2020, 2021, 2022: Rat, Cow, Tiger

The Year of the Rat (or Mouse) began on January 25, 2020. This was the year of the birdemic. Rats and mice are plague vectors (as in the Black Death), and the bat was historically thought of as a sort of mouse (as in the dated term flittermouse). Mice are proverbially timid, and 2020 was marked by ridiculous extremes of caution.

The Year of the Cow (or Ox, or Bull) began on February 12, 2021. This was the year of the peck -- known, despite the medical inaccuracy of the term, by a word that originally meant "pertaining to cows, from cows" -- and people were "bull"-ied into taking it.

The Year of the Tiger began on February 1, 2022. Right on cue, the narrative switched from the peck to the urgent need to start World War III.

Brave and Presearch absolutely DO censor search results.

So DuckDuckGo has just decided to do this:

Even Google doesn't go that far! They at least give you a few RT articles in foreign languages.

Bing is the same as DDG.

Brave has claimed that they don't censor anything, which is a lie.

In fact, Brave seems to be just using Google's algorithm. What are the chances that two different search engines would independently return the Wikipedia article on Tim Burton as the first hit for christopher walken infogalactic?

Notice that my own blog is fifth result -- not the post where I mention Walken but one where I quote one of Paul's epistles without comment!

Presearch, which also claims not to censor search results, is the same as all the others.

They do at least return the Christopher Walken page on Infogalactic -- though for some reason it ranks lower than "1969 texas longhorn football stats."

Okay, what about Yandex, then? I mean, they're actually Russian, right?

Yeah, well that's a mixed blessing.

To be clear, this is what happens when you run this news search on their English site: it automatically switches you to all Russian.

So . . . any other ideas? Is there any search engine at all that returns uncensored English-language results?

Third and final round: Portraits

Wombo is absolutely terrible at drawing faces, so this will be more challenging. To make things a little easier, I have provided three portraits of each person, to help you separate essence from accident. These are all real individuals from very recent history, and several of them are still living.

Person 1:

Person 2:

Person 3:

Person 4:

Person 5:

Some of these individuals may be dangerous. If you recognize any of them, do not approach. Just notify us in the comments.

The 2014 augury

I've discussed augury -- interpreting birds as omens -- before on this blog.

On January 26, 2014, during the Euromaidan coup, Pope Francis gave a speech at the Vatican calling for an end to violence in the Ukraine. Then, during the Angelus prayer, he had two children release white doves as symbols of peace.

Moments later, both doves were attacked -- one by a gull

and the other by a hooded crow.

In retrospect, this really seems like an augury in the classical sense -- something straight out of Homer -- and the specific birds involved are highly symbolic. It's something I'll be keeping in the back of my mind as events unfold.

Ex-Mormon apostle honors Joe Lieberman

Remember former U.S. Senator and failed presidential and vice-presidential candidate Joe Lieberman? For those whose memory is a little hazy, this is how the far-left Wikipedia summarizes his position on killing children:

Overall Lieberman has a pro-choice voting record, and in 2007 he received a grade of 100 from the abortion rights organization NARAL Pro-Choice America. While running in the Democratic primaries in the 2004 presidential election, Lieberman said that as president he would "follow a policy that makes abortion safe, rare and legal." He voted against the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act.

And on killing adults:

According to a 2003 article in the Boston Globe, Lieberman "initially supported the Vietnam War, then changed his mind in late 1967, when he decided it was 'the wrong place to be.' He has firmly backed every military action since then: Grenada, Libya, Panama, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and both Gulf wars." Since that time, he has repeatedly urged new American attacks against Iran, Syria and, most recently, action in Yemen against terrorists.

He was also an early advocate of turning YouTube into the censorship platform it has become today. This was in 2008, so before-it-was-cool that even the far-left New York Times was against him.

Lieberman "demanded that YouTube take down hundreds of videos produced by Islamist terrorist organizations or their supporters. YouTube reviewed the videos to determine whether they violated its guidelines, which prohibit hate speech and graphic or gratuitous violence. It took down 80 videos, but left others up. Mr. Lieberman said that was 'not enough,' and demanded that more come down." The New York Times reported that Lieberman was "trying to pressure YouTube to pull down videos he does not like" and wrote that "[w]hile it is fortunate that Mr. Lieberman does not have the power to tell YouTube that it must remove videos, it is profoundly disturbing that an influential senator would even consider telling a media company to shut down constitutionally protected speech."

Imagine the Times saying anything remotely like that today! The senator was truly a man ahead of his time.

⁂

And here's what Ex-Mormon Apostle Quentin L. Cook is up to these days.

You can tell from his face that this guy just loves being allowed to hang out with celebrities. Here he is last year with a Harvard "African American studies" professor and a handsy archbishop.

I give Elder Cook a hard time, but he really was a prophet, at least once in his career.

What happened since then? James sums it up pretty well.

Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God (James 4:4).

Hysteria is the new normal

Remember the Mostly Peaceful Riots of the summer of 2020? Birdemic hysteria was put on hold, social distancing and abject obedience were replaced by crowded protests and lawlessness, and all the institutions and individuals who had gone all in on the old hysteria seamlessly transferred their attention to the new. The birdemic coup was only a few months old, and at the time I wrote that "the nascent birdemic police state [has] suddenly morphed into an Eff-tha-Police state."

But nothing had ended. The Birdemic Police State was just taking a breather. It would be back with a vengeance, and before long systemic racism -- in the form of peck mandates disproportionately affecting blacks -- would be A-OK again. Not that the other thing has ended, either. One of these days, Black Lives will suddenly start mostly peacefully Mattering again like we've never seen before. And then it'll be the birdemic again, or the weather, or aliens, or whatever.

In those early days of the new world order, I used to think, "This can't go on like this forever. People can only sustain this level of hysteria for so long." Well, it turns out that when it comes to hysteria, a change is as good as a rest.

Now it's happening again, but Putin's Nobel Prize in Medicine for single-handedly ending the birdemic is premature. The birdemic is still in play. "Anti" racism is still in play. The War on Sex is still in play. Even that weather crap is still in play. People can sustain this level of hysteria indefinitely, as long as they change it up from time to time to keep things interesting -- and the Liararchy certainly has no problem doing that! The Satanic Revolution has no positive values and no core principles, so absolutely everything -- including, apparently, "standing with" literal neo-Nazis! -- is on the table.

Strangest book summary ever

Some completely random browsing led me to this on Amazon.uk.

Title: Glim the Glorious or How the Little Folk Bested the Gubgoblins

Summary: Traces the history of the Ethiopian Jews and chronicles the progress of Operation Moses, the secret rescue mission that brought these isolated persecuted black Jews out of Ethiopia to Israel