Nelson Lowhim's Blog, page 15

Back to Bad and Possibly Crazy News.

Abe was killed because he was too close to a cult (as was his LDP party) that destroyed many lives in Japan. Seriously did not expect that. 

According to Britain’s Financial Times, Moon founded a conglomerate called Tongil Group in South Korea in 1963, and its affiliates now operate ski and golf resorts, a defence company, a chemicals group, a car parts business and a newspaper. In the United States, the church’s business interests include the conservative Washington Times newspaper, the New Yorker Hotel in New York, the True World Foods seafood wholesaler and a vast property portfolio, it said.

Despite the complaints over its fundraising practices in Japan, the church continued to find favour among LDP politicians, with whom it shared conservative values, including opposition to LGBTQ rights.

The assassin's mother ended up sending close to a million to this cult and destroyed many of the young man's hopes. 
So I didn't expect anything like this and will have to say (given current evidence) that it's one of the rare examples of the weak striking out against the powerful. It looks like LDP is in crisis mode. One can only hope that the left in Japan manages to take over. Though the super low voter participation there is something to behold. [1] We'll see. 

[1] Been low for a few elections. I wonder why. I did hear something about the US interfering when a left party did win, so who knows (rumor from what I know). 

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Some good news

People trying for dialogue in the Sahel. I'll also note that most Chileans want the Constitution changed but not the one that was up for vote earlier this month. Not many details out there, especially with regard to what needs to be done next (more leftist one or more rightist one?). Note that the oligarchs were against and over time changed people's minds, but that's not clear either. What is does mean for the time being is that Pinochet's Constitution gets a reprieve. I wonder what happens if, instead of yes/no, you say A/B? 
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Oldie but Goodie

pandemic in charcoal (Ai art)


Here is a solid short story. 
Full text:

fThe Diary of a Madman

Guy de Maupassant

This page copyright © 2002 Blackmask Online. http://www.blackmask.com

He was dead the head of a high tribunal, the upright magistrate, whose irreproachable life was a proverb in all the courts of France. Advocates, young counselors, judges had saluted, bowing low in token of profound respect, remembering that grand face, pale and thin, illumined by two bright, deep−set eyes.

He had passed his life in pursuing crime and in protecting the weak. Swindlers and murderers had no more redoubtable enemy, for he seemed to read in the recesses of their souls their most secret thoughts.

He was dead, now, at the age of eighty−two, honored by the homage and followed by the regrets of a whole people. Soldiers in red breeches had escorted him to the tomb, and men in white cravats had shed on his grave tears that seemed to be real.

But listen to the strange paper found by the dismayed notary in the desk where the judge had kept filed the records of great criminals! It was entitled:

WHY?

June 20, 1851. I have just left court. I have condemned Blondel to death! Now, why did this man kill his five children? Frequently one meets with people to whom killing is a pleasure. Yes, yes, it should be a pleasure the greatest of all, perhaps, for is not killing most like creating? To make and to destroy! These two words contain the history of the universe, the history of all worlds, all that is, all! Why is it not intoxicating to kill?

June 25. To think that there is a being who lives, who walks, who runs. A being? What is a being? An animated thing which bears in it the principle of motion, and a will ruling that principle. It clings to nothing, this thing. Its feet are independent of the ground. It is a grain of life that moves on the earth, and this grain of life, coming I know not whence, one can destroy at one's will. Then nothing nothing more. It perishes; it is finished.

June 26. Why, then, is it a crime to kill? Yes, why? On the contrary, it is the law of nature.

Every being has the mission to kill; he kills to live, and he lives to kill. The beast kills without ceasing, all day, every instant of its existence. Man kills without ceasing, to nourish himself; but since in addition he needs to kill for pleasure, he has invented the chase! The child kills the insects he finds, the little birds, all the little animals that come in his way. But this does not suffice for the irresistible need of massacre that is in us. It is not enough to kill beasts; we must kill man too. Long ago this need was satisfied by human sacrifice. Now, the necessity of living in society has made murder a crime. We condemn and punish the assassin! But as we cannot live without yielding to this natural and imperious instinct of death, we relieve ourselves from time to time, by wars. Then a whole nation slaughters another nation. It is a feast of blood, a feast that maddens armies and intoxicates the civilians, women and children, who read, by lamplight at night, the feverish story of massacre.

And do we despise those picked out to accomplish these butcheries of men? No, they are loaded with honors. They are clad in gold and in resplendent stuffs; they wear plumes on their heads and ornaments on their breasts; and they are given crosses, rewards, titles of every kind.

They are proud, respected, loved by women, cheered by the crowd, solely because their mission.is to shed human blood! They drag through the streets their instruments of death, and the passer−by, clad in black, looks on with envy. For to kill is the great law put by nature in the heart of existence! There is nothing more beautiful and honorable than killing!

June 30. To kill is the law, because Nature loves eternal youth. She seems to cry in all her unconscious acts: "Quick! quick! quick!" The more she destroys, the more she renews herself.

July 3. It must be a pleasure, unique and full of zest, to kill to place before you a living, thinking being; to make therein a little hole, nothing but a little hole, and to see that red liquid flow which is the blood, which is the life; and then to have before you only a heap of limp flesh, cold, inert, void of thought!

August 5. I, who have passed my life in judging, condemning, killing by words pronounced, killing by the guillotine those who had killed by the knife, if I should do as all the assassins whom I have smitten have done, I, I who would know it?

August 10. Who would ever know? Who would ever suspect me, especially if I should choose a being I had no interest in doing away with?

August 22. I could resist no longer. I have killed a little creature as an experiment, as a beginning. Jean, my servant, had a goldfinch in a cage hung in the office window. I sent him on an errand, and I took the little bird in my hand, in my hand where I felt its heart beat. It was warm. I went up to my room. From time to time I squeezed it tighter; its heart beat faster; it was atrocious and delicious. I was nearly choking it. But I could not see the blood.

Then I took scissors, short nail scissors, and I cut its throat in three strokes, quite gently. It opened its bill, it struggled to escape me, but I held it, oh! I held it I could have held a mad dog and I saw the blood trickle.

And then I did as assassins do real ones. I washed the scissors and washed my hands. I sprinkled water, and took the body, the corpse, to the garden to hide it. I buried it under a strawberry−plant. It will never be found. Every day I can eat a strawberry from that plant. How one can enjoy life, when one knows how!

My servant cried; he thought his bird flown. How could he suspect me? Ah! August 25. I must kill a man! I must!

August 30. It is done. But what a little thing! I had gone for a walk in the forest of Vernes. I was thinking of nothing, literally nothing. See! a child on the road, a little child eating a slice of bread and butter. He stops to see me pass and says, "Good day, Mr. President."

And the thought enters my head: "Shall I kill him?" I answer: "You are alone, my boy?"
"Yes, sir."
"All alone in the wood?"

"Yes, sir."

The wish to kill him intoxicated me like wine. I approached him quite softly, persuaded that he was going to run away. And suddenly I seized him by the throat. He held my wrists in his little hands, and his body writhed like a feather on the fire. Then he moved no more. I threw the body in the ditch, then some weeds on top of it. I returned home and dined well. What a little thing it was! In the evening I was very gay, light, rejuvenated, and passed the evening at the Prefect's.

They found me witty. But I have not seen blood! I am not tranquil.

August 31. The body has been discovered. They are hunting for the assassin. Ah!

September 1. Two tramps have been arrested. Proofs are lacking.

September 2. The parents have been to see me. They wept! Ah!.October 6. Nothing has been discovered. Some strolling vagabond must have done the deed.

Ah! If I had seen the blood flow it seems to me I should be tranquil now!

October 10. Yet another. I was walking by the river, after breakfast. And I saw, under a willow, a fisherman asleep. It was noon. A spade, as if expressly put there for me, was standing in a potato−field near by.

I took it. I returned; I raised it like a club, and with one blow of the edge I cleft the fisherman's head. Oh! he bled, this one! rose−colored blood. It flowed into the water quite gently. And I went away with a grave step. If I had been seen! Ah! I should have made an excellent assassin.

October 25. The affair of the fisherman makes a great noise. His nephew, who fished with him, is charged with the murder.

October 26. The examining magistrate affirms that the nephew is guilty. Everybody in town believes it. Ah! ah!

October 27. The nephew defends himself badly. He had gone to the village to buy bread and cheese, he declares. He swears that his uncle had been killed in his absence! Who would believe him?

October 28. The nephew has all but confessed, so much have they made him lose his head! Ah! Justice!

November 15. There are overwheming proofs against the nephew, who was his uncle's heir. I shall preside at the sessions.

January 25, 1852. To death! to death! to death! I have had him condemned to death! The advocate−general spoke like an angel! Ah! Yet another! I shall go to see him executed!

March 10. It is done. They guillotined him this morning. He died very well! very well! That gave me pleasure! How fine it is to see a man's head cut off!

Now, I shall wait, I can wait. It would take such a little thing to let myself be caught. ** *
The manuscript contained more pages, but told of no new crime.

Alienist physicians to whom the awful story has been submitted declare that there are in the world many unknown madmen; as adroit and as terrible as this monstrous lunatic.

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The Panopticon & How to get Paranoid

Listen to this and the reporter who was killed via remote controlled car. Just crazy stuff that kills trust in the gov and you get results where people think even the vaxxes are filled with control measures. 




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AI Me, or Meh?

What are your thoughts on this? Decent head shot? Definitely not what I expected (other iterations were worse). Someone online compared the AI feed it a prompt or image to a slot machine. You could get something awesome or you could get something meh. But the hope for awesome keeps you going. That pic above was touched up by me, of course, but the gist of what the AI churned is there. So too is the word prompt feature (I think I showed you something from a first line of mine). But here is "Pandemic" in about 16 iterations. 

That make sense to you?

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Lots of thoughts here.

Thinking about this protest movement in Iran. Well that and the need to fight back, especially when the cops are being especially violent, but then knowing that even a slight modicum of violence from protestors, no matter how valid, and the state now has a reason and excuse to paint the entire movement as bad and to use much more violence against you. I mean I believed this [1] before but I wonder what the choice is now? Just take the shots? Get murdered? That doesn't always mean public opinion comes your way. Not the way anyone can be painted as bad by ruling PR. 
Damn. Well I'm wishing them luck, but I haven't much else to say, tbf. 


[1](this is for the left, so the usual anti-est protests, since right wing ones are given more, much more leeway). 
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That AI Art

Not as "space opera fantastical" as other ones, but it is mine. Will update it and work on it and repost here or on patreon. Peace out. 



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Did I mention this interview?

Right here, btw. One of the pieces they published is pretty nice, btw. 
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#booktok

Not sure I'll ever be the kind to be picked up by them. But it's always worth a try, right? So you TikTok or what? That being said, not sure what to make of this article. The content is what is worth a thought:

The most popular videos don’t generally offer information about the book’s author, the writing or even the plot, the way a traditional review does. Instead, readers speak plainly about the emotional journey a book will offer.

Not something I'd ever think to share, though sometimes I do hint at it. And though I have quite the haters that runs through my veins, hearing something like this always puts a smile on my face:

It was published in 2012 with an initial print run of 20,000 copies. This month, its publisher, Ecco, announced it had sold two million copies across all formats.

Miriam Parker, Ecco’s associate publisher, said this type of sales record for a book like “The Song of Achilles” is more than remarkable.

“It never happens,” she said. “This is a book about the Iliad!”

Ms. Miller, who has another book, “Circe,” that has also been popular on TikTok, said she is now taken more seriously in the literary world because of her work’s higher profile. The sales also came as a relief during an extremely challenging time.

When the pandemic began, her speaking and touring opportunities dried up and she thought she might need to go back to teaching to earn a living. Since February 2020, she has been struggling with long Covid and was concerned about her ability to work, she said. Having “Song of Achilles” catch fire on TikTok allowed her to take care of herself and her family, and to keep working on her next novel.

“It really has changed my life,” she said. “It has given me the time to write, to continue to be a writer.”

It certainly makes me wonder about both the algorithmically induced demand that I sense as "random discovery" but really is just random tiktokkers who like a book then you see it every where else (because I only heard about this book recently and not back in 2012). 
And again, I can feel myself pulled to this platform, the hope of being chosen to have one of my books do well to have one of them clear my schedule, so to speak. A tic of mine. But that's why they don't call it tictok. All right all right, I'll see my way out. 
Anyhow, some of the comments add insight, especially that it has no diversity, this booktok. So meet the new boss, same as old boss:

Yes indeed! I am a high school librarian and this year a student came in looking for books by Colleen Hoover. I was embarrassed that I had never heard of her and didn’t have anything for her. The student absolutely could not believe I had never heard of Hoover…anyway fast forward and we have almost all of her books now and they circulate well. Song of Achilles had a good run a few years ago and is now revived. Taylor Jenkins Reid is also popular. Critics have noticed that book tok is dominated by white authors, so can’t depend on it for diverse offerings, but glad that there is a place on social media where book are alive and loved.

But then there are also some ravings about the evils of TikTok (again like Russiaphobia, no relation to reality and no self awareness for sure):

Glad to hear young adults are reading and sharing. TikTok wasn't designed for all demographics—it skews young. Every new generation deserves its own space to develop. China as custodian of the parent company and its subsidiaries. That's dangerous considering China's human rights violations. I don't see a scenario in which they respect some unspoken arm's length regulation. Have you not seen how they surveil their population? Their apparatus for surveillance closely resembles the thesis in the film Minority Report. Americans still don't understand a power greater than wealth. China has harnessed that power and will not give it up to protect the data sensitivity of Americans. Maybe it's time for someone to write a good book about a country hostile to personal freedom who creates a Trojan horse social media program to draw in a population who freely give it data to track them and later oppress them through surveillance and tight control of their daily activity. The Chinese have a different mindset when it comes to ethics and morals. Their baseline is the American extreme for oppression. By supporting their platform through using it and loading it with your personal data, you're helping them learn how to control large population masses. Hey, they never know when that may come in handy, like taking over other countries when the time is right.

I mean, it's public info and yet:

This is perhaps the best way for Chinese intelligence to keep track of books they deem potentially subversive. Nice job, publishing industry!

A million people without a single way of thinking. And they're not on TikTok just yet. 
But there is some sense in the comments:

I listened to the FCC commissioner Carr today on TV, followed up by a TikTok representative. There is a clear misrepresentation of facts going on becasue they very clearly did not agree as to what they are. to be honest, I don't know what the true facts are and the American public doesn't either. What I do know is that some of the most helpful public informatio I have seen is on TikTok. I have learned to stretch, to dance, to make food of different cultures and the like. I see individuals communicating DIRECTLY to ME about things they care about. This is a HUGE first amendment issue. Just watch PoliticsGirl one time, and you will understand why the political class wants to shut it down. Many brave souls put themselves out to identify injustices in their personal lives. IT captures video clips of "Karens" and racists in action on the streets and makes that available to employers and law enforcement when appropriate - NOT TIKTOK, but good citizens who care about building a better future together. I also watch several highly qualified experts on COVID information and alter my public behavior based on their expertise.  So, yes, it helps with good literature too. But it's MUCH MORE than that. It's scary to politicians because it gives power to individual people to control their own lives and make better decisions about who to vote for and against.

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War on Women. Iranian Edition.

Plenty of bad stuff happening there. This doesn't, ofc, mean that the crazies on our side are right to try and push Iran towards a war (or try to subjugate the entire country). Mainly they empower these crazies in Iran and are a very strong part of the war against the women here in the States, so don't listen to them when they speak. but definitely support the women of Iran. 
Hope they win, though it won't be easy. 

There are a bunch of videos showing these morality police types (plenty of women trying to cut down other women). It's a tough world out there, but sometimes it's clear which side is the right side and which isn't. 
More pics of these violent fucks. 





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