It’s the ultimate gaslight. It seems he just plans to tell everyone his preferred reality and everyone is supposed to just get on board. That’s just crazy. The most recent was when a reporter mentioned that the families of the sailors on board the USS Lincoln are concerned about conditions on the Lincoln. This, after one guy jumped overboard. 47’s answer? “No, they’re not.” Um, yeah. They are.

He says people are mad at Republicans, but not him. I know several one-time supporters who ARE quite angry with him, personally. They feel betrayed. He’s just telling the world they don’t. He’s doing the same thing with the economy. It’s perfect, don’t you know? Gas is .38 cents a gallon. Grocery stores (a name he thinks he made up) are actually giving the food away. We’re supposed to ignore how much deeper into your pocket the corporations are reaching just so you can eat and get to work, right?

Despite a court filing from his own team that the Reflecting Pool was not vandalized but failed as the result of shoddy work, he maintains the Reflecting Pool was vandalized. He prefers that idea so that’s the idea he sticks with. No evidence? No problem. He’ll just TELL you what you think.

He won the Iran war and the US is completely in control of the Strait of Hormuz. Everything is coming up roses. He’ll tell you the US is more respected than ever as world leaders laugh in his face. Under trump, and because of trump, the US is an increasingly horrifying nightmare but he’s telling you to ignore the evidence of your own eyes and stick, instead, to his lying words.

The really freaky part is that a large swath of supporters will do everything in their power to comply. Not me, though. He’s not going to simply talk me into believing things that aren’t true. He can tell me ‘affordability’ is a made-up word all day long. I know better and I won’t change what I know because he says I should. Especially since I know he’s only gaslighting like he is to try and protect his cowardly, soft self…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here’s a weird bit. There was a full solar eclipse across the arctic and parts of Europe on Wednesday. That’s not the weird part. Full solar eclipses happen. They happen because the moon is 400 times smaller than the sun, but about 400 times closer to the Earth. We get to see full eclipses because of that odd fact.

BUT…the facts get even more odd. You see, the Moon is slowly moving away from Earth. That means within a mere 1.2 billion years (so don’t wait up) solar eclipses won’t be possible. The Moon will appear too small in the sky to completely block the sun. Weird, eh?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If you’re going to vandalize a national memorial AND you’ve chosen to livestream your actions under an account using your own, real name, why run away when authorities show up? That’s what Melissa L. Farris did, though. It wasn’t hard to find her, even for these clowns. Now she’s facing vandalism charges and the main available video is provided BY her and totally implicates her as the vandal.

It doesn’t make sense, does it? 47 is out there gaslighting his believers with the idea that his Reflecting Pool was vandalized only to have all of the video evidence AND a court filing undermine his delusions. (Dear MAGA, “undermine his delusions” means “prove he lied.”) Then, suddenly, a woman shows up to vandalize a completely different memorial, AND make certain to livestream it so there can be no mistake?

There was no vandal in the first episode, so there absolutely HAD to be a vandal, readily identified, in the second? The press is going to dig into Farris’ life. They’ll want to know who she is. She may turn out to be some nutball who thought she was striking a clever blow for democracy or some such, but I won’t be surprised to learn that she’s a rightie, falling on her sword in an effort to prop up her Precious…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I once went outside at stupid o’clock in the morning to watch the Geminids meteor shower. We see it in December so it can be quite cold. The associated meteors are said to be slow moving for meteors. What I saw was, frankly, amazing. The meteors, as they passed, looked like flaming angels. One could make out a head and shoulders.

The shape was unmistakable. I knew I was looking at meteors, but in that moment, I also understood where the idea of flaming angels came from. If I were living in, say, the 4th century BCE, and had never heard of meteors, gods and angels might be the only “explanation.”

Now science thinks it may have discovered the root of some of the stories of little people from all around the world. As it happens, stories of little people like fairies and leprechauns can be found in many cultures from a wide variety of places. And, as it happens, there’s a mushroom that causes people to specifically hallucinate little people. Who knew?

If you ask me, that’s a weird little evolutionary defense. “If someone eats me, they’ll see little people.” Why would a plant develop such a weird effect? How does it know to show little people? No one can say, for sure. But researchers at the University of Utah have discovered a fungus that induces hallucinations that can manifest dozens or even hundreds of tiny people.

“People pretty much always report seeing dozens or hundreds of little people, about 3 to 30 centimeters [1 inch to 1 foot] tall, in incredible detail, like they’re actually there,” study coauthor Colin Domnauer, a doctoral student specializing in mycology at the university, said in a statement. Around 90% of the people who consume this fungus report seeing the little people, who follow the laws of physics in our world. “One person told me that while they were eating soup, the little people were jumping off their spoon into the bowl and swimming around,” said Domnauer.

In the same way those meteors might have boosted religious servitude, if one knew nothing of hallucinogens, one would actually believe they had seen little people and nothing could convince them otherwise, and fairies and leprechauns are born. Humanity shares stories of them to this day and probably will for as long as we exist. It’s kind of fun to realize those stories likely came from our forebears tripping balls from the mushrooms they ate with dinner…