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All your flags are false

 

1937 Berlin, before the War. Hitler won a lot of people over by the booming economy, essentially ending the Great Depression in Germany. He did this of course by focusing most of the industrial sector towards building his war machine. War - it's good for business!

Imagine, if you will, if in the span of a few years, those stupid "Don't Tread on Me" flags started appearing on most streets, businesses, government offices, everywhere. Kinda weird/scary, right?

 At least I hope it would be. But then, if these flags were going up everywhere, maybe most everyone approved. Real America!

Here's a revelation I had as a teen, and it blew my then teenage mind. Your mileage may vary. But hey, say you're American. I am. Now, everytime you see an American flag during the course of your day, replace it with a NAZI flag. Or a Soviet flag. Or a UK flag. Canada. Heck why not Mexico? Replace it with another country and see what you think.

For me, it revealed the hitherto unrecognized fact that there are flags everywhere, and flags are essentially group propaganda. Mythology given form in a waving piece of colored cloth. The colors on this cloth determine what team (country/empire/kingdom) you root for. What is normally background noise because you are so used to them jumps out when it's a different team - like hey! America is way better than the NAZI's dude!

So yeah, look at the German NAZI's going about their average days in Berlin. So many atrocities, so much violence, and yet here they are appearing rather ordinary and normal.

Makes you wonder, I hope.

Memes Obliterated

As I've said before, the swastika was widely used as a good luck symbol for thousands of years, prior to the NAZI's.

But due to horrors of the NAZIs, swastikas have been removed from all public use, save the fevered hatreds of Neo-NAZIs, Skinheads, and pissed off teens looking for attention. It's become verboten, like many other NAZI symbols (the Hitler stache, for example).

It's remarkable to consider - in the span of ten years or so, a symbol that was used worldwide for tens of thousands of years was removed from use. Obliterated. A meme created by ancient mankind - the swastika is one of the oldest human symbols, up there with the circle, square, the line, and the triangle - gone in the blink of an eye.

Consider this when looking at our culture, our society, our world. What might seem timeless can be changed in an instant. There's no such thing as permanence.  There's also no such thing as objective meaning.

Coke and a Smile

For real - the artist obtains an actual neolithic vase and paints Coca Cola logos on them. Read about Al Weiwei here. This is a genuinely provoking piece of art for me, as 1. It's a Neolithic vase! They don't grow on trees. But 2. I get it, and it works. It's stunning.

That kind of reaction is specific to art, and is one of its chief powers. At the same time, it's like saying one is against murder, and so committing the worst murder you can think of to show how bad murder is. Don't murder, kids!

Nuts.

Too Late

Alas, it is far too late in this cycle to do anything real against these global beasts of money and power - American companies spread across the globe, fattening and suckling impressionable youths at the teat of "whatever you want, whatever you can dream". Or fry.

Hollywood, Madison Avenue, Silicon Valley, flooding the world with America, the empire that need not conquer you militarily to rule you, as you'll queue up for the chance.

America! Buy it or leave it!

(Don't) Fear the Clown

Like Wal Mart, McDonald's wields a massive influence across the planet, and has radically changed the way many of us eat in the past 50 years. It's no hyperbole to say, for example, that McDonald's is one of the leading forces behind the destruction of the rain forest - due to forest being cut down for pasture for animals to kill to send to McDonald's.

And of course, the clown. But there are steps we can take! We could mount protests and boycotts; we could write letters; we could not frequent McDonald's. Or, we could kill the clown, before he kills us (too late, alas, for many):

Perseus, Slayer of Ronald!

Snow White Rebootier

Given that everything gets rebooted these days, and then perhaps even rebooted again, and of course with every reboot things get darker, grittier, edgier, cuz, society, man.

So it's high time Snow White gets the modern reboot story - it's been a year or so - as a punk militant vegan eco-terrorist who also just happens to be heir to the throne, only if she can overthrow the ruling junta, led by Glenn Close.

But also too, kids, that's just a movie. In real life, grenades are NOT the answer. Say no if anyone ever offers you one, or suggests you go pick some up at the grenade store. Bad news.

Dang it! My PSA came too late.

Everyone's place

As has been long taught, the children are our future. Teach them well and let them lead the way.

It should be all of our place. Perpetual revolution - peaceful, you dig? But constant, and thus no entrenched power elite can gain enough strength to oppress us.

A revolution of the mind - acceptance of the dialectic nature of power, and how the few use it to rule the many.

We've gone through many social revolutions these past 100 years. Women's rights, LGBT rights, minority rights, etc. Many have fought against these revolutions - the forces of the status quo, the minions of the elite. But as you see, they can be overcome. Sometimes! To degrees.

The Least Revolutionary Revolutionaries

So when did America stop being Revolutionary? Washington crushing the Whiskey Rebellion? War of 1812 (note: Needs better name - something like "Revolutionary War 2: Red Glare")? Our first of the hundreds of invasions of the Caribbean and Central America?

Whenever, it's pretty clear we long ago stopped being a Revolutionary power and instead became an Imperial one. So, yeah, Revolutionaries suck! Says America, now. But not the whole world, yet. And not all Americans. So remember:

Well, with all this space age tech, they might! But the point still stands: Fight the power!

Armored up

One of the more pernicious impacts of the Drug War is the militarization of police forces across the US, and now the world. Andy and Barney are gone, replace by an armored goon with a tazer and mace, to start. More Army than Local Constable.

 Dorner hunt.

Most people did not get shot during the manhunt, thankfully.

But don't worry! Our native, freedom loving militias are keeping pace!

Keep abreast of the latest in mass killing tools, techniques, and strategies! For freedom, of course.

To Beat and Repress

Wingnuts would defend it, of course. "Shouldn't be in a riot, anyways!"

Your crime is being present. GUILTY!
But let us remember that whatever happens outside of American borders is of no consequence.

700+ people died at a sweat shop dedicated towards producing crap at Wal-Mart. Big whoop!

4 people are killed by some douchebag's cry for help:

And the Imperial Army is forcing Afghani kids to hold up signs commemorating "our loss".

Fair and balanced, you see.

F the Police

Yeah! Anarchy, man!

The power of hippie chicks is enough to stem the black armor clad stormtrooper tide.

Rebel dogs are necessary for man to defeat The Man. Don't go protest without one.

Riot Cop Beachball

It's officially a party once the beachball gets busted out. Riot cop party!

Pluto or Possibly (Likely) Bust

These are the Hubble gifs of the best shots we have of Pluto to date. Pluto, the demoted planet. But don't be sad!

Mankind has sent one of its precious crafts to the non-planet. New Horizons is the latest and perhaps the last deep space probe mankind has launched - since we are currently regressing, yay!

It will find rock and ice, how exciting. By the time it finds the next scientific discovery, some other Kuiper Belt object of ice and rock, we'll be in a Republican Theocracy and worshiping Ronald Reagan and the latest Republican Emperor.  We'll all agree this is the natural order of things.

Be sad - we're about to regress, zeig yay!

The Motion

Click for big, as always.

Hey! Motion is a funny thing - everything is in motion. EVERYTHING! Whether you're sleeping or sitting or even dead, you're in motion. The Earth spins, the Earth rotates around the Sun, the Sun rotates around the galactic center, the Milky Way galaxy rotates around a shared gravitational spot with Andromeda, the Local Group rotates around a larger cluster of galaxies, and so on. So on... forever! And of course it goes down as well, as electrons rotate around nuclei, and quarks rotate around each other, and it's true: Reality is motion. There is not one thing standing still - it's literally impossible, in the literal sense.

Above, a truer view of our Solar System - as the planets rotate around the Sun, the Sun is speeding along on the Orion-Cygnus Arm of the Milky Way, a backwater place far from the bustling galaxy core.

Also, I just drove across America in a huge truck towing a 67 Mustang. What a country! Always in motion!

Listen

Your eggs are talking to you. Are you listening?

Also, I'm off on a cross country drive. Not sure if I'll be able to report in, so if you don't hear from me in a while, blame the talking eggs.

Eggs within Eggs

Eggs within eggs within eggs. How far down (and up) does it go?

Question: Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

The answer is: Egg. The answer to everything is: Egg.

Shells

Let me drop some more perspective on you. Here's our old friend, the Oort Cloud. Picture billions upon billions of icy little comets tumbling around in a vast sphere, such that our entire solar system is enshrouded in a cloud of ice. A shell, like the electron shell.

It's big - extending almost a light year in all directions from the Sun. And then as you see, far closer in, is another sphere, or shell, of icy bodies, but also rocky bodies too - like Pluto. The Kuiper Belt, another shell - also like the electron shell.

So again picture this from far away in space, looking towards the Sun. First a giant cloud of white ice, floating lazily in a vast sphere. And another sphere of ice and rock far within that, and then tucked inside that shell are planets, and a star.

Every star with planets probably has something similar. And so now look up into the dark sky and picture every star you see as a white egg of ice shells, within beats the bright nucleus of a galactic atom. Together these atoms join with vast clouds of gas to create galaxies, and galaxies join other galaxies strung along in necklaces of dark matter, grouping in vast clouds of millions of galaxies, stretching.... forever?

Is a shell forever?

Star Scales

Apologies for the slow speed of this gif, but do stay till the end, where you'll visually grasp the incredible scale of star sizes. Our Sun is fairly normal size wise, but oh how much bigger do stars get! So big that the Sun is but a speck compared to the biggest.

But like with rock and/or roll, the bigger a star is, the brighter and faster it burns away. Our star will last about 10 billion years on the main cycle; the biggest stars last but a few million years then go KABLOOM, leaving behind a neutron star, or a black hole.

Behold this scale and know the glory and the rapture of our reality.

Because that's why

A billion, trillion, gazillion stars, and God cares whether you masturbate or not. Laugh while you can.

Also:

Revelation.

Republican Jesus III

Republican Jesus hates poor people, because they are poor. Why are they poor, Jesus asks? Because they suck. So why would Republican Jesus care about homeless people, or handicapped people, or old folks with no relatives, and so on? Oh yeah, because they're EVIL.

Our side rules!

LOL Jesus IV

Know your meme! But seriously, every other person at an AA meeting starts their story this way - "This one time I got so hammered...." (or variant). It becomes a strange drug, and I think the body gets a little placebo drunk, even if stone sober.

Also, memes rule. I love them even though I know they're lame. It's like a brand new form of the joke - by that I mean one person getting another person to laugh intentionally. One wonders when the first joke was told, or even further back, when the first physical humor was displayed. I contend the first physical joke was the "tapping on the left shoulder when in truth you are standing on the right side, such that the tap-ee looks left to see no one, then right to see you!"

Still funny!