Logitech G 502X

After purging myself of all Microsoft products, even my beloved ergonomic trackball style mouse, I hadn’t really replaced what I gave up with anything of quality mouse-wise other than some drug-store generic-three-button gaming mouse. It worked fine for what it was, but paired with the NsCDE (not so common desktop environment) which has become my regular graphical desktop windows system due to stability, (and familiarity since the first Linuxes I used had its ancestor on it–Common Desktop Environment) I needed something with more programmable buttons. (For instance, in NsCDE you can “iconify a program” which is very handy, but the keystrokes are not so handy)

A quick glance on the net showed that the Logitech G 502 X could do this job with compatibility. It appeared to be pricier than I wanted to pay, but eventually my wife was able to sleuth one at a deal that was within the price range I was willing to spend. The compatibility with Linux, however, turned out to not exactly be the truth.

Non System D

The Linux distro I run intentionally does not use System D. I don’t really have anything against System D, but I have seen enough concerning how it runs with regard to resolvers and defaults that I do not think it is especially interested in privacy of user information as a first principle. I get that it allows for a standardized way to deal with init scripts, but I don’t think standardization is the right barometer. Windows is, after all, standardized in many, many ways. It just also happens to be an evil operating system.

The recommendation for Linux, and the G502 mouse suggest a program called “libratbag” (who comes up with these names?) and a GUI interface called Piper. Piper, it turns out, relies heavily on System D, so you can forget about a nice little graphical interface for programming your mouse buttons. Libratbag doesn’t necessarily rely on System D, but has a stilted syntax and for the purposes of my needs, did not seem to allow for the mouse to actually do what I instructed Libratbag to do. (Libratbag does heavily suggest you use System D and since I was trying to avoid it, there is a good chance some user error was introduced that I didn’t spend more time trying to fix. I spent about a day trying different solutions anyway, and that was more than enough) So, another solution was going to have to happen, and this was likely going to mean firing up windows within a VM. One last stop before that point was trying Solaar. It didn’t even detect my mouse, so I knew it was off to the VM harbor.

Windows VM

I happened to have a Windows 7 VM all ready in Qemu, and thought I might try the suggested Onboard Memory Manger to program a profile to save to the mouse for use with Linux. This didn’t work, and I figured probably Windows 7 was a little too old for this trick. I wasn’t about to try the G Hub from Logitech on Windows 7 since past experience with Logitech and popular opinion suggested that G Hub was, on a good day, a dumpster fire. So, I thought I’d fire up a Windows 10 via Qemu utilizing QuickEmu. After some time, I was able to allow the mouse to pass through, but when I did, the keyboard would stop allowing me to type. So, the Onboard Memory Manager app worked, but I couldn’t tell it to do anything. My keyboard was not a USB style keyboard, so passing it through via USB was out of the question, so the next stop was VirtualBox.

VirtualBox

VirtualBox allowed all the passthroughs, and when I started the Onboard Memory Manager app it ran AND, importantly, I could type. Unfortunately, Onboard Memory Manager did not save my settings to the mouse and seemed to also not be detecting the full range of options available to the G502X. That meant that I was going to have to install the maligned Logitech G Hub software instead to do the job. Fortunately, it installed fairly smoothly, although I can see why people don’t like it. It is a large download for doing very little other than controlling mouse buttons, and it is very slow to start. It wants you to have an account which you must sign up for before you can use it, and all of this seems a little ridiculous just to program a mouse you own. The next complaint about it is that it is counter-intuitive to use, and there is a certain “Logitech G Hub dance” you have to do if you want to program your onboard memory. Fortunately for you, I’ve taken pictures of the process to help you cut down the time required to get what should be a simple task accomplished.

The Picture Tour

In order to program your new G502X or similar product, you are going to need to pay careful attention to the thing I’ve circled in yellow on the upper right. It tells you the name of the profile you are editing, which, in this example, is default. Once you edit whatever you intend to edit, which is probably going to be a macro, (there is a macro tab in the program for editing those) you drag it over to the button that corresponds to the mouse button you desire to trigger said action. Once you are done with that, you will need to push the second button, toward the lower left in my screen shot, that toggles the onboard memory manager on. When you do this, you won’t be able to edit your mouse buttons any more, since the system assumes you are finished with that. What you will be able to do is access the settings of the “On Board Memory Mode” which shows slots and profiles that are active. In my example I’ve drawn a yellow arrow next to the active profile. You want to be sure that whatever this says is the name of the profile you saw in the upper right when you were editing your mouse buttons. So, even though in the example photo it says “Profile 2” what it should say if we wanted settings we edited in the previous screen to take hold is “Default”. Once you do this, it is safe to close down your VM and your mouse, at least in my case, won’t work since it was passed through to the VM. You have to then unplug and re-plug your USB mouse into your tower or laptop.

Observations

If this seems convoluted and tortured to use system hardware, it’s because it is. Many are the pleas for G Hub to be supported on Linux, and Logitech usually answers the same which seems to be “We aren’t aware of any plans for this.” I guess they must be making enough from Windows users that it isn’t a priority, but it is odd to make your hardware dependent on a specific OS in the case of a mouse.

Outcome

A lot of time was spent for me trying to cajole this mouse into working with a non-systemd distro. Often, the world has a tendency to make the easy things the more costly in terms of the trade-offs. The assessment I’d give for this specific situation is that Logitech is needlessly making this entire process more difficult than it has to be because it wants email addresses and user device information–preferably from a windows system where it might be able to harvest even more data. This is not really treating your users with respect since the end goal isn’t to see how much information in terms of meta-data you can squeeze from your user base to sell to someone else. Rather, the business is to sell them a mouse that they can then use for their purposes. Anything else is an “unstated business objective” that the consumer isn’t necessarily agreeing to since their mouse is going to be held hostage until they agree to the corporate terms. While I think the G502X is a good product from the standpoint of function, the getting-it-there is an unnecessary snarl of some kind of corporate self-interest that shouldn’t be the case.

No Prophecy Around These Parts…

As I was searching around on the internet, I came across a criticism of modern churches that caught my attention. The observation was made that modern churches do not focus on prophecy or their fulfilment. After considering the observation made, I had to conclude that the author had a solid point. In most modern churches it is rare to hear much about Revelation while in many others the book is entirely avoided. What might explain this bias?

For One Thing…

There is a tendency in many congregations where a prophecy is involved to absolutely go nutzo bonkers in expectation of fulfilment. This kind of zeal is not exactly the “patient waiting on the Kingdom” kind of trait that is usually attributed to those who are considered to be holy. It is, on the other hand, a kind of wish fulfilment with an added force behind it of trying to make the prophecy come true on the terms of the believer or believers. A prophecy will likely never have to be forced since it is the will of YHVH for a prophecy to unfold. That is not to say, however, that there will not be contention and tension around a prophecy as it is fulfilled–particularly if the prophecy alludes to such a process. So, the hypothesis here is that congregations have become allergic to the concept of prophecy because believers tend to run off in all directions with what that means and cause the congregation to have to experience something of this roller coaster version of events. If you need a more secular case study though, I have got you!

Q Posts

The Q posts are a little like a prophecy in that they seem to allude to events that are going to happen. I’ve written a little about them here. Watching this movement gain momentum was somewhat equivalent to watching a tilt-a-world gain momentum. Despite some posts saying very clearly answers to questions posed, people ran off with what they wanted to be true as opposed to what was said. This of course led to subgroups of subgroups that were linked by “belief in thing X”. The splintering and fracturing continues until now with some who still think the plan is on, others who think Israel is the secret enemy of the world, some who think the whole thing is a psy-op, and still others who think neither of those things is what the posts are saying.

Prophecy In a Church

The same problems can happen when a prophetic voice arises in a church. For one thing, a prophetic voice that is authentic cannot be challenged. This might upset the power dynamic in the church, although if a church is looking for prophecy, it shouldn’t. One could easily see how a pastor who is faced with a prophecy that sounds negative about their ministry is going to be inclined to not want to hear whatever that prophecy is. Thing is, sometimes pastors are wrong, and sometimes others hear a word from YHVH concerning them. Of course, sometimes people also make up stuff too. This is where prayer and discernment enter the scene.

When Times are Wild

When a prophecy is getting close to being fulfilled, the Bible is full of wild events that begin to happen. Fake versions show up and people mistake them for the real deal. The real deal shows up, and people mistake it for the fake. Demons are in the middle of the conversation along with angels, and the level of mix-up chaos becomes high. Again, a congregation is going to want to instinctively avoid all of this kind of action. However, by trying to avoid it, it also finds itself outside the realm of living prophecy and how it might be fulfilled. This makes the church in that case a tool not for fulfilling the purposes of the Will of YHVH which is supposed to be its entire purpose.

When Times Are Not Wild

On the other hand, when times are not wild, then often a kind of prophecy begins to wake up in one way or another, and people believe it is near fulfilment but do not see the expected result. This causes a falling away from having faith in prophecy as people simply become burned out. A casual stroll through Twitter/X will show you what “burned out” people look like on all sides of the political spectrum. The same thing can happen in churches, and so more than a few leaders probably decide it is better to focus on the bulk of the Bible that has prophecies that are all ready fulfilled as opposed to the prophecies that will be fulfilled.

Weirdness About A Prophecy

The peculiar quality of a prophecy, though, is that it will be fulfilled when it is ready with or without the participation of those that ought to be sensitive to its coming. The prophecy is made so that faith is sustained and has something to focus on–not so people can lose their minds or their religion where the prophetic is concerned. The reactions in some congregations and subsequent avoidance is really the oppositekind of behaviour YHVH seems to want His people to have concerning these future utterances. Rather, they are supposed to be a kind of extra confirmation that YHVH keeps His word, and His people should turn back to Him. Shutting one’s eyes to His prophecies written in His books because it is inconvenient to congregation leaders and congregations says more about those who are convened in assembly than about any of the prophecies. If there is a problem with the Bible, where does the problem, do you suppose, ultimately lie? With YHVH, or with people?

Worthwhile Sci-Fi

As a Sci-Fi author, I have some opinions on what constitutes good science fiction. Farscape in my opinion, is at the top of the list of very good Sci-Fi. If you haven’t seen it, then go flush around 68 hours of your life away watching the series. You’ve probably spent time doing far worse.

Basic Premise of the Show

The plot Farscape explores concerns wormholes and interstellar travel. There are more than a few cautionary episodes of what might happen if you unlock a quantum scenario you don’t understand–and then there are more than a few episodes that are cautionary if you unlock a quantum scenario that you do understand. However, an interesting piece of information concerning the series was that the two leads were in New York when 9-11 hit after a convention and were preparing to book travel to the United Kingdom. Then, my astrological senses kicked in, and I noticed that Ben Browder who plays John Crichton in the series has a birthday that is situated on December 11th, 1962. Claudia Black, who plays Aeryn Sun, has a birthday that lands her existence on October the 11th, 1972. Those two towers at the time had a very “11” kind of existence–they were after all twins of one another. That got me to thinking about what Farscape’s leads possible birth charts look like. The question, it turns out, bore some unexpected fruit.

Some Assumptions

Before I post the charts, I want to make my assumptions clear. This analysis is coming from the Roman calendar system, which ought to be obvious. There are other ways of keeping time, and some of those ways of keeping time probably would not align with both birthdays being on “11” days. The next thing is that I am using Astrotheme’s information for the charts, and it appears that Claudia Black’s chart does not have a solid birth time. The basic characteristics of the day will remain about the same, but the house expression can change drastically with differing birth times. Still, for the level of analysis I intend to offer, it is enough to make some general observations. With these essential assumptions and limitations being made, I will move on to the charts.

Ben Browder’s Chart

Browder has a very “left-oriented chart”. This usually means the personal will and matters of Aries/Mars are going to be more prominent than typical. The Seventh house, the house of Justice and relationships has a wound in Pisces via Chiron, with a Jupiter sitting next to it. This indicates some proclivity toward spiritual injury and injustice and being put in some position to do something about it. The North Node of the chart sits in the 11th house in Cancer, and away from the 5th house in Capricorn, and suggests a more emotional existence among whatever Ben Browder’s “tribe” is as he moves along his soul journey. The 6th house pops with a Saturn in Aquarius, which says something about how those emotions might come up, and in this case it has to do with groups and karma. All of this chart is relative to Browder’s birth,in Memphis, Tennessee which is, of course, named after the town in Egypt.

Claudia Black’s chart has Libra all over it. It appears to be situated in the bottom half of the circle, which usually makes a person more private. On the other hand, the wound appears in Aries at the top in the Ninth house, and all the contacts from that go straight to Libra. The implication is that information and justice/communication are bound up in relationships in massive ways. The North node here is in Capricorn in the sixth, and away from Cancer, which is the opposite of Browder’s chart. If you take into consideration all the Libra stuff going on in Black’s chart, and see it as a kind of mirror to all the Aries contacts of Browder’s chart, the two are somewhat like mirrors of one another from an astrological perspective. Black is born in Sydney, Australia, which is in the “upside down” hemisphere relative to Browder. Australia has a lot of history, but a big chunk of it concerns England using it as a prison for people for some time.

Take Um Together

If you take both Browder’s and Black’s charts together, you get a kind of spiritual headwound conversation with Chiron in Pisces and Chiron and Aries. You can actually see this dynamic in action by their responses to the trauma of 9-11:

In 2016 I asked Ben if he wanted to share his thoughts looking back :

Angie,

My most enduring moments from 9/11 are ones of compassion and hope. Horrible things happen and we are witness to the great wrongs that people can commit. In the aftermath, there was so much good and caring.

I saw the buildings come down, staring down the avenues of New York.

I watched people stream North out of the city,rubble and dust covered, their eyes glazed in shock.

I walked through an eerie and silent Times Square the evening of 9/11.

But what sticks in my soul was watching strangers and acquaintances caring for their fellows.

For every terror there is a balm in beauty.

Peace

Ben

More from the post from 2016 :
Special thanks to Dani from Farscape.world who found the post!!!!!!!!!! I think I knew the coffee from Ben’s email to me—-

Ben, Claudia, David, and company safe in NYC
by Mary Wood – Wednesday, September 12th 2001

Category: Old News

Claudia Black just posted to the scifi.com bulletin board:

The purpose of this message is two-fold.
Firstly, thank you for a successful and very enjoyable convention tour.
Secondly we would like to send out our best wishes to everyone in New York. We walked into town and lit a >candle on the steps of a closed church last night. What else is there to do but try and give blood and pray >for everyone.

We are here in town until the planes start running and are being taken care of by a large and caring group >of collegues from the Henson Group. So lucky to have members of our work family with us at this time.

As much as I have wondered how Aeryn would be dealing with this the very human me has been a little teary, >a lot scared and very grateful to be alive.

Ben has plying me with chocolate and has firmly established himself as a real life hero.

Chick with gun and black tee signing out for now somewhere in nyc…..

Original source: http://benbrowder.net/bb/news/11-september-2021/

Notice what sticks for Browder in his soul, people caring for one another in a compassionate way–Chiron in Pisces. Black is donating blood. Chiron in Aries.

For Browder, his birth comes slightly before the JFK assassination, another kind of head wound. For Black, her birth overlaps the presidency of Nixon, which one could argue is another kind of head wound–a type of war over who had leadership of the United States.

It seems both their existence, and the show Farscape, are all caught up in trying to deal with some kind of injustice (via Black) around beliefs/children/travel (via Browder’s Sag. Sun). In doing the show, they happened to be at a spot where another kind of grave head wound was inflicted. Both of them would later jump to the Sci-Fi (I hate that rebrand to Syfy–what even is that?) series Stargate which is another discussion entirely, but then, since you have seen their Natal charts now, you somewhat know the hows and whys of that transformation.

The final piece of analysis that might be important is that both John and Aeryn, Biblically speaking, appertain to the voice which is prophetic which emits ultimately from God. A head wound is, if nothing else, a way of shutting someone up–the idea being if your head is missing you probably won’t be doing a lot of speaking. Maybe John Crichton was a weird way of trying to “Make the way straight” in a collective conscious manner. If so, his main convert would surely have been Aeryn, who goes from a creature of war to one understanding love and its place in the universe…

Radio Message

While I was driving the car on my way to town, I had the radio tuned to a more conservative station. While I wasn’t listening to the station carefully, I did hear a snippet that stood out. The speaker was explaining how people get angry when God does not change. I was not sure which way the speaker was going to take this topic, but then he began to discuss God’s specific values and civilization. Civilization, he was saying, gets mad because its values change and they call it progress and then they become perturbed with God because He won’t change His values to condone whatever the civilization decides is good. The examples he used were actions like adultery, and homosexuality. God, he said, is not going to rubber stamp these issues with approval, because He has all ready said they are not approved actions.

Gamergate Stuff

A little later, I was sailing about on the internet, and came across some fairly recent controversy concerning James Rolfe–better known as the Angry Video Game Nerd. I was well acquainted with his work as I’d seen it around when it first hit the web. I generally found it amusing along with Red vs Blue and all the other stuff that came out during that time that hit a similar nerve. Apparently, though, Rolfe took some payout for reviewing some game that he didn’t review recently, and this has caused a kind of Gamergate re-emergence accusation to emerge in no small part because Rolfe is probably the personification of a white guy. I’m not sure that Rolfe in 2025 reviewing games is still as good of an idea as it was in 2008 and before. There is something a little sad about someone still reviewing games when you are pushing 50–especially when those games were made mostly in the 80’s and 90’s. (I think he does more modern games now as well) What was weird, though, were how the people skewering Rolfe on several boards were coming at it from “Rolfe is part of the old web, and probably doesn’t even know trans people exist.” The critical, key parts that stand out here is that Rolfe is now, dated, which arguably has a basis as I mentioned playing and reviewing games in your 40’s as a lifestyle is definitely a little weirder than your 20’s and 30’s. It isn’t because he is playing the games though, but because he hasn’t updated himself concerning the trans agenda that seems to be trying to assert itself as some kind of “new thing”

Trans And God

Thing is, trans stuff is old—like Giants falling out of heaven old. God dealt with it then, and He did not deal with it in an approving way. This was because the Giants, which were the offspring of angels that fell out of heaven due to a desire to have sex with mortal, human women, had abandoned their posts and taught humanity a slew of things that were sorcery. Likewise, since they were not made to inhabit the Earth, their appetites could not be sated, and so they became cannibals and physically deformed. The key thing to remember is that the Giants fell due to DESIRE FOR SEX. It was not LOVE that caused them to fall, but lust. Their relationships were not authorized. Likewise, neither are same sex relationships authorized in the Heavenly Kingdom.

Modern and Hip is Old and Sin

With respect to James Rolfe, and the internet at large, what is being said is that he’s not cool because he doesn’t have the new thing with trans stuff down, which is actually an old thing that got the giants killed and ultimately condemned to Hell. Generations tend to go through these kinds of periodic revolts where they think they have something figured out that God hasn’t solved and then they expect that God is gonna change because they are so progressive and right about their interpretation of what is good and just. (like the radio program was saying) Of course, to determine that, one has to have their spiritual eyes fully open, and if we have learned anything over the past 2,000 years, it is that most people do not have their spiritual eyes open nor can they discern good from evil in a meaningful sense on a given day. The Holocaust which, in hindsight, now everyone regards as evil, was regarded as “maybe kinda a good idea” during the time it happened. Do you know how you know that was the case? Because it happened. Now, all sides want to try to claim the Holocaust as their rallying call, except the Holocaust was, primarily, against the Jewish people first and foremost. Do you know why that was? Because Jewish people have been hated in many places they have lived for a long, long time, in part because they serve as a reminder to civilizations that want to rubber stamp something that God doesn’t approve of that they exist and will not bend their knees to a given King or dictator. While it is true some will assimilate, the ones that are problems are always the ones who keep following God apart from the civilization they happen to be surrounded by in terms of “progressive agendas”.

Being Color Blind

At the same time, while everyone screams equality, they certainly keep alive certain narratives–and in the case of the Holocaust often one they have appropriated–that point out the differences perceived as opposed to the common causes shared. Jewish people can’t talk about the Holocaust in reference to their story, because well, nobody likes Jews, don’t you know? It’s a real Catch-22. A people are heavily discriminated against because of what they believe about God to the point they are tortured and killed, but they cannot freely talk about how that experience plays into being Jewish and the greater story of Israel because everyone else hates Israel and Jewish people too much and wants to hold them accountable for smaller versions of the greater sins they themselves are committing.

What No One Says

The thing everyone forgets, though, is God allowed the Holocaust to happen. For many Jewish people, that was a deal breaker. On the other hand, because God allows a thing to happen to His people, He will contend and correct them on His own, and THEN He will contend and correct the ones who thought they could issue the correction as being holier in some way than His chosen people. One can imagine the second correction is much more likely to be harsher than the first.

Which Brings Us To Progress and the Web

So finally, all these folks shouting Nazi and white privilege must believe, on some level, that they are more just than the people they are shouting down. This implies they have their spiritual eyes open, which means they must be serving God correctly, right? If that isn’t right, it means their spiritual eyes are closed, and they are not serving God but are in fact serving the adversary and dressing it up like it is progress, hip, cool, and whatever other word you want to use. (I’ll borrow a more recent one that fits, they think it is ‘fire’–yep) Going to Hell doesn’t make you more progressive, just, or cool, but it does make you potentially a great deal hotter. If a person wants to explore why the internet has degraded in quality and interaction, a good place might be this event with Rolfe and Gamergate, and what it portends.

A Conceit

There is a conceit among those who make platforms or networks, or networks on platforms. That conceit is that the data on the platform is theirs to do with as they wish. Sometimes this is true with regard to data on operating systems too. It is a wrong-headed belief.

Copyright

For one thing, if I write something, I own the copyright automatically. A platform can create some kind of EULA saying whatever data you put in it now legally belongs to it. Fine. I still haven’t waived my copyright. Rather, the platform is asserting that a pre-condition of its use is that it owns whatever is put into it. Thing is, if nobody uses a platform, it just sits there, empty and probably value-less.

Imagine a Stage

Imagine I own a stage. Plays are performed on it, and speeches are made. What I own is the venue where the speech is made. If I want to sell a copy of the speech, I am going to have to pay the person who owns the copyright on the words, since the person owns the speech. It is an absurd precondition to make anyone who wants to be on the stage sign some kind of document stating that whatever is said on the stage is now owned by the stage. No writer is going to consent to that. No speaker will either. Further, what if the speech is actually in the Public Domain like some manner of Presidential address? Does the platform’s assertion to owning whatever is put in it supersede the laws concerning Public Domain?

Twitter (X) Policy

A quick glance on the legalities of how X handles this can be found here.

Here is a screenshot for faster grokking:

You own the content, here, but then a license is granted to X. Fine. Does that license extend into using all the data to train an AI model? Why does a platform that is digital get to do more in terms of owning content than a physical stage can? Why isn’t the physical stage analogy applicable to a platform? A stage can’t “store” the spoken word on its own, this is certain. However, if someone makes a digital recording of a speech, the copyight of the speech still belongs to the speaker, although the one recording the speech has a copyright to that recording. Permission might have to be asked both of the speaker and recorder if someone wanted to use the work.

Natural Rights Trump Derivative Rights

The U.S. Constitution has the clause concerning the “pursuit of happiness” and how certain rights are granted relative to that endeavour. A natural right as a creator is to be able to, hypothetically, have the creation valued and sold so as to support the creator. While a platform has the right to say how it might be used, it cannot also double dip and say that it owns all the content created by creators to do with it how it sees fit. What incentive would a creator have to create? Wouldn’t a creator just put their mind to creating platforms instead to make another walled garden that benefits them?

Public Platforms…

The data on public platforms, if it is going to be owned by anyone, should be owned by “The People” and not the platform. While it is true a creator loses certain amounts of creative control in a crowd, it is also true that they do not lose control of their creation. If I, as a platform, decide to make an AI model using all the data on a platform I own, I am using the minds of all the creators on the platform. I did not, of course, ask for permission to do this–and I am not also going to compensate anyone for it since the platform has a “permissive license” on the content of its users. Furthermore,the matter is compounded if an AI crawler comes onto my website and slurps up all the content. It does not own the copyright, but yet, it is going to integrate the data and speak as though it does. That’s a huge problem, in my book, since if a person does that we generally call them a fraud.

It’s Possible…

It might be possible that, in the digital domain, Freedom of Speech has become one large defrauding operation since the digital domain has some characteristics the physical does not. Of course, the thing about the digital domain is that it ends when you unplug it…

X Marks The Spot

Over on X, there is a significant amount of hubbub about some imaging that was done below the Egyptian Pyramids:

The timing of the discussion is, as usual, interesting since we are heading into Passover season where the Hebrew people were told that it was time for them to get out of Egypt. Since the discussion is arising, I figured I’d offer my take on what the pyramids are, and what they were doing.

The Primer

In terms of getting the structural answer and basic purpose of the pyramids right, I think a good article that discusses that can be found here. Ancient origins generally gets in the ballpark of correct. In this article, the concept of the pyramids being a kind of light battery that splits water into constituent molecules toward that end is developed. Likewise, principles of the atmosphere of the Earth are being harnessed to carry electrical charge into the battery. The entire process is quite clever, and can be described as a kind of polarizing ionization designed to emit light.

So far, we have not said much beyond what the article indicates. However, there are some pieces the article doesn’t really explain that I intend to expound on here.

It will be necessary to remember a few things:

1. Egypt worshipped the Sun God Ra. (Ra, in Hebrew, translates as “evil”)
2. The Pharaoh was supposed to be an embodiment of the sun God on Earth.
3. The Egyptian Gods often claimed to be from the star system Sirius, which is known as the Dog star or “Scorcher”.

Over time, the Egyptian system of worship became Luciferic and rebellious against YHVH, which culminates in the story of Passover where YHVH proves His power against those of the Gods of Egypt. (Spoilers: YHVH wins)

Theory

When we take all the above facts into consideration, the idea behind the pyramids becomes more obvious. A lot of light is being generated and mixed with the light of the star Sirius in order to create a kind of star on the Earth yoked to that star system. Since the sun would be the brightest thing during the day, it makes sense that the pyramids might well have been locally the brightest things at night. This would have made the population more susceptible to being controlled by the cult of the Pharaoh along with the distant kinds of Gods Egypt served which claimed they were from Sirius as they would be subject to the bright lights emitted by the pyramid. Further, it is possible that the King and Queen chambers were used as a kind of magnifying astral projection toward that system, although the amount of radiation might have been deadly. It would not be unusual for the Egyptians to select some sacrifices to be atomized for the Gods in some way.

Other Light Stuff

If those whole using star light stuff to light up with power sounds odd, consider that it was done also at the Chicago World’s Fair a couple of times with the star Arcturus. When it comes to light which is needed at night, the stars and the moon are the only natural source, and so when illumination fires up, it seems that there is a contingent of folks who feel the need to make sure that a given star is represented by the illumination. This, of course, can court an astral worship of the heavenly host, but it explains a little more clearly what Egypt might have been doing. Since the Pharaoh was “God on Earth” and linked with the sun, it makes sense that he might also try to be the brightest thing on the Earth in defiance of the heavenly arrangement.

Stealing A Domain With Your Name On It?

I wrote about a podcast domain that was hijacked some time ago by a guy who wanted to “own the world”.

I decided to allow the domain jbschirtzinger.com to expire awhile ago due to AI slurping up content. As you can see, though, the domain exists and the blog as it existed in around 2023 appears to be online. It is an impostor posing as me, and then pulling my old content to make it appear that I wrote some stuff I haven’t. This blog you are currently reading is the original material.

Here is where the “injected content” begins:

See all that “Nigerian Crypto Stuff?” Yeah, I didn’t write any of that, and it is weird that someone decided to duplicate my blog after purchasing the domain name to make it look like I did.

Reporting It

I reported the issues to the domain registrar, but they only sent some form email back and never did anything. I reported it to ICANN and submitted the clear evidence that someone is posing as me, and then sometime like a month later they asked for some additional info that was really irrelevant to the problem and only gave like a week to respond to their request before auto-closing the case. Since I hadn’t heard from them in over a month, I wasn’t on the lookout for their email. You can, of course, re-open the case, but then, if it is that badly broken in terms of a reporting system, I highly doubt they will be effective in addressing the matter. ICANN wanted the form letter that the registrar sent back as proof that the registrar was contacted, apparently. Regardless, if someone is posing as you and the evidence is clear, it shouldn’t really matter who contacts whom about the issue.

An Analogy

An analogy would be that you come into a crime scene and you can see someone is sprawled out on the floor and that a witness there is telling you the person was shot. You listen to the witness, but you ask them whether or not they filed a police report at their local police station. The person says they have but nothing was done. You ask them for a copy of the report, but you do not receive it right then and there. You tell them that the case is auto-closed then but you can re-open it anytime in the future. Oh yeah, you also just so happen to work with the Federal Branch of criminal investigation.

Obviously, if the power isn’t being used locally, you aren’t, at the Federal level, absolved from doing anything about what was reported. It’s ridiculous to think you would be. Hemming and hawing over some minor procedural element while someone is shot on the floor is definitely not in the spirit of the law…

Playing the Trumpet

The Silver Trumpet ran a short piece today that caught my attention. The topic concerned work, specficially hard work. After considering the perspective, I wanted to be certain that I did not give the topic short shrift, and so decided the best place to detail my thoughts on the topic would be here.

A definition from Strong’s Hebrew is going to be necessary:

There is not, in the above distinction, a necessary relationship to “hard work”. The “or” also does not automatically mean work AND service but could instead mean work OR service–the latter being the exclusive case. This has application to the Silver Trumpet’s piece–particularly this part:

The understanding here reflected in the writing is an understanding of what we might understand as toil or labor without the Holy Spirit. If we see people worshipping hard, for instance, in a Church service, do we tend to say those people are “working hard?” Contrast that idiom and use with the idea of someone being on a construction site. Would we say the construction workers are “working hard”? In Church, the Holy Spirit ought to be present. On the construction site, maybe not. The curse of labor often gets tangled in the concept of work, or service.

Levi Genes – not for mining

Levites, it is said, though responsible for carrying the Ark of the Covenant were more held aloft by the Ark itself. The idea behind the statement is that when a person is fulfilling the work or duty to be done as a service to YHVH, the burden is lightened into something that becomes a kind of mystical joy. The mundane tasks that might seem rote and boring are elevated into an intimate relationship that creates a closeness with the essence of the Glory of God. People do drugs for much less of a sensation, and they often do “mundane tasks” while on them. (Brushing one’s teeth while on acid, perhaps) If drugs are a cheap, unsanctioned knock-off or ersatz for the Holy Spirit, how much more magnified would these tasks be with the full presence of the Holy Spirit?

Concordance

The above Strong’s definition lists the Hebrew word “abad” as being a primitive root. Its meaning is to work, serve, labor, worship, or possibly enslave. Egypt, of course, is the Biblical discourse on slavery, and the Hebrew people generally found it to be disagreeable although they became accustomed to being slaves in ways that made them not want to leave Egypt. This concept of labor and slavery being linked comes again to the point of some of the misperception present in the article in The Silver Trumpet. Levites are not “enslaved to YHVH”. That kind of phraseology is more of a Pauline idea. Levites are, however, to render service specific to YHVH and traditionally received certain things that other tribe members did not receive for doing so. YHVH was their duty, their meal ticket, and their inheritance as well as their home and their occupation. They didn’t serve YHVH at say 9:00 am then hit the rush hour traffic to go work at Microsoft on the latest release until 5:00 pm. The work was seamless and sanctioned by the Most High. This is a key difference.

The Rest of the Story

The rest of the story in the Silver Trumpet article is decent, although good works need not be difficult as such. It is often the case that they become that way because a lot of evil is being performed that would otherwise not desire good works to be performed. This is “hard work” not because the work is necessarily hard, but because other people are choosing to do what they ought not do. As Messiah said, “My yoke is light”. It is up to us to jettison our baggage overboard around work and slavery to fully understand what He meant. It could be, for instance, that we have enslaved ourselves to work because we are working for ourselves when we ought to be aiming to to the Will of the Only Work worth doing. If that’s so, the problem is in our own inner relation to work and worship. The only hard thing there is to go far enough within ourselves with transparency to find the snag.

Back in the Day

Way back now in the beginning of the user web, I had a Tripod site, and an Angelfire site. I likewise had a Geocities site. I remember using the Tripod site the most, in the end, because I liked how it worked better than the other two. Of course, since it was the beginning of the web, I can safely say that I didn’t really know what I was doing, and neither did anyone else. And you know what? That made the web experience great.

Before All That

My generation was the last to see the world prior to the internet. My house had a set of 1960’s encyclopedias written during the cold war, and that meant that any book report that did not involve a trip to the library would involve consulting these books which, by 1988, were very outdated. I remember having to do some kind of report on Indira Gandhi, and fortunately, those encyclopedias were still viable for that. They weren’t so useful, however, for all the countries in the USSR which was no longer the USSR.

Encarta

So, when we first were able to afford a home computer and it had Encarta, I soon learned how other kids were able to knock out their reports so fast with clip-art and digitized articles. It was near essential to have some way to get online, or at least on a recent CD or your knowledge pool was severely hampered.

Things Shifted…

Somewhere along the way, maybe the next generation after mine, a group of kids was born with the presence of the internet always being there. Furthermore, they have never known a world without that information at their fingertips. The key realization that they are missing is that all that information is not your information!. In fact, you don’t really know jack diddly. Because you can read a thing on the internet doesn’t make you smarter. It does, however, put a lot of information at your fingertips that before had a high barrier to entry.

But Then…

Because none of us knew what we were doing back in the Tripod/Geocities/Angelfire era, there were many weird and wonderful web pages out there. No one was trying to be an influencer because no one knew what that was. Instead, if you were in to the TV show Family Ties then you made your site about it and other people who were into that might come along and talk with you about things you need to add. There might be a small ecosystem of Family Ties related sites.

But NOW…

But now, there is this sense of there can only be one supreme overlord of Family Ties. First there has to be some kind of flame war, then a bunch of cancellation of people who don’t do Family Ties according to the Contributor Covenant adopted by Family Ties fandom and oh yeah, only the pagerank can support this person who, clearly, knows everything about Family Ties there is to know or ever will be.

Then Wikipedia Made Everyone an Expert

Then the final nail in the coffin is that because an encyclopedia like Wikipedia exists which far outpaces Encarta or my 1960’s encyclopedias. (at least sometimes)There is a whole new generation of self-proclaimed experts on just about any topic you care to pursue. Again, this is a far cry from the early social web, where you were just into a thing because you were. The emails have largely stopped, and instead everyone is jockeying for self-promotion points so that their reputation in the digital world is lifted. And oh, it is unlikely they are gonna code a page. It is more likely they will submit a three minute video clip spouting some shit they read ten minutes ago to try to get the algorithm to pick them up and toss them up the heap.

The Social Web Being Trash Is A Social Problem

In a me-culture, the social web is a social problem. Wisdom and knowledge are not the same things. Knowledge can change with wisdom, but knowledge without wisdom seldom does.

Heaven Tree Webring

A few years back, I belonged to a webring for “Christians”. I was not sure this category was the best fit, since what a Christian consists of varies enough that there are many hundreds if not thousands of denominations of Christians with the same but highly differing beliefs. The webring was called Heaven Tree. It’s still around.

Christians That Don’t Understand Christianity

Modern Christians do not understand early Christians, and certainly less Christian Jews or Messianics. One day, after having joined Heaven Tree webring, I had found that I had been kicked out because some of my subject matter concerned topics like Astrology and Tarot. After writing for clarification, what I was told was the reason for my removal was that these topics had been brought to the attention of the ringmaster, and that these were not appropriate for a Christian webring.

The only problem with this assertion is that there is an entire Hebrew form of Astrology and Tarot, which in fact I have developed, discovered, and pursued. A typical Christian, however, is unaware of the encoded meanings of Astrology inherent in the Book of Revelation, or how the Messiah having literally become the “Hanged Man” undertook the hero’s journey. In other words, modern Christianity splits its roots and it winds up being something like Christianity Lite without any kind of magical understanding. This forces believers who might normally have some comprehension of such matters to go full on Harry Potter and then they try to reconcile what is witchcraft with Christianity. C.S. Lewis and other early Christian writers had to toe this line especially carefully. How do Christians, for instance, deal with elves who do not appear in the Bible? Satyrs? Fairies?

To most Christians, the answer is those are all “evil”. The only thing that counts is Jesus–and Jews MAYBE on a good day–might. Never mind Jesus WAS Jewish and was fulfilling things relating to these systems which pagans have appropriated and used for other ends. Still, what belongs to God is God’s.

What Belongs In A Community…

The infuriating thing about issues like these is that people are willing to kick a person or author out of a given place because, and this is important, THEY BELIEVE THEY UNDERSTAND WHAT IT MEANS TO BE IN THAT COMMUNITY. There is a normalized type of thinking that begins to resemble a kind of mall police that weeds out the shoppers that might look like they are trouble. Ironically, however, it is THEY who are missing pieces of their own community–or at least essential definitions of it–and when someone comes along to try to fill them in on that, they rely on a heuristic of “this info is scary and possibly evil” instead of considering the facts and passages on their own merits. A lobotomized Christian is not the work of the Lord, but the work of believers who, thinking they are doing the right thing and trusting their own judgment, falter and do something else instead. (That was how Messiah was crucified in the first place, wasn’t it?)

Not Unique To Religion

This problem is not unique to religion. Often, one can see it at work in programming languages or potential solutions to engineering issues. It can be seen in treatments doctors are willing to pursue, and what it means to be “good at one’s job” via “work culture”. It is everyone and at all times present, and it seems that generally the gatekeepers who ought to have the greatest vision concerning the community are the most blinded guards. The consequence is that the community is denied membership and growth that certain people bring. It “arrests” the development and keeps the status quo for a little longer, although eventually some critical failure will begin to manifest and by then, the community has split, or failed entirely, and is no longer a community. The klaxon sounds well before this outcome. Unfortunately, it generally requires people to put down their favorite mask–that of the false ego–and there are few who are willing to do that. (nevermind the humility that greatness in either religion or worldy accomplishment often must display or advocate)

Guards At The Gate

While it is true that not everyone is a “good fit” for a given community, it is also true that sometimes the definition of a community is a stolen thing and has become an artificial flower among legitimate roses. A Christianity that refuses to understand the underpinnings of these ancient arts is somewhat dead. It is certainly bereft of essential understanding. What community, then, other than of ignorance, is being guarded?