Fake Reviews

Over yonder at The Bookseller there is an article which discusses bad reviews being given on Goodreads even before a book is available to read.

What’s the motivation? From the article:

Goodreads reviews have long been associated with review bombing, for example in 2021 Time revealed how some authors were allegedly victims of extortion, facing demands to pay scammers to avoid bad reviews on the website. In 2023 the Guardian also reported authors were actively “staying away” from the site. Later that year, Goodreads announced changes later that year to prevent review bombing, shortly after Daphne Press backtracked on Cait Corrain’s debut deal after the aspiring SFF author admitted to posting negative reviews about other books on book recommendation website Goodreads under multiple accounts.

Would-be authors are being asked to pay a bribe so that a preemptive negative review is not given. This is quasi-extortion, as the only action the author has done by this point is to write a book. The equivalent would be to pay a ransom so a person is NOT kidnapped, which is also a backwards-facing procedure to the unstated criminal rule book. Maybe criminal kids these days are getting lazier?

In case the reader of the above article missed the important desired nuance the writers wish the audience to deduce, there is a predigested-digested ‘this-is-what-you-should-think-about-this’ quote provided for them:

“Also, book ratings do matter. Otherwise, why are we all here? One friend who writes crime for a digital imprint was advised by an editor to retire a long-running series because the average rating for the most recent installment slipped below 4.2 stars. So every keyboard-licking troll who fires off a volley of one-star ratings for their own strange and probably sad reasons, has the power to affect a writer’s career.”

Begging the question does not drop alms in the bowl of the scribblers of volumes. What the article is making abundantly clear is that the reviews do not matter as they cannot be trusted.

Trust And Money

American money, last I knew, still has the motto “In God We Trust” on it, sometimes. (it originally appeared on two cent pieces –for putting in my two cents) The reason for invoking a higher power on the filth that passes for a medium of exchange is because it turns out that many people are dishonest, and if you cannot trust anyone, you are not going to trade with them. You need something a little higher up the chain than the Earthly kingdom to figure out whether you should trust someone who is presenting themselves in a certain way. This skill is discernment, which in the business world is often labeled shrewdness.

The vexing version that highlights the issue between trust and money is illustrated by P.T. Barnum’s quote that “there is a sucker born every minute.”

Circus Wisdom

On the other hand, P.T. Barnum also said that “there is no such thing as bad publicity.” Since he was in the business of running circuses, one deduces he probably knew something about when the world was more bonkers than normal. This is to say that a writer will write because they are a writer. Publishers might care about reviews, because sales could be impacted negatively by word of mouth. Conversely, one could market the book on the merits of how badly it sucks as a work. There are many photos of coffee places doing exactly this where one can stop in and get the worst cup of whatever a person has ever had. This is what Barnum meant.

Reading Between The Lines

What this article is specifically about is making a living as a writer where the industry and commerce of being a writer and one’s reputation matter. How anyone can be alive in 2025 and have anything that does not resemble the American flag flying in tatters above a sieged fort for a reputation I cannot fathom other than such a person must have been a non-offending political genius that should be immediately placed in an embassy so their skills can be used for important problems like National Security. The rest of us plebeians, though, have had at least one round of attempted reputation assassination if not worse. The free-speech-o-meter has been running almost on empty and is just now showing signs that the needle might bounce back to a position a little greater than it has been occupying for the past ten or so years.

Fake News And Dastardly Jews

Fake reviews are a specialized case of Fake News, which court accusations of Evil Jewish World Empires. Right now, the pulse is that Palestine is an angelic being that would never do anything to provoke anyone, and Israel, a place which was born after World War II on the heels of attempted genocide, is super mean and wants to beat the world with the Star of David as a billy club. Apparently, the last scorching of a type of specific religious identity predominately only buys you around 70 years or so before everyone decides the guy who tried to kill you last time was actually right about everything even though the illustrations of the evil wrought by him are legion. If we cannot get the narrative straight on something as simple as this story, which has been pounded into almost every media imaginable, I doubt we are going to do better because your book about vampires falling in love with dolphins is being unfairly held ransom by Russian Shadow Brokers. Hell, people cannot agree that the huge fire sacrifice on Jewish people happened, and if it did, they try to get all mathematical about it as though it would be somehow better if two people died in a raging inferno instead of six-million. (it was probably way, way more for the record) Such logic brings to mind the reasoning of Joseph Stalin who allegedly said that “one death is a tragedy, but a million is a statistic.”

Picking One’s Battles

Are Fake News stories a problem? Sure. Fake reviews are too. However, we are much, much farther down the rabbit hole of problems. We want to sit around and bemoan our fates concerning our potential to sell books. How about we focus on the ability for some people to work at any given job at all? That’s a thing now. If Social Credit lunatics have their way, it will become more of a thing. We might also want to think about how we are teetering frequently on the knife edge of world war with the power to completely obliterate life as we know it. But then, what do I know? I have only been blowing this horn for something like the past 13 years, and you know what I got for the effort, at least in part? Accused of being a part of a vast Jewish conspiracy to uh–well, I’m not sure what it was, exactly. Not be Satanists? Pretty much that.

Into The Philosophical Morass With Thee

Over here, Akhilajnya is pursuing the noble art of quiet self-infuriation and indignation which philosophically introspecting chiefly involves.

Here, he considers what influence is. A quick summary of his position from the article follows:

No one can truly give anything to anyone. A person can only speak in the language of the other’s existing logos. At best, influence is an illusion—a shared mirage between speaker and listener, where the listener believes transformation is occurring through external force, while in truth, the transformation is evoked from within.

This is, indeed, a valid way of seeing the concept of influence. On the other hand, it also somewhat supposes a conscious agent. What about all those seeds people have that they do not know they have? Here enters the smokey depths of the subconscious.

Story Time

While Akhilajnya endeavors to find the scalpel to cleanly cut the subject into discrete parts, I will instead take the route of telling you a story. Back in 2016, a game was released on several systems called We Happy Few by Compulsion Games. The game unfortunately shared a similar vibe to the pre-existing survival horror genre games of the Bioshock universe and appears almost to take place in the same continuum. A lot of time was spent by the game studio decrying the fact they were emphatically not Bioshock. (Thou protesteth too much?)

The plot of We Happy Few revolves around a post World War II society that has done some bad things and it very much wants to forget having done those bad things to the point that it demands everyone take a drug called “joy” that puts the inhabitants in a euphoric state–or at the very least–a compliant state. The main character works as a censor for a government office and discovers that when he is not taking his “joy” reality is a terrible nightmare scenario that the pills were disguising as acceptable parameters of quotidian life. Of course, everyone taking their joy notices his attitude, and their response is to try to force him to take the pill, or kill him. At this juncture, the game turns into a kind of riff of The Twilight Zone meets The Prisoner aesthetic.

Remember, This Was 4 Years Before COVID

At the time the game arrived, I pointed it out to people who were avid gamers and suggested to them that this specific game was closer to a kind of confessional–that someone had decided to turn some of the darker facets of our world and its mechanisms into a game so that people might be able to more easily pretend that it was simply fiction. If one watches a movie, or reads a book, or even plays a meaningful game with a plot, there is typically that moment of “Ya know, I think I learned something here,” if a person is truly engaged with the process. I made some statements at the time about how the medical system cannot always be trusted and that the game demonstrated that point in a way that my simply saying so could not. People played the game, beat it, and then, only a short 4 years later, were not sure whether or not they ought to take the COVID vaccine. In fact, many of them did. It was as if I had never said anything about this game, and as though they had never played it or learned anything from the experience of doing so.

Presidential Election 2024

By the time we get to the presidential election of 2024, Kamala Harris decides to run on what? You’d never guess it: joy. For four years, the country underwent a succession of less than ideal changes with which it is still grappling, and people who actually played the silly video game did not or could not see that Harris was actually like some cartoon character from the game! “Do not worry about the state of the world, take your vaccines, focus on joy!” Was this art imitating life, or life imitating art? A confessional? A plan designed as a game?

The Tyranny of the Subconscious

What We Happy Few tries to address is the maladjusted coping mechanism of denial. When people refuse to acknowledge something they did or are harboring within themselves, they have no choice but to shove the content into a file marked “stuff I’m not going to worry about”. The obvious outcome of that, though, is to have a thousand buttons that a breeze can blow by and push that suddenly have a person doing whatever it is that someone else wants them to do just so long as they do not have to deal with the thing they are trying to avoid. The desire to “coast” and to do no “internal work” is the main drive. The only influence necessary is to tell someone that they can take that path and continue to do what they have been doing. Influences, in the social media aspect, are not really doing anything other than telling people what they want to hear. In this regard, Akhilajnya is right. However, I would hesitate to call these proclivities “seeds”. They are more like the opposite of seeds–maybe rot or blight. There can be no real persuasion or influence where there is nothing to persuade or influence other than a kind of lethargy that courts death. There is no substance in such a temple. Only a vacuum.

Influence As An Illusion?

Yes, the influence is an illusion in the case Akhilajnya points out which supposes substance. However, it is not even an illusion in the case where there is no substance. It is nothing at all since there is nothing for it to do other than uplift nothingness. It is simply a burnt offering on the altar of the subconscious where no experience, prophecy, or message gets through other than the ones the person wants to hear. “Be happy, go for joy! You don’t need to change! There’s nothing wrong with anything here!” These voices are the gods they must serve. Whatever sacrifice that requires, they will make.

On Continuity

Without ruining the game, in case you, reader, decide to play it, if you do happen to also play the games in the Bioshock realm, I think you are likely to discover an overlap in all those dark secrets that lie at the heart of the plot of each of them. Asking yourself why this specific theme arises in each game might be worth thinking about–and that it showed up on a national stage even moreso. A more terrifying prospect is that those games were never games. They were judgments and indictments. If you were only amused by the game, guess where the sentencing will fall?

New Retro Gaming 90’s Inspiration

When Apogee announced they were making a retro game called Wizordum that had a distinctly shareware 90’s vibe going on, I thought the idea sounded cool. It’d be nice to see some of the stuff from back in the day make the rounds today while also being new to everyone. I asked one of the Apogee guys on X/Twitter for a copy of the game in exchange for a review, but they ghosted that query, which is fine. Eventually, I was able to see it in first person due to the assistance of an acquaintance.

90’s Gaming

I did not have a lot of time for gaming in the 90’s, but I had a lot more time then than I do now. There are many titles that fly by these days that I might glance at for about 10 minutes or so, with no expectation of ever finishing. There is far too much going on in life for me to make the kind of time investment most games require. So, the old Apogee model of save your game anytime was potentially a good fit. Firing up Wizordum after some backstory eventually got me to a screen like this:

That’s not really a wizard-y item, typically–the mace. However, you gotta have some melee mode, and I guess the designers thought the wizard staff was not formidable enough. Pretty soon you are bashing in suspicious walls in search of secrets and finding gold loot laying around from enemies you slay first with a mace, but pretty soon thereafter with some magic rings that shoot fireballs.

Problems With Wizordum

My problems with Wizordum, however, are not so much due to the game design or the fireball slinging. Yes, you could wonder how a fellow can sling fireballs, but I suppose God could grant a person the ability to sling fireballs if he wants to. As you get deeper in the game, though, the God hypothesis gets slammed shut due to the presence of the BFG mechanism in the weapons selection, which originally stood for Big Froggin’ Gun, (not really, use your imagination) but now stands for Big Froggin’ Grimoire. All you gotta do, of course, is just make a huge upside down pentagram with your finger and you are off to the races and things die.

This is in stark contrast to something like Doom, where there are blue million pentagrams all over the place because you are in Hell fighting demons who, it turns out really like pentagrams–especially evil ones:

That’s fine and well when you are in Hell battling evil demons. Their decor is gonna be the Led-Zeppelin-poster-in-the-bedroom equivalent of demon design/culture. Your job there is to shoot them in the face, and use their stuff against them. You are not skipping around drawing pentagrams leisurely with your finger. You are battling that and those that use that.

Same thing with Wolfenstein, which does not have any pentagrams in it as I recall, although it has a boatload of Nazis:

There is no shortage of Swastikas, but then again, a Nazi is gonna Nazi. You are killing those guys, cause they are bad and like bad Nazi stuff. Did you see robot Hitler? Nobody likes him. Did you see those skull flames in the above Doom picture? Yeah, nobody is gonna cry if the flaming skulls don’t come to their birthday party.

Bible Stuff

The Bible has some strong words on wizards, but usually the interpretation really means “sorcerers” which is a nuanced difference. Wizards might be all right–Moses is kind of a wizard. Sorcerers are doing nefarious things that aren’t sanctioned. This would include, in the case of Wizordum, invoking upside down pentagrams for the destruction of your evil nemesis. (nemeses?) Matthew 12:26 reads If Satan drives out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then can his kingdom stand? So in addition to putting the player into the role of casting sorcery, it also is bad magical practice since it really would not work anyway. If you have evil demons, Satan is not interested in ridding you of those. Those are his bros. What he is interested in, probably, is screwing up your life so that you serve whatever his ends are. Sometimes that can come through from something as innocent as playing a game. Pretty soon, if you lack awareness, you remember all the times you drew a pentagram upside down in a game and nothing bad happened, so maybe you ought to try it in waking life, or you ignore it in reality because it is just a game. Of course, if the 90’s taught us anything, in hindsight, it has to be that people like Sean Diddy were running around doing all manner of crazy things that were far from anything anyone would consider holy.

Wizordum, then, to quote Maxwell Smart, “Missed it by that much”. The spirit is there, but the key to the entirety of gaming in the 90’s is missing. You want your parents to complain because upside down pentagrams are in the game to begin with, not because YOU are casting them. Otherwise, when they say the game is trying to make you Satanic, they just so happen to be right! That’s the most un-90’s thing imaginable–parents being right about technology. Apogee should know better.

New Tor Tools

If you missed it, the other day Tor introduced a new privacy tool called “oniux”.

It wasn’t clear to me whether or not wrapping other apps with the command “oniux” before it like the provided Hexchat example would work to produce a different IP while separating the namespace out via the proposed isolation mechanisms. So, I thought I’d give the trusty Lynx a whirl on the command line and see what happened. After going to the https://icanhazip.com link, I was pleasantly surprised to see that Lynx was reporting the IP of a tor exit node. I’m not even sure you could set up torsocks with Lynx without a mountain of pain, whereas Oniux makes it a one-step process. I’d like to, of course, understand more of what’s going on under the hood with maybe a future wireshark scan, or to watch some system calls go by via something like strace, but that kind of investigation is going to have to be left to others at the moment who probably have a more discerning eye than mine for any kind of security mistakes with those tools if they are in the habit of daily usage of them.

One Stop Apps

One stop apps are a mixed blessing because they make what what otherwise be a several step process turn in to only one, but you also have to “trust” the app to a certain extent. Multi-pieces like torsocks complain if some piece is broken readily. With only one app, there is only one thing that has to be breached in order for all your security to go out the window. On the other hand, all security is a trade-off between levels of trust and containment. Torsocks has been known to leak information if not configured correctly without complaint. It will be nice, however, to see how Oniux refines itself in terms of this security challenge over the forthcoming months.

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.