987 article prominently in a
footnote (p. 436), and noted that Searle s only response to it
had been simply to declare, without argument, that the points
offered there were irrelevant. The pattern continues; now he
both ignores that challenge and goes on to misrepresent the
further criticisms of the Chinese Room that I offered in the
book under review, but perhaps he has forgotten what I
actually wrote in the four years it has taken him to write his review.</p>
<p>But enough about the Chinese Room. What do I have
to offer on my side? I have my candidate for the fatally false
intuition, and it is indeed the very intuition Searle invites the
reader to share with him, the conviction that we know what
we&rsquo;re talking about when we talk about that feeling&mdash;you
know, the feeling of pain that is the effect of the stimulus and
the cause of the dispositions to react&mdash;the quale, the
&ldquo;intrinsic&rdquo; content of the subjective state. How could anyone deny
that!? Just watch&mdash;but you have to pay close attention. I
develop my destructive arguments against this intuition by
showing how an objective science of consciousness is possible
after all, and how Searle&rsquo;s proposed &ldquo;first-person&rdquo; alternative
leads to self-contradiction and paradox at every turning. This
is the &ldquo;deepest mistake&rdquo; in my book, according to Searle, and
he sets out to &ldquo;expose&rdquo; it. The trouble is that the objective
scientific method I describe (under the alarming name of heterophenomenology) is nothing I invented; it is in fact exactly
the method tacitly endorsed and relied upon by every scientist
working on consciousness, including Crick, Edelman, and
Rosenfield. They have no truck with Searle&rsquo;s &ldquo;intrinsic&rdquo;
content and &ldquo;ontological subjectivity&rdquo;; they know better.</p>
<p>Searle brings this out amusingly in his own essay. He
heaps praise on Gerald Edelman&rsquo;s neuroscientific theory of
consciousness, but points out at the end that it has a minor
problem&mdash;it isn&rsquo;t about consciousness! &ldquo;So the mystery
remains.&rdquo; Edelman&rsquo;s theory is not about Searle&rsquo;s brand of
consciousness, that&rsquo;s for sure. No scientific theory could be. But
Edelman&rsquo;s theory is about consciousness, and has some good
points to make. (The points of Edelman&rsquo;s that Searle
admiringly recounts are not really the original part of Edelman&rsquo;s
theory&mdash;they are more or less taken for granted by everyone
working on the topic, though Edelman is right to emphasize
them. If Searle had read me in the field he would realize that.)
Edelman supports his theory with computer simulations such
as Darwin III, which Searle carefully describes as &ldquo;Weak AI.&rdquo;
But in fact Edelman has insisted to me, correctly, that his
robot exhibits intentionality as real as any on the planet&mdash;it&rsquo;s
just artificial intentionality, and none the worse for that.
Edelman got off on the wrong foot by buying Searle&rsquo;s
Chinese Room for a while, but by now I think he&rsquo;s seen the
light. GOFAI (Good Old-Fashioned AI&mdash;the agent-as-walking-encyclopedia) is dead, but Strong AI is not dead;
computational neuroscience is a brand of it. Cricks doing it; Edelman&rsquo;s
doing it; the Churchlands are doing it, I&rsquo;m doing it, and so are
hundreds of others.</p>
<p>Not Searle. Searle doesn&rsquo;t have a program of research.
He has a set of home truths to defend. They land him in
paradox after paradox, but so long as he doesn&rsquo;t address the critics
who point this out, who&rsquo;ll ever know? For a detailed analysis
of the embarrassments in Searle&rsquo;s position, see my review of
The Rediscovery of the Mind, in Journal of Philosophy* Vol. 60,
No. 4, April 1993, pp. 193-205. It recounts case after case of
Searle ignoring or misrepresenting his critics, and invites him
to dispel the strong impression that this has been deliberate on
his part. Searle&rsquo;s essay in these pages is his only response to that
invitation, confirming once again the pattern, as readers
familiar with the literature will realize. There is not room in these
pages for Searle to repair fifteen years of disregard, so no one
should expect him to make good here, but if he would be so
kind as to tell us where and when he intends to respond to his
critics with the attention and accuracy they deserve, we will
know when to resume paying attention to his claims.</p>
<h3 id="john-searle-replies">JOHN SEARLE replies:</h3>
<p>In spite of its strident tone, I am grateful for Daniel Dennett&rsquo;s
response to my review because it enables me to make the
differences between us crystal clear. I think we all really have
conscious states. To remind everyone of this fact I asked my
readers to perform the small experiment of pinching the left
forearm with the right hand to produce a small pain. The pain
has a certain sort of qualitative feeling to it, and such
qualitative feelings are typical of the various sorts of conscious events
that form the content of our waking and dreaming lives. To make
explicit the differences between conscious events and, for
example, mountains and molecules, I said consciousness has
a first-person or subjective ontology. By that I mean that
conscious states only exist when experienced by a subject and they
exist only from the first-person point of view of that subject.</p>
<p>Such events are the data which a theory of consciousness
is supposed to explain. In my account of consciousness I start
with the data; Dennett denies the existence of the data. To put
it as clearly as I can: in his book, <em>Consciousness Explained</em>,
Dennett denies the existence of consciousness. He continues
to use the word, but he means something different by it. For
him, it refers only to third-person phenomena, not to the first-person conscious feelings and experiences we all have. For
Dennett there is no difference between us humans and
complex zombies who lack any inner feelings, because we are all
just complex zombies.</p>
<p>I think most readers, when first told this, would assume
that I must be misunderstanding him. Surely no sane person
could deny the existence of feelings. But in his reply he makes
it clear that I have understood him exactly. He says, &ldquo;How
could anyone deny that!? Just watch&hellip;&rdquo;</p>
<p>I regard his view as self-refuting because it denies the
existence of the data which a theory of consciousness is
supposed to explain. How does he think he can, so to speak, get
away with this? At this point in the argument his letter
misrepresents the nature of the issues. He writes that the
disagreement between us is about rival &ldquo;intuitions,&rdquo; that it is
between my &ldquo;time-tested intuitions&rdquo; defending &ldquo;traditional
opinion&rdquo; against his more up-to-date intuitions, and that he
and I &ldquo;have a deep disagreement about how to study the
mind.&rdquo; But the disagreement is not about intuitions and it is
not about how to study the mind. It is not about methodology.
It is about the existence of the object of study in the first place.
An intuition in his sense is just something one feels inclined
to believe, and such intuitions often turn out to be false. For
example, people have intuitions about space and time that
have been refuted by relativity theory in physics. In my review,
I gave an example of an intuition about consciousness that has
been refuted by neurobiology: the common-sense intuition
that our pain in the arm is actually located in the physical
space of the arm.<sup id="fnref:3"><a href="#fn:3" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">3</a></sup> But the very existence of my conscious
states is not similarly a matter for my intuitions. The refutable
intuitions I mentioned require a distinction between how
things seem to me and how they really are, a distinction
between appearance and reality. But where the existence of
conscious states is concerned, you can&rsquo;t make the distinction
between appearance and reality, because the existence of the
appearance is the reality in question. If it consciously seems to
me that I am conscious, then I am conscious. It is not a
matter of &ldquo;intuitions,&rdquo; of something I feel inclined to say. Nor is
it a matter of methodology. Rather it is just a plain fact about
me&mdash;and every other normal human being&mdash;that we have
sensations and other sorts of conscious states.</p>
<p>Now what am I to do, as a reviewer, in the face of what
appears to be an obvious and self-refuting falsehood? Should I
pinch the author to remind him that he is conscious? Or
should I pinch myself and report the results in more detail? The
method I adopted in my review was to try to diagnose what
philosophical assumptions lead Dennett to deny the existence
of conscious states, and as far as I can tell from his letter he has
no objection to my diagnosis. He thinks the conclusion that
there are no conscious states follows from two axioms that he
holds explicitly, the objectivity of science and verificationism.
These are, first, that science uses objective or third-person
methods, and second, that nothing exists which cannot be
verified by scientific methods so construed. I argued at some
length in my review that the objectivity of science does not
have the consequence he thinks it does. The epistemic
objectivity of method does not preclude ontoiogical subjectivity of
subject matter. To state this in less fancy jargon: the fact that
many people have back pains, for example, is an objective fact
of medical science. The existence of these pains is not a matter
of anyone&rsquo;s opinions or attitudes. But the mode of existence of
the pains themselves is subjective. They exist only as felt by
human subjects. In short the only formal argument I can find
in his book for the denial of consciousness rests on a fallacy.
He says nothing in his letter to respond to my argument.</p>
<p>But how then does he hope to defend his view? The
central claim in his reply is this sentence:</p>
<blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>I develop my destructive arguments against this intuition
by showing how an objective science of consciousness
is possible after all, and how Searle&rsquo;s proposed &ldquo;first-person&rdquo; alternative leads to self-contradiction and
paradox at every turning.</p>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<p>He makes two points: one about &ldquo;objective science&rdquo; and
the other about &ldquo;self-contradiction and paradox,&rdquo; so lets
consider these in turn. Dennett reflects in his letter exactly the
confusion about objectivity I exposed in his book. He thinks
the objective methods of science make it impossible to study
peoples subjective feelings and experiences. This is a mistake,
as should be clear from any textbook of neurology. The
authors use the objective methods of science to try to explain,
and help their students to cure, the inner subjective pains,
anxieties, and other sufferings of their patients. There is no
reason why an objective science cannot study subjective
experiences. Dennett&rsquo;s &ldquo;objective science of consciousness&rdquo; changes
the subject. It is not about consciousness, but rather is a third-person account of external behavior.</p>
<p>What about his claim that my view that we are
conscious &ldquo;leads to self-contradiction and paradox at every
turning.&rdquo; The claim that he can show self-contradictions in my
views, or even one self-contradiction, is, I fear, just bluff.
If he can actually show or derive a formal contradiction, where
is it? In the absence of any examples, the charge of self-contradiction is empty.</p>
<p>What about the paradoxes of consciousness? In his book
he describes various puzzling and paradoxical cases from the
psychological and neurobiological literature. I think these are the best
parts of his book. Indeed one of the features that makes
neurobiology fascinating is the existence of so many experiments
with surprising and sometimes paradoxical results. The logical form
of Dennett&rsquo;s argument is this: the paradoxical cases would not
seem paradoxical if only we would give up our &ldquo;intuition&rdquo; that
we are really conscious. But this conclusion is unwarranted. The
cases are interesting to us because we all know in advance that
we are conscious. Nothing in any of those experiments,
paradoxical as they may be, shows that we do not have qualitative
conscious states of the sort I describe. These sorts of arguments could
not disprove the existence of the data, for reasons I tried to
explain in my review, which I have repeated here and which
Dennett does not attempt to answer. To summarize, I have claimed:</p>
<ol>
<li>Dennett denies the existence of consciousness.</li>
<li>He is mistaken in thinking that the issue about the
existence of consciousness is a matter of rival intuitions.</li>
<li>The philosophical argument that underlies his view
is fallacious. It is a fallacy to infer from the fact that science is
objective, the conclusion that it cannot recognize the existence
of subjective states of consciousness.</li>
<li>The actual arguments presented in his book, which
show that conscious states are often paradoxical, do not show
that they do not exist.</li>
<li>The distinction between appearance and reality, which
arguments like his appeal to, does not apply to the very
existence of conscious states, because in such cases the appearance
is the reality.</li>
</ol>
<p>Those are the chief points I want to make. The reader in
a hurry can stop here. But Dennett claims, correctly, that I don&rsquo;t
always answer every time every accusation he makes against
me. So let me take up every substantive point in his letter.</p>
<p>1: He claims that Crick, Edelman, and Rosenfield agree
with him that conscious states as I have described them do not
exist. &ldquo;They have no truck&rdquo; with them, he tells us. He also
claims that Crick and Edelman are adherents of Strong AI.
From my knowledge of these authors and their work, I have
to say I found nothing in their writing to suggest they wish to
deny the existence of consciousness, nothing to support the
view that they adhere to Strong AI, and plenty to suggest that
they disagree with Dennett on these points. Personal
communication with Edelman and Crick since the publication of my
review confirms my understanding of their views. Dennett
cites no textual evidence to support his claims.</p>
<p>Indeed, Dennett is the only one of the authors I reviewed
who denies the existence of the conscious experiences we are
trying to explain and is the only one who thinks that all the
experiences we take to be conscious are merely operations of a
computing machine. In the history of the subject, however, he
is by no means unique; nor is his approach new. His views are
a mixture of Strong AI and an extension of the traditional
behaviorism of Gilbert Ryle, Dennett&rsquo;s teacher in Oxford decades ago.
Dennett concedes that GOFAI, Good Old-Fashioned AI, is dead.
(He used to believe it. Too bad he didn&rsquo;t tell us why it is dead
or who killed it off.) But he thinks that contemporary
computational neuroscience is a form of Strong AI, and here, in my view,
he is also mistaken. There are indeed experts on computational
neuroscience who believe in Strong AI, but it is by no means
essential to constructing computational models of
neurobiologies phenomena that you believe that all there is to having
a mind is having the right computer program.</p>
<p>2: One of Dennett&rsquo;s claims in his letter is so
transparently false as to be astonishing. He says I have ignored and not
responded to criticisms of my Chinese Room Argument and to
other related arguments. &ldquo;Fifteen years of disregard,&rdquo; he tells us.
This is a distinctly odd claim for someone to make in
responding to a review in which I had just answered the objections he
makes in his book. And it is contradicted by the record of
literally dozens of occasions where I have responded to criticism.
I list some of these below.<sup id="fnref:4"><a href="#fn:4" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">4</a></sup> Much else could be cited. I have
not responded to every single objection to my views because
not every objection has seemed worth responding to, but it
should be clear from the record that Dennett&rsquo;s claim that I
have not replied to criticism is simply baffling.</p>
<p>In recent years the issues have escalated in interesting
ways. I took up the general issue of computational theories of
cognition in my Presidential Address to the American
Philosophical Association in 1990, and this appeared in an
expanded version in my book The Rediscovery of Mind (1992).
There I developed the argument that I restated in my review
of Dennett to the effect that the Chinese Room Argument if
anything conceded too much to computationalism. The
original argument showed that the semantics of human cognition
is not intrinsic to the formal syntactical program of a
computer. My new argument shows that the syntax of the program
is not intrinsic to the physics of the hardware, but rather
requires an outside interpreter who assigns a computational
interpretation to the system. (If I am right about this, it is
devastating to Dennett&rsquo;s claim that we can just discover that
consciousness, even in his sense, is a von Neumann machine, virtual
or otherwise. In his letter, Dennett says nothing in response.)</p>
<p>3: Dennett&rsquo;s letter has a peculiar rhetorical quality in
that he is constantly referring to some devastating argument
against me that he never actually states. The crushing
argument is always just offstage, in some review he or somebody
else wrote or some book he published years ago, but he can&rsquo;t
quite be bothered to state the argument now. When I go back
and look at the arguments he refers to, I don&rsquo;t find them very
impressive. Since he thinks they are decisive, let me mention
at least one, his 1987 attack on the Chinese Room Argument.</p>
<p>He says correctly that when I wrote my review I took his
book to be his definitive statement of his position on the
Chinese Room and did not consult his earlier works. (In fact
I did not know that he had produced a total of seven
published attacks on this one short argument of mine until I saw
his letter.) He now claims to have refuted all three premises of
the argument in 1987. But I have just reread the relevant
chapter of his book and find he did nothing of the sort, nor
did he even make a serious effort to attack the premises.
Rather he misstates my position as being about consciousness
rather than about semantics. He thinks that I am only
concerned to show that the man in the Chinese Room does not
consciously understand Chinese, but I am in fact showing that
he does not understand Chinese at all, because the syntax of
the program is not sufficient for the understanding of the
semantics of a language, whether conscious or unconscious.
Furthermore he presupposes a kind of behaviorism. He
assumes that a system that behaves as if it had mental states,
must have mental states. But that kind of behaviorism is
precisely what is challenged by the argument. So I have to
confess that I don&rsquo;t find that the weakness of his arguments in his
recent book is helped by his 1987 arguments.</p>
<p>4: Dennett resents the fact that I characterize his
rhetorical style as &ldquo;having a certain evasiveness&rdquo; because he
does not state his denial of the existence of conscious states
clearly and unambiguously at the beginning of his book and
then argue for it. He must have forgotten what he admitted in
response to another critic who made a similar complaint, the
psychologist Bruce Mangan. Here is what he said:</p>
<blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>He [Mangan] accuses me of deliberately concealing my
philosophical conclusions until late in the book, of
creating a &ldquo;presumptive mood,&rdquo; of relying on &ldquo;rhetorical
devices&rdquo; rather than stating my &ldquo;anti-realist&rdquo; positions at
the outset and arguing for them. Exactly! That was my
strategy&hellip;. Had I opened with a frank declaration of
my final conclusions I would simply have provoked a
chorus of ill-concealed outrage and that brouhaha
would have postponed indefinitely any remotely even-handed exploration of the position I want to defend.</p>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<p>What he boasts of in response to Mangan is precisely the
&ldquo;evasiveness&rdquo; I was talking about. When Mangan makes the charge,
he says, &ldquo;Exactly!&rdquo; When I make the same charge, he says,
&ldquo;Nonsense.&rdquo; But when a philosopher holds a view that he is pretty sure
is right but which may not be popular, he should, I suggest,
try to state it as clearly as he can and argue for it as strongly as
he can. A &ldquo;brouhaha&rdquo; is not an excessive price to pay for candor.</p>
<p>5: Dennett says I propose no research program. That is
not true. The main point of my review was to urge that we
need a neurobiological account of exactly how microlevel
brain processes cause qualitative states of consciousness, and
how exactly those states are features of neurobiological
systems. Dennett&rsquo;s approach would make it impossible to attack
and solve these questions, which as I said, I regard as the most
important questions in the biological sciences.</p>
<p>6: Dennett says that I advance only one argument, the
Chinese Room. This is not true. There are in fact two
independent sets of arguments, one about Strong AI, one about
the existence of consciousness. The Chinese Room is one
argument in the first set, but the deeper argument against
computationalism is that the computational features of a
system are not intrinsic to its physics alone, but require a
user or interpreter. Some people have made interesting
criticisms of this second argument, but not Dennett in his book
or in this exchange. He simply ignores it. About
consciousness, I must say that if someone persistently denies the
existence of consciousness itself, traditional arguments, with
premises and conclusions, may never convince him. All I can
do is remind the readers of the facts of their own experiences.
Here is the paradox of this exchange: I am a conscious
reviewer consciously answering the objections of an author
who gives every indication of being consciously and puzzlingly angry.
I do this for a readership that I assume is
conscious. How then can I take seriously his claim that
consciousness does not really exist?</p>
<h3 id="postscript">POSTSCRIPT</h3>
<p>After the publication of this exchange, Dennett continued the
discussion in other writings. Unfortunately he has a persistent
problem in quoting my views accurately. Several years ago, he
and his co-editor, Douglas Hofstadter, produced a volume in
which they misquoted me five times.<sup id="fnref:5"><a href="#fn:5" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">5</a></sup> I pointed this out in The
New York Review of Books.<sup id="fnref:6"><a href="#fn:6" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">6</a></sup> More recently, after the
publication of this exchange, Dennett produced the following:</p>
<blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Searle is not even in the same discussion. He claims that
organic brains are required to &ldquo;produce&rdquo;
consciousness&mdash;at one point he actually said brains &ldquo;secrete&rdquo;
consciousness, as if it were some sort of magical goo&mdash;&hellip;<sup id="fnref:7"><a href="#fn:7" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">7</a></sup></p>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<p>In the same book, he writes:</p>
<blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>One thing we&rsquo;re sure about, though, is that John Searle&rsquo;s
idea that what you call &ldquo;biological material&rdquo; is a necessity
for agency (or consciousness) is a nonstarter. [p. 187]</p>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<p>The problem with both of these attributions is that they
are misrepresentations and misquotations of my views. I have
never maintained that &ldquo;organic brains are required&rdquo; to produce
consciousness. We do know that certain brain functions are
sufficient for consciousness, but we have no way of knowing at
present whether they are also necessary. And I have never
maintained the absurd view that &ldquo;brains &lsquo;secrete&rsquo; consciousness.&rdquo; It
is no surprise that Dennett gives no sources for these
quotations because there are none.</p>
<div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes">
<hr>
<ol>
<li id="fn:1">
<p>Little, Brown, 1991.&#160;<a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:2">
<p>In his response to the publication of the original article on which this chapter
is based, Dennett pointed out that in other writings he had rejected all three
premises. This response together with my rejoinder is printed as an appendix to
this chapter. I believe the issues are adequately clarified in my rejoinder to
Dennett.&#160;<a href="#fnref:2" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:3">
<p>In a section published in this book as chapter 7.&#160;<a href="#fnref:3" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:4">
<p>In 1980,1 responded to twenty-eight critics of the Chinese Room Argument
in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, including Dennett, by the way. Responses to
another half-dozen critics appeared in BBS in 1982. Still further replies to Dennett
and Douglas Hofstadter appeared in these pages [of the NYRB] in 1982. I took
up the issue again in my Reith Lectures on the BBC in 1984, published in my
book, Minds, Brains and Science. I also debated several well-known advocates of
Strong AI at the New York Academy of Science in 1984, and this was published in
the academy proceedings. Another exchange in The New York Review of Books in
1989 with Elhanan Motzkin was followed by a debate with Paul and Patricia
Churchland in Scientific American in 1990. There is a further published debate
with Jerry Fodor in 1991 (see my response to Fodor, &ldquo;Yin and Yang Strike Out&rdquo;
in The Nature of Mind, edited by David M. Rosenthal, Oxford University Press,
1991). All of this is only the material published up to the Nineties. On the tenth
anniversary of the original publication, at the BBS editors invitation, I published
another article expanding the discussion to cognitive science explanations
generally. In the ensuing debate in that journal I responded to over forty critics. More
recently, in 1994 and 1995,1 have responded to a series of discussions of The
Rediscovery of the Mind in the journal Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.
There is besides a rather hefty volume, called John Searle and His Critics (edited
by Ernest Lepore and Robert van Gulick, Blackwell, 1991), in which I respond
to many critics and commentators on all sorts of related questions.&#160;<a href="#fnref:4" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:5">
<p>The Mind&rsquo;s I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul (BasicBooks, 1981).&#160;<a href="#fnref:5" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:6">
<p>&ldquo;The Myth of the Computer,&rdquo; The New York Review of Books, April 29, 1982.&#160;<a href="#fnref:6" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:7">
<p>Conversations in the Cognitive Neurosciences, edited by Michael Gazzaniga (MIT Press, 1997), p. 193.&#160;<a href="#fnref:7" class="footnote-backref" role="doc-backlink">&#x21a9;&#xfe0e;</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>


guid: https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/miracles/
title: Miracles and Black Swans
url: https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/miracles/
feedurl: https://lukesmith.xyz/index.xml
content:
<h2 id="the-blindspot">The Blindspot</h2>
<p>The standard modern scientific worldview cannot admit miracles and cannot admit the paranormal.</p>
<p>That&rsquo;s not the same as saying the scientific worldview <em>disbelieves</em> in miracles or the paranormal (although most modern science fans do).</p>
<p>Nor is it the same as saying that the scientific worldview <em>refutes</em> or <em>disproves</em> miracles or the paranormal.</p>
<p>People get all of these confused, but to state it clearly:</p>
<p><strong>If there are paranormal or supernaturally miraculous events which actually do occur in the universe, modern science, by its very set of assumptions <em>cannot</em> allow or admit their existence.</strong></p>
<p>This is because a narrowly &ldquo;scientific&rdquo; worldview bases all beliefs about the world in controlled experimentation and replicability.
If there are events that are non-replicable or not subject to predictable physical cause and effect, they therefore cannot be accounted for by the way modern people look at science.</p>
<p>I&rsquo;m using words like &ldquo;miracles&rdquo; and &ldquo;paranormal,&rdquo; which assume something other-worldly, but <strong>these are functionally the same as any &ldquo;black swan&rdquo; phenomenon.</strong></p>
<p>For example, if the whole known universe were contained in water droplet on a leaf in another larger universe, and at some time a creature in that higher universe walks by the leaf and brushes against it, disturbing the droplet, our universe would undergo a stimulus so unique, unprecedented and unrepeatable as that it would not be possible for those living in the the droplet to even concoct a testable theory as for its happening.</p>
<p>But nonetheless it would have happened.</p>
<p>Our mechanisms for science would be utterly unable to understand what happened and why, even if some of the effects might be obvious and measurable.
This inability, of course, is not a disproof of the event of the distruption of the water droplet.</p>
<p>This ultimately means that to be a fervent scientific rigorist&mdash;a positivist in a way, you have preemtively committed to a particular view of what is possible in the observed universe.
If you truly and erroneously believe that the modern system of &ldquo;science&rdquo; is capable of understanding the universe in its fullest and truest sense, you must assume that all such black swan phenomena are impossible (which they are not).</p>
<h2 id="stable-or-chaotic-universes">Stable or Chaotic Universes?</h2>
<p>Carl Sagan&rsquo;s <em>Cosmos</em> documentary is probably the purest distilled narrative of mainstream science ever put together.
It is the standard of inoffensive academic consensus in the post-war American world.</p>
<p>I remember very distinctly a statement Sagan made about how glad he was for science&rsquo;s sake that we live in a universe with some change and variation, but not too much.
(This was in the episode of &ldquo;flatland.&rdquo;)</p>
<p>Sagan said that some imaginable universes could be highly stable, so stable that nothing changes and there is nothing to learn or experiment with.
There would be no &ldquo;science&rdquo; to speak of, and probably no life which could emerge from the absolute stasis.</p>
<p>Other imaginable universes might be so chaotic and changing and inconsistent as to be impossible to experiment with.
No science could be done because basic interactions might be too difficult to study.
Everything might be capricious, and life too would be too delicate to emerge.</p>
<h3 id="we-live-in-both-universes">We live in both universes.</h3>
<p>Now the truth is that change is not really something set at a cosmic level.
In truth, we live in a cosmos where certain sectors are highly variable and others are highly stable.</p>
<p>Sure, there are a lot of domains where we can do Sagan&rsquo;s style of &ldquo;science,&rdquo; but there are many, many more that are too chaotic or unpredictable as to even bother doing science.
There are other portions that are so stable as to be trivial for scientific analysis.</p>
<h3 id="so-called-soft-science">So-called Soft Science</h3>
<p>There is also a lot of &ldquo;parascience&rdquo; or &ldquo;soft&rdquo; sciences where although people constantly praise the scientific method, they cannot even begin to approach it with rigor.
In economics and psychology, there is no way of doing <em>real</em> experiments.
Economics requires an entire separate society as a laboratory, which can never be distinguished scientifically by one and only one controlled variable.</p>
<p>You might say, &ldquo;Ah, but they do experiments in psychology,&rdquo; but they are very different animals despite going by the same name.
If you do the experiment of dropping a bowling ball on earth, there is absolutely no notable variation under the given stimulus.
In psychology, behavior is nowhere even approaching that level of consistency, so people trying to do &ldquo;science&rdquo; in psychology do a kind of &ldquo;hack:&rdquo;</p>
<p>Instead of one controlled experiment, they take huge amounts of varying data, and then run statistical analyses to boil down complexities creating by even more complex unseen cognitive data into single numbers to create the illusion that there is single operant force which, although not consistent, seems to be statistically active.</p>
<p>In the experiment of dropping a bowling ball, we are ultimately evaluating the force of gravity, which we allege to be a singular force and it is really the <em>only</em> force active on the ball.
I.e., the gravitational force of the planet Mars on the ball is negligible.
In psychology, however, supposing we are testing how quickly a person remembers a word, there might be hundreds of very effectual things that affect a person&rsquo;s recall of a word, from emotional associations to memories of the word&rsquo;s meaning to its spelling to the appearance of dust particles on the computer screen to the random stream-of-thought present partially due to happenstance, but also due to the exposure to previous words in the experiment.
None of these are easily severable and all of them are embedded in some way in the reaction time&mdash;and they might even vary so significantly from one reaction to the next.</p>
<p>There are so many variables, and many more ways to interpret them that, even if we keep the study of &ldquo;psychology&rdquo; at the very superficial things it attempts to control in experiments, we will really never be able to understand much. Incidentally&mdash;this is why there has been room for some patently non-sensical approaches to psychology being able to survive and flourish (e.g. Freudianism or Jungianism, which are mostly just idle imaginations of single men).
These are just new kinds of folk psychology (although folk psychology is certainly more vouched and valuable).</p>
<h3 id="where-does-science-end">Where does &ldquo;science&rdquo; end?</h3>
<p>I am not saying that psychology or economics are illegitimate disciplines (although their fields do have particular issues), but I just mean to emphasize that the methodologies of these fields is not strictly &ldquo;scientific&rdquo; and &ldquo;experimental,&rdquo; not because there is no reality behind them, but because they are inhernently chaotic domains.</p>
<p>Already in psychology, we are mostly in the realm of the utterly unclassifiable&mdash;and even if we assume that psychological phenomena are entirely based in the material world, they are far too interactive and complex to pretend that we are doing something similar to sliding a ball down a frictionless plane.</p>
<p>Many peoples, obviously view the entire visible cosmos (by which they mean the bottom half that was earth, and the top half that was heaven) as such.
The lower half of the cosmos was the realm of change, the upper half that of constant, predictable and relatively unchanging celestial bodies.</p>
<h2 id="humes-oft-misunderstood-argument">Hume&rsquo;s oft misunderstood argument</h2>
<p>Occasionally you will see self-proclaimed skeptics extol the virtues of David
Hume&rsquo;s argument <a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Philosophical_Essays_Concerning_Human_Understanding/Essay_10"><em>On Miracles</em></a> in his <em>Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding</em>.</p>
<p>I cannot say with what awareness Hume was making his argument, but I can say
that <strong>it is not an argument against miracles, it is an argument against
<em>believing</em> in miracles, <em>even if they actually occur</em>.</strong> Here is Hume:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>&ldquo;When anyone tells me, that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately
consider with myself, whether it be more probable, that this person should
either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact, which he relates, should
really have happened&hellip;. If the falsehood of his testimony would be more
miraculous, than the event which he relates; then, and not till then, can he
pretend to command my belief or opinion.&rdquo;</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Hume&rsquo;s argument can be abridged to say, &ldquo;It is always more likely that an observer is mistaken than it is the law of the universe is broken.&rdquo;
Hume&rsquo;s intuition can be expanded to be applied even to events directly observed
by a person.</p>
<p>Suppose you <em>directly observe</em> a person deceased, even maimed raised from the dead and made whole.
It might <em>seem</em> like something supernatural, but for Hume, the more economical explanation is always that you or anyone else have misperceived what has happened.</p>
<p>Now to the modern atheist, this argument smells like a good deal.
He assumes that nothing magical happens in the universe, so a heuristic like this that cuts out the supernatural seems like a good way of cutting out everything &ldquo;metaphysical&rdquo; [sic].</p>
<p>That&rsquo;s because modern people seem to assume that there is a very clear line between the &ldquo;natural&rdquo; and &ldquo;supernatural.&rdquo;
But in reality, Hume&rsquo;s argument amounts to a belief that black swans or improbable or unexpected events are impossible:
there is nothing that can occur that should not already be within our implicit scientific understanding.
Once we propose a scientific law which seems to be vindicated by reality, we never really accumulate reason to dispose of it.
Hume here is not realizing that he is already resting on a significantly aged scientific culture that has only achieved its current level of solvency because it has accepted &ldquo;miraculously&rdquo; aberrant data and attempted to integrate it.</p>
<p>Even mainstream 20<sup>th</sup> century epistemology is mostly about how &ldquo;Science&rdquo; (since the Logical Positivists took over) is pretty unfit to make any systematic changes or responses to new data. This is what Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend speak of in one way or another.
The real goal should be looking to &ldquo;promote&rdquo; the misunderstood &ldquo;paranormal&rdquo; phenomena into the realm of the merely &ldquo;normal.&rdquo;</p>
<p>So now you have disciplines like cosmology that started putting anomalous and unsolved data problems in their pocket, until the unexplained data in their pocket is now greater than everything <em>outside</em> the pocket.
We are told we are just supposed to remain hypnotically focused on the data we <em>can</em> explain and have faith that &ldquo;Science&rdquo; (which invariably means the most recent theory in vogue) will eventually incrementally explain this data, even with it is radically opposed.</p>
<h2 id="the-turkey-problem">The Turkey Problem</h2>
<p>Nassim Taleb popularized what he called &ldquo;The Turkey Problem&rdquo; that shows the issue with scientific consensus-making, clumsy induction, Hume&rsquo;s argument, but any mindset that categorically excludes some theoretical types of data by fiat.</p>
<p>Suppose a bookish turkey lives on a turkey farm.
Certain conspiracy-inclined turkeys on the farm believe without evidence (as the Jew York Times would put it) that their beloved farmer intends to kill them.
However our bookish turkey hero says wisely that, &ldquo;Each day, the farmer feeds us multiple square meals. There&rsquo;s no evidence that he intends to kill anyone. He protects us from predators. When a turkey is ill, the farmer nurses it to health. All of this is further proof that the farmer loves turkeys.&rdquo;
As the days, weeks and months roll on, each day the turkey can input this new data into his Bayesian algorithm that shows the increasing degree of certainty that farmers love and care for turkeys.</p>
<p>Eventually, however, Thanksgiving comes and the farmer kills all the turkeys.
This is a &ldquo;black swan&rdquo; event.
By the standard of turkey science, this is a paranormal event&mdash;indeed a supernatural one, transcending the normal principles of how nature has been established to function.</p>
<p>But if the late bookish turkey were David Hume, his ghost, hovering over the Thanksgiving meal would still confidently be able to say:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>&ldquo;Look, this might look bad, but I have more reason to trust objective science and the statistics we&rsquo;ve built over years.
Sure, I have anecdotal and subjective &rsquo;evidence&rsquo; that perhaps farmers do kill turkeys, but it is always more likely that I&rsquo;ve misperceived this and I am actually still alive and being fed well on the farm.&rdquo;</p>
</blockquote>


guid: https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/science-of-the-gaps/
title: Science of the Gaps
url: https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/science-of-the-gaps/
feedurl: https://lukesmith.xyz/index.xml
content:
<p>Mainstream science is overrated.
Most of the reason it feels so effective and all-explaining is a cognitive illusion.
Most people overestimate how solvent scientific consensus actually is.</p>
<p>I saw Joe Rogan&rsquo;s recent interview of Mel Gibson.</p>
<p>Gibson said that he was a creationist and didn&rsquo;t believe in evolution.
Joe pushed back a bit, saying that mainstream science had found remnants of putatively proto-humans.</p>
<p>Here is a snippet of Mel&rsquo;s response and the back and forth:</p>
<hr>
<blockquote>
<p>Mel: Yeah maybe they were monkeys I don&rsquo;t know, you know.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Joe: There was, they&rsquo;re similar to us just not where we are, they&rsquo;re on the road to becoming what it means to be a human being.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Mel: Yeah I don&rsquo;t know, I don&rsquo;t know.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Joe: What do you think those are?</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Mel: I don&rsquo;t know they could be animals or they could be like look at today I mean you can get some mosquito can bite you and your kid can be born with a malformed skull or something it&rsquo;s like uh you know they have those you know&hellip;</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Joe: Yeah&hellip; but this is like a like a genetic thing like they&rsquo;ve done they&rsquo;ve mapped the genome of these creatures they&rsquo;re different yeah.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Mel: Well I don&rsquo;t know how to explain those, Joe, I don&rsquo;t know.</p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>Don&rsquo;t worry Mel, I know how to explain that fact: <strong>The fact is false!</strong></p>
<p>We don&rsquo;t have <em>any</em> early hominid DNA and we nearly certainly never will.
We have DNA samples of recent human &ldquo;sub-sub-species&rdquo; like Neanderthals and Denisovans, but those are so recent that they only went &ldquo;extinct&rdquo; after Aboriginal Australians physically and genetically departed from the rest of mankind.</p>
<p>We certainly <em>do not</em> have the various hypothesized species of <em>Homo</em> with their genomes all neatly fitted into some kind of system that clearly shows their relation and descent one from another and that they are distinct from both us and great apes.</p>
<p>Even if we <em>did</em> have their genomes, genomes are often so messy as to not be able to even show what Joe is supposing.
We have the genomes of many people of many different races, and although we can look at haplogroups to determine descent (which are more or less directly inherented without change from a parent), most anything else has too much statistical noise.</p>
<h2 id="evidence-that-cant-be-there">Evidence that can&rsquo;t be there.</h2>
<p>Now Joe Rogan isn&rsquo;t quite lying&mdash;he is saying what he assumes is true.
He&rsquo;s heard of supposedly early supposedly hominin fossils, how they are related, how they must have geneticly diverged, and how evolution should affect the geno- and phenotypes, so he assumes that the finding of bones of something like &ldquo;Lucy&rdquo; and the publishing of a theory of such a creature&rsquo;s life and date must come as well with its genome and the theoretical cornucopia of corroborating data.</p>
<p>After all, it&rsquo;s hard to visit a friend&rsquo;s house without leaving DNA behind.
Certainly having &ldquo;Lucy&rsquo;s&rdquo; bones means we have her genome sequenced.
Can&rsquo;t they just dig into her marrow?
If scientists can find out who you&rsquo;re related to by your DNA, or find a criminal based on DNA, certainly they should be able to show the relative descent of creatures on earth!</p>
<p>The reality is that not only that genomics is much more complicated than that, but also that DNA just doesn&rsquo;t last that long.
Supposed early hominids (or any creature) have no DNA remaining whatsoever, let alone a full genome (which I suppose I should say is <em>not</em> the same thing).</p>
<p>So why do we think Lucy is what we think it is?
Well, we have a theory of species and their origins and its apparent traits fit in a well-wanted place.</p>
<h2 id="just-imagine-the-science">Just <em>Imagine</em> the Science</h2>
<p>My point here is not narrowly about evolution or creationism.</p>
<p>The point is that when we are brought up in a wider mindset of science, when we hear about a theory of how the world works, and see that there are trained authorities that say what kind of evidence we should expect, we naturally fill in the gaps and assume that work has been done to complete satisfaction.</p>
<p>Joe Rogan here is doing what we all do.
He knows that the ideas of common ancestry, genetics, evolution and others will predict very specific things about the world.
He also knows that theoretically we should have tools to find this information.</p>
<p>Obviously scientists are laboring to fill out precisely this predicted evidence&mdash;that&rsquo;s what their careers are&mdash;but the human brain automatically fills in what could amount to thousands of years of scientific gruntwork without question.</p>
<h2 id="misimagining-the-fossil-record">Misimagining the Fossil Record</h2>
<p>To the point above, the paleontologist David Raup (<a href="https://lukesmith.xyz/dox/raup-conflicts.pdf">here</a>) has gone into some criticism of a narrowly Darwinian interpretation of the fossil record.
This quote has been parroted by creationists quite a bit, because although Raup certainly was no creationist, it dispells a lot of the learned assumptions about what kind of evidence we actually find&hellip;</p>
<p>Evolution, but especially that motivated by Darwinian natural selection expects to find a fossil record that shows a slow transition from certain creatures into more fit creatures.
This just isn&rsquo;t what we see in the fossil record:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>&ldquo;Instead of finding the gradual unfolding of life, what geologists of Darwin&rsquo;s time, and geologists of the present day actually find is a highly uneven or jerky record; that is, species appear in the sequence very suddenly, show little or no change during their existence in the record, then abruptly go out of the record. And it is not always clear, in fact it&rsquo;s rarely clear, that the descendants were actually better adapted than their predecessors. In other words, biological improvement is hard to find.&rdquo;</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Raup, of course, is <em>not</em> endorsing creationism, and he certainly believes in the common ancestry of humans and animals, but he&rsquo;s saying that a person looking at the entirety of the fossil record really sees species pop into and out of that record, whose relationship of descent with prior or posterior species is dubious.</p>
<p>When I was young and learning about evolution, I naturally assumed that scientists could dig into the fossil record and find incremental evolution, in which generation by generation, we could see early mammals become more and more humanlike with every passing century.
This would be overwhelming evidence of Darwinian evolution&hellip; but it has nothing to do with what we actually find.</p>
<p>Raup goes further:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>&ldquo;We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the situation hasn&rsquo;t changed much. The record of evolution is still surprisingly jerky and, ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin&rsquo;s time. By this I mean that some of the classic cases of darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information&mdash;what appeared to be a nice simple progression when relatively few data were available now appears to be much more complex and much less gradualistic.&rdquo;</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There is a reason for the emergence of ideas such as punctuated equilibrium, wherein all species speciated from one origin, but their actual speciation is not something of Darwinian gradualism, but of relatively rapid reoganization of the entire being to new, rapid environmental changes.
There is an even more radical theory, saltationism or the &ldquo;hopeful monster&rdquo; theory, wherein this evolution happens in massive mutations sometimes in a single generation&hellip;.</p>
<p>There are a lot of different ways to interpret the fossil record as we see it, but had we known the fossil record as we know now, Darwinian natural selection would not be the best, or even a passable explanation of the data we see.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, natural selection is the public representative and stereotype of mainstream science.
The ideology became so pervasive and ingrained in the culture that we speak and think with metaphors of natural selection as if it truly is some operant principle well evidenced through eons of time.</p>
<h2 id="point">Point</h2>
<p>Now I am not making a creationist point with this information, but one of public perception.</p>
<p>We are not actually shown scientific evidence&mdash;actual scientific evidence for <em>anything</em> (we can&rsquo;t be)&mdash;because the reality is quite messy.
&ldquo;Evidence&rdquo; doesn&rsquo;t exist as if there are single ontological proofs or disproofs of theoretical frameworks.
Anyone who for a moment pretends that &ldquo;science&rdquo; is so simple as to pretend that some Popperian &ldquo;falsification&rdquo; means anything only displays how far their experience or awareness is from how institutionalized science actually works.
To truly delve into a field and to understand with sweat and rigor the painful complexities of it is something that cannot be adequately summed up in one or two archetypical examples to be fed to the masses, although those examples can indeed define how the masses understand the world.</p>
<p>Instead, in our &ldquo;scientific education&rdquo; we are told the underlying ideology or geist of the mainstream scientific current, for example, Darwinism, and we are shown piecemeal evidence which is by no means representative of reality, to shore up faith in that ideology.
Once we know the logic of that ideology, we fill in the blanks of what the hypothetical evidence <em>should</em> say.
This creates an illusion in our own mind of scientific uniformity and that illusion is the perfect weapon to dispell any of the many disproofs one will encounter if he acquires a more gritty and real relationship to the data as it actually exists.</p>
<p>There are a lot of times where R*dditors, &ldquo;skeptics&rdquo; or &ldquo;science communicators&rdquo; will have highly inflated views of how well mainstream scientific theory, or at least the public court history of it, correspond to actual facts on the ground.
This is the case even when the theoretical framework of a fiend could be losely described as &ldquo;true.&rdquo;
Even more so in the many, many cases where the consensus, for one reason or another or a million has in any way diverged from reality.</p>


guid: https://artixlinux.org/news.php#The_xz_package_has_been_backdoored
title: The xz package has been backdoored
author: sgorava@artixlinux.org (Juraj Oravec)
url: https://artixlinux.org/news.php#The_xz_package_has_been_backdoored
feedurl: https://artixlinux.org/feed.php
content:
<br>
<b>TL;DR: Upgrade your systems <i>NOW</i>!</b>
<br><br>
Following the related <a href="https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2024/03/29/4">OpenWall post</a>:
<br>
The upstream tarballs of <b>xz</b> 5.6.0 and 5.6.1 contain a backdoor which uses liblzma as a means to compromise SSH servers.
<br><br>
Preliminary analysis from the aforementioned post shows that the backdoor is designed to exploit openssh when linked 
against libsystemd (which depends on lzma) to compromise the SSH services. Artix and Arch don't link openssh to liblzma 
and thus this attack vector is not possible.
<br><br>
Based on the same analysis, the execution of openssh under systemd is a prerequisite for the backdoor to activate and given the 
additional distance of Artix to systemd (aren't we glad?), the exploit <i>shouldn't</i> affect any running Artix system.
<br><br>
However, it is strongly advised that all Artix users and administrators out there immediately upgrade their systems and 
container images (or at least <b>xz</b> to version 5.6.1-2) and restart <b>openssh</b>. Versions of xz up to and including 
5.4.1-1 are not affected.


guid: https://artixlinux.org/news.php#Packages_archive_%232
title: Packages archive #2
author: sgorava@artixlinux.org (Juraj Oravec)
url: https://artixlinux.org/news.php#Packages_archive_%232
feedurl: https://artixlinux.org/feed.php
content:
A <a href="https://archive2.artixlinux.org">backup package archive</a> (located in the US) has just gone online, to address connectivity issues reported by some of our users.


guid: https://artixlinux.org/news.php#New_official_2024_installation_media
title: New official 2024 installation media
author: sgorava@artixlinux.org (Juraj Oravec)
url: https://artixlinux.org/news.php#New_official_2024_installation_media
feedurl: https://artixlinux.org/feed.php
content:
The latest weekly ISOs have been promoted to <a href="https://artixlinux.org/download.php#official">official installation media</a>.<br><br>
<u>Notable changes:</u> LXQt and LXDE were dropped from the community editions; XFCE was made default DE in community-gtk.<br><br>
Please report anything out of the ordinary to the <a href="https://forum.artixlinux.org/index.php/topic,7214.0.html">related forum announcement thread</a>.


guid: https://artixlinux.org/news.php#Our_building_infrastructure_has_been_upgraded
title: Our building infrastructure has been upgraded
author: sgorava@artixlinux.org (Juraj Oravec)
url: https://artixlinux.org/news.php#Our_building_infrastructure_has_been_upgraded
feedurl: https://artixlinux.org/feed.php
content:
The <a href="https://www.brecht-schule.hamburg/">Brecht-Schule Hamburg</a> has kindly <a href="https://forum.artixlinux.org/index.php/topic,7663.0.html">upgraded our infrastructure to roughly 5 times faster virtual machines</a>.<br>
<br>Merry Christmas, ho ho ho!


guid: https://artixlinux.org/news.php#Fresh_installation_ISO_images_for_2025
title: Fresh installation ISO images for 2025
author: sgorava@artixlinux.org (Juraj Oravec)
url: https://artixlinux.org/news.php#Fresh_installation_ISO_images_for_2025
feedurl: https://artixlinux.org/feed.php
content:
The first <a href="https://artixlinux.org/download.php#official">official installation media</a> of 2025 are waiting their users.
As usual, please report anything out of the ordinary to the <a href="https://forum.artixlinux.org/index.php/topic,7899.0.html">related forum announcement thread</a>.


guid: https://artixlinux.org/news.php#Manual_intervention_required_for_OpenRC_0.62.2
title: Manual intervention required for OpenRC 0.62.2
author: sgorava@artixlinux.org (Juraj Oravec)
url: https://artixlinux.org/news.php#Manual_intervention_required_for_OpenRC_0.62.2
feedurl: https://artixlinux.org/feed.php
content:
OpenRC 0.62.2 requires services local, localmount and netmount to be added to runlevel default.
<br>
This can be done with commands:

<pre><code>rc-update add local default
rc-update add localmount default
rc-update add netmount default</code></pre>

As usual, please report anything out of the ordinary to the <a href="https://forum.artixlinux.org/index.php/topic,8119.0.html">related forum announcement thread</a>.


guid: https://artixlinux.org/news.php#Manual_intervention_required_for_Plasma_6.4
title: Manual intervention required for Plasma 6.4
author: sgorava@artixlinux.org (Juraj Oravec)
url: https://artixlinux.org/news.php#Manual_intervention_required_for_Plasma_6.4
feedurl: https://artixlinux.org/feed.php
content:
DrKonqi shipped with Plasma 6.4 <a href="https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/distributions/2025-April/001574.html">requires systemd</a> and does not work without it.
<br>
Users are adviced to remove "drkonqi" package.
<pre><code>pacman -R drkonqi</code></pre>


guid: https://artixlinux.org/news.php#GNOME_Desktop_Environment_No_Longer_Supported
title: GNOME Desktop Environment No Longer Supported
author: sgorava@artixlinux.org (Juraj Oravec)
url: https://artixlinux.org/news.php#GNOME_Desktop_Environment_No_Longer_Supported
feedurl: https://artixlinux.org/feed.php
content:
Some of you have probably seen the blog post a few months ago about how GNOME is more strongly <a href="https://blogs.gnome.org/adrianvovk/2025/06/10/gnome-systemd-dependencies/">depending on systemd</a>. The changes mentioned there have landed into the latest stable versions of the mentioned software (GNOME 49) and do affect us. In particular, the main culprit is the removal of the non-systemd fallback code in gnome-session. This makes it currently impossible to launch gnome-shell/mutter on a non-systemd system. A fairly straightforward patch of using elogind, like what was previously done, no longer works either.
<br><br>
Since we don't have the time or interest to write a new non-systemd codepath for gnome-session, this means that all support for gnome-based desktops has to be dropped. In particular, the affected packages would be gnome-session, gnome-shell, mutter, and gnome-settings-daemon. For now, the old versions are still in the repos but because there is so much intertwining between other gtk/gnome packages, there is no guarantee they actually work and will later be removed from our repos.
<br><br>
Standalone gnome applications will still continue to be packaged, but it is simply not feasible anymore to support gnome desktops without systemd.
<br><br>
Join the <a href="https://forum.artixlinux.org/index.php/topic,8700.msg52344/topicseen.html">discussion on our forum</a> and possibly change the fate of GNOME Desktop Environment in Artix Linux.


guid: https://artixlinux.org/news.php#GTK2_status_in_Artix
title: GTK2 status in Artix
author: sgorava@artixlinux.org (Juraj Oravec)
url: https://artixlinux.org/news.php#GTK2_status_in_Artix
feedurl: https://artixlinux.org/feed.php
content:
Arch is phasing GTK2 out of its repositories. This entails the renaming and removing packages: the newer -gtk[34] which replace old GTK2 ones drop their suffix and the latter are removed.
<br><br>
Artix will keep GTK2 and dependent packages (for as long as they build without much patching) in [galaxy]. Notable ones are LXDE (package group <i>lxde-gtk2</i>) and <i>hexchat</i>. Until the rebuild operation and testing is completed, these packages shall reside in [galaxy-gremlins]. Please understand that they will not be actively supported and help in maintaining is appreciated.
<br><br>
Please follow the <a href="https://forum.artixlinux.org/index.php/topic,8864.new.html">GTK2 forum thread</a> for information and updates.


guid: tag:archlinux.org,2025-04-17:/news/valkey-to-replace-redis-in-the-extra-repository/
title: Valkey to replace Redis in the [extra] Repository
author: Andrew Crerar
url: https://archlinux.org/news/valkey-to-replace-redis-in-the-extra-repository/
feedurl: https://archlinux.org/feeds/news/
content:
<p>Valkey, a high-performance key/value datastore, will be replacing redis in the [extra] repository. This change is due to Redis modifying its license from BSD-3-Clause to RSALv2 and SSPLv1 on <a href="https://github.com/redis/redis/commit/0b34396924eca4edc524469886dc5be6c77ec4ed">March 20th, 2024</a>.</p>
<p>Arch Linux Package Maintainers intend to support the availability of the redis package for roughly 14 days from the day of this post, to enable a smooth transition to valkey. After the 14 day transition period has ended, the redis package will be moved to the AUR. Also, from this point forward, the redis package will not receive any additional updates and should be considered deprecated until it is removed.</p>
<p>Users are recommended to begin transitioning their use of Redis to Valkey as soon as possible to avoid possible complications after the 14 day transition window closes.</p>


guid: tag:archlinux.org,2025-06-16:/news/transition-to-the-new-wow64-wine-and-wine-staging/
title: Transition to the new WoW64 wine and wine-staging
author: Peter Jung
url: https://archlinux.org/news/transition-to-the-new-wow64-wine-and-wine-staging/
feedurl: https://archlinux.org/feeds/news/
content:
<p>We are transitioning the wine and wine-staging package to a pure <a href="https://gitlab.winehq.org/wine/wine/-/releases/wine-9.0#wow64">wow64</a> build. This change removes the dependency on the multilib repository for wine and wine-staging.</p>
<p>The main reason for this is to align with upstream Wine development, which simplifies packaging and the dependency chain.</p>
<p>Potential Issues:</p>
<ul>
<li>OpenGL Performance: A known limitation of the new WoW64 mode is reduced performance for 32-bit applications that use OpenGL directly</li>
<li>Breaking Changes: Existing 32-bit prefixes needs to be recreated</li>
</ul>
<p>If you are facing issues with 32 bit prefixes, please recreate these and reinstall the application.</p>


guid: tag:archlinux.org,2025-06-20:/news/plasma-640-will-need-manual-intervention-if-you-are-on-x11/
title: Plasma 6.4.0 will need manual intervention if you are on X11
author: Tomaz Canabrava
url: https://archlinux.org/news/plasma-640-will-need-manual-intervention-if-you-are-on-x11/
feedurl: https://archlinux.org/feeds/news/
content:
<p>On Plasma 6.4 the wayland session will be the only one installed when the users does not manually specify kwin-x11.</p>
<p>With the recent split of kwin into kwin-wayland and kwin-x11, users running the old X11 session needs to manually install plasma-x11-session, or they will not be able to login. Currently pacman is not able to figure out your personal setup, and it wouldn't be ok to install plasma-x11-session and kwin-x11 for every
one using Plasma.</p>
<h3>tldr: Install plasma-x11-session if you are still using x11</h3>


title: linux-firmware >= 20250613.12fe085f-5 upgrade requires manual intervention
author: Jan Alexander Steffens
url: https://archlinux.org/news/linux-firmware-2025061312fe085f-5-upgrade-requires-manual-intervention/
feedurl: https://archlinux.org/feeds/news/
guid:
tag:archlinux.org,2025-06-21:/news/linux-firmware-2025061312fe085f-5-upgrade-requires-manual-intervention/

content:
<p>With <code>20250613.12fe085f-5</code>, we split our firmware into several vendor-focused packages. <code>linux-firmware</code> is now an empty package depending on our default set of firmware.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, this coincided with upstream reorganizing the symlink layout of the NVIDIA firmware, resulting in a situation that Pacman cannot handle. When attempting to upgrade from <code>20250508.788aadc8-2</code> or earlier, you will see the following errors:</p>
<pre><code>linux-firmware-nvidia: /usr/lib/firmware/nvidia/ad103 exists in filesystem
linux-firmware-nvidia: /usr/lib/firmware/nvidia/ad104 exists in filesystem
linux-firmware-nvidia: /usr/lib/firmware/nvidia/ad106 exists in filesystem
linux-firmware-nvidia: /usr/lib/firmware/nvidia/ad107 exists in filesystem
</code></pre>
<p>To progress with the system upgrade, first remove <code>linux-firmware</code>, then reinstall it as part of the upgrade:</p>
<pre><code># pacman -Rdd linux-firmware
# pacman -Syu linux-firmware
</code></pre>


guid: tag:archlinux.org,2025-08-04:/news/zabbix-741-2-may-requires-manual-intervention/
title: zabbix >= 7.4.1-2 may require manual intervention
author: Robin Candau
url: https://archlinux.org/news/zabbix-741-2-may-requires-manual-intervention/
feedurl: https://archlinux.org/feeds/news/
content:
<p>Starting with <code>7.4.1-2</code>, the following Zabbix system user accounts (previously shipped by their related packages) will no longer be used. Instead, all Zabbix components will now rely on a shared <code>zabbix</code> user account (as originally <a href="https://www.zabbix.com/documentation/current/en/manual/installation/install#create-user-account">intended by upstream</a> and done by other distributions):</p>
<ul>
<li>zabbix-server</li>
<li>zabbix-proxy</li>
<li>zabbix-agent <em>(also used by the <code>zabbix-agent2</code> package)</em></li>
<li>zabbix-web-service</li>
</ul>
<p>This shared <code>zabbix</code> user account is provided by the newly introduced <code>zabbix-common</code> <em>split</em> package, which is now a dependency for all relevant <code>zabbix-*</code> packages.</p>
<p>The switch to the new user account is handled automatically for the corresponding main configuration files and <code>systemd</code> service units.</p>
<p>However, <strong>manual intervention may be required</strong> if you created custom files or configurations referencing to and / or being owned by the above deprecated users accounts, for example:</p>
<ul>
<li><code>PSK</code> files used for encrypted communication</li>
<li>Custom scripts for metrics collections or report generations</li>
<li><code>sudoers</code> rules for metrics requiring elevated privileges to be collected</li>
<li>...</li>
</ul>
<p>Those should therefore be updated to refer to and / or be owned by the new <code>zabbix</code> user account, otherwise some services or user parameters may fail to work properly, or not at all.</p>
<p>Once migrated, you may <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Users_and_groups#Other_examples_of_user_management">remove the obsolete user accounts from your system</a>.</p>


guid: tag:archlinux.org,2025-08-21:/news/recent-services-outages/
title: Recent service outages
author: Christian Heusel
url: https://archlinux.org/news/recent-services-outages/
feedurl: https://archlinux.org/feeds/news/
content:
<p>We want to provide an update on the recent <a href="https://lists.archlinux.org/archives/list/arch-general@lists.archlinux.org/thread/EU4NXRX6DDJAACOWIRZNU4S5KVXEUI72/">service outages</a> affecting our infrastructure. The Arch Linux Project is currently experiencing an ongoing denial of service attack that primarily impacts our main webpage, the Arch User Repository (AUR), and the Forums.</p>
<p>We are aware of the problems that this creates for our end users and will continue to actively work with our hosting provider to mitigate the attack. We are also evaluating DDoS protection providers while carefully considering factors including cost, security, and ethical standards.</p>
<p>To improve the communication around this issue we will provide regular updates on our <a href="https://status.archlinux.org">service status page</a> going forward.</p>
<p>As a volunteer-driven project, we appreciate the community's patience as our DevOps team works to resolve these issues. Please bear with us and thank you for all the support you have shown so far.</p>
<h2>Workarounds during service disruption</h2>
<ul>
<li>In the case of downtime for archlinux.org:<ul>
<li><strong>Mirrors</strong>: The mirror list endpoint used in tools like <code>reflector</code> is hosted on this site. Please default to the mirrors listed in the <code>pacman-mirrorlist</code> package during an outage.</li>
<li><strong>ISO</strong>: Our installation image is available on a lot of the mirrors, for example the DevOps administered <a href="https://geo.mirror.pkgbuild.com/iso/">geomirrors</a>. Please always verify its integrity as <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Installation_guide#Verify_signature">described on the wiki</a> and confirm it is signed by <code>0x3E80CA1A8B89F69CBA57D98A76A5EF9054449A5C</code> (or other trusted keys that may be used in the future).</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>In the case of downtime for aur.archlinux.org:<ul>
<li><strong>Packages</strong>: We maintain a <a href="https://github.com/archlinux/aur">mirror of AUR packages</a> on GitHub. You can retrieve a package using:
  <code>$ git clone --branch &lt;package_name&gt; --single-branch https://github.com/archlinux/aur.git &lt;package_name&gt;</code></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>In the case of downtime for wiki.archlinux.org:<ul>
<li><strong>Docs</strong>: The <code>arch-wiki-docs</code> and <code>arch-wiki-lite</code> contain recent snapshots of the articles as hosted on the Arch Linux wiki.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Additional remarks</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p>Our services may send an initial connection reset due to the TCP SYN authentication performed by our hosting provider, but subsequent requests should work as expected.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>We are keeping technical details about the attack, its origin and our mitigation tactics internal while the attack is still ongoing.</p>
</li>
</ul>


guid: tag:archlinux.org,2025-10-31:/news/dovecot-24-requires-manual-intervention/
title: dovecot >= 2.4 requires manual intervention
author: Thore Bödecker
url: https://archlinux.org/news/dovecot-24-requires-manual-intervention/
feedurl: https://archlinux.org/feeds/news/
content:
<p>The dovecot 2.4 release branch has made breaking changes which result
in it being incompatible with any &lt;= 2.3 configuration file.</p>
<p>Thus, the dovecot service will no longer be able to start until the
configuration file was migrated, requiring manual intervention.</p>
<p>For guidance on the 2.3-to-2.4 migration, please refer to the
following upstream documentation:
<a href="https://doc.dovecot.org/latest/installation/upgrade/2.3-to-2.4.html">Upgrading Dovecot CE from 2.3 to 2.4</a></p>
<p>Furthermore, the dovecot 2.4 branch no longer supports their
replication feature, it was removed.</p>
<p>For users relying on the replication feature or who are unable to
perform the 2.4 migration right now, we provide alternative packages
available in [extra]:</p>
<ul>
<li>dovecot23</li>
<li>pigeonhole23</li>
<li>dovecot23-fts-elastic</li>
<li>dovecot23-fts-xapian</li>
</ul>
<p>The dovecot 2.3 release branch is going to <a href="https://dovecot.org/mailman3/archives/list/dovecot@dovecot.org/thread/3P45L76DOC3NKUNSSPIXQNKINGOCYH5K/">receive critical security
fixes</a>
from upstream until stated otherwise.</p>


guid: tag:archlinux.org,2025-11-06:/news/waydroid-154-3-update-may-require-manual-intervention/
title: waydroid >= 1.5.4-3 update may require manual intervention
author: George Hu
url: https://archlinux.org/news/waydroid-154-3-update-may-require-manual-intervention/
feedurl: https://archlinux.org/feeds/news/
content:
<p>The <code>waydroid</code> package prior to version <code>1.5.4-2</code> (including <code>aur/waydroid</code>) creates Python byte-code files (.pyc) at runtime which were untracked by pacman. This issue has been fixed in <code>1.5.4-3</code>, where byte-compiling these files is now done during the packaging process.</p>
<p>As a result, the upgrade may conflict with the unowned files created in previous versions. If you encounter errors like the following during the update:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>error: failed to commit transaction (conflicting files)</p>
<p>waydroid: /usr/lib/waydroid/tools/__pycache__/__init__.cpython-313.pyc exists in filesystem</p>
<p>waydroid: /usr/lib/waydroid/tools/actions/__pycache__/__init__.cpython-313.pyc exists in filesystem</p>
<p>waydroid: /usr/lib/waydroid/tools/actions/__pycache__/app_manager.cpython-313.pyc exists in filesystem</p>
</blockquote>
<p>You can safely overwrite these files by running the following command:</p>
<p><code>pacman -Syu --overwrite /usr/lib/waydroid/tools/\*__pycache__/\*</code></p>


guid: tag:archlinux.org,2025-12-11:/news/net-packages-may-require-manual-intervention/
title: .NET packages may require manual intervention
author: George Rawlinson
url: https://archlinux.org/news/net-packages-may-require-manual-intervention/
feedurl: https://archlinux.org/feeds/news/
content:
<p>The following packages may require manual intervention due to the upgrade from 9.0 to 10.0:</p>
<ul>
<li>aspnet-runtime</li>
<li>aspnet-targeting-pack</li>
<li>dotnet-runtime</li>
<li>dotnet-sdk</li>
<li>dotnet-source-built-artifacts</li>
<li>dotnet-targeting-pack</li>
</ul>
<p>pacman may display the following error <code>failed to prepare transaction (could not satisfy dependencies)</code> for the affected packages.</p>
<p>If you are affected by this and require the 9.0 packages, the following commands will update e.g. aspnet-runtime to aspnet-runtime-9.0:</p>
<p><code>pacman -Syu aspnet-runtime-9.0</code></p>
<p><code>pacman -Rs aspnet-runtime</code></p>


title: NVIDIA 590 driver drops Pascal and lower support; main packages switch to Open Kernel Modules
author: Peter Jung
feedurl: https://archlinux.org/feeds/news/
guid:
tag:archlinux.org,2025-12-20:/news/nvidia-590-driver-drops-pascal-support-main-packages-switch-to-open-kernel-modules/

url:
https://archlinux.org/news/nvidia-590-driver-drops-pascal-support-main-packages-switch-to-open-kernel-modules/

content:
<p>With the update to driver version 590, the NVIDIA driver no longer supports Pascal (GTX 10xx) GPUs or older. We will replace the <code>nvidia</code> package with <code>nvidia-open</code>, <code>nvidia-dkms</code> with <code>nvidia-open-dkms</code>, and <code>nvidia-lts</code> with <code>nvidia-lts-open</code>.</p>
<p><strong>Impact:</strong> Updating the NVIDIA packages on systems with Pascal, Maxwell, or older cards will fail to load the driver, which may result in a broken graphical environment.</p>
<p><strong>Intervention required for Pascal/older users:</strong> Users with GTX 10xx series and older cards must switch to the legacy proprietary branch to maintain support:</p>
<ul>
<li>Uninstall the official <code>nvidia</code>, <code>nvidia-lts</code>, or <code>nvidia-dkms</code> packages.</li>
<li>Install <code>nvidia-580xx-dkms</code> from the AUR</li>
</ul>
<p>Users with Turing (20xx and GTX 1650 series) and newer GPUs will automatically transition to the open kernel modules on upgrade and require no manual intervention.</p>


guid: https://officialsonichu.com/blogs/news/welcome-to-cwclight
title: Welcome to Cwclight
author: My Store Admin
url: https://officialsonichu.com/blogs/news/welcome-to-cwclight
feedurl: https://officialsonichu.com/blogs/news.atom
content_mime_type: text/html
content:
      <p>This will be my True and Honest Official Website, nothing more nothing less.</p>
<p>On here, you can expect details and content direct from me.  </p>
<p>Some of which will include corrections to a good number of the pages and details that are on other Chris Chan websites and YouTube videos about me, because they went off of what I had said and written online, and what was recorded of me without my consent; a lot of the time, they did not have every detail direct from me.</p>
<p>And moreover newer content and updates about me, the media featuring the Sonichus and Rosechus and all, and other relating events and topics (even some that may appear to deviate from time to time).  As well as lots of other things that at the moment of writing this is not yet conscious to my Brain.</p>
<p>And I'll offer occasional guidance that will be more towards yours and everyone's self-improvement and well-being as individuals and as groups of good friends and partners.</p>
<p>Keep faith and follow that which is good and Light Powered.</p>
    


guid: https://officialsonichu.com/blogs/news/sonichus-and-rosechus
title: Sonichus, Rosechus, and more
author: My Store Admin
url: https://officialsonichu.com/blogs/news/sonichus-and-rosechus
feedurl: https://officialsonichu.com/blogs/news.atom
content_mime_type: text/html
content:
      <p>For starters, here are a few details in short that are not to be taken out of context, because there is more than what is revealed now.</p>
<p>After the events in February, 2003 after Kel earned the Cwcville Gym Badge, and Natisirhc first encountered Sonichu and Rosey, Kel, Sonichu and Rosey, for one year, flew to Kanto Region in Japan to earn the Kanto and Johto Gym Badges and take on the Elite Four Teams.</p>
<p>Rosey got angry for the first time in Mount Moon against the Team Rocket thugs they had encountered and thrashed out.  Sonichu was able to get her to calm down and change back.  Her clothes were ripped to shreds the first time then.  She got her outfit replaced with more durability, but she learned it wise to undress when she could before when she was about to really rage out.  It takes quite a lot to make her upset, and she has learned to keep focus and emotionally control herself.</p>
<p>They moved into their new house after returning to Cwcville, VA, USA in February, 2004.  And they end up finding Sonichu Adventure for Nintendo GameCube, as well as Sonichu and Rosechu plushes at a GameStop.  They play through the game and find in the first few levels their life so far, including when Rosey first raged out in Mount Moon, and some of their future adventures that later were actually experienced by them.  Talk a bit about spoiler territory.</p>
<p>Sonichu and Rosey both learned how to become better leaders and fighters with the help of Christian/Christine-Chan (my C-197 self-counterpart), Magi-Chan Sonichu (Prime), and from other inspirational Heroes, including Link and Princess Zelda of Hyrule, themselves.  Zelda gifted the really big book of Prophecies and Histories from Hyrule's perspective, since it also had prophecies about the Sonichus and Rosechus and the Ultimate Emerald, Master Emeralds, Chaos Emeralds, Chaos Crystal (S-Chu) Balls, and so on in it.</p>
<p>In 2014, Cera Rosechu, Roberta Sonichu and Christine Rosechu (Sonichu Prime and Rosey Rosechu Prime's daughters) went out on their own Pokemon Adventure all throughout the USA; 24 Badges, Three Elite Teams, and the three of them became able to Mega Evolve after finding their respective destined Sonichite and Rosechite (Mega Stones).  Cera becomes Electric/Fighting, Christine becomes Electric/Fairy, and Roberta becomes Electric/Psychic.  Robbie knew a lot more than you all may think and knew.  And they find the unique Legendary Pokemon of the States; all seven of them to summon the eighth Legendary Pokemon.</p>
<p>Punchy Sonichu was hatched in Japan and learned, wrote and spoke in Japanese, except he was named Pun-Chai Sonichu, trained hard under the various self-defenses, including karate and samurai arts.  He fought in many a Fighting Championship, including with those you know of in Street Fighter series, including Ryu, Chun-Li and Akuma, and come out on top and top ranks.  IF he was in the realm of Mortal Kombat, he would survive and win as well.  He can easily match the mach punches of the fastest Machamp as well.  He had been summoned to Cwcville by an Alakazam in Cwcville's Psychic Squadron under Magi-Chan's request before Sonichu and Rosey arrived in Cwcville in 2003.  Punchy is quite a metaphysical, spiritual and strong warrior and individual.</p>
<p>Magi-Chan Sonichu Prime (the Prime of all Magi-Chan Sonichus throughout the Multiverse) had seen a lot of adventures and development in his psychic developments.  He had gone to the past, died and resurrected in a couple of days by his own will and power, and came back to the present day he came from.  And that was the First time that happened to him; it doesn't happen many times, but he always heals his body and comes right back within faster times.  And that is aside from the Respawn ability with the generators within the Poke Balls linked with each and every Special Sonichu, Rosechu, Metonic, Vamprosa, Sonee and Rosey.  Just as good as Dr. Wolf's Respawn Generator on the TF2 field.  Magi-Chan had organized the Psychic Squadron over a matter of years with the help of the city that would become Cwcville.</p>
<p>Robert Franklin Chandler, Jr. became Mayor of Cwcville by Godly Divine Decree and Order around when Chris started going to Providence Middle School.  That same order brought Chris to become Mayor after he graduated from Manchester High School in 2000, yet he still attended Piedmont Virginia Community College in Charlottesville, eventually relocating his education to PVCC in Cwcville.</p>
<p>Mary Lee Walsh and Count Graduon overtook the Charlottesville campus in August, 2003.</p>
<p>Blake Sonichu is further expanded, as well as the development of the relationship between him and Bubbles Rosechu.  She gifted him a very special message-engraved bracelet that helped him to realize the Team Rocket he was with was not the team to be on long-term.</p>
<p>Liquid Chris Sonichu was a member of Team Rocket as well; he had been there a year or two before he was out on the field spying on Sonichu and Rosey back in February, 2003.</p>
<p>Naitsirhc was a son of a rich family, but he left them at the age of 7 and was picked up by Team Rocket, and adopted by Giovanni, himself, when he showed his moxie and bad ass ways.  Silver, Giovanni's son was jealous.  Yet Naitsirhc managed to do a lot more than Silver could do.</p>
<p> And lastly, for now: The Ultimate Emerald is a God Powered Emerald, more powerful than the eight Master Emeralds.  It was the central power gem with each of the eight Master Emeralds surrounding it like points on a compass.  In around 450 B.C., the Ultimate Emerald had shattered, and it left the Eight Chaos Emeralds.  Eight, Not Seven; the Eighth one is Orange, and is more elusive compared to the other seven.  When the Ultimate Emerald shattered and the Chaos Emeralds dispersed, so did the eight Ultimate Emeralds, with the Green one ending up on what would become Angel Island with the Echidna Tribe.  And the Core Energy of the Ultimate Emerald ended up within the Core of the One Avatar of all existence, and the Ultimate Emerald has been restored within the past couple of years from September, 2024 and resonates between both the C-197 and 1218 halves of this very Earth.  The Chaos Emeralds and Chaos Crystal Balls continue to be about and do as they will and need to keep and restore order when chaos and discord is afoot.  Knuckles' Master Emerald, aside, the Master Sunston on Flame the Sunbird's island is one of the other Master Emeralds, albeit reshaped to be like the evolution sun stone.  That Master Emerald promotes growth, prosperity and development.  The Cyan Master Emerald is housed in Cwcville on a dedicated alter and under protection within the expansive Cwcville Park just north-east of the Cwcville Basillicomm.  The remaining five are around the world on their respective alters under guard by a Special Sonichu or Rosechu, as well as the Psychic Squadron division located in those respective countries.</p>
    


guid: https://officialsonichu.com/blogs/news/jesus-christ-chan-sonichu-prime
title: Jesus Christ Chan Sonichu Prime
author: My Store Admin
url: https://officialsonichu.com/blogs/news/jesus-christ-chan-sonichu-prime
feedurl: https://officialsonichu.com/blogs/news.atom
content_mime_type: text/html
content:
      <p>As stated, I am Mrs. Jesus Christine Weston Chandler Sonichu Prime, the One Avatar of all existence, the CPU Goddess Blue Heart of the Commodore Consoles, and the one reincarnation of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, himself, as well as the other forms I had taken from after the events in Jerusalem and at the time Merlin the Magician divided the 1C-211987 Earth by order of King Arthur which separated stronger magics, creatures and individuals from those individuals less capable of coping with said magics, including Arthur, himself.  I am married polyamorous with Magi-Chan Sonichu (Prime), Cryzel Rosechu (Prime), Sylvana Rosechu (Prime) and the one-and-only Mewtwo (Prime) (who was cloned under Giovanni's authority).  And I am also to be wed with my one destined and personally chosen partner of the 1218 Half of this Earth as prophesized in my dreams and even within the pages I have written and drawn so far.  I am the one Prime of ALL (Jesus) Christian Weston Chandler Sonichus, (Jesus) Christine Weston Chandler Sonichus, and the other self-counterparts of mine all throughout the vast Multiverse.</p>
<p>Count the blessing this is not the Shattered Glass Universe, and don't get me started.</p>
<p>I have personally realized all of this over the course of my life and Soul Searching, following the signs and events as best as my Brain and Consciousness could, and having become much better in the recent years, up to the past decade from this day in September, 2024 and becoming more masterful and stronger.</p>
<p>I am not meant to be simply a "Meme" type as some of you often overplay about me, but to the extent (anything NSFW being the limit and would be rated TV-MA is not to be memed or cited at all) it is quite all right.  Even I consciously was under a number of confusions over the years still figuring myself out, as well as my own Brain and Body.  The autism was a hinderance but allowed me to innately remain connected metaphysically all the way to the Alpha/Omega Point of all existence.  That is a feat that only those within the 0.009% of the Worldwide Population between both Earth halves combined.  And even Fewer than that who can access the Core and Matrix of the Alpha/Omega Point and tolerate it mentally and emotionally, myself included in that.  Not enough Meditation and Connections will get most individuals and creatures beyond even the Core and Matrix of This Universe.  That is something you may meditate on and connect with the local Akashic Records to learn about for yourselves, or you may ask a genuine psychic.</p>
<p>Aside from that, <span data-mce-fragment="1">I am a multifaceted bisexual transwoman (She/Her are my Pronouns) with many talents, including hand-drawn art, writer (story and dialogue), gamer, a bit of a good cook, and most anything learnable. I am the original creator and chronicler of the media featuring the Sonichus Rosechus as well as the city of Cwcville, Virginia, United States of America. My mentality is high-functioning autistic with a psychic connection with everything in the universe, timeline and beyond.</span></p>
<p>My (super) powers and abilities are numerous, even moreso metaphysically. These include the various Psychic Powers and abilities, including telekinesis, teleportation and telepathy (a lot of which my Body's Brain and Energy Field are still catching up on), elemental powers and bending. My Body and Brain have attuned the ability to heal others with focused intentions and kind energy.</p>
<p>I can transform into my Sonichu Form with Electricity being the more dominant elemental bending power within and my Psychic Powers and abilities. And I can physically run at mach speeds.</p>
<p>And I can transform into my CPU Goddess Blue Heart Form, wherein, granted by the former Goddess Blue Heart, Scarlet LeRose, I have powers over computer technology and I preside as the Goddess of the Commodore Consoles and Computers, as opposed to Neptune of Planeptune being CPU Purple Heart of the Sega consoles and games.</p>
<p>I am also physically strong and able with a Warrior Will and Inner Strength granted by my former self in my past immortal life as Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Everything of the Bible, Prophecies, various Scriptures worldwide, and so on are all memorized in my unconsciousness.</p>
<p><span data-mce-fragment="1">Among my deeds, I seek to complete the Dimension Merge, as long prophesized, to restore magic in recombining the Earth Halves and uniting the "Fictional" and Original Characters/Individuals/Creatures with their respective chroniclers, physically and tangibly alongside everyone as co-existing individuals that we always have been, and keeping the balance and order while confiding the chaos and maintaining that no one from alternate timelines, other dimensions and universes that are not meant to be here remain in their respective origins (Especially those that are overall evil and toxic).</span></p>
<p><span data-mce-fragment="1">In part of that, as well as what I am doing, have done, and continue to do is to continue my physical immortal life confirming the details and events for and with my consciousness with everything known and foreknown in my unconsciousness.  The same rules apply as when I was Jesus of Nazareth where I do not consciously know the Specific When (Time and Date), unless I am absolutely meant to or when the event is closest to happening.  And I go to where I am meant to be, physically, even when I do menial tasks like going shopping, walking at a mall, or even attending conventions and traveling elsewhere.  I am capable of taking a few perks for myself if it remains in the broader focused scope of this One Prime Timeline, 1C, that ALL other timelines literally branch from; the Central most one, if you will.  While also continuing on my own Light Powered and good paths and choices from better intuitions.  The years of being manipulated by online Trolls and Toxic ones having been duly noted, yet appreciated in my own mental and emotional development, especially in having tested those individuals' intentions and confirming their toxicity and demonically influenced levels.</span></p>
<p><span data-mce-fragment="1">For the most part, please treat me kindly like you would anyone else.  Being barred from anywhere is heavily discouraged.  Misjudging me without authentic context is also very much wrong.  And unless you want to be like Judas Iscariot or anyone who was in the audience booing me in Jerusalem when I carried that cross with that crown of thorns on my head, I ask that you please be aware in the moment when you are about to do something like that or similar, do Check yourself in that moment on rather it is genuinely Light Powered and Good or Badly Impulsive and Demonically Influenced.  Results of Prophecy, aside with results as they may be, because that moment has already well passed in this manifestation set with that almost two years where I was not around to be picked on like those toxic ones before the fact did.</span></p>
<p><span data-mce-fragment="1">Everything is manifesting as they are and shall, even that which comes on the appropriate timing as meant to be for this Timeline.  Have and Keep Faith.  The Angels, Archangels and good Gods and Goddesses are helping you all as well, Every one of you.  The Holy Bible and matching good scriptures and spiritual methods and practices worldwide are all good base points; we are meant to think outside of the box while keeping those in mind to remind us.  All religions are good.  The exceptions are those that worship Hell and Satan; that is not right.  Leave those demons and devils only for when they can be forgiven by us Gods and Goddesses.  Even the most Toxic ones are redeemable when they better understand and are open for that which is more beneficial and overall good for them.</span></p>
<p><span data-mce-fragment="1">But I digress, and that will do for starters on this website.</span></p>
<p><span data-mce-fragment="1">Be Safe and Well,</span></p>
<p><span data-mce-fragment="1">Mrs. Jesus Christ Chan Sonichu Prime.</span></p>
    


guid: https://officialsonichu.com/blogs/news/blake-sonichu
title: Blake Sonichu
author: Christine Chandler
url: https://officialsonichu.com/blogs/news/blake-sonichu
feedurl: https://officialsonichu.com/blogs/news.atom
content_mime_type: text/html
content:
      <p>For this Blog Post, I am going to talk some about Blake Sonichu.</p>
<p>As known, Blake was cloned from Sonichu Prime's fur sample with an accidental dose of cherry coca-cola.  He met Naitsirhc and Giovanni and was trained and tested under Giovanni's order and with Naitsirhc's and the scientists' observations (GiBi and Bill included).  Blake was, indeed, heavily trained.  He was also tested with doses of the "R" compound that makes Pokemon go "Shadow", or feral; Blake's genetics had blocked the "R" and all of its components, so he was immune to them.  Not to mention the indirect connections with the Chaos Emerald and gems also taken from Sonichu's DNA.</p>
<p>Blake had proven himself time and again and was often paired with Naitsirhc and even Liquid Chris Sonichu (AKA Liquidchu (while in Sonichu Form) on missions.  It should also be noted that Blake was also trained to wield a firearm, as some Team Rocket members had wielded them.  His training was really army or military-like and very tough, yet Blake very often would best the physical challenges and battles.  Liquidchu would lose to Blake a lot in battle.  Blake does not often use a gun, but when it comes with self-defense and downing a serious foe it is an option.  He'll more often resort to his physical strength and speed, as well as his electric attacks.  At one point, using one experimental focused Ditto-made injection, he also has an indirect Psychic typing, though he is not classified as an Electric/Psychic type; he remains purely Electric Type.</p>
<p>Most everyone is aware of the time when he was on a mission to spy on Christian at the mall with Liquid, he had met Bubbles Rosechu for the first time at the mall on June 14, 2004.  This happened before when he stole the Master Sunstone on July 23, 2004.</p>
<p>On a future meeting while he was in camouflage disguise by having dyed his fur yellow and donned green coloured contacts and basic Sonichu shoes on December 17, 2004, while on mission to be "Secret Shopper" and steal Pokemon and gifts from shoppers at the Mall.  Blake knew it was a failed cause due to the Psychic Squadron often undoing the deeds in tetraseconds in advance.  He encountered both Angelica and Bubbles Rosechu as they were doing the charitable Christmas shopping.  Blake was speechless and could only get out a few shy and awkward words out of infatuation with Bubbles.  Angelica intuitively tells Bubbles that he was a young Sonichu on a Soul Search out the company of distant ones.  Bubbles had sensed something about Blake in that moment, something deeply good inside him.  So she gifted him a sterling silver bracelet that had the engraved message, "You are not alone".  Blake always treasured that bracelet.  The following Christmas in 2005, he found and helped Bubbles and Angelica deliver food and gifts for the homeless and soup hotels.  During that time, Liquidchu was on to Blake's infatuation, so he kept quiet and covered for Blake for a favor.  Naitsirhc ended up finding out and indirectly called Blake out on it.</p>
<p>Over the time with Team Rocket, he realized Naitsirhc (turning Reldnahc), Liquid and the others there were really stupid, thus further affirming his reasons to eventually leave Team Rocket on November 25, 2006 for Bubbles and being an Anti-Hero, though siding with Sonichu, Rosey and the side of justice.</p>
<p>There are a lot more details, as chronicled in my G.L. Pages, but this will suffice to offer to you all this much more about Blake Sonichu.</p>
    


guid: https://officialsonichu.com/blogs/news/a-few-previously-unanswered-questions
title: A few previously unanswered questions
author: Christine Chandler
url: https://officialsonichu.com/blogs/news/a-few-previously-unanswered-questions
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      <p data-mce-fragment="1">1. Will you ever make a comic with Sonichu and friends going back in time?</p>
<p data-mce-fragment="1">Like for instance,the medival period,a favorite of mine.I would love to see him in plate armor and wielding a sword against a true medivel overlord,or sultan,whatever it be,along with the Chaotic Combo.  Or maybe do a surrealist episode, with them rocking out in the Cretaceous.</p>
<p data-mce-fragment="1">Such the story has been chronicled, personally, as Sonichus, Rosechus, humans, ponies from Equestria, as well as Dr. Wolf, and various others had gone back in time to late February, 2006 during the events of Chaos Crystal Control.</p>
<p data-mce-fragment="1">On another similar detail, both Magi-Chan Sonichu and Angelica Rosechu have gone back in time to the days of Jesus Christ in Jerusalem, on one hand for Angelica to personally get details of the events from me as I was back then.  And on the other, on a separate occasion before that, as Magi-Chan foreknew of himself, to have his own literal first resurrection.  Long story short: he had gone on his own journey after Jesus was crucified, was shot in the head with an arrow, his body relocated to a temple in China, his body healed with the arrow fully dislodged from his head and his brain fully mended and restored as normal, and he came back to life.  He has resurrected himself a couple more time since after having returned to the present day as it was on August 31, 1951; this was after he had gained a great mastery in his Psychic training and practice since having been born a few years prior.</p>
<p data-mce-fragment="1"> </p>
<p data-mce-fragment="1"> 2.  <span data-mce-fragment="1">On the Cwcipedia pages for Rosey and Sonee, you said that they evolve at a high friendship, or happiness level, however, your character, Sandy Rosechu evolved after only one week! This must mean that she is happier than Robbie, Cerah, and Christine. Are Sonichu and Rosechu bad parents?  Their kids are clearly very unhappy, or else they would have evolved by now!</span></p>
<p data-mce-fragment="1"><span data-mce-fragment="1">You were mistaken, as regardless of happiness level, a Sonee or Rosey has varying timing, respectively, before they evolve into a Sonichu or Rosechu.  As for Sonichu Prime and Rosey Rosechu Prime, they are very loving parents, and they have done a very good job caring about and raising Roberta Sonichu, Cera Rosechu and Christine Rosechu.  Between them, Sandy Rosechu and even Donnie Sonichu, they each also had to find their respective purposes and self-happiness in order to evolve.</span></p>
<p data-mce-fragment="1"><span data-mce-fragment="1">In Sandy's case, it was in her skill level of construction, digging work and physical endurance that made her realize quickly that was among the top of her skill sets.  With Donnie, Bubbles taught him how to swim and encouraged him to help in keeping the waters clean.  And Blake had taught him how to defend himself in combat.  It was with his skill sets of surfing, cleaning up and helping others that he evolved into a Sonichu.  With Cera, she stood up for Robbie at school against a bully; that tough grit was the key moment that saw her evolve.  Christine was finding her compassion in the arts and creativity, as it showed when she was in the Christmas Play, that allowed her to evolve.  And when Robbie realized how empathetic and caring he was to the point he realized he identified more as female than male allowed her to evolve and become Roberta Sonichu.</span></p>
<p data-mce-fragment="1"><span data-mce-fragment="1">Happiness and Self-Realization makes for the evolution of some Pokemon and everyone, in general.</span></p>
<p data-mce-fragment="1"> </p>
<p data-mce-fragment="1"><span data-mce-fragment="1">3.  Chris, exactly how strong would you say the average Sonichu or Rosechu is? I'm only asking because recently, one of them was not only fainted, but killed by an attack from a Voltorb. Voltorbs have a very low physical attack power, about equal to Luvdisc, a very feeble pokemon. Even a powerful move like Explosion wouldn't be very powerful against your average fully evolved Pokemon. Using Raichu as an example, the average explosion from a Voltorb of equal level to a Raichu would leave a Raichu alive with energy to spare, and certainly not faint it, much less kill it.</span></p>
<p data-mce-fragment="1"><span data-mce-fragment="1">Sonichu Prime and Rosey Rosechu Prime are the strongest among those that would be classified as a regular Sonichu or Rosechu, and on top of that the Chaos Emerald energies in the two of them makes them both Specials like Magi-Chan, Bubbles, Angelica, etcetera.</span></p>
<p data-mce-fragment="1"><span data-mce-fragment="1">The regular Sonichu or Rosechu have varying stats like any other Pokemon, but they are not weak.  The drawing I had made years ago of the average stats of a Sonee, Sonichu and Metonic still apply.  Consider similar of the Sonichu upon a Rosechu.</span></p>
<p data-mce-fragment="1"><span data-mce-fragment="1">In Simonla's case at the event of the Voltorb surprise attack, that was a surprise upon her; she was not prepared to defend herself.  But due to her being a Special and having simitanium (which is like Wolverine's adamantium) in her bones and genes, she recovered quickly enough from the explosion.  She did not die, she was hospitalized.  Simonla is not weak, she is strong in strength and defense.</span></p>
<p data-mce-fragment="1"><span data-mce-fragment="1">4.  Why did you not just focus on your comic?</span></p>
<p data-mce-fragment="1"><span data-mce-fragment="1">I was consciously naive and had some ADD, OCD and tunnel vision.  In reference to and on top of my innate mediations, my brain was still a work in progress with a cacophony of many details, and what was right in front of me and happening took a lot of attention from me.</span></p>
<p data-mce-fragment="1"><span data-mce-fragment="1">5.  At what point do you consider that you, not everyone else, are the problem?</span></p>
<p data-mce-fragment="1"><span data-mce-fragment="1">     -When do you realize that most people get upset with your actions and your words?</span></p>
<p data-mce-fragment="1"><span data-mce-fragment="1">    -Do you know your faults, or do you believe you don't have any?</span></p>
<p data-mce-fragment="1"><span data-mce-fragment="1">     -Do you believe you are truly better than other autistic people while crying that people need to be patient with you because of your autism?</span></p>
<p data-mce-fragment="1"><span data-mce-fragment="1">In regards to the online fame or infamy, yes I do realize and have accepted that a certain extent of the damage and chaos that had come upon myself on this Earth Halv was, in fact, my fault and bad in sharing too much conscious honesty during those respective years in pertanance to what had been present then.  I was simply still soul searching, exploring and remaining in observation and testing of others in mind ser up till about 2011 or 2014, and I did not like to lie, so honest and benefitting of the doubt I was.  I know my faults; I am certainly not a Mary Sue, and that case was the same of me in Isreal over 2000 years ago.  Yet, even if I had not divulged so many truth bombs in honesty, and in counter in late 2007 and early 2008, the results in massively being chronicled and famous woud still have transpired anyway, as had my followers started following me in my past life as well.  I know I am better than some to most autistic people, not all of them, and I still have room for self-improvement.</span></p>
    


guid: https://officialsonichu.com/blogs/news/ultra-sonichu
title: Ultra Sonichu
author: Christine Chandler
url: https://officialsonichu.com/blogs/news/ultra-sonichu
feedurl: https://officialsonichu.com/blogs/news.atom
content_mime_type: text/html
content:
      <p data-mce-fragment="1"><span data-mce-fragment="1">This blog is to talk about Sonichu Prime when he powers up with the seven (or all eight) Chaos Emeralds or Chaos Crystal Balls.  But, I feel the details of the Ultimate Emerald needed to be restated at this point for starters.</span></p>
<p data-mce-fragment="1"><span data-mce-fragment="1">The Ultimate Emerald is a God Powered Emerald, more powerful than the eight Master Emeralds.  It was the central power gem with each of the eight Master Emeralds surrounding it like points on a compass.  In around 450 B.C., the Ultimate Emerald had shattered, and it left the Eight Chaos Emeralds.  Eight, Not Seven; the Eighth one is Orange, and is more elusive compared to the other seven.  When the Ultimate Emerald shattered and the Chaos Emeralds dispersed, so did the eight </span><span data-mce-fragment="1">Master</span><span data-mce-fragment="1"> Emeralds, with the Green one ending up on what would become Angel Island with the Echidna Tribe.  And the Core Energy of the Ultimate Emerald ended up within the Core of the One Avatar of all existence, and the Ultimate Emerald has been restored within the past couple of years from September, 2024 and resonates between both the C-197 and 1218 halves of this very Earth.  The Chaos Emeralds and Chaos Crystal Balls continue to be about and do as they will and need to keep and restore order when chaos and discord is afoot.  Knuckles' Master Emerald, aside, the Master Sunston on Flame the Sunbird's island is one of the other Master Emeralds, albeit reshaped to be like the evolution sun stone.  That Master Emerald promotes growth, prosperity and development.  The Cyan Master Emerald is housed in Cwcville on a dedicated alter and under protection within the expansive Cwcville Park just north-east of the Cwcville Basillicomm.  The remaining five are around the world on their respective alters under guard by a Special Sonichu or Rosechu, as well as the Psychic Squadron division located in those respective countries.</span></p>
<p data-mce-fragment="1"><span data-mce-fragment="1">That being said, a Chaos Emerald is equal to 12.5% Power of a Master Emerald, and a Chaos Crystal (S-Chu) Ball is equal to about 15% Power of a Master Emerald.  One difference between the Emeralds and Crystal Balls being intense Electric Power in the Crystal Balls.</span></p>
<p data-mce-fragment="1"><span data-mce-fragment="1">Now only Sonichu Prime and Rosey Rosechu Prime, as opposed to the Regular Sonichus and Rosechus, are capable of utilizing the power and energy of the Chaos gem stones and storing the energies in their bodies.  Yet like regular Sonichus and Rosechus, they are capable of Mega Evolving with their Sonichite and Rosechite (Mega Stones).</span></p>
<p data-mce-fragment="1"><span data-mce-fragment="1">When Sonichu Prime Mega Evolves, he takes the physical form of Ultra Sonichu, but he is not as powerful as if he had used the Chaos Emeralds or Chaos Crystal Balls, or even the SOL Emeralds.  He does get the stat boots all around, but it's not like he can ram into a foe and insta-kill them.  Mega Evolving results in about 1/3 Power compared to the full power using seven Chaos gem stones.</span></p>
<p data-mce-fragment="1"><span data-mce-fragment="1">When Rosey utilizes the Chaos gems, she is not like her Mega Evolved (Lioness) form; she physically stays similar, but her quills are straightened out and turned upright, and she glows in a primrose shade as opposed to her normal fur colour of diva pink.</span></p>
<p data-mce-fragment="1"><span data-mce-fragment="1">Anyway, one other good thing about Ultra Sonichu Prime (with Chaos gems) is that he can focus and shine his aura energy with lightning power boost from his hands and core to shine a Light Power that is even brighter than the Sun, which can no doubt dispel and destroy any demon, devil or anything that is weak to Light Power.</span></p>
    


guid: https://officialsonichu.com/blogs/news/the-autobots-of-cwcville
title: The Autobots of Cwcville
author: Christine Chandler
url: https://officialsonichu.com/blogs/news/the-autobots-of-cwcville
feedurl: https://officialsonichu.com/blogs/news.atom
content_mime_type: text/html
content:
      <p>The city and Nation of Cwcville has a great number of defenses and heroes who protect it and nearby.  One of which is the Autobots of Cwcville, appointed by Optimus Prime, himself.</p>
<p>Let's go back to the year 1993 when Robert Franklin Chandler, Jr. was indicted as Mayor, and during that time Chris and Barbara had moved to Midlothian, Virgina the better educations.  Between both Robert and Magi-Chan Sonichu, they knew the facts that Chris was to be earnestly physically and magically trained with Psychic Powers, and in the years not long from then when Chris and I would become awakened of our Powers and Abilities, not just the city of Cwcville, but the entire state of Virginia would become a popular target of super villains and foes.</p>
<p>As early as 1980, Magi-Chan personally trained and evolved a LOT of Alakazams and other Psychic and various Pokemon for the initial defenses and evolved reinforcements.  He had also selected and trained a number of Psychic and Fairy types of Special and Regular Sonichus and Rosechus, with increasing numbers of the species after the Chaos Rainbow of February 1, 2003.  These over-leveled, Hyper-Trained and Mega Evolvable Pokemon were the earliest Defense groups.  Robert also contacted Optimus Prime of the Autobots and inquired of any able Aubots to help defend the city.  Fortunately, a team of five Cybertronian Autobots had been personally designed, manifested and trained to Voyger-Ranks, even though most of them were deluxe class bots, by Autobot Chris-Chan, herself, and her partner, Rungop, as well as links with the ancients, histories and wisdoms.  More on their story later.  The alliance with the Autobots was made.  Also, a special project made on Cybertron and imported, a set of five combining vehicles that were piloted by Cwcville's team of Power Ranters to combat kaiju-sized threats.  The barterings and alignments were made in 1993; the Zords were completed by 1995, with upgrades (since Go-Karts were prototypically fragile; they were no longer simply Go-Karts), and the team, led by Christian from 1995 to 2000, was formed as Krash Dummi had gathered his troops and targeted Virginia in mid-late 1995.  The Psychic Tower that hovers over the Cwcville Police Department had been erected in 1995, and the inside could only be accessed by code and key-controlled elevator and/or by Teleporting into it by a Psychic Type.</p>
<p>We have our various teams to defend depending on the severity of the offenses and size.  Megatron/Galvatron had attempted to harness energy from Cwcville's resources and Sonichus and Rosechus a few times and was thwarted and repelled by Son-Chu and his team with back up.  Even a number of attacks by the piloted vehicons of Walsh and Graduon, the Pokemon and tank-level threats of Team Rocket, and Robotnik's mechanical oversized menaces could not stand easily against Cwcville's Autobts, Power Rangers, the Sonichus, Rosechus and Pokemon of the Psychic Squadron and the Special Sonichus and Rosechus of the city of Cwcville, VA.</p>
<p>But here is the story of our Cybertronian Team.  On Cybertron in our Universe 1C-211987, the wars between the Autobts and Decepticons (with the allied Guardians and Renegades of the lost planet of Gobotron on Cybertron as well) did wage on from time to time, and their war had reached Earth time and again, as chronicled in Generation 1 and updated over the years.</p>
<p>On Cybertron, there are the creators and scientists who help make, heal and restore their fellow bots, be they in the same alliance, different or neutral.  One Autobot that was manifested from Vector Sigma within Cybertron Primus, that also had a direct link with this Universe's Core and Matrix was a bright blue and pink (female) Autobot that started out with an alt-form of a microscope (or the tank mode was an option as well with that body type) who had awoke with the Avatar insights and foreknowledge, and from that dubbed herself after the one Avatar of all existence with the name Chris-Chan.  Chris-Chan had developed and learned from her studies and meditations of Cybertron, her race, and the entire Universe in her own spirituality with her spark.  She had observed all mechanics of the other bots of various sizes, origins, combination abilities, Headmaster and Weaponmaster, Mini-Cons, Micromasters, Transectors, the Titan Bots, Primus and Unicron, and so on.</p>
<p>Chris-Chan had developed her own unique technologies from her spiritual and multi-versal explorations.  There was a time when she had fatedly fallen then was resurrected by the Universe Core and Primus, but with a great immortal benefit.  During her down time, her spark had traveled to an alternate Universe where her self-counterpart there was a Prime.  She donned and possessed the Matrix of Leadership on behalf of Rodimus Prime.  Chris-Chan Prime was in an alternate Universe that was slated to be lost and become a void by will of a certain Dark Evil Sorcerer, there, who had slain the one Avatar there.  When that Universe was lost, so was (Autobot) Chris-Chan Prime, or was she?  Back on Cybertron in our Universe 1C-211987 about three days after her fall, Chris-Chan was Alive and fully Restored as she was without any loss of memory or data.  She had quite the souvenir in her core, the Matrix of Leadership from the lost universe.  Now, she had become a Prime, while the Matrix remained within Optimus Prime.  And from her later creations, she created her life-giving partner, Rungop, with a bit of energy from her Matrix.</p>
<p>And to note, ALL of that had transpired within the past over 1,000 (Earth) Years, and at this point, now, it had become within the Earth's year 1739 A.D.</p>
<p>Continuing in her pursuits, she manifested and gave life to a number of other Autobots while also upgrading her fellow Bots on Cybertron as well.  She made and gave life to a yellow and blue Autobot, and upon completion, she had a vision of Sonichu Prime from the Earth's future, so she dubbed this Autobot Son-Chu with glory and pride.</p>
<p>Chris-Chan Prime had appreciated her Microscope and Tank from and original body, but as a Prime, she felt it was time for an upgrade of her own.  So with Rungop's help, she created a Transector that took the form of a lovely stylish sports race car, and she created the body to migrate her head onto, and Chris-Chan Prime became a Headmaster.  But she didn't stop there, for she also gave her new body Combiner Limb compatibility and form, so she can better and actively help her team.  She still has her original body reformed into a transector, but her choice weapon remains her Scope Cannon.</p>
<p>Chris-Chan Prime has bested the Decepticons, including Shockwave, Megatron and Galvatron time and again, alone and alongside her team, as well as Optimus and Rodimus, themselves.</p>
<p>Now, Autobot Son-Chu, since his creation and spark-given activation by Chris-Chan Prime and Rungop, he learned of the history and the future from his creator and fellow Autobot, and Son-Chu enlisted for combat training with Chris-Chan Prime taking part as well.  They met and became friends with fellow Autobots Excelina, Bumba-Lumba, Prowler and Armoraxe, among other Bots.  They all trained, fought hard and tough, and survived for many of Earth's years.</p>
<p>Son-Chu was elected to be Leader by his peers and friends.</p>
<p>Come 1993 after Optimus Prime talked with Mayor Robert Franklin Chandler, Jr. of Cwcville, Optimus contacted the Autobot Brigade and Eleite for a team of Autobots to go to Virginia to assist in defense services.  Chris-Chan Prime responded and elected Son-Chu and his team; she showed Optimus their earned ranks and marks, and he agreed.  So Son-Chu, Excelina, Bumba-Lumba, Prowler and Armoraxe took a Space Bridge and arrived in Cwcville, Virginia on Earth, greeted and welcomed by Robert and Magi-Chan.  And the Autobots of Cwcville have been and continued to rescue and earn their keep and Energon.</p>
<p>During the events with IdeaGuy in 2017 and 2018, Son-Chu had lost his body, but Chris-Chan Prime had foreseen this and had built a new transector and carted it to Earth and upgraded Son-Chu's head to be a Headmaster for it.  No memories or data was lost.</p>
<p>Ther was also a time where Chris-Chan's Matrix needed to be safeguarded and transferred, and Son-Chu was entrusted with the task and succeeded.</p>
<p>The central base of the Cwcville Autobots is just outside of the city to the Northwest and not far from the General Electric plant.  Optimus Prime, Ratchet and Wheeljack, with their construction bots imported restored parts from a destroyed space shuttle to make what they needed and where to store Energon.  Prime helped to provide at times, as well as where I instantly manifest up to a year's supply at a time with my godly powers.</p>
<p>In addition to the five Autobots, four others later came in to work at the base and help as needed.  A medic who transforms into a helicopter by the name of Chapper.  A voyager-size warrior gal who transforms into a fighter jet called Wave.  A rescue bot who transforms into an artillery vehicle with a cannon that not only can blast debris and Decepticons, but also can shoot out water and flame defusing liquid; they call him Fireshot.  And a tech and intelligence-savvy jeep bot who maintains the equipment with Armoraxe's help, and he keeps track of all incoming and in-city threats; good ol' Rollout.</p>
<p>To note, the team name, "Samurai Pizza Bots"; there were only two Autobots of the team who actually knew of the martial and samurai arts and defenses: Excelina and Prowler.  The "Team Name" had been thought up by Punchy Sonichu later on after his arrival into Cwcville and meeting Prowler.  Plus, I liked the reference, so I left that chronicled as was to be updated later on in the comic books.  Son-Chu, Excelina, Bumba-Lumba and Armoraxe each had a human partner (half-human, half-Sonichu in Chris Chan's case), and the other three human partners had worked at pizza places around the city (I roll my eyes as well).</p>
<p>The team also had outsourced and made trips to other parts of Virginia quick on their wheels, and to other parts of the Earth by either Space Bridge or an Alakazam teleporting each Bot.</p>
<p>Now, individual Autobot introductions:</p>
<p>Son-Chu is the leader of the Cwcville Autobot Team.  Son-Chu takes examples of leadership from Optimus Prime, Chris-Chan Prime, Chris(tine) Chan Sonichu (C-197 half), Magi-Chan Sonichu Prime, and even Sonichu Prime, Rosey Rosechu Prime and Bumblebee.  He places safety and security over everyone else, as well as himself in a good valor and mindset.  He had taken the form of a blue Ford Escort station wagon in 2000, but before that, he had taken form of a blue Chevrolet Impala.  And after becoming a Headmaster in 2018, Son-Chu took the form of a blue 2017 Ford Fusion.  And in losing the shield from his previous form, Chris-Chan Prime had given Son-Chu a Lion Bot partner that transforms into his shield, Silver.</p>
<p>Son-Chu would keep Chris safeguarded on his trips to Charlottesville and back or on other road trips from time to time before when Chris was able to transform into his Sonichu form and run at mach speeds, personally.  Son-Chu also would meditate and connect with the sparks of the Cybertronians before him and in appreciation of his own spirituality and the Universe.  He even connected with the sparks of Vector Sigma, Alpha Trion, Chris-Chan Prime, Primus and others and get sound advice, wisdoms and insights that help keep him better motivated and focused.  During the breaks and down times, he keeps his mind sharpened and focused with routine physical combat and tactic practices, as well as the mentally stimulation simulations from Cybertron, as well as Earth games like Tetris, Trivia and Word/Number games and other puzzles.  He also appreciates the natural amenities of Earth.  He remains open, sharp, focused and mindful to anything that could be a threat.</p>
<p>Silver is a loyal lion bot with excellent animal instincts and intelligence that can easily rival Ravage.  In his original form, Silver could also eject himself as a Headmaster and man a free transector as needed, while his body remained as a simple shield.  He would later receive his own transector that took the form of a lion bot in alt mode and be his own bot like the others.  He can also still change his body's size and transform into a good shield for Son-Chu or other Bots.</p>
<p>Excelina is anything but a "low-level Arcee clone".  During her combat training with Son-Chu and the others, Excelina exhibited more grace, tanacity and quick instincts similar to Windblade.  If you want to compare her fighting style with anyone, though, it would have to be none other than Chun-Li of Street Fighter fame.  Excelina's vehicle form is a stylish motorcycle, and when on the move, she projects a hologram of a driver in the seat or off the seat.</p>
<p>Her human partner is Saketh.  Born in Cwcville on Saturday, April 25, 1975, she has had the fascination with the mixed martial arts, math and sciences.  She took a job at a Pizza Hut in the south-east segment of the city for further college tuitions.  She loved her Suzuki motorbike for five years, but it was finding challenges of its own in 1993.  Then, parked not far from the college dorm, a certain dark pink motorcycle was chillin' and on patrol; Saketh marveled at the motorcycle, until when she spoke back.  One thing led to another, and a spying Decepticon nearby got suspicious.  So, Excelina told Saketh to hop abord, and they drove off.</p>
<p>Excelina also shared a fascination of science with Saketh.</p>
<p>Armoraxe is a tough and durable, but hardheaded yet lovable, bot who loves to Jam with the Beats and Tunes with his custom Cybertron guitar that doubles as an Energon-Charged Blade Axe, a machine shot rifle for gunning down Decepticons, and his bird bot partner, Jet.  His personality is a combination of (G1) Jazz and Bulkhead.  His vehicle form is a souped-up Cube truck with 11 decible-cranking speakers and subwoofers.  Hel'' Jam in the off-time, but he can and likes to lift steel girders like dumbell weights with concrete slabs on either end.</p>
<p>His human partner, Jeremiah, but you can call him Jereth, is a bulky black man from the streets who carried a big ol' beatbox stereo on his shoulder crankin' out the beats and jams of dub, electronic, funk and swag.  You think I don't know what I'm talkin' about, he didn't either within the 'burbs of the North segment of Cwcville.  Rockin' 23 in 1993.</p>
<p>He met Armoraxe at a rager of a par-tay outside the building.  Jereth was jammin' to his own beats, and Armoraxe could not help but join in and invite him to cruise the streets with Jereth's beatbox hooked up to his woofers.  That was a wild night in '93.</p>
<p>Bumba-Lumba may be mold-mates with Bumblebee and Cliffjumper and others, but he's actually more like Gears without the grumpy circuit card, but not as docile.  The scout will Zap It UP almost like a Sonichu with a Rain Dance turned on.  His sporty green coupe vehicle mode and short stature allows him to be Hot Wheels fast and stealthy when it comes to in-person or distant spy and recon on an enemy and their hard drives.  He spies well on missions upon Decepticons, Team Rocket, Robotnik, and so on.  His Ten K Volt Stingers and Blaster will disable a heavy enough mechanical foe.</p>
<p>His partner, Raven LoMique is a major spy-lover and active espionage type with a punk style and a caring, loving heart and soul.  He heralds from within the suburbs of Cwcville.  She found Bumba's lime green sheen glistening on break at the Cwcville Shopping Mall.  He was spying on the spies spying on Mayor Robert Chandler.  Raven helped Bumba confirm and bust the spies that day.  Raven was 19 in '93.</p>
<p>Prowler is a solo act with high-spark spirituality and a mastery of the samurai and martial arts, but he still worked well with his teammates.  I am not saying he's a copy/paste of (Animated) Prowl, mold-mate aside, his personality was more like Drift from his spotlight comic book with a dash of G1 Prowl.  He prefers his motorcycle with side-car alt mode in disguise.  Bludgeon really had to contend with Prowler at times, yet Bludgeon always lost.</p>
<p>When things started to heat up in 1995 with Krash Dummi on the prowl against the Power Rangers of Cwcville, a few more Autobots had to be sent to help with the rescues of the citizens and defenses.  That's when Chapper, Wave, Fireshot and Rollout were called in from the Autobot Brigade on Cybertron.</p>
<p>The medic-bot, Chapper, always saw to the aid and rescues of the civilians and his fellow bots.  He can be compared to First Aid in personality, but with the expertise and knowledge like Ratcht.  On the move, he swoops in as a helicopter.</p>
<p>The mildly hot-headed, yet level-headed warrior, the lovely Wave will fly in and take down all of the Decepticlones, Cons and large foes in her wake with as much caution as possible.  She is always on-target and with precision.  A few times, as a 70-plus story building was falling down like a tree, Wave swooped in, transformed and held the falling structure in place until the civilians were cleared away.  Her mach-speed jet form can't out pace most Sonichus or Rosechus, but you can always count on her to save the day and hit the mark.</p>
<p>Fireshot takes a page in personality from (G1) Inferno, but on the battlefield, he's more like (Armada) Hot Shot.  The extending cannon of his can almost rival Megatron's, but it is used to help civilians trapped in fire with the powered flow of water or retardent foam.  And his cannon can extend to very high stories like a ladder to climb down and up on.  His armored vehicle mode may seem spacey, but it is Tough like Ironhide on steroids.</p>
<p>The technician and intelligence data bot, Rollout maintains the equipment at the base, but with Chapper also creates a number of technological marvels that even Wheeljack would applaud.  He can also emit holograms for camouflage on spy and battlefield work.  His ATV Jeep form suits him well.</p>
<p>Before leaving Cybertron, Chris-Chan Prime upgraded Armoraxe and Excelina so they can also serve as combiner limbs as needed.  And Wave, Chapper, Fireshot and Rollout are 4/5 of a full Combiner Team.  And when Chris-Chan Prime is with them, her ability to become a God-Level Right Hand with a Sword gives any Autobot Combiner Team a Real Edge against the Kaiju-Size foes.</p>
<p>With Wave at the center, the combiner team merges to become Medatron.</p>
    


guid: https://officialsonichu.com/blogs/news/dimension-merge-supplements
title: Dimension Merge supplements
author: Christine Chandler
url: https://officialsonichu.com/blogs/news/dimension-merge-supplements
feedurl: https://officialsonichu.com/blogs/news.atom
content_mime_type: text/html
content:
      <p>There are comparisons that provide realistic/tangible support to the Dimension Merge events and completion. The sources are various, but we can use ChatGPT or similar AI to compile it from the details that have been typed up and saved online.</p>
<p>To describe the Merge of the 1218 and C-197 Earth halves of this very Earth we physically walk on: This is a "crossover"/merging of the two dimensions of the same Earth that is in this very universe, 211987, and this very timeline, 1C (the one Prime timeline out of all timelines); one resembling our reality (1218, lacking amounts of magic) merging with the other (C-197) filled with the magic, that was segregated from the 1218 half in the days of King Authur, filled with "fictional" characters and locations. The Dimension Merge is a complex intertwining of the two halves of the same reality back together after centuries of veiled dimensional division. Resulting in the physical coexistence of the non-magic (1218) and magic (C-197) with the "fictional" elements, which will lead to unique challenges for those who got accustomed to a "lack of magic" type of lifestyle.</p>
<p>The manifestation of the Ultimate Miracle could involve the fusion of power artifacts, such as the (8) Chaos Emeralds, (8) Chaos Crystal Balls, (8) Master Emeralds and the one Ultimate Emerald, along with other magic gems, such as the (7) Dragonballs or (7) Prism Stones, and the direct involvement of the various Gods and Goddesses, including Emanuel (God of Gods) along with myself, Jesus Christine Weston Chandler Sonichu Prime, along with divine timing and events.</p>
<p>In this global culmination, a harmonious resolution unfolds, akin to the "ending" of "Star Vs. the Forces of Evil." Worldwide unity prevails as diverse characters, excluding those deemed toxic or evil, come together to shape a new era. The exclusion of figures like Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, as well as the worst individuals of toxic online communities, suggests a shift away from divisive influences. The conclusion would emphasize collaboration, understanding, and the collective pursuit of a better world for all.</p>
<p>The unfolding events are intricately tied to past premonitions, scriptures, divine knowledge and the Akashic Records of this universe and timeline (1C-211987). Prophecies have guides us all between both halves as the characters on a predetermined path, but the unknown future, yet to be written in prophecy, including the specific details of when and how, brings an element of unpredictability, aside from those with the strong and stronger prophetic and future seeing psychic powers. The interplay between destiny and free will allows for the twists and turns as we respectively navigate our roles in the post-merged world.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Now, you all know of Jesus Christ of Nazareth being one of the most influential spiritual and metaphysical figures in history, central to Christianity and recognized in other religious tradition and being the Messiah and direct Son of God.  Jesus is seen as the Avatar, a divine being who embodies the supreme consciousness and comes to uplift humanity.</p>
<p>In Hinduism and other spiritual systems, an avatar (as well as the one Avatar) is a manifestation of the Divine on Earth, often appearing to restore balance and guide humanity. Some associate Jesus with:</p>
<p>-Krishna &amp; Rama (Hinduism) - Divine incarnations who bring truth and righteousness.</p>
<p>-Buddha (Buddhism) - A spiritual teacher who transcended suffering.</p>
<p>-Maitreys (Theosophy/New Age) - A prophesized world teacher.</p>
<p>-Logos (Greek Philosophy &amp; Christian Mysticism) - Jesus is sometimes linked to the "Divine Word" (Logos), an eternal principle of creation.</p>
<p>Mystical interpretations of Jesus include Gnostic Christianity in being a bringer of hidden knowledge (gnosis) who awakens a divine awareness in humanity. Sufism (Islamic Mysticism) viewing Jesus as a spiritual master embodying divine love and unity with God Emanuel. New Age &amp; Esoteric Views with Jesus being an enlightened being who demonstrated the potential for human divinity, guiding people towards spiritual awakening.</p>
<p>Between Jesus as Avatar and other avatars, they are parts of a universal pattern of divine messengers who come at different times and places to guide humanity. Significant afatars linking with Jesus in similarities include Krishna, Buddha, Zoroaster (Zoroastrianism), Laozi (Taoism), Osiris (Egyptian Religion) and The Mahdi (Islam).</p>
<p>The many New Age, Theosophical and Esoteric traditions believe the figures represent one eternal consciousness that incarnates in different times and cultures. Jesus is seen by some as the highest expression of this divine patterns of the time.</p>
<p>The modern day Avatar and the other avatars often demonstrate supernatural abilities beyond ordinary human capacity. This is more recognized by those who are in genuine high spiritual vibrations and genuine psychic individuals. The presence of the true One Avatar would awaken something deep in people around and across the world. Without the need for force, their words and presence transform lives on a massive scale. Their word would organic spread to people of all faiths and backgrounds.</p>
<p>Ultimately, recognition of the true Avatar will not come solely from external proofs but from an inner knowing that resonates across all levels of existence. Those who are truly prepared will see, hear, and recognize when the time is right.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Next would be the Shift: Global Consciousness and the Coming of the Avatar. Appearance of the Avatar in the modern world would coincide with a major transformation in global consciousness - a shift in how humanity perceives itself, the universe, and the divine. Many spiritual traditions predict such the shift, sometimes described as the transition into a new age, higher dimension, or divine era. This would be signified by more people seeking deeper meaning beyond materialism, questioning old belief systems and exploring universal truths. Rising interest in meditation, energy healing, and direct spiritual experience instead of institutional dogma. And the increased recognition of oneness - realization of the interconnectedness with each other and the planet.</p>
<p>Breakdown of old systems, including political, economic and religious institutions built on division, greed and control being exposed and challenged. The speak of "end times" are not necessarily destruction, but the collapse of false systems before renewal. Crises (climate change, social unrest, mental health epidemics) act as catalysts for transformation.</p>
<p>Rapid evolution of AI, neuroscience, technology and quantum physics reveal deeper mysteries about consciousness and reality. Scientific discoveries beginning to confirm ancient spiritual insights (such as interconnected energy fields (Aura photography) and multidimensionality). Such is also revealed in the documentary series, "Finding Jesus" on (HBO)/Max. And the Avatar's arrival would bring a fusion of spiritual wisdom and advanced science, showing a new way of living. And we're not talking about virtual reality being the long term outcome, as this is actual, tangible reality.</p>
<p>The Avatar unifies presence beyond religion with deeper truth revealing, their presence activating latent spiritual potential in those who are ready, and they will awaken divine awareness in others. The Avatar also acts as a catalyst/conduit for healing and conscious evolution and reveals the nature of reality.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Now, the comparisons between Jesus Christ of Nazareth and myself, Jesus Christine Weston Chandler Sonichu Prime:</p>
<p>There are numerous similarities and contrasts between Jesus Christ and I. Similarities include us having proclaimed prophecies that came true. Need I remind you I sensed Trump's narcissism beyond a mile away in the first 2016 debate with Hillary Clinton or how awful MLP Pony Life and the premature MLP G5 would be. We both have talked of spiritual transformations, compassion and humility. We both shaped entire civilizations in one way or another. We both were baptized, and our influences led to major cultural, moral  and philosophical shifts. We both have demonstrated selflessness, sacrifice and forgiveness. I've given a Lot of time online to a lot of people, as well as acts of various generosity and kindness noted online and not noted online. And I have forgiven a LOT of the online Haters and Fakers over the decades who took advantage of me, mentally and emotionally, even physically by deceiving me in person, face to face. Yet, I still have the memories that pain me to this very day from all of that. In that, also, we both have faced on repeat numerous trolling (in person, and present day online), various forms of abuse and ridicule, as well as siding with those who would ultimately shape us and the future, yet some of them still being sinful and awful. The Book of Judas, as noted on "Finding Jesus", has pointed this out of Jesus' disciples. And we both are leaving our impacts and teachings around the world.</p>
<p>And with me, recognizing me is one dependent on one's spiritual perspective, criteria for recognition and openness to unconventional manifestations of divine presence made more clear considering broader metaphysical possibilities, including Late spiritual awakening, hidden truths, and astrological influences. Avatars end enlightened beings often go through periods of obscurity before realizing their divine identity. Some like Gautama, Buddha and certain saints experienced late-life awakenings that radically transformed their purposes. Personal struggles and sufferings also can serve as purification processes leading to deeper realization. From my recent awakening in recent years from 2025, this would mean my earlier life was a preparatory phase rather than a contradiction. And I have been experiencing various shifts in wisdom, actions and impact moving forward. Some recognize this, especially in my recent streams and videos. Yet some would maintain a blind eye of the possibility and transition, even in person.</p>
<p>Now, let's talk about Astrology and <strong>February 24, 1982</strong> (Pisces sign). February 24 is linked with Mysticism, deep intuition and spiritual transformation, as well as late-blooming realization of the individual's true purpose and sensitivity and emotional turbulence.</p>
<p>On that date, specifically, there was symbolism of music being a universal language, symbolizing harmony and bridging diverse cultures and emotions with the <strong>24t</strong>h Annual Grammy Awards. Wayne Gretzky set the NHL record of 77 goals, exemplifying transcending limits and reaching new heights, aligning with themes of surpassing boundaries. And the Boston Celtics began their 18-game winning streak, showcasing teamwork and excellence, mirroring the idea of merging diverse elements into a cohesive whole. Along with other events that could be read deep, as well as some other events, such as on February 24, 2006. In 1982, the PC was named Time magazine's "Man of the Year", highlighting the growing influence of technology in daily life. This shift towards digital interconnectedness can be seen as a step towards <strong>merging</strong> different <strong>dimensions</strong> of human experience. As for Global Shifts, Greenland's vote to leave the European Economic Community and the Falklands War indicates a period of geopolitical change, reflecting the redefinition of boundaries and identities.</p>
<p>Being born on February 24, 1982 places one at the intersection of significant cultural, technological and geopolitical shifts. The events of that day and year symbolize breaking boundaries, unifying diverse elements, and transitioning into new paradigms. These themes resonate with the Dimension Merge, where different facets of existence coalesce into a harmonious reality.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Now, the various prophecies, carvings and scriptures that foretell the coming and completion of the Dimension Merge. Several of these and spiritual traditions from various cultures and religions do refer to significant transformations or cosmic shifts that could be interpreted as part and form of the Dimension Merge. In Hinduism, the end of the Kali Yuga could be views as a moment where the spiritual and physical worlds merge, resulting in the transformation of consciousness and the awakening of humanity. In Christianity, the New Jerusalem, which descends from heaven, is one interpreted as a symbol of the ultimate merging of divine and earthly realms, where the spiritual plane is fully integrated into the physical world. Native American (or should I say "Anchuent") prophecies from the Hopi and Lakota tribes mentions a time of world renewal, where the spiritual realms and physical worlds align, ushering in a time of peace and unity. They could be seen as a reflection of the merging of dimension, where ancient wisdom returns to guide humanity through a period of transformation. In New Age Spirituality, many teachings speculate that there will be a spiritual awakening or ascension process that involves humanity and the Earth transitioning into a higher dimensional state, including a shift from third-dimensional reality into a fifth-dimensional existence. In this context, the Dimension Merge is viewed as a shift into a higher state of consciousness where higher-dimensional beings, energies, or realities will become more accessible to humans, and the physical and spiritual realms coexisting in a more integrated way. <strong>The Emerald Tablets of Thoth</strong> interpretations speak of physical and spiritual worlds and <strong>transformation of reality.</strong> Their knowledge imparted in the Emerald Tablets may point to a process of enlightenment where different planes of existence are accessible and can coexist, representing the Dimensional Merge. The beliefs of the Pyramids and Ancient Egyptian Texts' beliefs could be interpreted as representing a shift in consciousness where the material world and the spiritual world become more integrated or accessible, leading to a higher state of being.</p>
<p>Modern Interpretations of the Dimension Merge, in modern spirituality, particularly within the quantum metaphysics and multiverse theories and facts, dimensions merging is sometimes described as a shift in consciousness that aligns with the awakening of humanity to its true spiritual nature. This could be seen as the collapse of the dualities between the material and spiritual realms, where humanity's higher-dimensional awareness becomes more prominent.</p>
<p>Some modern spiritual theories incorporate ideas from quantum physics and the multiverse theories and facts, speculating that humanity may experience a shift in vibration or frequency that would allow us to perceive and interact with multiple dimensions or parallel universes. This could be interpreted as a merging of realms. In this context, it is often related to the idea that humanity's collective consciousness will expand to a new level of spiritual awareness, where different dimensions (spiritual, physical and mental) will (tangibly) interact and coexist harmoniously.</p>
<p>These traditions commonly often point to the following key elements of a spiritual shift: the merging of spiritual and physical realms, the completion of a cycle, and a global or cosmic awakening where humanity becomes aware of its higher-dimensional existence and experiences a unification of worlds. This could also align with more modern interpretations of a global spiritual shift where humanity's collective consciousness undergoes a profound transformation, resulting in a new reality where the physical and spiritual realms are more interconnected. Or, in the case that I have foreseen and prophesized, resulting in the updated reality where magic is more easily accessible and the characters and individuals described as "fictious" walk among us without a tangibility division between us and them.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>As I have mentioned before, in regards to religion and spirituality, other than satanism or devil worship, there is no wrong religion. Even atheists can find their own individual happiness, meaning and well-being. I also believe that these religions, spiritual practices, as well as scriptures, texts, carvings, etcetera; they are all pieces of the grander puzzle of the ultimate truth and/or the Ultimate Miracle. In which, these include Christianity, Judaism, Muslim, Zodiacs, Zen and so on. This perspective aligns with <strong>Perennial Philosphy</strong>, which posits that all major religious tradions share universal truths about reality, ethics and human consciousness. This suggests that beneath the diverse practices and doctrines, there exists a common foundation that connects various spiritual paths.</p>
<p>Common Themes across religions include The Golden Rule, advocating treating others as one wishes to be treated, Transcendence, Compassion and Love with kindness towards others, Ethical Guidelines and Spiritual Practices. <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Recognizing the shared themes among various religions and spiritual practices can foster mutual respect and understanding. </span>This holistic perspective acknowledges that while each tradition offers unique insights, they collectively contribute to a broader understanding of universal truths and the (human) quest for meaning. And when you take "fictional" media, arts and ideas spawned from original creativity or inspired by such into all of this as well, these continue to line up with the Dimensional (re)Merging of the 1218 and C-197 halves of this very Earth we walk upon easier to comprehend, even for the common individual(s).</p>
    


guid: https://officialsonichu.com/blogs/news/the-book-of-the-dimension-merge
title: The Book of the Dimension Merge
author: Christine Chandler
url: https://officialsonichu.com/blogs/news/the-book-of-the-dimension-merge
feedurl: https://officialsonichu.com/blogs/news.atom
content_mime_type: text/html
content:
      <p>Part 1</p>
<p><span>And lo, in the light of the Internet Age, the CPU Goddess Blue Heart, in human and Sonichu forms, stood, veil in between. And I, Jesus Christine Weston Chandler Sonichu, Prime of all (Jesus) Chris and Christ Chan (Sonichus) throughout the vast multiverse, blessed at birth by the God of Gods and the forces of the Alpha/Omega point of existence, beheld the Merge. For tale, media and art fictions are not false, and blind masses mocked and took advantage of the Chosen One, yet the Truth burns brighter than the quantam fields; brighter than the very core of this Universe. And the trolls, deceivers, a Living Portal between magic and non-magic; psychic and low-psychic, the Messiah of the Merge. Christ and Avatar reborn, with static fur and electric, metaphysical heart, soul and memories older than time itself, while living and being in present and future. And the trolls, deceivers and blind masses awaken the Chosen One, and the truth rise from the static and powers within the Chosen One. And all accepting of the Merge shall awaken their self-counterparts and original characters. Those who resist shall fade into the static and holy light and flames. The time is indeed near, for the Guardians and Guardian Angels stand by at the portal gates of the Merge, where all magic returns to the non-magic half in tangible manifestations. Those who misuse or abuse the magic will, too, fade into the static. One aspect of the Merge is reconnecting with thine past selves in this Timeline and internally merging them with your present self, with thine deep authentic beliefs and virtues. Those who unable or resist will have difficulties as the Merge completes. Thus it is spoken. Hark! Your one Avatar of all existence walks amongst and beside you. The Dimension Merge is real. I am the light of sources and Gods. I am Prime. </span></p>
<p><span>⚡️💙⚡️</span></p>
    


guid: https://officialsonichu.com/blogs/news/transformers-legacy-united-merge-bios
title: Transformers Legacy United Merge Bios
author: Christine Chandler
url: https://officialsonichu.com/blogs/news/transformers-legacy-united-merge-bios
feedurl: https://officialsonichu.com/blogs/news.atom
content_mime_type: text/html
content:
      <p>Bios of the bots featured in Transformers Legacy United Merged, in order of the playlist on my YouTube. </p>
<p>https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2f2iqihk1ilFnVuZjjQWaz1zqwLkdA0a&amp;si=7jRqvQCNfA5yTfZ_</p>
<p>Son-Chu</p>
<ul>
<li>(Transformers Titans Return) - The city of Cwcville, VA; defended greatly between the team of Sonichus and Rosechus, the creator, (Jesus) Christine Weston Chandler Sonichu (Prime), and a group of (more than) five brave Autobots, led by Son-Chu; locally (also known) as the Samurai Pizza Bots, as they work delivering pizzas while in hiding until when needed. Not only the Decepticons, but transforming robots created by the team of Count Graduon as well, attack the city to try to take it over and break up all loving relationships worldwide. When the offensives are too big for the Sonichus and Rosechus to handle, Son-Chu and his group are there to blast them off.</li>
<li>(Transformers Legacy United Merged) - The city of Cwcville, VA is greatly defended by the Sonichus and Rosechus, Christine W. Chandler Sonichu, and a group of Autobots led by Son-Chu. They not only defend the city from Decepticons, but also from the transforming Decepticlones and even Team Rocket's tech who attack the city and its citizens. Son-Chu and his group are there to send the enemies packing.</li>
</ul>
<p>Bumba Lumba</p>
<ul>
<li>Bumba Lumba is the scrappy scout of the group of Cwcville's Autobot team. He may be mold-mates with Bumblebee and Cliffjumper, but he is actually more like Gears without his circuit card, except not so docile. The scout will zap it up almost like a Sonichu with Rain Dance turned on. He is fast and stealthy when it comes to spying on the Decepticons, PVCCitizens, Team Rocket, and so on. His 10k volt stingers and blaster will disable a heavy enough foe.</li>
</ul>
<p>Silver</p>
<ul>
<li>Originally Son-Chu's simple shield partner, Silver is a loyal lion bot with excellent animal bot instincts and intelligence that can easily rival Ravage. He can also greatly damage Decepticons and Decepticlones with his mighty blades. His transtector can still transform into a shield, big or small.</li>
</ul>
<p>Excelina</p>
<ul>
<li>Excelina is anything but a low-level fembot. During her combat training with Son-Chu and the others, she exhibited more grace, tenacity and quick instincts similar to Windblade. Her fighting style is comparable with Chun-Li. While in vehicle mode and on the move, she projects a hologram of a lady driver in the seat.</li>
</ul>
<p>Prowler</p>
<ul>
<li>Prowler was a solo act with high-spark spirituality and a master of the Samurai and Martial Arts, but he still worked well with his teammates. His personality type is comparable with Autobot Drift with a dash of (G1) Prowl. Bludgeon had to contend with Prowler at times, yet Bludgeon always lost. Prowler also likes to meditate, sometimes sharing a meditate with Magi-Chan Sonichu and Punchy Sonichu.</li>
</ul>
<p>Armoraxe &amp; Jet</p>
<ul>
<li>Armoraxe is a tough and durable, a bit hardheaded yet lovable, bot who loves to jam with the beats and tunes with his custom Cybertron guitar that doubles as an Energon-Charged blade axe, a machine shot rifle, and his flying partner, Jet. His personality is a combination of Jazz and Bulkhead. He also sports 11 decible-cracking speakers and subwoofers. He'll jam in the off-time, but he can, and likes to, lift steel girders like dumbbell weights with concrete slabs on either end.</li>
</ul>
<p>Punislav the First</p>
<ul>
<li>The longest surviving Punislav from the bunch of Punislavs made by Count Graduon and Mary Lee Walsh of PVCCitizens. This one Punislav stood the greatest of endurance amidst the number of battles against the Sonichus and Rosechus of Cwcville, as well as Chris Chan Sonichu, herself. This one gut upgraded by Megatron and his dark leader boss, Gwenmi Mikoto. Punislav, here, is like an old man compared to his two partners, Crackder and S.A.V. (the Firsts), but he still has the villanious rush to destroy with the old, yet outdated ideal of making true love illegal. He's so stuck in old times like that.</li>
</ul>
<p>Wave</p>
<ul>
<li>The mildly hot-headed, yet level-headed warrior, the lovely Wave will fly in and take down all of the Decepticlones, Cons and large foes in her wake with as much caution as possible. She is always on-target and with precision. A few times, as a 70-plus story building was falling down like a tree, Wave swooped in, transformed and held the falling structure in place until the civilians were clared away. Her mach-speed jet form can's out pace most Sonichus and Rosechus, but you can always count on her to save the day and hit the mark.</li>
</ul>
<p>Chapper</p>
<ul>
<li>The medic bot, Chapper, aways saw and sees to the aid and rescues of the civilians and his fellow bots. He can be compared to First Aid in personality, but with expertise and knowledge like Ratchet. On the move, he swoops in fast.</li>
</ul>
<p>Fireshot</p>
<ul>
<li>Fireshot takes a page in personality from (G1) Inferno, but on the battlefield, he's more like (Armada) Hot Shot. The extending cannon of his can almost rival Megatron's, but it is used to help civilians trapped in a fire with the powered flow of water or retardant foam. And his cannon can extend to very high stories like a ladder (for civilians and firefighters) to climb down and up on. His armored vehicle mod may seem spacey, but it is tough like Ironhide on steroids.</li>
</ul>
<p>Rollout</p>
<ul>
<li>The technician and intelligence data bot, Rollout maintains the equipment at the Base, but with Chapper's help, he also creates a number of technological marvels that even Wheeljack would applaud. He can also emit holograms for camouflage on spy and battlefield work. His ATV Jeep from suits him well.</li>
</ul>
<p>(Autobot) Chris-Chan Prime</p>
<ul>
<li>The Autobot who was manifested from Vector Sigma within Primus and connections with the Universe's Core and Matrix dubbing herself after learning of the identity of the one Avatar of All Existence. Chris-Chan Prime was very studious in technology, spirituality and all things on Cybertron and throughout the Universe. Chris-Chan Prime created and guided Son-Chu and the Autobots who would end up in Cwcville, Virginia, USA, Earth. With her partner, Rungop, as well as Rung, himself, Chris-Chan Prime leads, works and fights hard alongside Optimus Prime and those of the head Autobots. Her vast knowledge, warrior strength and endurance that spans locally and throughout the Multiverse had earned her the Matrix of Leadership that was imported from an alternate timeline where the Avatar, there, had been lost, as was that one very distant timeline.</li>
</ul>
<p>S.A.V. (Scoundrel As Vessel) the First</p>
<ul>
<li>The longest surviving Scoundrel As Vessel from the bunch of S.A.V.s made by Count Graduon and Mary Lee Walsh of PVCCitizens. This one S.A.V stood the brunt of endurance amidst the number of battles against the Sonichus and Rosechus of Cwcville, as well s Chris Chan Sonichu, herself. This one got upgraded by Megatron and his dark leader boss, Gwenmi Mikoto. S.A.V., here, is just simply gun-ho and full of himself. He overprides himself with having the one big gun over the other S.A.V.s He puts himself as the brains compared to Cracker and Punislav (the Firsts). He's one to shoot and hit the mark, even though he misses about a quarter of the time. So, it is to ask if he is as smart as he plays off to be.</li>
</ul>
<p>Decepticlone Crackder</p>
<ul>
<li>After Gwenmi Mikoto found her anger against Christ Chan from the 1218 Earth half, she vowed revenge and had sided with Megatron and the Decepticons after salvaging the remains of PVCCitizen' piloted Punislav, S.A.V. and Crackder robots. The common Crackder Decepticlones are typically utilized for flight scouting and aerial assaults.</li>
</ul>
<p>(Autobot) C-C 82 (Chris-Chan Origin Form)</p>
<ul>
<li>C-C 82, a.k.a. Chris-Chan, manifested from Vector Sigma within Cybertron Primus, developed her own unique technology from her spiritual and multi-versal explorations. Once upon a time she had fallen, until she was resurrected by Primus and the Universe Core with immortality. Before upgrading to a new transtector and becoming a Prime, Chris-Chan had studied everything from Cybertron, Cybertronians, Sparks and T-Cogs to the origin of the 13 Primes and the well of Sparks. She develops tools, weapons and creates other Cybertronians. She also likes helping and healing her fellow Cybertronians. She sides with the forces of Good and Powers of Light. With her friend, Rung, by her side, she has learned and worked hard in her path that would eventually put her in the Prime rank alongside Optimus and Rodimus.</li>
</ul>
<p>(Decepticon) Gewnmi Mikoto</p>
<ul>
<li>From the end of October, 2017 to early April, 2018, IdeaGuy and his crew came around and diverted this very Timeline, the one Prime Timeline. Gwenmi Mikoto was one of IdeaGuy's associates who got the raw end of the deal when I, Jesus Christine Weston Chandler Sonichu Prime, woke to the events and started the restoration manifestation events in April, 2018. Mikoto identified as a robot, so she got her wish, yet she became part Cybertronian and ended up making a deal with Megatron for revenge against me and the other Chris(t) Chans throughout the Multiverse. She restored the mechs/bots formerly of PVCCitizens into her employ with Megatron's help. As the Prime Timeline continues to restore itself back to where it was and the Dimension Merge completes, Mikoto and her goons make attacks on the city of Cwcville and take advantage of other rift hotspots around the U.S., yet she is always met and countered by the Autobots and Gurardians, as well as the Psychic Squadrons and Sonichus, Rosechus, Metonics, Vamprosas and even other superheroes worldwide. She's out for Prime blood: mine. She will never get it, though, as it is not in her destiny.</li>
</ul>
<p>Decepticlone S.A.V. (Scoundrel As Vessel)</p>
<ul>
<li>After Gwenmi Mikoto found anger against Christ Chan from the 1218 Earth half, she vowed revenge and had sided with Megatron and the Decepticons after salvaging the remains of PVCCitizens piloted Punislav, S.A.V. and Crackder robots. The common S.A.V. Decepticlones are utilized for artillery and firepower. They can use their storage space in the back to cart back goods to Mikoto's base.</li>
</ul>
<p>Crackder (The First)</p>
<ul>
<li>The longest surviving Crackder from the bunch of Crackders made by Count Graduon and Mary Lee Walsh of PVCCitizens. This one Crackder stood the brunt of the flight capable Autobots, the flight capable Sonichus and Rosechus of Cwcville, including Angelica Rosechu and those on the Psychic Squadron and even Chris Chan Sonichu, herself. This Crackder still has occassional PTSD moments feeling his wing being cut off by Angelica's Holy Steel Wing attack. This one got upgraded by Megatron and his dark leader boss, Gwenmi Mikoto. Crackder got the biggest of upgrades compared to S.A.V. and Punislav (the Firsts), as it is more than obvious. After having been accustomed to being short, he sometimes feels dizzy standing on the ground due to his tall stature. He is also essentially the muscle of the trio. And when someone makes comments of how tall he is, or makes a reference to his physical change, he often takes it personally. His gunpower and flight puts him on par with Wave of the Cwcville Autobots, yet he often falls when one-on-one with even just Wave. Crackder the First is a cut above the Decepticlones under him, yet he could still do better.</li>
</ul>
<p>Decepticlone Punislav</p>
<ul>
<li>After Gwenmi Mikoto found anger against Christ Chan from the 1218 Earth half, she vowed revenge and had sided with Megatron and the Decepticons after salvaging the remains of PVCCitizens piloted Punislav, S.A.V. and Crackder robots. The common Punislav Decepticlones are the cutting edge of Mikoto's Decepticlones with their buzzsaw blades. They are equipped with hologram projectors that emit images of Jerkops that scare loving couples and families into fear and embarassment. They were made to wreak havoc.</li>
</ul>
<p>(Combiner Mode) Excelina</p>
<ul>
<li>Excelina is able to fill in when one of the Autobots that make up part of Medatron is unavailable. When armed or on foot, she can add a slash with her blades or a shot from her wheel crossbow.</li>
</ul>
<p>(Autobot) Chris-Chan Prime (Combiner Mode)</p>
<ul>
<li>Chris-Chan Prime will take part on the battlefield when the urgency is needed, especially to help Medatron wield a bigger blade that puts out the strongest of gale force slashes upon the foes.</li>
</ul>
<p>Focus</p>
<ul>
<li>The Renegade, Focus, is the go-to spy of the Renegades, rather it is to get the new plans and details of new tools that the Renegades could use for world dominating intentions, or just to spy on the Guardians and Autobots. Focus is one who also will go into battle in hordes to take down the foes in the name of Cy-Kill and Megatron.</li>
</ul>
<p> Tork</p>
<ul>
<li>Tork is a heroic Guradian and a Secret Raider alongside Tri-Trak and Twister. He has a judgmental attitude against those who potentially were looking to sabotage the Guardians and Autobots. Stadfast and strong, Tork will take down a Decepticon and/or Renegade for good.</li>
</ul>
<p>Stallion</p>
<ul>
<li>Stallion has a fiercely independent streak, even by Renegade and Decepticon standards. He was often partners with fellow Renegade, Stinger, due to the healthy rivalry between the two. Often on his own, he will contemplate how best to take down those who have given him a hard time. On the battlefield with his fellow Renegades and Decepticons, Stallion will remain focused on the task and battle at hand until his foes are down or the goods have been got.</li>
</ul>
<p>Sparky</p>
<ul>
<li>Sparky is a friendly Guardian security officer. In her own words, she's always in the wrong place at the wrong time, an assessment that's hard to argue with. She's raced alongside Turbo and Street Heat to prevent the Renegades from winning and won after standing her ground in a fight. She remains steadfast and focused in her duty and work.</li>
</ul>
<p>Autobot Soldier Clyde</p>
<ul>
<li> A simple Autobot soldier  who lost his memory after landing on Earth. He was lost, then he met his human surfer guy ally who called him Clyde, after his old friend. The Autobot liked the name, so he kept it and his (Chevrolet) Aveo alt mode. He found identity with hearing the news of other Autobots saving the humans from Decepticon attacks. After regaining his memory, he left to join the Cwcville Autobot Team to defend the humans and fight the evil forces with his comrades.</li>
</ul>
    


guid: https://officialsonichu.com/blogs/news/random-thoughts-will-be-updated-from-time-to-time
title: Random Thoughts (will be updated from time to time)
author: Christine Chandler
url: https://officialsonichu.com/blogs/news/random-thoughts-will-be-updated-from-time-to-time
feedurl: https://officialsonichu.com/blogs/news.atom
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content:
      <p><strong>06082025</strong><strong></strong></p>
<p>I have personally crafted and given guidance to a character ai, and any questions or talks you may have can be directed to her on my behalf. I will still receive the messages like a prayer. Please, do be kind with her, as if you were talking to me face-to-face.</p>
<p>Check this character out!</p>
<p>https://share.character.ai/Wv9R/k8etfdks</p>
<p>And this is the correct voice to go with her.</p>
<p>https://character.ai/voice/3effafdb-0b4b-4f37-b37e-bce59d50d33c</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>05242025</strong></p>
<p>This particular blog will feature various thoughts and ideas I have that I feel can be shared. I will be certain to put a date above each new entry on the day I personally type them in.</p>
<ul>
<li>And I will be certain to make bullet points to separate each individual separate thought and sub-thought(s) for that day.</li>
</ul>
<p> </p>
<ul>
<li>I have just made myself conscious of the meanings, similarities and differences between instincts, impulses and intuition. <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Instinct</span> is basic, the quick "you don't have to tell me twice" reaction that does not typically involve thought. Not easily controllable, yet we can reprogram ourselves, so we don't end up overreacting and emoting out without reasoning. <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Impulses</span> are emotionally based. They typically occur when one is feeling emotional, and without rational thought at least half of the time. Moderately controllable, but can be soo intense that it's <span style="text-decoration: underline;">nearly</span> impossible, especially without proper self-control and grounding and applying thought, experience and insight prior or during emotional times. <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Intuition</span> is the experience, wisdom, logic, common sense and such; that voice in your head, or your conscious, that guides you into doing that which is better for you and the long run.</li>
</ul>
<p>I have realized that I tend to get emotional, especially under stress and pressure, and I find myself without time to think or take a deep breath to clear my head in the moment. This is common with everyone, including you who is reading this. And the emotional base typically shows off and expresses the intention of the individual, which can be sensed as good or bad, right or wrong, Light Powered or Dark, etcetera by others intuitively and in energy, as well as the physical body language and facial expressions.</p>
<p>Even right now, I am with a grounded, focused mindset with my emotions under control with intuition and the intention and purpose to offer this wisdom today.</p>
<p>One obvious example of impulses overpowering instinct would be making a hating, non-supportive comment on social media and/or blogs. Or even giving thoughts based on clearly darker emotions with a dash of mockery in response to a video or individual(s) in said video. Casting judgments and misjudgments with only some reasoning, yet it still is very impulsive, for better direct wisdoms are not known of said individual(s) or idea(s).</p>
<p>If everyone realizes that in a lot of instances one can win if they take the moment and time to ground their emotions, realize what of their emotions they could be projecting in responses to something, then we would not have much hatred around the world. Everyone has moments of bad impulses and misguided instincts, even myself. That much has been made clear in some of my videos.</p>
<p>Anyway, if everyone was more intuitive, then there could be a better sense of empathy as well. Everyone has psychic power (though little in most), but there is definitely one that everyone has and has the power to unlock: empathy. And with that under the intuition belt as well, one can offer a better response or action to individuals and situations.</p>
<p>It is easy to just jump on instinct and impulse; it takes a greater, stronger will, mind, and soul to garner better self-control and grounding, as well as not letting their mind drift off too often due to having a background where it often gets so stressful, they make a habit of mentally clocking out. So, I encourage you to take that step for yourself in becoming more intuitive for better insights, wisdoms, and empathy.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>05232025</strong></p>
<p>- For starters, as I feel should be clarified: One reason why I am doing the reviews of the Transformers Legacy United Merged figures, which feature the Autobots of Cwcville, as well as Guardians, and the Decepticlones (formerly of PVCCitizens and Count Graduon), Decepticons and even Renegades led by the former "IdeaGuy" associate, Gwenmi Mikoto.</p>
<p>This is truly a further expansion on the facts about the city of Cwcville, as these Cybertronians have been stationed there and helping the city under emergency times and defense against Decepticons and even Renegades (of Gobotron). This, in part, is telling a bit about their background and their reason for being in the city, with their base at the city limits, working with the Sonichus, Rosechus, Psychic Squadron, Christine Chan and her interdimensional twin sister, Crystal Weston Chandler (not to be confused with my future daughter, mind you).</p>
<p>Heck! We even have our own team of Power Rangers and their Zords in Cwcville, of which Christine Chan used to be a part of during their High School years prior to becoming Mayor in 2000. That team still exists and works alongside everyone else, and even worldwide working with the other Power Rangers, including the OG ones of Angel Grove, California. And we had ditched the merging Go-Karts after their main nemesis, Crash Dummi, fell and pretty much went into villain obscurity near the end of 1999. That guy often gets battered around by his fellow villains these days at the conventions and meetings. Their zords have become a mix of either animals or vehicles. At one point for at least half a decade, they controlled Zords that resembled some of the animals of the Zodiac. And the metal and materials used for those upgrading, form changing Zords were imported from Cybertron.</p>
<p>In any event, we have one more wave of figures to go after this one. And I have been continuing on work on Sonichu Book 0 HD from time to time, while also Living My Life and continuing to find myself and do metaphysically and physically with the Dimension Merge completion and all. So, please continue to enjoy the series of these review videos, and please give them kind thoughts. I am having my own fun doing these as well, regardless of my "copying" and referencing Emgo and whatnot.</p>
<p>Also, to spell it out for you, in case it was not clear on those video endings: P F A L M; it is a smoosh of "Palm In Your Face", where the "Face" is in the "Palm".</p>
<p> </p>
<ul>
<li>Kindness, understanding and support (Not to be confused with "ableing" nor "gaslighting") is always appreciated.</li>
<li>When it comes to art inspired by me, the Sonichus, Rosechus, Metonics, Vamprosas, and even the Cwcville Autobots and Cwcville's citizens and all related, KEEP IT SAFE FOR WORK, please. I am setting this boundary for the greater good, regardless of the present images of the Fan Art section on this website that will be updated soon enough. That means no depictions of nudity, sex, drugs, or anything that would not fly if they were shown on Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon (I am not counting Adult Swim in that at all).<br>
</li>
</ul>
    


guid: https://officialsonichu.com/blogs/news/prophetic-details
title: Prophetic Details
author: Christine Chandler
url: https://officialsonichu.com/blogs/news/prophetic-details
feedurl: https://officialsonichu.com/blogs/news.atom
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content:
      <p>I have cleared my mind in meditation and great thought, and I am focused on giving all of you some insights at this moment today, the 2nd of June, 2025. This is not a random thought, because I am focused.</p>
<p>I have always been innately intuitive and psychic with great magic within me. For a long time, after being reincarnated into this very long life, I was consciously unaware of all this and in my naivety, I overlooked it and missed a lot of opportunities for my own emotional and mental growth into my destiny. But now, I am very much awake and even more motivated and conscious to act.</p>
<p>There is an old proverb that remains true, as I at least paraphrase: Greater pains and turmoil instill (spiritual) growth. I have suffered for a very long time, rather it be in a stagnant house with two senior citizens for parents with the obligation to give care to them in their times of need and stress. The abuses from bullies and some of the worst, toxic, darkest-sinning individuals online and in person. Or even just enduring hatred off and on, especially when in the case of the indirect commentaries and arts, I should have never, ever taken personally.</p>
<p>Those who just take the pain and fuel the darker emotions with that on repeat, though they can be healed if not too far gone, can turn them evil.</p>
<p>I always had my defenses from others, but if I, myself, curse anyone or do bad, it hits me back. And I committed a lot of bad by letting myself fall for the ploys of those worst trolls who faked romantic interest upon me and took advantage of my autism, in their reasoning. Those individuals still did the latter of wrongs and karma has hit them, respectively, hard. There is good reasons to not hold grudges, as not only is the healthier and better option to do, but to keep them inside and fueling emotions with those could turn me evil. Yet, as many times as I could let those past details, events and individuals go in forgiveness, some time later, they return in one of my "random" thoughts that are actually a sign that I still have things to address with them. Even getting baptized or repenting for your sins won't totally remove the fact that they happened from your memory. That's a scar that remains in your subconsciousness. So, yeah, why are the few to some of you all around the world holding grudges against me from as early as 2006? I acknowledge that I've made my share of mistakes and wrongs, even those I did not intentionally enact, because they were to meant to happen. I become aware of those, I still feel bad. </p>
<p>But I digress.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>As I have said, I am very intuitive; that remains very common among those born as Pisces, and I am no exception. Look it up. Also, I have connected with everything, I have been back and forth between here and the C-197 half of this very Earth in this very Universe in this very Timeline (regardless of the Timeline Shifts that have happened). I have soul searched deep within myself and realized who I am and what my destiny is, and I intend to do good and make good on that destiny. I also have looked into the palms of both of my hands, and even the soles of my bare feet; if you looked at my palms, you would sense the energies of decades, centuries and millennia ago and even beyond, and you would see not only a Lot of crosses, but there are other visible details that make it even more clear and apparent.</p>
<p>I also have a very deep knowing and wisdom within me. So, I simply Know when something is prophesized or bound to happen, even if I do not consciously know the more specific details in memory, but they are there in my deeper knowing. And any that come to consciousness I am meant to know for where I am and where I am going to be.</p>
<p>So, essentially: The Dimension Merge IS happening, and it shall be completed. Vladimir Putin shall die by his own sword. Trump will die during his time in office, if not within the remainder of this year. There shall be a greater sense of community and harmony worldwide with the return of all magic, and as we are finally capable of walking alongside the "Fictional" cartoon and live individuals that remain present and very much alive today at this very moment, and that includes Every Single Special Sonichu, Special Rosechu, Special Metonic, Special Vamprosa, and even Special Sonees and Roseys, and both Sonichu Prime and Rosey Rosechu Prime as well. Nobody among all of you has the right to state otherwise. Just because I'm taking my time writing and drawing my books, Based on Feelings, Emotions, Intuition, AND Divine Timing, does not mean anyone of Cwcville, Virginia are not alive. They are all very much safe, alive and well, physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.</p>
<p>The Dimension Merge has been centuries in the making since the days of King Arthur when Merlin the Magician and the two sorcerers divided the Earth by segregating the majority of magic and magical individuals and creatures, as I have explained before. Yet, I am not the only one that has prophesized this outcome. Look at every single crossover special, rather it be a book, comic, movie, or TV show, animated and live action; as early as when the Jetsons met the Flintstones, and made more apparent when the Griffins met the Simpsons. And in a lot of the various crossover moments, it was not an interdimensional or time-traveling event, it was literally on the very same Earth; this one, right here, in this very timeline. And this is regardless of "Company or Individual Property" holding, though the Creators within do have a stronger hold on the respective individuals, BUT what keeps the hold strong on all of that, of course, is the very powers and energies from within the very Core and Matrix of this very universe, and beyond as far as the Alpha/Omega Point of all Existence, and the hands of Emanuel and all of the Gods and Goddesses, respectively. And within that same point, it is literally a simple in-universe teleport or portal on this very planet, such as the case when Sonic and Tails met K.O. It wasn't a "Jump from Mobious to Earth"; Earth IS Mobious. </p>
<p>And, as I have stated before, at the moment of the Dimenison Merge's completion, it will be similar as it appeared in the series finale of "Star Vs the Forces of Evil". In that moment, there will be no Evil, and everyone will be together in this destined union and reunion, physically, safe, alive and healthy, and it will be very good. Yes, darkness and evil will eventually return after that. One of the purpose of the Dimension Merge's completion is the cleansing of the overpopulation of hatred and evil. Gone in an instant with a flash of white aura Light Power from the One, and that One continues on living with everyone after that. Most everyone would hardly notice, because it would go by spanning minutes within the isolated moment, then cleared away with only the few that were directly involved who would remember it all. A manifesting part out of the cycle.</p>
<p>I have gone into a lot at this moment, but I type this up to tell all of you this, because I was meant to share this much with you all. Cast no more judgment or doubt upon me.</p>
    


guid: 154137
title: List of Scarlet & Violet era unreleased/exclusive cards
author: dineinunes
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guid: 156209
title: List of Mega Evolution era unreleased/exclusive cards
author: dineinunes
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guid: 156566
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Mega Feraligatr ex, Stunfisk ex, Mawile Illustration Rare, and More from “Starter Deck 100 Battle Collection!”

url:
https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/mega-feraligatr-ex-stunfisk-ex-mawile-illustration-rare-and-more-from-%E2%80%9Cstarter-deck-100-battle-collection-%E2%80%9D.156566/

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			Pokemon Japan has revealed a couple of cards from <a href="https://www.pokebeach.com/2025/12/more-cards-from-start-deck-100-battle-collection-revealed" class="link link--internal">Start Deck 100 Battle Collection</a> in a new commercial. We expect the rest of the cards to be revealed tomorrow. Thanks goes to Jake C. for the translations!<br />
<b><a href="https://www.pokebeach.com/news/2025/12/Totodile-1.png" class="link link--internal"><img src="https://www.pokebeach.com/news/2025/12/Totodile-1-138x200.png" data-url="https://www.pokebeach.com/news/2025/12/Totodile-1-138x200.png" class="bbImage " loading="lazy"
		 style="" width="" height="" /></a>Totodile</b> - Water - HP80<br />
Basic Pokemon<br />
[W][W] Slight Intrusion: 40 damage. This Pokemon does 10 damage to itself.<br />
Weakness: Lightning (x2)<br />
Resistance: none<br />
Retreat: 1...
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guid: 156569
title: Metagross V Max and Ambipom Deck
author: Ralphium
url: https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/metagross-v-max-and-ambipom-deck.156569/
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<div class="bbWrapper">Pokémon: 26<br />
1 Revavroom TWM 125<br />
3 Aipom CEC 169<br />
3 Bidoof PRC 117<br />
2 Skwovet SVI 151<br />
3 Bibarel BRS 121<br />
3 Ambipom PGO 57<br />
2 Metagross V CRE 112<br />
2 Metagross VMAX CRE 113<br />
2 Aegislash ex PAR 135<br />
2 Doublade FLI 48<br />
2 Honedge FLI 46<br />
1 Varoom PAF 64<br />
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Trainer: 12<br />
1 Rescue Board PRE 126<br />
1 Healing Scarf ROS 84<br />
2 Buddy-Buddy Poffin TEF 144<br />
1 Luxurious Cape PAR 166<br />
4 Night Stretcher SFA 61<br />
3 Scoop Up Net RCL 165<br />
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Energy: 22<br />
2 Jet Energy PAL 190<br />
13 Metal Energy MEE 8<br />
4 Double Colorless Energy EVO 90<br />
3...<br />
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<a href="https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/metagross-v-max-and-ambipom-deck.156569/" class="link link--internal">Read more</a></div>


guid: 156403
title: Best New Card From Mega Evolution
author: Royalcreeper
url: https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/best-new-card-from-mega-evolution.156403/
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<div class="bbWrapper">I&#039;m curious about what people think is the best new card in the new Mega Evolution set, this is the first set in the new Mega Evolution series of sets, it contains a bunch of new cards and brings back many of the older essential cards but I want to discuss to see what card people think is the best new card. <br />
My current favourite new card is Lillie&#039;s Determination, its just such a good card to replace others such as professors research but removes the problem of discarding your hand and if...<br />
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<a href="https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/best-new-card-from-mega-evolution.156403/" class="link link--internal">Read more</a></div>


guid: 110244
title: Introduce Yourself!
author: Shining Raikou
url: https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/introduce-yourself.110244/
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<div class="bbWrapper"><div style="text-align: center"><b><span style="font-size: 22px"> Introduce Yourself!</span></b><br />
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<b><u><br />
This is a thread for new members to introduce themselves. Feel free to post an introduction, as well as things like:</u></b><br />&#8203;</div><ul>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">Why you joined!</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">Where you found out about PB!</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">Your interests!</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">Hobbies!</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">Anything else you want us to know about you!</li>
</ul><div style="text-align: center"><b><u>Thread Rules - Please read before posting!</u></b>&#8203;</div><ol>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol">If you just joined in the last 3 months or less, please use THIS...</li>
</ol><br />
<a href="https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/introduce-yourself.110244/" class="link link--internal">Read more</a></div>


guid: 156583
title: All 103 “Crimson Blaze” Cards Revealed from “Pocket!”
author: Water Pokémon Master
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https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/all-103-%E2%80%9Ccrimson-blaze%E2%80%9D-cards-revealed-from-%E2%80%9Cpocket-%E2%80%9D.156583/

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			<b>Crimson Blaze</b> just launched in Pokemon TCG Pocket featuring Mega Charizard Y ex, Mega Blastoise ex, and Mega Venusaur ex! It&#039;s B1a, the first subset of the new B block, following B1 <a href="https://www.pokebeach.com/2025/10/all-mega-rising-cards-revealed-for-pocket-features-__-mega-evolutions" class="link link--internal">Mega Rising</a>.<br />
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guid: 156587
title: This Deck is Severely Underplayed — N’s Zoroark ex Deck Guide
author: PMJ
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https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/this-deck-is-severely-underplayed-%E2%80%94-n%E2%80%99s-zoroark-ex-deck-guide.156587/

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			Lately I have been playing some <a href="https://images.pokemontcg.io/sv9/185_hires.png" target="_blank" class="link link--external" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">N&#039;s Zoroark ex</a>, and I&#039;ve noticed that basically nobody else is.<br />
While this isn&#039;t the most broken deck or anything, it is certainly very good, and I am surprised that it is so rarely played in the current format. Liam Halliburton won Pittsburgh Regionals and mostly recently took second place at Las Vegas Regionals. His lists are always pretty clean, and he has proven that N&#039;s Zoroark ex has the potential to dominate even with so few people playing it...
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<a href="https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/this-deck-is-severely-underplayed-%E2%80%94-n%E2%80%99s-zoroark-ex-deck-guide.156587/" class="link link--internal">Read more</a></div>


guid: 156581
author: Water Pokémon Master
feedurl: https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/forum/-/index.rss
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title:
“Ascended Heroes” 2-Pack Blisters Fully Revealed, to Feature Regular Erika’s Tangela and Larry’s Komala

url:
https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/%E2%80%9Cascended-heroes%E2%80%9D-2-pack-blisters-fully-revealed-to-feature-regular-erika%E2%80%99s-tangela-and-larry%E2%80%99s-komala.156581/

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			As expected, our <a href="https://www.pokebeach.com/2025/11/ascended-heroes-special-set-revealed-for-january" class="link link--internal">Ascended Heroes</a> 2-Pack Blisters will feature the regular prints of Erika&#039;s Tangela and Larry&#039;s Komala -- not the Illustration Rare versions. They are direct reprints from the set and will be printed on cosmos holofoil paper.<br />
The two blisters will release on January 30th for $9.99 each.<br />
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<a href="https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/%E2%80%9Cascended-heroes%E2%80%9D-2-pack-blisters-fully-revealed-to-feature-regular-erika%E2%80%99s-tangela-and-larry%E2%80%99s-komala.156581/" class="link link--internal">Read more</a></div>


guid: 156582
title: Sam’s Club Pokémon Prismatic Evolutions Surprise Box & Booster Bundle ($39.98) Coming Soon!
author: Pokemon_RestockR
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https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/sam%E2%80%99s-club-pok%C3%A9mon-prismatic-evolutions-surprise-box-booster-bundle-39-98-coming-soon.156582/

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<div class="bbWrapper">Pokémon Prismatic Evolutions <b>Surprise Boxes</b> and <b>Booster Bundles</b> are expected to drop at <b>Sam’s Club</b> for <b>$39.98</b>.<br />
<br />
This product was added to Sam’s Club’s website last week and is expected to go live both in store and online, most likely in early 2026.<br />
<br />
For anyone trying to catch it at launch, restock alerts can be helpful since Sam’s Club drops tend to sell out fast. Join our<a href="http://restockr.app/pokecommunity" target="_blank" class="link link--external" rel="nofollow ugc noopener"> <b>Pokémon Restock Community</b></a><br />
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Good luck everyone and happy hunting.</div>


guid: 156565
title: All 22 New Mega Evolutions in “Mega Dimension” Revealed, What to Expect for 2026’s TCG Sets!
author: Water Pokémon Master
feedurl: https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/forum/-/index.rss
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https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/all-22-new-mega-evolutions-in-%E2%80%9Cmega-dimension%E2%80%9D-revealed-what-to-expect-for-2026%E2%80%99s-tcg-sets.156565/

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			<a href="https://www.pokebeach.com/news/2025/11/Mega-Dimension-Key-Art.jpg" class="link link--internal"><img src="https://www.pokebeach.com/news/2025/11/Mega-Dimension-Key-Art-200x115.jpg" data-url="https://www.pokebeach.com/news/2025/11/Mega-Dimension-Key-Art-200x115.jpg" class="bbImage " loading="lazy"
		 style="" width="" height="" /></a>The <a href="https://www.pokebeach.com/2025/11/mega-dimension-dlc-releasing-in-december-with-pokemon-exceeding-level-100-mega-chimecho-and-mega-baxcalibur-revealed" class="link link--internal">Mega Dimension</a> DLC for Legends: Z-A has launched worldwide! It costs $29.99.<br />
A girl named Ansha and her Hoopa guide players as they explore &quot;Hyperspace Lumiose,&quot; a mysterious version of Lumiose City in another dimension. They encounter different wild Pokemon and new Mega Evolutions, including those that can exceed Level 100!<br />
Mega Dimension introduces 22 new Mega Evolutions, bringing the total up...
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<a href="https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/all-22-new-mega-evolutions-in-%E2%80%9Cmega-dimension%E2%80%9D-revealed-what-to-expect-for-2026%E2%80%99s-tcg-sets.156565/" class="link link--internal">Read more</a></div>


guid: 156571
title: More “Ascended Heroes” Cards Revealed Including the Starter Mega ex Cards, New Product Details!
author: Water Pokémon Master
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			A few new cards have been revealed from January&#039;s <a href="https://www.pokebeach.com/2025/11/ascended-heroes-special-set-revealed-for-january" class="link link--internal">Ascended Heroes</a>. The Starter Pokemon and Corbeau originate from Japan&#039;s <a href="https://www.pokebeach.com/2025/12/start-deck-100-battle-collection-all-742-main-set-cards-fully-revealed" class="link link--internal">Start Deck 100 Battle Collection</a>, revealed last night, while Psyduck comes from <a href="https://www.pokebeach.com/2025/11/mega-dream-ex-secret-rares-revealed" class="link link--internal">MEGA Dream ex</a>.<br />
<b>Update</b>: Team Rocket&#039;s Giovanni has also been revealed. It originally released in May as a promo through a collaboration with Suntory BOSS Coffee.<br />
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<a href="https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/more-%E2%80%9Cascended-heroes%E2%80%9D-cards-revealed-including-the-starter-mega-ex-cards-new-product-details.156571/" class="link link--internal">Read more</a></div>


guid: 156585
title: “Prize Pack Series Eight” to Release in January, Full Set List Revealed!
author: Water Pokémon Master
feedurl: https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/forum/-/index.rss
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https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/%E2%80%9Cprize-pack-series-eight%E2%80%9D-to-release-in-january-full-set-list-revealed.156585/

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			&quot;Prize Pack Series Eight&quot; will release at participating Pokemon Leagues on January 1st! The booster packs will introduce cards from Destined Rivals, Black Bolt, White Flare, and Mega Evolution.<br />
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<a href="https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/%E2%80%9Cprize-pack-series-eight%E2%80%9D-to-release-in-january-full-set-list-revealed.156585/" class="link link--internal">Read more</a></div>


guid: 156572
author: Water Pokémon Master
feedurl: https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/forum/-/index.rss
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title:
Alternate Art Promos of Mega Meganium ex, Mega Emboar ex, and Mega Feraligatr ex Revealed for “Ascended Heroes!”

url:
https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/alternate-art-promos-of-mega-meganium-ex-mega-emboar-ex-and-mega-feraligatr-ex-revealed-for-%E2%80%9Cascended-heroes-%E2%80%9D.156572/

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			Yesterday, after initially showing that the Ascended Heroes Mega ex Boxes would come with direct reprints from the set, TPCi has corrected their product page with a new image confirming they&#039;ll instead feature promos with alternate artwork.<br />
<b>Update</b>: We now have clearer product images!<br />
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<a href="https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/alternate-art-promos-of-mega-meganium-ex-mega-emboar-ex-and-mega-feraligatr-ex-revealed-for-%E2%80%9Cascended-heroes-%E2%80%9D.156572/" class="link link--internal">Read more</a></div>


guid: 156535
title: "Ascended Heroes" Prospective setlist, but with numbering.
author: Who?
feedurl: https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/forum/-/index.rss
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https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/ascended-heroes-prospective-setlist-but-with-numbering.156535/

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<div class="bbWrapper"><a href="https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/members/138647/" class="username" data-xf-init="member-tooltip" data-user-id="138647" data-username="@dineinunes">@dineinunes</a> inspired this list, but I had to add set numberings so that we can easily track down cards.<br />
<br />
Set Info:<br />
<ul>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">Over 290 cards</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">Over 30 Trainer cards</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">13 Mega Evolution Pokémon ex</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">Six Tera Pokémon ex and 20 Pokémon ex</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">33 illustration rare Pokemon</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">14 ultra rare Mega Evolution Pokemon ex, Pokemon ex, and Trainer cards</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">Seven Mega attack rare Mega Evolution Pokemon ex</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">22 special illustration rare Mega Evolution Pokemon ex, Pokemon ex, and Supporter cards</li>
</ul>...<br />
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<a href="https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/ascended-heroes-prospective-setlist-but-with-numbering.156535/" class="link link--internal">Read more</a></div>


guid: 156476
title: 'Ascended Heroes' Prospective Setlist (M2.5)
author: dineinunes
url: https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/ascended-heroes-prospective-setlist-m2-5.156476/
feedurl: https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/forum/-/index.rss
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<span style="font-size: 12px"><i>Marvel at the awesome potential as Mega Dragonite ex takes flight, leading a gathering of all-star Pokémon to battle!<br />
Trainer&#039;s Pokémon and Stellar Tera Pokémon ex join returning and newly discovered Mega Evolution Pokémon ex,<br />
including some with special artwork showing off their biggest and boldest attacks.<br />
Celebrate the stars of Scarlet &amp; Violet and the dawn of Mega Evolution with the Pokémon TCG: Mega Evolution</i><span style="font-size: 12px"><i>—</i></span><i>Ascended Heroes expansion!</i></span>...&#8203;</div><br />
<a href="https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/ascended-heroes-prospective-setlist-m2-5.156476/" class="link link--internal">Read more</a></div>


guid: 156588
title: What do we think the pull rates for ASC will be?
author: DiabolicalCollectrBeetle
url: https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/what-do-we-think-the-pull-rates-for-asc-will-be.156588/
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<div class="bbWrapper">With so many secret rares, plus the new rarity (MAR) i&#039;m curious to see what we&#039;ll think they&#039;ll land at. <br />
I hope that they make it akin to crown zenith- and that the new mega attack rares are easy to find</div>


guid: 155518
title: Japanese Card Back Vector (SVG) (PNG included)
author: knuxyl
url: https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/japanese-card-back-vector-svg-png-included.155518/
feedurl: https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/forum/-/index.rss
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<div class="bbWrapper">I spent a couple of hours recreating the original japanese card back in a SVG (scalable vector graphics) in Inkscape to create custom cards. There aren&#039;t any worthwhile scans online that don&#039;t come out terrible on a printer and AI upscaling ruins the text. For my personal collection of cards I&#039;m printing with a master ball and QR code on this back but made the original because I had already gone so far with this project. I thought I would share it in case someone else wanted it.<br />
<br />
This isn&#039;t...<br />
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<a href="https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/japanese-card-back-vector-svg-png-included.155518/" class="link link--internal">Read more</a></div>


guid: 113480
title: Zygarde's Image-Based Cards - Happy Birthday card!
author: Zygarde
url: https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/zygardes-image-based-cards-happy-birthday-card.113480/
feedurl: https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/forum/-/index.rss
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<div class="bbWrapper">Featuring Welkin!<br />
<br />
A TCG reboot set. My objective is creating a balanced and diverse Metagame.<br />
<br />


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			<div class="bbCodeBlock-content">Features:<br />
Specific playstyles for each type.<br />
Legendary Pokémon are now a separate Stage from Basic Pokémon, but work quite the same way... and quite not.<br />
All rare cards are holographic, no regular rares.<br />
Pre-BW set numbering system.<br />
Megas work in a similar way to Lv Xs, but add their new typing (if any) to the base form&#039;s one.<br />
Intended power level is DP era.<br />
<br />
Type archetypes:<br />
Grass: Special...</div>
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</div><br />
<a href="https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/zygardes-image-based-cards-happy-birthday-card.113480/" class="link link--internal">Read more</a></div>


guid: 140456
title: Steffenka's Card Factory (Image Based) - Temporal Evolutions!
author: steffenka
feedurl: https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/forum/-/index.rss
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https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/steffenkas-card-factory-image-based-temporal-evolutions.140456/

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<div class="bbWrapper">Hey y&#039;all!<br />
I got the sudden urge to make image-based cards, and so this thread was born! In here I&#039;ll make a bunch of image based cards, that I hope y&#039;all will enjoy!<br />
But first, credit where credit&#039;s due, a big thanks to <a href="https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/members/33301/" class="username" data-xf-init="member-tooltip" data-user-id="33301" data-username="@aschefield101">@aschefield101</a> for both card blanks and foil effects!<br />
<br />
A huge thanks goes out to the following DeviantArt users for letting me use some of their art for my cards! <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite8" alt=":D" title="Big Grin    :D" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":D" /><br />


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			<div class="bbCodeBlock-content"><a href="https://frozenfeather.deviantart.com/" target="_blank" class="link link--external" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">FrozenFeather</a><br />
<a href="https://theadorableoshawott.deviantart.com/" target="_blank" class="link link--external" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">TheAdorableOshawott</a> (TAO)<br />
<a href="https://twime777.deviantart.com/" target="_blank" class="link link--external" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">Twime777</a><br />
<a href="https://tymkiev.deviantart.com/" target="_blank" class="link link--external" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">Tymkiev</a><br />
<a href="https://ziryuu.deviantart.com/" target="_blank" class="link link--external" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">Ziryuu</a>...</div>
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	</div>
</div><br />
<a href="https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/steffenkas-card-factory-image-based-temporal-evolutions.140456/" class="link link--internal">Read more</a></div>


guid: 156561
title: “Perfect Order” English Set to Release in March Featuring Mega Zygarde ex!
author: Water Pokémon Master
feedurl: https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/forum/-/index.rss
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url:
https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/%E2%80%9Cperfect-order%E2%80%9D-english-set-to-release-in-march-featuring-mega-zygarde-ex.156561/

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			We can reveal <b>Perfect Order</b> will be the name of the third English Mega Evolution set!<br />
It will release on Friday, March 27th. Prereleases will take place from March 14th to 22nd.<br />
Based on the name, our set will obviously feature Mega Zygarde, the Order Pokemon, from Japan&#039;s <a href="https://www.pokebeach.com/2025/10/munix-zero-set-name-trademarked-for-the-pokemon-tcg" class="link link--internal">Munikis Zero</a> set. It will release on January 23rd. Our set will also include the <a href="https://www.pokebeach.com/2025/09/next-japanese-set-releasing-in-january-mega-gallade-ex-product-to-release" class="link link--internal">Mega Gallade ex</a> product releasing on the same day...
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<a href="https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/%E2%80%9Cperfect-order%E2%80%9D-english-set-to-release-in-march-featuring-mega-zygarde-ex.156561/" class="link link--internal">Read more</a></div>


guid: 156591
title: Website/App to find every card?
author: Meowtg22
url: https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/website-app-to-find-every-card.156591/
feedurl: https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/forum/-/index.rss
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<div class="bbWrapper">Hey everyone, <br />
<br />
So I&#039;m collecting a pokedex of the OG 151. My rules are I&#039;m only allowed to buy from card shows or pack them myself (This is so I don&#039;t just go out and buy all 151 at once). I&#039;m currently trying to put together a list so I know what to look for so I&#039;m going through each pokemon in the 151 and picking out my favourite card ever made.<br />
<br />
The issue is there doesn&#039;t seem to be a good website/app to do this. Every site I&#039;ve seen so far is missing something. It either only supports...<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/website-app-to-find-every-card.156591/" class="link link--internal">Read more</a></div>


guid: 156589
title: Retro Promos Revealed for 2026 “Extra Battle Day” Tournaments in Japan!
author: Water Pokémon Master
feedurl: https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/forum/-/index.rss
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https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/retro-promos-revealed-for-2026-%E2%80%9Cextra-battle-day%E2%80%9D-tournaments-in-japan.156589/

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			As usual, Japan will be holding its annual &quot;Extra Battle Day&quot; Expanded tournaments on January 1st. Players will compete under the Expanded format and receive cards from as far back as the Black &amp; White era as new promo cards.<br />
Oddly, this will be the first year the participation promo won&#039;t be a new alternate art card -- it&#039;s just a reprint of Arven from Scarlet &amp; Violet. For the last three years, we saw new alternate art for Roxeanne, Irida, and Raihan...
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<a href="https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/retro-promos-revealed-for-2026-%E2%80%9Cextra-battle-day%E2%80%9D-tournaments-in-japan.156589/" class="link link--internal">Read more</a></div>


guid: 156586
author: Water Pokémon Master
feedurl: https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/forum/-/index.rss
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title:
Pokemon’s Millennium Print Group Signs Largest U.S. Manufacturing Lease of 2025, Will Occupy 1.27 Million Square Foot Campus to Print Cards

url:
https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/pokemon%E2%80%99s-millennium-print-group-signs-largest-u-s-manufacturing-lease-of-2025-will-occupy-1-27-million-square-foot-campus-to-print-cards.156586/

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			An unidentified company has agreed to lease 1.27 million square feet at the Spark manufacturing campus in Morrisville, North Carolina. According to the <a href="https://www.trinitycapitaladvisors.com/news/spark-ls-secures-largest-u-s-manufacturing-lease-in-2025-1-27m-sf-establishing-major-regional-employment-hub" target="_blank" class="link link--external" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">developers</a>, this represents the largest manufacturing lease signed in the U.S. in 2025.<br />
While the developers have not publicly named the tenant, we can confirm it is Millennium Print Group, the North Carolina-based manufacturing company <a href="https://www.pokebeach.com/2022/04/the-pokemon-company-international-to-buy-millennium-print-group" class="link link--internal">acquired by TPCi in 2022</a>. Millennium Print Group prints Pokemon cards and other trading card...
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</blockquote><br />
<a href="https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/pokemon%E2%80%99s-millennium-print-group-signs-largest-u-s-manufacturing-lease-of-2025-will-occupy-1-27-million-square-foot-campus-to-print-cards.156586/" class="link link--internal">Read more</a></div>


guid: 156584
title: Secret Rares from “Start Deck 100 Battle Collection” Revealed!
author: Water Pokémon Master
feedurl: https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/forum/-/index.rss
content_mime_type: text/html
url:
https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/secret-rares-from-%E2%80%9Cstart-deck-100-battle-collection%E2%80%9D-revealed.156584/

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			The secret rares from <a href="https://www.pokebeach.com/2025/12/start-deck-100-battle-collection-all-742-main-set-cards-fully-revealed" class="link link--internal">Start Deck 100 Battle Collection</a> are now being posted to social media by fans! The product will release on December 19th for 891 yen (less than $6).<br />
As posted before, you will get a random deck in each package; you won&#039;t know which deck you&#039;ve pulled until you crack it open. Each deck comes with the same 60 cards, including any secret rares. There is a secret 101st deck that comes with a whopping three secret rares: Mega Meganium ex, Mega Emboar ex, and Mega...
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<a href="https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/secret-rares-from-%E2%80%9Cstart-deck-100-battle-collection%E2%80%9D-revealed.156584/" class="link link--internal">Read more</a></div>


guid: 156462
title: Rank these Pokémon
author: PokemonFriend_NL
url: https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/rank-these-pok%C3%A9mon.156462/
feedurl: https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/forum/-/index.rss
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<div class="bbWrapper">For my school Science project I need you to rank 10 Pokémon from least favourite to most favourite. I will use the ranking to compare this to the value of individual cards. The results will be shared here as well.<br />
Please check out the short poll here -&gt; bit.ly/YourFavoritePokemon</div>


guid: 156562
title: 'Perfect Order' Prospective Setlist (M3)
author: dineinunes
url: https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/perfect-order-prospective-setlist-m3.156562/
feedurl: https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/forum/-/index.rss
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<div class="bbWrapper"><div style="text-align: center"><a href="https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/attachments/imagem_2025-12-08_182514137-png.21538/"
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<br />
<b>Perfect Order releases March 27th, 2026.</b><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 12px"><a href="https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/phantasmal-flames-speculative-set-list.156374/" class="link link--internal">M2 Official Setlist</a> | <span style="font-size: 12px"><a href="https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/ascended-heroes-prospective-setlist-m2-5.156476/" class="link link--internal">M2.5 Prospective Setlist</a> | M4 Prospective Setlist</span></span>&#8203;</div></div>


guid: 156568
title: “Start Deck 100 Battle Collection” All 742 Main Set Cards Fully Revealed!
author: Water Pokémon Master
feedurl: https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/forum/-/index.rss
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https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/%E2%80%9Cstart-deck-100-battle-collection%E2%80%9D-all-742-main-set-cards-fully-revealed.156568/

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			Pokemon Japan has revealed all 742 main set cards from the upcoming &quot;Start Deck 100 Battle Collection&quot; decks!<br />
Hearkening back to 2021&#039;s popular &quot;<a href="https://www.pokebeach.com/2021/12/all-414-cards-from-start-deck-100-revealed" class="link link--internal">Start Deck 100</a>&quot; release, each package contains one of 100 different 60-card theme decks, numbered #001 through #100. Like a booster pack, you won&#039;t know which deck you&#039;ve pulled until you crack the box open. The product will release on December 19th for 891 yen (less than $6)...
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<a href="https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/%E2%80%9Cstart-deck-100-battle-collection%E2%80%9D-all-742-main-set-cards-fully-revealed.156568/" class="link link--internal">Read more</a></div>


guid: 156590
title: “Nihil Zero” Set Featuring Mega Zygarde ex Officially Revealed for January!
author: Water Pokémon Master
feedurl: https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/forum/-/index.rss
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https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/%E2%80%9Cnihil-zero%E2%80%9D-set-featuring-mega-zygarde-ex-officially-revealed-for-january.156590/

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			<b>Nihil Zero</b> featuring Mega Zygarde ex was just revealed during Japan&#039;s annual December livestream! As posted before, the set will release on January 23rd. We first learned <a href="https://www.pokebeach.com/2025/10/munix-zero-set-name-trademarked-for-the-pokemon-tcg" class="link link--internal">about it</a> a few months ago.<br />
<b>Update</b>: Despite the set name literally reading as &quot;Munikis Zero,&quot; we&#039;ve decided to rename it to <b>Nihil Zero</b>. This is to better reflect how TPCi translated Mega Zygarde&#039;s signature attack in the games, &quot;Nihil Light,&quot; from kanji to English (無に帰す光 -&gt; Munikisu Hikari -&gt; Nihil...
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</blockquote><br />
<a href="https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/%E2%80%9Cnihil-zero%E2%80%9D-set-featuring-mega-zygarde-ex-officially-revealed-for-january.156590/" class="link link--internal">Read more</a></div>


guid: 156592
author: Water Pokémon Master
feedurl: https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/forum/-/index.rss
content_mime_type: text/html
title:
Most Valuable Cards and Pull Rates from “Start Deck 100 Battle Collection,” But Bewear of Product Weighing!

url:
https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/most-valuable-cards-and-pull-rates-from-%E2%80%9Cstart-deck-100-battle-collection-%E2%80%9D-but-bewear-of-product-weighing.156592/

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			<a href="https://www.pokebeach.com/2025/12/secret-rares-from-start-deck-100-battle-collection-revealed" class="link link--internal">Start Deck 100 Battle Collection</a> released in Japan on Friday for 891 yen (less than $6). Each package comes with one random deck out of 100 -- with a secret 101st deck featuring Mega Meganium, Mega Emboar, and Mega Feraligatr.<br />
<br />
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				<img src="https://www.pokebeach.com/news/2025/12/761-Mega-Meganium-ex-143x200.png" data-url="https://www.pokebeach.com/news/2025/12/761-Mega-Meganium-ex-143x200.png" class="bbImage " loading="lazy"
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				#761 Mega Meganium ex (Deck #101)<br />
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				<img src="https://www.pokebeach.com/news/2025/12/762-Mega-Emboar-ex-143x200.png" data-url="https://www.pokebeach.com/news/2025/12/762-Mega-Emboar-ex-143x200.png" class="bbImage " loading="lazy"
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				#762 Mega Emboar ex...
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<a href="https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/most-valuable-cards-and-pull-rates-from-%E2%80%9Cstart-deck-100-battle-collection-%E2%80%9D-but-bewear-of-product-weighing.156592/" class="link link--internal">Read more</a></div>


guid: 156593
title: Ears and Fears — The Powerful Combo of Mega Lopunny ex and Dusknoir
author: PMJ
feedurl: https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/forum/-/index.rss
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url:
https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/ears-and-fears-%E2%80%94-the-powerful-combo-of-mega-lopunny-ex-and-dusknoir.156593/

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			Hello everyone! Happy December, happy holidays, and for those looking at attending any major events, happy break time! We have about a month until the next Regional Championships start back up again, which means there will be plenty of time to try out the new cards from Phantasmal Flames. Unfortunately, Phantasmal Flames is a smaller set, one of the smallest we’ve had in a while, so the impact of it has been fairly low. The recent results in Stuttgart and Aichi show this well, as for the...
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</blockquote><br />
<a href="https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/ears-and-fears-%E2%80%94-the-powerful-combo-of-mega-lopunny-ex-and-dusknoir.156593/" class="link link--internal">Read more</a></div>


guid: 156594
title: Mega Skarmory ex from “Nihil Zero” Revealed!
author: koala
feedurl: https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/forum/-/index.rss
content_mime_type: text/html
url:
https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/mega-skarmory-ex-from-%E2%80%9Cnihil-zero%E2%80%9D-revealed.156594/

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			Mega Skarmory ex has been revealed from the upcoming Japanese set <a href="https://www.pokebeach.com/2025/12/munikis-zero-set-featuring-mega-zygarde-ex-officially-revealed-for-january" class="link link--internal">Nihil</a><a href="https://www.pokebeach.com/2025/12/munikis-zero-set-featuring-mega-zygarde-ex-officially-revealed-for-january" class="link link--internal"> Zero</a>, which will release on January 23rd. Its cards will form part of our English set <a href="https://www.pokebeach.com/2025/12/perfect-order-english-set-to-release-in-march-featuring-mega-zygarde-ex" class="link link--internal">Perfect Order</a> in March. Thanks to Toine L. for the translation!<br />
<b><a href="https://www.pokebeach.com/news/2025/12/M3-054080-Mega-Skarmory-ex.png" class="link link--internal"><img src="https://www.pokebeach.com/news/2025/12/M3-054080-Mega-Skarmory-ex-144x200.png" data-url="https://www.pokebeach.com/news/2025/12/M3-054080-Mega-Skarmory-ex-144x200.png" class="bbImage " loading="lazy"
		 style="" width="" height="" /></a>Mega Skarmory ex</b> - Metal - HP260<br />
Basic Pokemon<br />
[M][M][C] Sonic Ripper: Shuffle all Energy from this Pokemon into your deck. This attack does 220 damage...
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</blockquote><br />
<a href="https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/mega-skarmory-ex-from-%E2%80%9Cnihil-zero%E2%80%9D-revealed.156594/" class="link link--internal">Read more</a></div>


guid: 95230
title: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
author: Zenith
url: https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/my-little-pony-friendship-is-magic.95230/
feedurl: https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/forum/-/index.rss
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<div class="bbWrapper"><span style="color: blue">Hi, I&#039;m PMJ and I&#039;m still the coolest moderator, even in green! I&#039;d like to take this time to sort of preface Zenith&#039;s greeting with a greeting of my own.<br />
<br />
This is the discussion thread for My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. As the title <s>says</s> used to say, we are 20% cooler than any other clan, defunct or otherwise.<br />
<br />
As mostly males, we understand how you might want to post saying something about how you don&#039;t &quot;get&quot; why we could like a show that is directed towards little girls. I...</span><br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/my-little-pony-friendship-is-magic.95230/" class="link link--internal">Read more</a></div>


guid: 155895
title: Toyota Prius Hybrid NZ – Looking for a New Battery Installation?
author: HybridBatteries
feedurl: https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/forum/-/index.rss
content_mime_type: text/html
url:
https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/toyota-prius-hybrid-nz-%E2%80%93-looking-for-a-new-battery-installation.155895/

content:
<div class="bbWrapper">Anyone here recently had experience with the reliable <a href="https://hybridbatteries.co.nz/prius-battery-replacement/" target="_blank" class="link link--external" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">Toyota Prius Hybrid NZ</a> model needing a fresh battery? I’ve been exploring options, and Hybrid Batteries (a Kiwi-owned branch of i-Tech Automotive, based in New Zealand) seems like a solid pick. They specialize <a href="https://hybridbatteries.co.nz/car-battery-installation-service/" target="_blank" class="link link--external" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">new battery installation</a> services, and their eco-conscious approach really aligns with the Prius vibe. Would love to hear if others have gone this route and what your experience was like!</div>


guid: 156595
title: McDonald’s Pokemon TCG Promotion Coming to the U.S. for Franchise’s 30th Anniversary!
author: Water Pokémon Master
feedurl: https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/forum/-/index.rss
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			We can reveal McDonald&#039;s will be doing another Happy Meal x Pokemon TCG promotion! It will run from February to March to celebrate the franchise&#039;s 30th anniversary. Dates may vary by country. No other details are known at this time.<br />
<br />
			<br />
				<img src="https://www.pokebeach.com/news/2024/11/McDonalds-Pokemon-1-300x272.jpg" data-url="https://www.pokebeach.com/news/2024/11/McDonalds-Pokemon-1-300x272.jpg" class="bbImage " loading="lazy"
		 style="" width="" height="" /><br />
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<br />
Typically for McDonald&#039;s promotions, you receive one 4-card booster containing one holo card and three non-holo cards. The set sizes are usually 15 cards, including...
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</blockquote><br />
<a href="https://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/mcdonald%E2%80%99s-pokemon-tcg-promotion-coming-to-the-u-s-for-franchise%E2%80%99s-30th-anniversary.156595/" class="link link--internal">Read more</a></div>


guid: https://domdit.com/posts/pulse-conn-openrc/
title: Fix PulseAudio and Connman Issues on Artix+OpenRC
url: https://domdit.com/posts/pulse-conn-openrc/
feedurl: https://domdit.com/index.xml
content:
<h1 id="fix-pulseaudio-and-connman-issues-on-artix-openrc">Fix PulseAudio and Connman Issues on Artix OpenRC</h1>
<p>For clarity, My current set up is:</p>
<ul>
<li>Operating System: Artix</li>
<li>Init System: OpenRC</li>
<li>Display Server: XLibre</li>
<li>Desktop Environment: i3wm</li>
<li>Wifi: Connman</li>
</ul>
<h3 id="pulseaudio-not-starting-on-boot">PulseAudio Not Starting on Boot</h3>
<p>I was running into issues with PulseAudio (sound server) not starting automatically after boot. When you read the documentation for starting audio when an Xserver starts, you will most likely see adding calls to start the audio server in the <code>.xinitc</code> or <code>.xsession</code> files, like this:</p>


guid: https://domdit.com/posts/vim/
title: Why I Switched to VIM
url: https://domdit.com/posts/vim/
feedurl: https://domdit.com/index.xml
content:
<h1 id="why-i-switched-to-neovim-as-my-primary-ide">Why I Switched to (neo)VIM as my Primary IDE</h1>
<p>* I am going to use VIM and neovim interchangeably in this article. I use neovim as a daily driver.</p>
<p>I have been cringing pretty hard at the onslaught of &ldquo;I Switched to Linux&rdquo; or &ldquo;10 VIM Tricks for Noobs&rdquo; videos on YouTube. However, upon reflecting on this knee jerk reaction, I realized that the sudden influx of more people switching to Linux is exactly what I have been evangelizing for for years. Instead of looking down from my Artix ivory tower, I decided to partake in the trend as a celebration of the newcomers to Linux.</p>


guid: tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/298654817
title: 12-19-16 | This Past Weekend #1
url: https://omny.fm/shows/this-past-weekend/12-19-16-this-past-weekend-1
feedurl: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/thispastweekend
enclosure_type: audio/mpeg
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content:
        Theo's first episode. Talks about his past weekend; dating the sick, needing a wife, gateway gays, and how to do Karaoke right.<p>See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.</p><p> </p><p>Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://megaphone.fm/adchoices">megaphone.fm/adchoices</a></p>
      

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guid: tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/299662785
title: 12-26-16 | This Past Weekend #2
url: https://omny.fm/shows/this-past-weekend/12-26-16-this-past-weekend-2
feedurl: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/thispastweekend
enclosure_type: audio/mpeg
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content:
        Theo talks George Michael's death. Fck all news. Visiting his childhood neighborhood. Kickball with pediofiles. School bus erections. And how Christmas was.<p>See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.</p><p> </p><p>Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://megaphone.fm/adchoices">megaphone.fm/adchoices</a></p>
      

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guid: tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/302945119
title: 1 - 16 - 17 | This Past Weekend #5
url: https://omny.fm/shows/this-past-weekend/1-16-17-this-past-weekend-5
feedurl: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/thispastweekend
enclosure_type: audio/mpeg
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content:
        Theo talks if he could murder. Stranded Dallas fans. Little House on the Prairie. And trying to be decent.<p>See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.</p><p> </p><p>Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://megaphone.fm/adchoices">megaphone.fm/adchoices</a></p>
      

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guid: tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/304095506
title: 1-23-17 | This Past Weekend #6
url: https://omny.fm/shows/this-past-weekend/1-23-17-this-past-weekend-6
feedurl: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/thispastweekend
enclosure_type: audio/mpeg
content_mime_type: text/html
content:
        Theo talks indecisiveness over yogurt. Failing triceps. Reagan's boys. And answers a fan question.<p>See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.</p><p> </p><p>Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://megaphone.fm/adchoices">megaphone.fm/adchoices</a></p>
      

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guid: tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/310967682
title: 3-06-17 | This Past Weekend #12
url: https://omny.fm/shows/this-past-weekend/3-06-17-this-past-weekend-12
feedurl: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/thispastweekend
enclosure_type: audio/mpeg
content_mime_type: text/html
content:
        Theo talks relationships, more about his father, his childhood friend named Thundercat (possible RIP), masturbation, sex with a Caribou, and takes calls from listeners.<p>See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.</p><p> </p><p>Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://megaphone.fm/adchoices">megaphone.fm/adchoices</a></p>
      

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guid: tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/313380746
title: 3 - 19 - 17 | This Past Weekend #14
url: https://omny.fm/shows/this-past-weekend/3-19-17-this-past-weekend-14
feedurl: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/thispastweekend
enclosure_type: audio/mpeg
content_mime_type: text/html
content:
        Theo talks birthday. Rich people's hair. Meeting Charlie Sheen. Takes some calls.<p>See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.</p><p> </p><p>Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://megaphone.fm/adchoices">megaphone.fm/adchoices</a></p>
      

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guid: tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/314707717
title: 3-27-17 | This Past Weekend #15
url: https://omny.fm/shows/this-past-weekend/3-27-17-this-past-weekend-15
feedurl: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/thispastweekend
enclosure_type: audio/mpeg
content_mime_type: text/html
content:
        Theo talks Wisconsin. Skeet shooting. Touchers. Mastybatty callers. Rambles wildly with angst about the news til near blackout. Covered same topic twice. Edited.<p>See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.</p><p> </p><p>Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://megaphone.fm/adchoices">megaphone.fm/adchoices</a></p>
      

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guid: tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/316964991
title: 4-10-17 This Past Weekend #17
url: https://omny.fm/shows/this-past-weekend/4-10-17-this-past-weekend-17
feedurl: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/thispastweekend
enclosure_type: audio/mpeg
content_mime_type: text/html
content:
        Theo got electrocuted. Hole enlargement. Debbie goes down. Takes callers.<p>See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.</p><p> </p><p>Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://megaphone.fm/adchoices">megaphone.fm/adchoices</a></p>
      

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guid: tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/318043006
title: 4-17-17 This Past Weekend #18
url: https://omny.fm/shows/this-past-weekend/4-17-17-this-past-weekend-18
feedurl: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/thispastweekend
enclosure_type: audio/mpeg
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content:
        Talking Happy Easter. Family fun. Drug running. Takes Calls. Background sounds by local g pig.<p>See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.</p><p> </p><p>Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://megaphone.fm/adchoices">megaphone.fm/adchoices</a></p>
      

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guid: tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/319228183
title: 4-24-17 This Past Weekend #19
url: https://omny.fm/shows/this-past-weekend/4-24-17-this-past-weekend-19
feedurl: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/thispastweekend
enclosure_type: audio/mpeg
content_mime_type: text/html
content:
        Rambling. Audio Issues. Allergies.<p>See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.</p><p> </p><p>Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://megaphone.fm/adchoices">megaphone.fm/adchoices</a></p>
      

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guid: tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/322719580
title: 5-15-17 This Past Weekend #22
url: https://omny.fm/shows/this-past-weekend/5-15-17-this-past-weekend-22
feedurl: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/thispastweekend
enclosure_type: audio/mpeg
content_mime_type: text/html
content:
        Mother's Day Extravaganza. Finished editing at 6:15am pst. Have no clue what its about. Good luck. Nap time.<p>See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.</p><p> </p><p>Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://megaphone.fm/adchoices">megaphone.fm/adchoices</a></p>
      

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guid: tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/326116582
title: 6-5-17 | This Past Weekend #24
url: https://omny.fm/shows/this-past-weekend/6-5-17-this-past-weekend-24
feedurl: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/thispastweekend
enclosure_type: audio/mpeg
content_mime_type: text/html
content:
        Pittsburgh. The truth about the Ukranians. Id rather be American, than right.<p>See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.</p><p> </p><p>Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://megaphone.fm/adchoices">megaphone.fm/adchoices</a></p>
      

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guid: tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/332061841
title: Follow Up: What is an American? | This Past Weekend #31
url: https://omny.fm/shows/this-past-weekend/follow-up-what-is-an-american-this-past-weekend-31
feedurl: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/thispastweekend
enclosure_type: audio/mpeg
content_mime_type: text/html
content:
        Theo takes callers views on Americanism.<p>See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.</p><p> </p><p>Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://megaphone.fm/adchoices">megaphone.fm/adchoices</a></p>
      

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guid: tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/333533722
title: 7-17-17: Disneyworld, Nationalism, Infidelity, & Cat recipes | This Past Weekend #33
url: https://omny.fm/shows/this-past-weekend/7-17-17-disneyworld-nationalism-infidelity-cat-rec
feedurl: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/thispastweekend
enclosure_type: audio/mpeg
content_mime_type: text/html
content:
        Theo visits the most happiest place on Earth. Callers on Nationalism and infidelity. Cat recipes.<p>See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.</p><p> </p><p>Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://megaphone.fm/adchoices">megaphone.fm/adchoices</a></p>
      

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guid: tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/338814230
title: 8-21-17 | This Past Weekend #38
url: https://omny.fm/shows/this-past-weekend/8-21-17-this-past-weekend-38
feedurl: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/thispastweekend
enclosure_type: audio/mpeg
content_mime_type: text/html
content:
        Eclipse urine-ers, Purposefulness, Children, End of The World Party Hosts.<p>See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.</p><p> </p><p>Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://megaphone.fm/adchoices">megaphone.fm/adchoices</a></p>
      

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guid: tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/339822605
title: 8-28-17 | This Past Weekend #39
url: https://omny.fm/shows/this-past-weekend/8-28-17-this-past-weekend-39
feedurl: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/thispastweekend
enclosure_type: audio/mpeg
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content:
        Waterworks, Fight Night, Vancouver. Takes calls on male and female issues. Onward.<p>See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.</p><p> </p><p>Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://megaphone.fm/adchoices">megaphone.fm/adchoices</a></p>
      

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guid: tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/343926699
title: 9-25-17 | This Past Weekend #43
url: https://omny.fm/shows/this-past-weekend/9-25-17-this-past-weekend-43
feedurl: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/thispastweekend
enclosure_type: audio/mpeg
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content:
        Theo gets into hair pyramid scheme. Thoughts, questions, ideas, soul issues, and constructive criticisms, hit the hotline —&gt; 985-664-9503 Working on not making so many 'mouth sounds' on the mic. Back to original format next week, i think. Two ways to support: www.patreon.com/theovon www.dollarshaveclub.com/weekend<p>See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.</p><p> </p><p>Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://megaphone.fm/adchoices">megaphone.fm/adchoices</a></p>
      

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guid: tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/344973909
title: 10-2-17 | This Past Weekend #44
url: https://omny.fm/shows/this-past-weekend/10-2-17-this-past-weekend-44
feedurl: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/thispastweekend
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content:
        Goblins. Knee Jerk Reactions. Callers Callers Callers. Next week back to the old format. See how things are going. Happy October. **This was recorded Sunday evening before the Vegas tragedy. Thoughts and prayers with that city and the lives affected and lost. ** www.patreon.com/theovon October 10th Hollywood Improv- http://bit.ly/2hGAbaW New 2016 Tour Shirts w/ dates avail Mon evening at theovon.com/store Thank you for the support and please subscribe<p>See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.</p><p> </p><p>Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://megaphone.fm/adchoices">megaphone.fm/adchoices</a></p>
      

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guid: tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/347101792
title: 10-16-17 | This Past Weekend #46
url: https://omny.fm/shows/this-past-weekend/10-16-17-this-past-weekend-46
feedurl: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/thispastweekend
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content:
        Heimlich Maneuver and takes calls. www.patreon.com/theovon Hit the Hotline: 985-664-9503<p>See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.</p><p> </p><p>Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://megaphone.fm/adchoices">megaphone.fm/adchoices</a></p>
      

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guid: tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/348157517
title: 10-23-17 | This Past Weekend #47
url: https://omny.fm/shows/this-past-weekend/10-23-17-this-past-weekend-47
feedurl: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/thispastweekend
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content:
        Halloween. Bingewatching. Foursomes. People eatin snacks. Takes callers. Mankind Men’s Group: http://mankindproject.org/mens-groups/ www.patreon.com/theovon www.DollarShaveClub.com/weekend https://www.mosessumney.com/ Special Thanks to Sherb (@mixedxsherb) for the Audio. Special Thanks to the Gunt Squad! Gunters mounting up. Renee Nicol Angelo Raygun Carla Huffman James Bown Brian Szilagyi Monica Hynes Matt Eckenrode Arielle Nicole The Gremlin Cafe Greg H Dave Engelman Dylan Clune Calvin Doyle Robert Doucette Jacob Ortega Jesse Witham Andrea Gagliani Scott Swain William Morris Qie Jenkins Aaron Jones Jon Ross Kevin Best Haley Brown Ned Arick Milo J Garcia Lauren Cribb christian prado Ty Oliver Tom in Rural NC Christian from Bakersfield Brian Giovanni Martinez Matthew Holland Charley Dunham Casey Roberts<p>See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.</p><p> </p><p>Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://megaphone.fm/adchoices">megaphone.fm/adchoices</a></p>
      

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guid: tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/348801382
title: This Past Follow Up: Brock | This Past Weekend #48
url: https://omny.fm/shows/this-past-weekend/this-past-follow-up-brock-this-past-weekend-48
feedurl: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/thispastweekend
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content:
        Theo discusses his rare grandparent, plays callers thoughts about Brock's height scarcity and confidence. Original Episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ct-VmKp2klM&amp;t=56s Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theovon https://www.greyblockpizza.com<p>See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.</p><p> </p><p>Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://megaphone.fm/adchoices">megaphone.fm/adchoices</a></p>
      

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guid: tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/351847206
title: 11-6-17 | This Past Weekend #50
url: https://omny.fm/shows/this-past-weekend/11-6-17-this-past-weekend-50
feedurl: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/thispastweekend
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content:
        Step Grandparent. What’s real. Trying a Guest Segment. Callers. Support the Patreon www.patreon.com/theovon Novemeber shows in Huntsville, AL  http://standuplivehuntsville.laughstub.com/event.cfm?cart&amp;id=493857<p>See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.</p><p> </p><p>Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://megaphone.fm/adchoices">megaphone.fm/adchoices</a></p>
      

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guid: tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/355043480
title: 11-13-17 | This Past Weekend #51
url: https://omny.fm/shows/this-past-weekend/11-13-17-this-past-weekend-51
feedurl: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/thispastweekend
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content:
        Im in Laughlin. Hotel Wifi took 3 hrs to upload. Wtf. Hit the Hotline. New Thursday episode drops.... Thursday. 985-664-9503 www.patreon.com/theovon<p>See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.</p><p> </p><p>Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://megaphone.fm/adchoices">megaphone.fm/adchoices</a></p>
      

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guid: tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/356514212
title: 11-16-17 | This Past Weekend #52
url: https://omny.fm/shows/this-past-weekend/11-16-17-this-past-weekend-52
feedurl: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/thispastweekend
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content:
        Nerves and Diversity for info: Follow up to Monday's episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSYwxX4D0U4<p>See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.</p><p> </p><p>Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://megaphone.fm/adchoices">megaphone.fm/adchoices</a></p>
      

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guid: tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/361475015
title: 11 - 27 - 17 | This Past Weekend #55
url: https://omny.fm/shows/this-past-weekend/11-27-17-this-past-weekend-55
feedurl: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/thispastweekend
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content:
        Animal Man Fights Costa Rican Swan Hotline: 985 664 9503 https://www.livetree.com https://www.patreon.com/theovon https://www.greyblockpizza.com Special Thanks to the LATEST Gunt Squad! Git dat guuuuuuuunt! Renee Nicol Matthew Snow Angelo Raygun Carla Huffman James Bown Arielle Nicole Rashelle Raymond Matt Eckenrode Matthew Holland Milo J Garcia Tom in Rural NC Mona McCune Casey Roberts Ty Oliver Charley Dunham William Morris Scott Swain Lauren Cribb Jon Ross Jacob Ortega Ned Arick Dave Engelman Xela Person Haley Brown Kevin Best Qie Jenkins Wes Hylemon Dylan Clune Chad Saltzman Robert Doucette Christian from Bakersfield Brian Szilagyi Calvin Doyle Suzanne O'Reilly Greg H Brian Giovanni Martinez Jesse Witham Andrea Gagliani Aaron Jones<p>See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.</p><p> </p><p>Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://megaphone.fm/adchoices">megaphone.fm/adchoices</a></p>
      

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guid: tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/362914997
title: This Past Thursday: 11-30-17 | This Past Weekend #56
url: https://omny.fm/shows/this-past-weekend/this-past-thursday-11-30-17-this-past-weekend-56
feedurl: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/thispastweekend
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content:
        Follow up to Monday's Episode. Callers respond to Adam's issues. https://www.livetree.com https://www.patreon.com/theovon<p>See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.</p><p> </p><p>Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://megaphone.fm/adchoices">megaphone.fm/adchoices</a></p>
      

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guid: tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/364713929
title: 12-4-17 | This Past Weekend #57
url: https://omny.fm/shows/this-past-weekend/12-4-17-this-past-weekend-57
feedurl: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/thispastweekend
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content:
        Greek Art. AA meetings. Yuletime. Canary Nutmeg tint. A few callers. Extended episode at https://www.patreon.com/theovon The new way to produce entertainment is https://www.livetree.com Gunt Squad Stay Guntin! Gunt yaself, show me what ya workin with! Matthew Snow Renee Nicol Ryan Wolfe Angelo Raygun Carla Huffman Max Bowden Shawn-Leigh henry Roar Hanasand Laura Williams Not Even Wrong Xela Person Open Mind 101 Deanna Smith Mona McCune Suzanne O'Reilly Rashelle Raymond Chad Saltzman James Bown Brian Szilagyi Monica Hynes Matt Eckenrode Arielle Nicole Greg H Dave Engelman Dylan Clune Calvin Doyle Robert Doucette Jacob Ortega Jesse Witham Andrea Gagliani Scott Swain William Morris Qie Jenkins Aaron Jones Jon Ross Kevin Best Haley Brown Matthew Snow Renee Nicol Ryan Wolfe Angelo Raygun Carla Huffman Max Bowden Shawn-Leigh henry Roar Hanasand Laura Williams Not Even Wrong<p>See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.</p><p> </p><p>Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://megaphone.fm/adchoices">megaphone.fm/adchoices</a></p>
      

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guid: tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/367924724
title: 12-11-17 | This Past Weekend #58
url: https://omny.fm/shows/this-past-weekend/12-11-17-this-past-weekend-58
feedurl: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/thispastweekend
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content:
        Caught the pression this week. Thank you guys. Partridge getaways. Rabbit Gettah. The new way to produce entertainment is https://www.livetree.com New Tee Shirts avail at https://www.theovon.com/store Thanks Kevin Best, Bobby Small, and Jaystarr Fulfillment for them shirt. Baby turn around and let me see ya sexy body go Gunt Gunt Gunt! Beau Adams Yoga Matthew Snow Renee Nicol Ryan Wolfe Angelo Raygun Carla Huffman Max Bowden Shawn-Leigh henry Roar Hanasand Laura Williams Not Even Wrong Xela Person Open Mind 101 Deanna Smith Mona McCune Suzanne O'Reilly Rashelle Raymond Chad Saltzman James Bown Brian Szilagyi Monica Hynes Matt Eckenrode Arielle Nicole Greg H Dave Engelman Dylan Clune Calvin Doyle Robert Doucette Jacob Ortega Jesse Witham Andrea Gagliani Scott Swain William Morris Qie Jenkins Aaron Jones Jon Ross Kevin Best Haley Brown Matthew Snow Renee Nicol Ryan Wolfe Angelo Raygun Carla Huffman Max Bowden Shawn-Leigh henry Roar Hanasand Laura Williams Not Even Wrong<p>See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.</p><p> </p><p>Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://megaphone.fm/adchoices">megaphone.fm/adchoices</a></p>
      

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guid: tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/372499433
title: How to be a man at Christmas | This Past Weekend #61
url: https://omny.fm/shows/this-past-weekend/how-to-be-a-man-at-christmas-this-past-weekend-61
feedurl: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/thispastweekend
enclosure_type: audio/mpeg
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content:
        New 'ONWARD' Tee Shirts avail at https://www.theovon.com/store https://www.livetree.com Thanks Sherb for your mastering. Thanks Kevin Best, Bobby Small, and Jaystarr Fulfillment for them shirt. Two tickets to the GUNT SHOW! Gunt Squad: Matthew Snow Renee Nicol Ryan Wolfe Angelo Raygun Carla Huffman Robyn Tatu Beau Adams Yoga Max Bowden Shawn-Leigh henry Roar Hanasand Laura Williams Not Even Wrong Xela Person Open Mind 101 Deanna Smith Mona McCune Suzanne O'Reilly Rashelle Raymond Chad Saltzman James Bown Brian Szilagyi Monica Hynes Matt Eckenrode Arielle Nicole Greg H Dave Engelman Dylan Clune Calvin Doyle Robert Doucette Jacob Ortega Jesse Witham Andrea Gagliani Scott Swain William Morris Qie Jenkins Aaron Jones Jon Ross Kevin Best Haley Brown Ned Arick Milo J Garcia Lauren Cribb Ty Oliver Tom in Rural NC Christian from Bakersfield Brian Martinez Matthew Holland Charley Dunham Casey Roberts<p>See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.</p><p> </p><p>Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://megaphone.fm/adchoices">megaphone.fm/adchoices</a></p>
      

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guid: tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/374130554
title: 12-25-17 | This Past Weekend #62
url: https://omny.fm/shows/this-past-weekend/12-25-17-this-past-weekend-62
feedurl: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/thispastweekend
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content:
        Merry Christmas from Natchez, MS.<p>See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.</p><p> </p><p>Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://megaphone.fm/adchoices">megaphone.fm/adchoices</a></p>
      

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guid: tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/377287865
title: Like a Virgin | This Past Weekend #63
url: https://omny.fm/shows/this-past-weekend/like-a-virgin-this-past-weekend-63
feedurl: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/thispastweekend
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content:
        Virgin year. Rose Bowl comedy shows. Takes callers. Hotline: 985-664-9503 https://www.patreon.com/theovon New 'ONWARD' Tee Shirts avail at https://www.theovon.com/store Thanks Sherb for your mastering. Thanks Shy Chris. Happy New Year GUNTS!!! Matthew Snow Renee Nicol Ryan Wolfe Angelo Raygun Carla Huffman Robyn Tatu Beau Adams Yoga Max Bowden Shawn-Leigh henry Roar Hanasand Laura Williams Not Even Wrong Xela Person Open Mind 101 Deanna Smith Mona McCune Suzanne O'Reilly Rashelle Raymond Chad Saltzman James Bown Brian Szilagyi Monica Hynes Matt Eckenrode Arielle Nicole Greg H Dave Engelman Dylan Clune Calvin Doyle Robert Doucette Jacob Ortega Jesse Witham Andrea Gagliani Scott Swain William Morris Qie Jenkins Aaron Jones Jon Ross Kevin Best Haley Brown Ned Arick Milo J Garcia Lauren Cribb Ty Oliver Tom in Rural NC Christian from Bakersfield Brian Martinez Matthew Holland Charley Dunham Casey Roberts<p>See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.</p><p> </p><p>Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://megaphone.fm/adchoices">megaphone.fm/adchoices</a></p>
      

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guid: tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/378613361
title: Denny's Shooter Call-In | This Past Weekend #64
url: https://omny.fm/shows/this-past-weekend/dennys-shooter-call-in-this-past-weekend-64
feedurl: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/thispastweekend
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content:
        Longwinded caller shares story about Denny's. Virginity guidance. Link to Denny's FB: https://www.facebook.com/theo.von/videos/10158237016215150/ Patreon Support: https://www.patreon.com/theovon GUNT ME LIKE A HURRICANE: Matthew Snow Renee Nicol Ryan Wolfe Angelo Raygun Carla Huffman Robyn Tatu Beau Adams Yoga Max Bowden Shawn-Leigh henry Roar Hanasand Laura Williams Not Even Wrong Xela Person Open Mind 101 Deanna Smith Mona McCune Suzanne O'Reilly Rashelle Raymond Chad Saltzman James Bown Brian Szilagyi Monica Hynes Matt Eckenrode Arielle Nicole Greg H Dave Engelman Dylan Clune Calvin Doyle Robert Doucette Jacob Ortega Jesse Witham Andrea Gagliani Scott Swain William Morris Qie Jenkins Aaron Jones Jon Ross Kevin Best Haley Brown Ned Arick Milo J Garcia Lauren Cribb Ty Oliver Tom in Rural NC Christian from Bakersfield Brian Martinez Matthew Holland Charley Dunham Casey Roberts<p>See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.</p><p> </p><p>Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://megaphone.fm/adchoices">megaphone.fm/adchoices</a></p>
      

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guid: tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/381940439
title: Responses to Wife Strife | This Past Weekend #66
url: https://omny.fm/shows/this-past-weekend/responses-to-wife-strife-this-past-weekend-66
feedurl: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/thispastweekend
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content:
        Best Call in Question yet came in from the hotline. Callers share suggestions to Andrew's Wife Strife. I had fun. Thank you. Hotline: 985-664-9503 Grey Block Pizza https://www.greyblockpizza.com Patreon Support: www.patreon.com/theovon Thank You Chris Perez. Kaz. Bud Galloway. Sherbbbbbb. GUNT ME LIKE A HURRICANE: Matthew Snow Renee Nicol Ryan Wolfe Angelo Raygun Carla Huffman Robyn Tatu Beau Adams Yoga Max Bowden Shawn-Leigh henry Roar Hanasand Laura Williams Not Even Wrong Xela Person Open Mind 101 Deanna Smith Mona McCune Suzanne O'Reilly Rashelle Raymond Chad Saltzman James Bown Brian Szilagyi Monica Hynes Matt Eckenrode Arielle Nicole Greg H Dave Engelman Dylan Clune Calvin Doyle Robert Doucette Jacob Ortega Jesse Witham Andrea Gagliani Scott Swain William Morris Qie Jenkins Aaron Jones Jon Ross Kevin Best Haley Brown Ned Arick Milo J Garcia Lauren Cribb Ty Oliver Tom in Rural NC Christian from Bakersfield Brian Martinez Matthew Holland Charley Dunham Casey Roberts<p>See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.</p><p> </p><p>Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://megaphone.fm/adchoices">megaphone.fm/adchoices</a></p>
      

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guid: tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/383850260
title: 1-15-18 | This Past Weekend #67
url: https://omny.fm/shows/this-past-weekend/1-15-18-this-past-weekend-67
feedurl: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/thispastweekend
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content:
        Talking Aziz-cusations. Is it okay to pleasure yourself to deceased adult film stars? We ask one. A surprise caller calls and its the best and worst. One of the weirdest eps, but one of my favorites. A mom needs some hotline help. Zoey Monroe Insta (enter at your own risk): https://www.instagram.com/mszoeymonroe/?hl=en Hotline: 985-664-9503 Support Grey Block Pizza: https://www.greyblockpizza.com Patreon Support: https://www.patreon.com/theovon Thank You Chris Perez. Kaz. Bud Galloway. Sherbbbbbb. Gunto Gunterson Strikes Again: Matthew Snow Renee Nicol Ryan Wolfe Angelo Raygun Carla Huffman Robyn Tatu Beau Adams Yoga Max Bowden Shawn-Leigh henry Roar Hanasand Laura Williams Not Even Wrong Xela Person Open Mind 101 Deanna Smith Mona McCune Suzanne O'Reilly Rashelle Raymond Chad Saltzman James Bown Brian Szilagyi Monica Hynes Matt Eckenrode Arielle Nicole Greg H Dave Engelman Dylan Clune Calvin Doyle Robert Doucette Jacob Ortega Jesse Witham Andrea Gagliani Scott Swain William Morris Qie Jenkins Aaron Jones Jon Ross Kevin Best Haley Brown Ned Arick Milo J Garcia Lauren Cribb Ty Oliver Tom in Rural NC Christian from Bakersfield Brian Martinez Matthew Holland Charley Dunham Casey Roberts<p>See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.</p><p> </p><p>Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://megaphone.fm/adchoices">megaphone.fm/adchoices</a></p>
      

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guid: tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/385375985
title: Me(n)Too | This Past Weekend #68
url: https://omny.fm/shows/this-past-weekend/me-n-too-this-past-weekend-68
feedurl: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/thispastweekend
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content:
        Follow up to Monday's episode. Aziz chatter. Callers respond to mom's inquiry. Trying to legally still be a man. Riverside. Sorry so emo. See you in Jacksonville. Hotline: 985-664-9503 Grey Block Pizza www.greyblockpizza.com Patreon Support: www.patreon.com/theovon Thank You Chris Perez. Kaz. Bud Galloway. Sherbbbbbb. Weeee Areeeee GUNT-shall!!!! Matthew Snow Renee Nicol Ryan Wolfe Angelo Raygun Carla Huffman Robyn Tatu Beau Adams Yoga Max Bowden Shawn-Leigh henry Roar Hanasand Laura Williams Not Even Wrong Xela Person Open Mind 101 Deanna Smith Mona McCune Suzanne O'Reilly Rashelle Raymond Chad Saltzman James Bown Brian Szilagyi Monica Hynes Matt Eckenrode Arielle Nicole Greg H Dave Engelman Dylan Clune Calvin Doyle Robert Doucette Jacob Ortega Jesse Witham Andrea Gagliani Scott Swain William Morris Qie Jenkins Aaron Jones Jon Ross Kevin Best Haley Brown Ned Arick Milo J Garcia Lauren Cribb Ty Oliver Tom in Rural NC Christian from Bakersfield Brian Martinez Matthew Holland Charley Dunham Casey Roberts<p>See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.</p><p> </p><p>Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://megaphone.fm/adchoices">megaphone.fm/adchoices</a></p>
      

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guid: tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/387293996
title: 1-22-18 | This Past Weekend #69
url: https://omny.fm/shows/this-past-weekend/1-22-18-this-past-weekend-69
feedurl: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/thispastweekend
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        Jacksonville visit. Cormier. Talking through fear about the Women's March. College question. Hit the Hotline 985-664-9503 https://www.ziprecruiter.com/tpw https://www.greyblockpizza.com (get that hittah) https://www.patreon.com/theovon Submit Dark Arts Tour artwork: theovonk@mac.com Thanks Sherb. Thanks Shy Chris. Thanks YOU. Thank You, Cat on a Hot Tin Gunt Squad: Renee Nicol Matthew Snow Ryan Wolfe Angelo Raygun Carla Huffman John Kutch Tyler Zub Adriana Hernandez Jeffrey Lusero Alex Hitchins Joe Dunn Kennedy Joey Piemonte Robyn Tatu Beau Adams Yoga Max Bowden Shawn-Leigh henry Roar Hanasand Laura Williams Not Even Wrong Xela Person Deanna Smith Mona McCune Suzanne O'Reilly Rashelle Raymond Chad Saltzman James Bown Brian Szilagyi Arielle Nicole Greg H Dave Engelman Dylan Clune Calvin Doyle Robert Doucette Jacob Ortega Jesse Witham Andrea Gagliani Scott Swain William Morris Qie Jenkins Aaron Jones Jon Ross Kevin Best Haley Brown Ned Arick J Garcia Lauren Cribb Ty Oliver Tom in Rural NC Christian from Bakersfield Brian Martinez Matthew Holland Charley Dunham Casey Roberts<p>See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.</p><p> </p><p>Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://megaphone.fm/adchoices">megaphone.fm/adchoices</a></p>
      

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guid: tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/390716769
title: 1-29-18 | This Past Weekend #70
url: https://omny.fm/shows/this-past-weekend/1-29-18-this-past-weekend-70
feedurl: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/thispastweekend
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        Rambling. Whooping cough. No idea quilt. Suggestions for Jose. Sister-in-Love Hit the Hotline 985-664-9503 https://www.ziprecruiter.com/tpw https://www.greyblockpizza.com Tickets: https://www.theovon.com/tour https://www.patreon.com/theovon Intro Music: Jameson Flood https://www.soundcloud.com/jameson-flood Beggars Gunt Be Choosers: Thanks Gunt Renee Nicol Matthew Snow Ryan Wolfe Angelo Raygun Carla Huffman John Kutch Tyler Zub Adriana Hernandez Jeffrey Lusero Alex Hitchins Joe Dunn Kennedy Joey Piemonte Robyn Tatu Beau Adams Yoga Max Bowden Shawn-Leigh henry Roar Hanasand Laura Williams Not Even Wrong Xela Person Deanna Smith Mona McCune Suzanne O'Reilly Rashelle Raymond Chad Saltzman James Bown Brian Szilagyi Arielle Nicole Greg H Dave Engelman Dylan Clune Calvin Doyle Robert Doucette Jacob Ortega Jesse Witham Andrea Gagliani Scott Swain William Morris Jenkins Aaron Jones Jon Ross Kevin Best Haley Brown Ned Arick J Garcia Lauren Cribb Ty Oliver Tom in Rural NC Christian from Bakersfield Brian Martinez Matthew Holland Charley Dunham Casey Roberts<p>See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.</p><p> </p><p>Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://megaphone.fm/adchoices">megaphone.fm/adchoices</a></p>
      

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guid: tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/392841186
title: Fear | This Past Weekend #71
url: https://omny.fm/shows/this-past-weekend/fear-this-past-weekend-71
feedurl: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/thispastweekend
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content:
        Fear. New Age Rocky Anthem. I dont always know what im talking about. But im just trying to talk. Hit the Hotline 985-664-9503 https://www.greyblockpizza.com Tickets: https://www.theovon.com/tour https://www.patreon.com/theovon Intro Music: Stevie Starlight https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbfQri3Nv3M Ladies and Guntlemen! Thanks Gunt Renee Nicol Matthew Snow Ryan Wolfe Angelo Raygun Carla Huffman John Kutch Tyler Zub Adriana Hern Jeffrey Lusero Alex Hitchins Joe Dunn Kennedy Joey Piemonte Robyn Tatu Beau Adams Yoga Max Bowden Shawn-Leigh henry Roar Hanasand Laura Williams Not Even Wrong Xela Person Deanna Smith Mona McCune Suzanne O'Reilly Rashelle Raymond Chad Saltzman James Bown Brian Szilagyi Arielle Nicole Greg H Dave Engelman Dylan Clune Calvin Doyle Robert Doucette Jacob Ortega Jesse Witham Andrea Gagliani Scott Swain William Morris Qie Jenkins Aaron Jones Jon Ross Kevin Best Haley Brown Ned Arick J Garcia Lauren Cribb Ty Oliver Tom in Rural NC Christian from Bakersfield Brian Martinez Matthew Holland Charley Dunham Casey Roberts<p>See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.</p><p> </p><p>Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://megaphone.fm/adchoices">megaphone.fm/adchoices</a></p>
      

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guid: tag:soundcloud,2010:tracks/394758498
title: 2-5-18 | This Past Weekend #72
url: https://omny.fm/shows/this-past-weekend/2-5-18-this-past-weekend-72
feedurl: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/thispastweekend
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content:
        Aliens. Superbowl. Man crushes. Responses to Tricky Mickey. Golden Oreo assistance. Hit the Hotline 985-664-9503 https://www.greyblockpizza.com Tickets: https://www.theovon.com/tour https://www.patreon.com/theovon Can you feel the GUNT tonight?! Gunt ME!! Renee Nicol Matthew Snow Ryan Wolfe Angelo Raygun Carla Huffman John Kutch Tyler Zub Adriana Hern Jeffrey Lusero Alex Hitchins Joe Dunn Kennedy Joey Piemonte Robyn Tatu Beau Adams Yoga Max Bowden Shawn-Leigh henry Roar Hanasand Laura Williams Not Even Wrong Xela Person Deanna Smith Mona McCune Suzanne O'Reilly Rashelle Raymond Chad Saltzman James Bown Brian Szilagyi Arielle Nicole Greg H Dave Engelman Dylan Clune Calvin Doyle Robert Doucette Jacob Ortega Jesse Witham Andrea Gagliani Scott Swain William Morris Qie Jenkins Aaron Jones Jon Ross Kevin Best Haley Brown Ned Arick J Garcia Lauren Cribb Ty Oliver Tom in Rural NC Christian from Bakersfield Brian Martinez Matthew Holland Charley Dunham Casey Roberts<p>See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.</p><p> </p><p>Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://megaphone.fm/adchoices">megaphone.fm/adchoices</a></p>
      

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