patrick.net

NuttBoxer says

That makes me feel better. Lots of Irish specific references I figured I'm missing the meaning of, but if even an Irishman can't fathom them, I'm not doing as bad as I thought.

Learn to read current and ancient Latin, Greek, and Irish, study Irish mythology in depth, as well as Greek Mythology, take some shrooms once in a while to relate the schizoid frame of reference, mixed analogies, and puns, think of a wobbly camera reeling through Dublin changing perspective constantly, and it will be one of the best books you have ever read (so I heard, I barely got past 'riverrun').

Patrick says

I've known some former 'homeless', including one of my oldest friends who was quite prosperous, but the drugs and booze got him. He wound up living in his car, then behind his car, until the car got towed, which is a common spirol for addicts. He was on the streets of Oakland for a couple of years. He wound up getting sober, rebuilding his life, and becoming quite prosperous again. Mentally ill, oddly enough, with medication can usually function enough to live in group homes and do OK as long as they are not taking or seeking street drugs.

Drugs, alcohol etc. can make you crazy as well as addicted, and typically, it requires at least six months to a year drying them out to even diagnose mental status, and who is going to go to the expense for a possibly brain damaged and homeless person(s)?

Patrick says

'
First, prohibition created alcoholism. Maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but fact is, most people never tried hard liquor until prohibition.
Second, I don't know of any addict who's quit because they got arrested. Does anyone?
Third, my relative who sold cannabis in Chicago would still be alive if it was legal. He was shot during a deal that went bad.

You cannot legislate morality or good choices. Black markets are always more dangerous than buying and selling legally. And the War on Us is still one of the greatest failures in American history, preceded only by the War of Terror, but still ahead of the Scamdemic.

Watch The Wire, Season 3, then tell me about drug laws.

Patrick says

Just finished Going Solo by Roald Dahl, the children's writer. It's about his time before WWII in East Africa, and during WWII as a British fighter pilot.

Why aren't you reading books emblazoned on flayed and tanned human flesh? That's where you will find out the way the world really works.

https://notthebee.com/article/why-do-you-need-to-own-so-many-books-they-ask-heres-why

In eras of mass censorship and overzealous ideology, books are often the first thing to go. Books are perfect mass mediums for the transmission of knowledge, which is why they're so often targets of censors and busybodies and dictators.

Keep your large book collections. Make them larger. Don't give them up. They're necessary.

Patrick says

Patrick says

Let me try a crack at the new Mother Goose:

There was and Old Women
Who lived in a shoe
She had so many kids
She did not know what to do
She lived in a Red State
So abortion was moot
She still having kids
So she moved to a Boot

-HeadSet

https://notthebee.com/article/never-in-a-million-years-did-i-think-id-ever-see-this-headline-but-i-am-so-here-for-it

British government warns that reading Tolkien, Lewis, Orwell, and John Locke radicalizes people into far-right extremism ...

Britain has a government program called "Prevent" that was founded in 2019 to research what causes a Muslim to become a terrorist.

[Hint: It's reading the Quran]

... Since it would be very bigoted for this program to look into the actual ideologies that are causing the vast, overwhelming majority of violence, terror, and crime on the planet, they had to make sure they gave those evil conservatives and Christians a shake down. ...

There is also a reading list of historical texts which produce red flags to RICU. These include 'Leviathan' by Thomas Hobbes, John Locke's 'Two Treatises of Government' and Edmund Burke's 'Reflections on the Revolution in France,' as well as works by Thomas Carlyle and Adam Smith. Elsewhere RICU warns that radicalisation could occur from books by authors including C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Aldous Huxley and Joseph Conrad. I kid you not, though it seems that all satire is dead, but the list of suspect books also includes '1984' by George Orwell.

No Dickens!? I bet it's coming...

I've started learning a bit of ancient Greek, so I'm going to bookmark this nice presentation of the alphabet here:



I'm going to run through this before getting a paper book to study:

https://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/getting-started-on-ancient-greek/content-section-overview?active-tab=content-tab

HeadSet says

Let me try a crack at the new Mother Goose:

There was and Old Women
Who lived in a shoe
She had so many kids
She did not know what to do
She lived in a Red State
So abortion was moot
She still having kids
So she moved to a Boot

-HeadSet

Sounds like a slut with a lot of baby daddies, and is on welfare, and is using her kids for income.

Patrick says

This Tom Wolf?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Wolf

I'm always suspicious about rags from riches stories.

richwicks says

Sounds like a slut with a lot of baby daddies, and is on welfare, and is using her kids for income.

Or by having many baby daddies, get a separate child support from each. Anyway, the joke is the moving to a boot, not any jab at Red states as I agree with outlawing abortion.

Revised:
There was and Old Women
Who lived in a shoe
She had so many kids
She did not know what to do
She's still putting out
To bring in the loot
But with so many kids
She's moved to a Boot

HeadSet says

Or by having many baby daddies, get a separate child support from each. Anyway, the joke is the moving to a boot, not any jab at Red states as I agree with outlawing abortion.

I am anti-abortion and pro-choice. I don't think people should get an abortion, yet, I think they should be allowed to.

Since abortion exists, and it's "a woman's choice", I don't believe in child support either. SHE made the choice to have it, he didn't.

When abortion was legalized, there were very few birth control methods allowed. I know that in the 1940's LYSOL was used to prevent pregnancy as a douche. I have heard women from that time SWEAR by it as well. There was a time where in many states, women could only get birth control if their husband allowed it.

I'm a proponent of RISUG:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4345756/

which is now being trialed (forever) as Vasagel

https://www.parsemus.org/2022/07/next-steps-for-vasalgel/

This will NEVER get through FDA approval, I view them as a scam. I've known about them for over 10 years, it would make female contraceptives obsolete. The way it works is a gel is injected into your vas deferens (basically your male fallopian tubes) and this destroys sperm. It might be that it simply blocks sperm flow, it's odd they don't know. Anyhow, it's reversible male sterility, and has been EXTENSIVELY tested in animals, and people - RISUG was used in India, but India also forcibly sterilized males up until like 1970.

As we all know (now) you can't trust the medical establishment as to whether its reversible or not, but it costs like $5 for the injection, it's an outpatient procedure, and it's not available in the United States, because it would make female contraceptives obsolete. Male sterility is permanent until the man decides he wants to have children, and its reversibility isn't well known.

Although it's been extensively tested in animals, animals aren't human beings. RISUG has been used in India since the 1970's, but reversibility wasn't studied. It might be an alternative to castration for animals. When I did dog fostering and rescue, I really didn't enjoy doing castration and spaying. The dogs I had were unwanted and had nobody to care for them, but I still felt like shit taking away their reproductive ability permanently. I had some great dogs, and they should have had children. They were better dogs as dogs than I am a good human being in humanity.

https://twitter.com/WokeArchive/status/1653911334495346688?ref_src=patrick.net

Savage!

Elect that kid now. Imagine him in a debate with Kamala.

Patrick says

Very true Patrick, as read what Robert Downey Jr has said about this.

.

There are some easy read books that are very helpful such as 7 Habits of Effective People, and How to Make Money in Stocks (written by the founder of Investors Business Daily).

If I am going to reach fiction, I like James A. Michener. I read his Caribbean book when I was stationed in the early 90's at Roosevelt Roads, Puerto Rico.

It gave an appreciation as far as the cultures around me especially when I traveled to different islands.

.

I just finished vol 9 of "The Life and Works of Thomas Paine". I haven't read the previous volumes. I just happened to find this book on a book-exchange shelf near me run by the owner of this local used bookstore:

https://www.abebooks.com/feldmans-books-menlo-park-ca-u.s.a/69651/sf

I like old books, so this one caught my eye.





It was printed in 1925 and apparently never read through, since some of the pages needed to be sliced apart to open them.

I flipped through it and could feel the fire! Hoo boy, is Paine an unorthodox guy. He was a Deist, saying that the universe itself is proof of God, but denying all "revealed" religion and their books.

He was the OG memer, writing little tracts and distributing them. Some of the stuff is hilarious, as in speculating that angels must shit, since the bible says they eat, and comparing that to the way birds shit in flight.

I must read "Common Sense" now if I can find a copy. Our local library does not have it, amazingly. They do have a ton of books on how to be gay and why white people are bad though, all prominently displayed.

Still struggling through Ulysses, but the more I read it, the more I like Joyce and his unique style. Although I must say I am stumped after listening to The Dubliners sing about fighting against England, and comparing that to the stories I hear about Ireland today. What the fuck happened..?

Ireland got rich. Well, the Republic did anyway. That took the fight out of them. They became wussified.

NuttBoxer says

Still struggling through Ulysses, but the more I read it, the more I like Joyce and his unique style. Although I must say I am stumped after listening to The Dubliners sing about fighting against England, and comparing that to the stories I hear about Ireland today. What the fuck happened..?

The Soviet Union fell, drying up the majority of funding for the IRA. That prompted them to come to the bargaining table with the Unionists and largely end the "Troubles" in Northern Ireland.

Then Ireland was swept up in the whole EU thing, after that whole hiccup with the European ERM collapse caused by Soros in 1992. Later, EU money gushed into Ireland, and bought up everything, causing a real estate boom like Spain and the rest of the PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, Spain).

When the housing meltdown occurred, the Irish assumed about 50 billion pounds of the bad loans lent by the international banks under pressure from the EU. Unlike the Icelanders, who said "Fuck you!" to that bullshit, the Irish, to my and their shame, acted like the whipped cur that they are and knuckled under, nearly bankrupting their economy.

rocketjoe79 says

Highly recommend the Aubreyaid (Master and Commander Series) by Patrick O'Brian. Excellent on every front.

Finally saw the 2003 movie Master and Commander and it was really excellent. I recommend it.

https://archive.org/details/fasting-the-ultimate-diet-with-bonus-book-fasting-as-a-way-of-life

Fasting The Ultimate Diet by Alan Cott. Also available as paperbook on Amazon. Everyone should consider reading this one, imho

NuttBoxer says

Still struggling through Ulysses, but the more I read it, the more I like Joyce and his unique style. Although I must say I am stumped after listening to The Dubliners sing about fighting against England, and comparing that to the stories I hear about Ireland today. What the fuck happened..?

They cucked out. Don't even speak their native language anymore.

I agree.

The Irish should speak only in Irish to each other.

Iceland retains its own language even though everyone there knows English. So it can be done.

Patrick says

The Irish should speak only in Irish to each other.

This will serve as an anti-dote to wokeism

Patrick says

The Irish should speak only in Irish to each other.

Which "Irish" is that? In the old days, an "Irish" from County Cork spoke a language different enough from an "Irish" from County Kerry as to be mutually unintelligible.

HeadSet says

Patrick says

The Irish should speak only in Irish to each other.

Which "Irish" is that? In the old days, an "Irish" from County Cork spoke a language different enough from an "Irish" from County Kerry as to be mutually unintelligible.

There must be a standard Irish, methinks. Germans have many dialects but standard German is a thing.

There is a standard Irish which is taught in schools and used in official documents.

I threw a good five years into learning Irish, even studying a bit on Inisheer (Irish: Inis Oírr). The three main dialects are mutually intelligible and people converse across them all the time. The fourth dialect is Scottish Gaelic, which is not really a separate language from Irish, though the Scots would like to think so. It's further removed, but I've read that any Irish speaker needs only about a week to get a pretty good understanding of Scottish. I can get parts of it myself.

The Irish colonized Scotland about the same time that the Angles and Saxons were moving into England, like 700 AD. This is why Scottish Gaelic exists. The Irish brought it there.

Someone left this book out on the street nearby for free with other household items for anyone to pick up, so I've been reading it at night before going to sleep. I've been interested in Locke since learning that he was one of the inspirations for the American founding fathers. He even repeatedly refers to "Life, liberty, and estate", which is not exactly the same as the Constitution, but close.

His English is pretty long, twisty, and verbose, but then he was writing in about 1690. I have to read some things several times, but I can mostly get it.

This edition copyright 1937, printed in 1952.

Patrick says

And this cartoon came out decades ago.

Sort of finished the Locke, Berkeley, and Hume book above. Their English is so verbose and twisty that it was too painful to really read it all. Glad I tried though, because I got an impression of all three of them into my head. Locke was totally one of the founders of the US whether he knew it or not. The Constitution is clearly quoting him at times.

Found another interesting book at a free bookshelf around here, so I've started that now:



Heard about Plutarch many times, so it will be interesting to read his little biographies of many people of ancient history. He's said to be very entertaining.