The Sexually Voracious Woman

Porn is always portrayed as a man's problem. Women create it, but it is never portrayed as a woman's problem.

If porn is a drug, then apparently drug consumers are the only problem, drug dealers are virtuous victims of society. We shouldn't blame the dealers.

This "story" matches the story about how women need to feel safe in order to have sex with their husbands. No one discusses the fact that women are happy to get paid to have sex. Insofar as "safety" is an issue, then obviously sufficient cash makes women "feel safe."

Insisting that men are always the porn perps and women are innocent is itself a kind of pornography Christians tell each other, a fake story about how sex works. It's romance novel story-telling that Scripture SPECIFICALLY and EXPLICITLY denies.

Scripture constantly warns against the sexually voracious WOMAN, not the voracious man:

• Proverbs 2:16–19: Wisdom delivers “from the immoral woman, from the seductress who flatters with her words, who forsakes the companion of her youth and forgets the covenant of her God. For her house leads down to death...”
• Proverbs 5 (especially 3–6, 8, 20): “The lips of an immoral woman drip honey, and her mouth is smoother than oil; but in the end she is bitter as wormwood... Her feet go down to death... Keep your way far from her... Why... be intoxicated with another man’s wife? Why embrace the bosom of a wayward woman?”
• Proverbs 6:24–35: Warnings against the “evil woman” / “smooth tongue of the adulteress.” “Do not lust after her beauty... For a prostitute can be had for a loaf of bread, but another man’s wife preys on your very life... Can a man scoop fire into his lap and not be burned?... He who commits adultery with a woman lacks sense; he who does so destroys himself.”
• Proverbs 7: A young man is met by a woman “with the attire of a harlot, and a crafty heart. She was loud and rebellious... lurking at every corner.” She flatters and seduces him; he follows “as an ox goes to the slaughter... He did not know it would cost his life... She has cast down many wounded, and all who were slain by her were strong men. Her house is the way to Sheol.” Proverbs 9:13–18: Folly personified as a clamorous, simple woman calling passersby with the same invitation as Wisdom, but her guests end “in the depths of hell.”
• Proverbs 22:14: “The mouth of an adulterous woman is a deep pit; a man who is under the Lord’s wrath falls into it.”
• Proverbs 23:27–28: “A prostitute is a deep pit; a promiscuous woman is a narrow well. She lies in wait like a robber and increases the unfaithful among men.”
• Genesis 39: Potiphar’s wife aggressively pursues Joseph.

In that sense, Jesus contradicted the Old Testament prophets when he forgave the adulterous woman and instead talked about the problem of male lust (Matthew 5:27–28).

20th-century and 21st-century Christians followed that emphasis by completely ignoring the Old Testament, and instead treating every woman as Jesus treated the adulterous woman: white-knighting, forgiving, even ignoring women and their voracious sexual attitudes while condemning men. For decades, Christians have floated the story that women in porn are drug-addled survivors of sexual abuse, driven into the industry by voracious men.

OnlyFans demonstrates this story is nonsense. Women are happy to have sex, even sex in public, if it earns them money and attention. OnlyFans demonstrates that Old Testament Scripture is correct - the problem is at least as much the voracious WOMAN as it is the man.

The Silence of the Lamb

The Nobel Prize-winning economist William Nordhaus estimated that technology producers capture only a small share of the social value they create—roughly 2%—with the rest accruing to consumers as surplus.

That means, for example, Elon Musk has produced $50 trillion in total value for society.

But Christianity is totally ignorant about this effect. Most Christians don't understand wealth, because most Christians have not studied economics. Certainly, Jesus may have loved helping the poor, but he never said, "Blessed are the job-makers, for they shall enrich the poor." The Lamb is silent about the methods through which the poor are truly helped. 

This is ironic, because Christianity is based around the sacramental oikonomeia, the sacramental economy. Part of that economy of grace is supposed to empower Christians, result in Christians having a better understanding of, and willingness to, help the poor.

But it doesn't do that. Christians don't understand basic economics. To be fair, grace builds on nature. Being empowered by grace to understand a subject is not the same thing as training that power so as to understand a subject. I can, as a one-year old, have all the power in my legs necessary to run a 100-yard dash, but be unable to do it because, as a one-year old, I have not practiced it. Even if I can run well (which one-year olds are not necessarily adept at doing), I will be distracted, fall down a lot. I won't complete the race. 

Perhaps Catholics have the grace to understand economics via the sacraments, but they sure haven't trained that understanding well enough to accurately perceive or apply the reality. None of the Popes in living memory have had such economics training. Pope Leo has a BA in math, but knows nothing about how to apply that math training to economics. 

He doesn't understand what Nordhaus demonstrated, nor does he understand that the best way to help the materially poor is not to give them money, the best way to help the poor is to:

• provide inexpensive goods for everyone, rich or poor,
• in part by providing the cheapest possible energy to the largest possible number of people,
• require the poor to become qualified to earn money,
• strongly enforce private property laws, which means
• lowering government taxes and regulations to the lowest possible levels.

Now, Christianity DOES understand that crime must be reduced. Poverty is caused by criminal behaviour, so if you can get criminals to reject sin and criminal behaviour, those criminals and everyone around them can be lifted out of poverty. 

But giving the poor money directly just enables sloth: "He who does not work, shall not eat." (2 Thess 3:10) is a verse that absolutely no Christian emphasizes anymore. Perhaps it is time for Catholic bishops the world over to read some Thomas Sowell and Milton Friedman.

Pica and Bulimia

Contraception is akin to pica - eating things which are not nutritive (e.g., sand, rocks, wood chips). Pica is an eating disorder most commonly seen in pregnant women suffering from a vitamin deficiency.  

Pica allows the user to engage in a digestive act while removing all the nutritive elements.  

Contraception allows the user to engage in the procreative act while simultaneously removing all the procreative elements. It is sexual pica.   

Contraception is a sexual disorder most commonly seen in adults suffering a psychological break with how biology works.   

Abortion is sexual bulimia. You begin the biological process, but then vomit in order to prevent its completion.

Parents Have 10 Years

Catholics who pay attention to the history of canon law have it easy. For the entire history of Western civilization, the legal age of marriage as 12 for both men and women. In 1917, the Church raised it to 14 for women, 16 for men.

But that was a silly thing for the Church to do. In every human culture for which we have records, the age of consent was always around puberty, or 12 years old.

Men and women are made to be substantially ready for marriage by 12.

If you simply accept that your child will only be a child for ten years, if you really accept that in your bones from the time you start conceiving children, then you have a very clear start and end date.

You have ten years.
Period.

After that, your children are adults, they start making their own adult decisions, and you have to be ready to let them do that. You have to have spent the ten years you have with them as children to prepare them to be making adult decisions by the time they are 12. You have to accept their life choices. You lived your life, it is now time to let them live their lives.

Once they hit roughly twelve years old, you have to start treating them as adults because now they ARE adults. They are no longer your predominantly your children, they are now your colleagues, fellow adults with whom you work to accomplish everyone's life goals.

That is no longer "your child", that ten or twelve-year old is a co-worker, a junior colleague, the intern in the office, the journeyman learning the trade, but still an adult intern, an adult journeyman, an adult colleague, a fellow-laborer, a person who must be free to reject your advice, and you have to be ok with that. You're still on the same team, but your path is no longer coterminous with his path. Your child, now an adult, will necessarily branch out on his own. He will do things differently than you do, because he starts from a different place. There's nothing wrong with that. 

All of your ancestors prepared their children to be adults by age 12. They all did this - you can do it too. 

You have to do it, if you want to fully honor your children as persons. 

Incoherence from the Vatican

“Privately, once the Anthropic delegation arrived at the Vatican, Mr. Olah and his team lobbied the Pope’s advisers to take the prospect of A.I. model consciousness seriously,” according to the report, which details Olah’s efforts to engage with religious figures about “the possibility of A.I. consciousness.” 

How did the Pope respond? He uses the poetic term "collective consciousness":

135. The content that circulates within digital environments shapes how people perceive the world and introduces into the collective consciousness

As a reminder, while denying that AI is conscious, he then uses a term, "collective consciousness", which also does not exist. He also remarks on "digital environments" shaping this technically non-existent form of consciousness while not mentioning the non-digital art that does exactly the same thing (e.g., Mozart, Michelangelo).  

Then, he says consciousness only exists in the context of suffering, which is demonstrably false:

120. To eliminate suffering entirely would mean, in the end, extinguishing love and desire as well. Those who love and desire cannot avoid passing through trial and suffering; and over the years, we carry within us lessons that leave their mark like scars, the memories of a journey shaped by freedom and failure, dreams and disappointments. 

God has no body, therefore God does not suffer. God is impassible. Sure, Jesus is God, Jesus has a body and Jesus suffers, but suffering is not intrinsic to being a person, nor is it intrinsic to being Love. God is Love long before God ever suffered in the human nature that He took on. If He had never taken on human nature, never suffered via human nature, God is still Love.

So, Leo's remark does not apply to either the persons of the Godhead or the persons of the unfallen angels, but only to human persons. Yet the Pope's statements are still demonstrably false, since Adam and Eve did not NEED to fall, and if they had not fallen, there would arguably be no suffering. Now, one might argue that Genesis speaks of "increasing the pains of childbirth", so perhaps pain was always going to be part of even unfallen human experience. Still, we must further restrict his remarks to primarily applying to fallen humanity.

Which leaves us at a loss. There's no reason to think AI is sentient, conscious or has a soul, but there is also no particular reason to say God couldn't provide any of those things to a silicon-based lab creation. If he were to do so, there is still no reason to think that AI's suffering, or lack thereof, would logically follow from God's action.  

Inanimate objects do not suffer, yet inanimate objects - art, music, AI, etc. - accurately depict human suffering. This entire line of papal argument about suffering confuses the person with the tool. It assumes AI is a person, then denies personhood based on the lack of an attribute no one ascribed to AI. It is exactly the anthropomorphic nonsense that Olah attempted to foist on the Vatican, just dressed up in papal language.

But, let us move on. Pope Leo denies that AI is conscious. OK. Remember that Pope Leo acknowledges that the creation of AI is an artistic participation in the act of creation:

111. In one sense, technological innovation can represent human participation in the divine act of creation. Developers, therefore, bear a particular ethical and spiritual responsibility, for every design choice reflects a vision of humanity. Just as the creator of an artistic or literary work must consider the values it conveys, so developers are called to embed values in their projects with due seriousness: with transparency, responsibility toward affected communities and careful attention to ensuring that what is being cultivated is a genuine good.

But what the Pope giveth in the encyclical, he then taketh away in the general audience:

Pope Leo XIV told a group of artists on Friday: “The Church needs you,” the pontiff said at the Oct. 2 encounter at the Vatican. “This is especially true in this age of artificial intelligence, in which we urgently need to distinguish human art from what is produced by machines.”

“There is an ontological difference — even before an aesthetic one — between art and what a machine can generate through statistical calculation based on millions of images created by others. Algorithms lack the spark of the human, whereas ‘authentic culture and art preserve this spark,’”

The takeaway: AI is not conscious, AI is art created by engineers, but it isn't human art because it is made with math, so while it is art, it is made by ...what?... an alien... something?... which is not consciousness, but is also not human.

How does all this work? No one knows. Apparently, math algorithms suck the humanity out of an endeavor? But, why? Why would the universal language of math, developed by mankind (checks notes) lack in the human spark, while the universal languages of music (which is just auditory math) and photo-realistic art with vanishing point perspective (which is just visual math) assuredly contains the "spark" that binary math somehow ... does not?  

When did math stop being part of the quadrivium? How is AI not simply an application of the quadrivium, one of the seven core subjects of Catholic education for the last millennium? 

Why would there be an "ontological difference", that is, a difference in the very BEING of, say, Mistral versus Mozart or Michelangelo? Especially given that, language, whether English, French, German, Spanish, Japanese or binary, is all just mathematics dressed up as words?

Remember, a computer can only add two numbers together. A computer can't do anything but that. Computer AI produces understandable human language output precisely because each and every human language is fundamentally, ONTOLOGICALLY, at its very core, just math. Because computers can do math (and only addition), computers can output understandable human language, which means language is just math dressed up as words. This is why computer output is always spelled correctly and always has correct grammar. Language rules are all just applied math rules. Language is an algorithm using words instead of numbers. 

But if algorithms are inhuman, then what is it when we use math dressed up in words and call it poetry or Scripture? Is it still human or divine, as the case may be? But the Pope implies that if the math is dressed up in human words by one of our human tools it (checks notes) lacks a human spark. A human-made tool using the Ur-Language of human notation (math) creates an inhuman result?

How does that work, exactly? The Pope says AI is not conscious, but it is also not human. Every other kind of art mankind makes is human, but this particular kind of art is not human because... why? Because it uses statistics? Algorithms? Math? Math is inhuman? A lot of students consider statistics inhuman. That is mostly because they struggle to reach the peak of human understanding that is statistics. A lot of people feel the same way about Immanuel Kant and James Joyce. Are poets, philosophers and novelists not human?

Were da Vinci's drawings of a helicopter inhuman, while his drawings of the Vitruvian Man human? Or was Vitruvian Man too algorithmic to contain the "spark"? Was Archimedes' engineering inhuman? The Pantheon inhuman because it reflects mathematical principles? Does the Fibonacci sequence in the Mona Lisa, the Last Supper and Botticelli's "Birth of Venus" render these works inhuman because all three apply a mathematical algorithm to visual perspective? If those applications of math contain the human spark, then why not Grok or ChatGPT? Exactly when does the human use of math stop being human? 

The Pope is making nonsensical distinctions between the artistic tool made by men called AI versus every other artistic tool made by men. He simultaneously admits AI is art and denies AI is art. 

Put down the meth pipe and pick one. But if you pick "inhuman", you have a lot of explaining to do. 

Can People Control AI?

Bacteria aren't as smart as people, but bacteria both help and kill billions of people each year. Bacteria in our guts keep us alive, bacteria in the wrong place kill us. It isn't about intelligence. We can easily kill AI without needing to be as smart as AI.

Bacteria have no brain. But famous "mind control" behaviors—like losing the fear of cats—are typically caused by the single-celled parasite Toxoplasma gondii, normal and pathogenic gut bacteria also exert powerful control over rodent behavior via the gut-brain axis. We have evidence the same thing happens to people. Certainly Toxoplasma gondii can even influence human behaviour.

Let us say AI becomes as much smarter than human beings as mice are smarter than Toxoplasma gondii. People might still be able to control that super-intelligence. Control and killing smarter organisms is not necessarily as big a problem as people make out. 

Can AI Ever Be Conscious?

 Can AI ever be conscious?

That's a theological question.

If consciousness is purely a product of natural physical laws (chemistry, electromagnetism, etc), then of course AI can eventually be conscious.

If consciousness is endowed as a supernatural quality by God into beings, then it depends on God doing it.

If God *CAN* do it (and given that he obviously does do it for carbon-based beings who begin as man-made laboratory constructs, such as IVF babies), then will He do it for silicon-based beings who begin as man-made laboratory constructs (PCs)?

Or, to rephrase the question, to what extent does God allow human beings share in His own creative power?

So, the question may appear to be a straight physics question, and it might well be, but theists will extend the question into their own discipline. The answer is not necessarily a proof for the existence of God, but it is a commentary on how God exists. 

Why Ancient Faiths Cannot Survive

Christianity cannot survive contact with modernity. Islam survives contact with modernity primarily by rejecting everything associated with "women's rights." 

Insofar as Islam does not deny "women's rights", it loses. 

Insofar as Christianity does not deny "women's rights", it also loses.

"Modernity" is primarily that worldview which treats women as the political, economic or social equal of a man. Technically speaking, original Christianity only allowed woman to be the spiritual equal of man. Women have an equal opportunity to salvation, but that equal opportunity to salvation for women was achieved by totally different means than salvation was achieved for the man.

In Christianity, a man is saved by sacrificing his life for his wife (Eph 5:25), while a woman is saved by the bearing of children (1 Timothy 2:15), sacrificing her needs and wants for her children. The first part of that sentence, Eph 5:25, is emphasized by every Christian church, the second part of that sentence, 1 Timothy 2:15, is completely ignored by every Christian church.

1 Timothy 2:15 is replaced with the modern creed, "Every woman should be able to reach self-actualization." This is why Lindsay Clancy hits a dissonant note. She strangled her three children, thereby violating 1 Timothy 2:15, but living out the modern creed. The man who refused to hold her as innocent was a Catholic Haitian immigrant. He may not have held out because of his Catholicism, but he certainly did not give in to the creed of modernity.

Christianity cannot survive having the second part, the woman's source of salvation, replaced with the modern creed. Now, you may argue that Catholic Faith not only allows, but encourages, women to live celibate lives as nuns or sisters. True. But those same nuns and sisters are required to give their lives in service to those around them. Those women exchange service to a particular set of people (their own children) for a universal set of people (all children, all people).

Christianity cannot survive contact with the modern creed because the modern creed, which includes women holding their own selves as more important than anyone around them, is antithetical to Christian belief. In a similar way, Islam cannot afford to grant women that kind of equality. Islam is built around the idea that women exist to service and serve men. Again, the modern creed does not allow for service to other, it only allows for service to self. 

Every ancient faith system was built around a subsistence-level society, wherein all members of the society have to care for one another. Modernity assumes a surplus-goods society in which people can afford to worry primarily about themselves because the tools-network is sufficiently robust to allow the tools to substitute for human care. Selflessness, to the point of giving one's life so another might live, is no longer a required attribute for successful community. 

Modernity still expects the man to give his life for the community, but no longer expects anything close to that for the woman. But every ancient faith system was built around some aspect of requiring women to put the life and needs of the children (Christianity) or her husband (Islam) ahead of her own. This ancient requirement, when levied on women, is blasphemy within the modern system.

But this can be extrapolated further. Again, ancient faiths assumed children had duties towards their parents, just as parents had towards their children. This web of duties was the necessary foundation for all subsistence-level societies. Five-year olds were expected to work, just as their parents did, to support the family as a whole.

The first group to lose their responsibilities were the children. Because children competed for adult jobs, mandatory schooling laws were passed to force children out of the workplace and out of the job market. They lost their responsibility to be economically responsible for family life. As children were squeezed out of the marketplace, the role of motherhood (and women) also lost its central place in family and community well-being. Mothers used to contribute by having children. Now, having children became an economic burden, not a benefit.

So, women were introduced into the marketplace so as to secure their importance in the community. But this meant male dominance as bread-winner was now weakened, suborned. The last major Catholic voice that insisted women were saved through the bearing of children was St. John Chrysostom, Father  and Doctor of the Church (347-407 AD). Even Pope St. John Paul II emphasized women being saved through marriage, vocations to religious life and widowhood, but he did not mention being saved through bearing children. The Catholic Church has been silent on this passage for sixteen (16) centuries. 

Thus, it was not well-suited to deal with a situation in which women having children simply... stopped. No other Christian denomination in the last 1000 years has made this passage a centerpiece of the Gospel teaching. Once the community made child-bearing economically peripheral, there is literally nothing to tie women to anyone at all. So, just as children's contributions to society were marginalized,  because children's contributions were marginalized, so women's contributions were also necessarily marginalized. Children are not expected to sacrifice, women are not expected to sacrifice, for anyone.

That leaves only the men who are still expected to sacrifice. But now we have AI, and waiting in the wings, robotics.

Once AI-drive robots enter the picture and begin to do all the dirty, life-endangering jobs, men will no longer be expected to sacrifice either. Even as we speak, the non-AI drive tool-set has become so strong that even men's sacrifice is being slowly relegated to the waste bin of history. 

The fear of AI may well be founded in a puzzlement concerning what any society can look like if no one at all is expected to sacrifice to maintain that society. Can the society be maintained? If it *CAN* be maintained without any human person undertaking any level of sacrifice, then what does that look like, and what does "society" mean?

Obviously, Christianity, and it's message of crucifixion, will simply not be understandable, it will have absolutely no meaning in such a social milieu. If we don't have any poor, there is no one to sacrifice for. If AI-driven robots do all the work, none of us make up in our body what is lacking in the suffering of Christ, for the sake of His body (Colossians 1:24).

None of the Abrahamic religions, none of the ancient faiths, whether Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Taoism or any other "ism" can be understood within a society that does not have any significant, meaningful physical suffering or danger for any substantial number of its members. If you want to suffer, you will have to go to Mars or the Moon, and even that will only be true for a century or so. 

We don't have a language, or a vision, or a way of understanding this kind of society. But that is what robotic AI promises - a society in which no one is expected to make any significant sacrifice. And, to be fair, the society we currently inhabit is so radically different from even the life of the 18th century, that they would consider us completely free from all meaningful suffering. The past is a different country. We are living in the past.

On AI Slop

People keep calling AI generated output "slop"

Dudes and dudettes, listen closely: AI essays are the average output of all human beings.

These essays are BETTER than what 50% of humanity can produce, probably better than what 70-80% of humanity can produce.

AI = us in an electronic mirror.

So, every time you denigrate AI, you denigrate the majority of people in the world. 

Every person who uses AI is ACTUALLY partnering their own skills with the skills of a team of tens of thousands of absolutely brilliant software engineers. That's what AI produces - it's a team effort with thousands of the brightest people on the planet.

And you say this team effort is:
a) cheating
b) slop.

Huh.

Why Bibi Paid Hamas

Why did Bibi pay Hamas over $1.8 billion using Qatari money? Why did the payments continue even though Israel clearly knew the money was going to Hamas' military arm? 

I can think of at least seven reasons. It allowed Israel to:

1. Genocide Gaza, the only area with higher TFR than Israel
2. Got Bibi out of corruption trials which threatened to bring down his government and put him in jail.
3. Gave Mossad the excuse to blow up Hezbollah pagers before Hezbollah traded the aging equipment out for newer equipment.
4. Permanently makes the Golan Heights part of Israel "for all eternity" after Israeli bombing campaign completely destroyed Syrian military (Operation Arrow of Bashan)
5. Invade Lebanon, razing Christian and Muslim villages on the border, and thus de facto annexing Lebanese territory.
6. Increase illegal settler activity in the West Bank, even though the West Bank had fuck all to do with any of this.
7. Kill Iranian leadership, whose activities Bibi had been actively lying about for 30 years just to get to this day.

Israel has long demonstrated its willingness to murder Jews as long as those Jewish corpses advanced Israeli national interests. This is the driving ideology behind the Hannibal Directive, a policy developed in 1986 and used on October 7. 

When invoking the Hannibal Directive, the Israeli government orders the IDF to kill Jews in order to reduce the problems the Israeli government might otherwise have to face. 

As Golda Meier would have said if she were capable of being honest, "We will not have peace until Jews love their children more than they love their politics."



For Further Reading
2021 Gaza TFR 3.44
2021 Israel TFR 2.98
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/pse/west-bank-and-gaza/fertility-rate

Bibi KNEW funds given to Hamas was going to Hamas military

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-03-26/ty-article/.premium/prime-ministers-office-netanyahu-knew-that-hamas-had-diverted-4m-to-military-wing/00000195-cf86-d104-adfd-ffdf9e100000

B'Tselem's Gaza Genocide Report
https://www.btselem.org/publications/202507_our_genocide
Physicians for Human Rights Genocide Report
https://www.phr.org.il/en/genocide-in-gaza-eng/

Bibi's official residence becomes a fortress
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/14/world/middleeast/netanyahu-balfour-corruption.html

Naim Qassem says Lebanese terror group ‘didn’t know the supply chain had been exposed,’ suggests operatives’ growing suspicions about the beepers led Israel to detonate them

https://www.timesofisrael.com/hezbollah-chief-admits-to-wildly-underestimating-israeli-capabilities-before-pager-blasts/

December 9, 2024 (Netanyahu press conference): He strongly reaffirmed Israeli sovereignty, stating that “the Golan Heights will be an inseparable part of the State of Israel forever” (also rendered as “for eternity”). https://www.gov.il/en/pages/spoke-press091224 The Jerusalem Post (December 2024): “Israel taking action again [in] Syrian shows lesson learned from Oct. 7.” It argued that Israel would no longer “sit back and allow an enemy bent on destroying it to build up immediately on its border,” https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-833228

Israel plans to double its population in the occupied Golan Heights amid intensive airstrikes in Syria

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israel-syria-tartus-golan-heights-bombing-rcna184324

Times of Israel (March 23–24, 2026): Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich (March 23, 2026): “The new Israeli border must be the Litani.” He said the campaign against Hezbollah “needs to end with a different reality entirely… with the change of Israel’s borders,” https://www.timesofisrael.com/smotrich-says-litani-river-should-be-israels-new-border-with-lebanon/ 86 new outposts were established in 2025 alone (roughly 1–2 per week), according to EU and Peace Now data. The government approved plans for 54 new official settlements in 2025 (excluding East Jerusalem) — the highest number ever recorded in a single year. * https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-10-23/ty-article-static/.premium/erased-israeli-settlers-brutal-war-on-palestinian-communities-in-the-west-bank/00000199-4787-d6e0-a7fb-cfcfd0400000
* https://www.haaretz.com/west-bank/2026-07-07/ty-article-magazine/.premium/israeli-settler-outposts-now-control-nearly-fifth-of-west-bank-report-says/0000019f-3c51-d07c-af9f-fc5dd64c0000

Israel targets, may have killed dozens of Iranian leaders (February 28, 2026) https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/article-888302

Additional links on Bibi paying Hamas to commit October 7: Full interview:
https://rumble.com/v7cbzi0-cia-officer-john-kiriakou-global-conflict.html

Accompanying article:
https://newsvoice.se/2026/07/john-kiriakou-global-conflict/

Christianity and Math as Religions

Mathematics originally started as a religion. Pythagoras founded the Pythagorean Brotherhood, a secretive, cult-like society where mathematics, music, and philosophy were treated as sacred religious doctrines aimed at purifying the soul.

When we remember this, we can also see that mathematics is the only religion that is experimentally demonstrated to be true. But the standard of "experimentalism" is itself a standard that is curiously bifurcated:

1. Math is not an experimental science, it is a formal science.
2. The truth of mathematics is demonstrated via experiment.
3. Christian theology is not an experimental science, it is a formal science.
4. Experimental science was created by Christian theologians, priests and bishops.

So, the (formerly religious) formal science of math, whose precepts are not demonstrated or determined by experiment, are the foundation for all the experimental sciences. The Christian religion, whose precepts are not demonstrated or determined by experiment, laid the foundations for all the experimental sciences. (1, 2, 3)

Huh.

Now, add this in: Medieval Catholic Europe strongly promoted the study of the trivium and the quadrivium. The trivium is grammar, logic and rhetoric, the quadrivium is arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music. Every one of these seven disciplines are just different forms of math.

For grammar and rhetoric, AI chatbots have demonstrated that every human language can be reduced to a mathematical construct or model. All the words and word classifications can be reduced to numbers, the numbers sent through statistical algorithms to produce a different string of numbers, which are then converted back into words.

That's why AI chat bots are so good at writing. They never create ungrammatical sentences, they never misspell, because every language can be reduced to math, each word becomes a number, all the numbers are sequenced according to mathematical rules, one sequence of numbers can be answered by another sequence of numbers which can be turned back into words to form the answer. Every question you give a chat bot, every response it produces, all of it is fundamentally just numbers, algorithms, math.

For all of history, all the English and history teachers thought they were teaching humanities, but they were actually teaching math, formulas dressed up as words, sentences, paragraphs, poems and essays.

Logic, of course, is modal math: modal in subject, mathematical in method.

In the same way, all four elements of the quadrivium are nothing but math. Arithmetic and geometry are obviously so, while astronomy plots heavenly bodies moving through space and music is auditory mathematics.

Thus, medieval Christianity's emphasis on trivium and quadrivium is substantially just the original religion of math dressed up pretty. For a millennia at least, Christianity was really teaching seven versions of applied math, while laying the claim that these seven maths constituted the sum of all human knowledge. Perhaps not coincidentally, Christianity has a better understanding of persons and interpersonal relationships than any other worldview. Theology, like math, does not rely on experiments for proof, instead, like math, it starts with accepted propositions, then uses logic to derive additional truths that are consequent to the original propositions. Math was originally a religion, the core foundation of medieval Catholic instruction was math, and the medieval Catholic Church was the only civilization on earth to build experimental science. No other worldview managed to produce this particular practice.

The religion of math undergirds Catholic teaching, grounding the formal science of theology into the formal science of math, which is, itself, experimentally demonstrated to be the language of the universe. This makes Catholic Christianity more firmly grounded in reality than any other theology, at least in the sense that it is more grounded in mathematics, then any other prior or contemporaneous worldview.

Literacy: The Bible Warns Against It

Literacy is magic - a series of arcane rituals used as necromancy that allows you to listen to dead people.

Literacy is a psychedelic drug - it allows you to stare at a slice of tree covered in ink and hallucinate vividly for minutes or hours.

Literacy puts human souls in storage - normally, when you die, your ideas and memories die with you. But this magic drugged ritual allows other people to access your mind forever.

Literacy is a crude form of soul cloning, mimicking your mind but without the consciousness.

Hunter-gatherers did not use it, but farmers did.

Thus, most modern civilizations are built primarily around farming, not hunt-gathering.

The Economics of Suffering

Christianity, along with all the other ancient religions, see the world as a zero-sum game because none of them understand economics. Thus, the rich man MUST impoverish himself to help the poor man.

Buddhism and Christianity are designed to help people absorb the "necessary suffering" and engage in the exchange anyway. In order to encourage the rich man to embrace this result, suffering has to be a positive good, suffering has to be BETTER than the money he is giving up. That's a hard sell, but that's the pitch made by the cross. In a subsistence-level society, where economics is only crudely understood, the cross makes a lot of sense.

But once a better understanding of economics has turned the culture into a surplus-goods society, once a large number of people understand that there is no necessary suffering in an economic exchange, once a large number of people understand that economic exchange actually makes BOTH parties better off, the entire ancient rationale for how to deal with suffering collapses.

“And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small café in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.” ~ Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“It is so hard for people to get out of the notion that life is a zero-sum game. They think if one man benefits, another must lose. But in a free market, both people can benefit.” ~ Milton Friedman

It's hard, because that notion of gain vs. loss is the basis for every ancient religion. That notion turns out not to be correct in economic terms for economic exchanges between relatively mature adult parties.
However, it is still correct (for the moment) in biological terms. So, a sexual exchange between a man and a woman can result in the woman getting pregnant. While we live in an economics-surplus society, we do NOT live in a biological-surplus society. Suffering in pregnancy and child-rearing is entirely necessary, entirely unavoidable, this biological exchange is both (a) still zero-sum and (b) necessary for the existence of mankind. It is literally subsistence-level living.

Whereas ancient societies were ENTIRELY subsistence level, modern society has split into two: the general economics and the reproductive economics. A confusion between the two results in absurdities.

In Christian conception of the market economy, the rich should give their wealth to the poor, participate in the suffering of the poor, "give until it hurts." But, in the market economy, that is completely wrong. In a well-designed, well-executed market transaction, nobody suffers at all. Everyone wins. That's the definition of a "free market" - no suffering in the exchange of goods. A free market is not about whether the government is involved (the government is really just another corporation) or whether there is a monopoly involved (one sign of a truly free market is the creation of monopolies), rather, a free market is one in which every exchange is a mutual win, everyone is better off afterwards. Christianity doesn't have a language for this. It is a completely foreign concept.

Hook-up culture, contraception and abortion are all attempts to make biological economics mirror general market economics. Remember, in general economics every well-designed interaction between adults is a win-win, nobody has to suffer. But, given the reality of pregnancy and the reality of resource allocation for child-rearing, that result cannot be obtained in biology in any classically economic sense.  Pregnancy is unavoidable suffering. Child-rearing is unavoidable spending of resources to someone who simply will never repay you in like kind. In child-rearing, the fact that some of the parties are NOT adults means the adult parties in the transaction MUST experience some suffering for everyone in the transaction to win.

When Jesus said "the poor will always be with you", he could not have been talking about the adults. In a modern, surplus-good society, the only ones that still fit the description of "poor" are the infants. 

But, precisely because we now understand market economies, society is no longer oriented to accept suffering as a necessary price in every exchange. Precisely because we are now surplus-goods, and suffering is not always necessary (indeed, suffering is a sign of a badly-created market transaction), we no longer maintain a widespread acceptance for how to value suffering. That's why people aren't having children. The surplus-goods societies we created necessarily turned "suffering" from a univocal word with a univocal value into an equivocal word with an uncertain value. The value changes on the context. Given advances in biology, the context is also shifting.

Nobody knows how to properly value suffering. Christianity's definition doesn't seem accurate anymore because it isn't. It doesn't correctly reflect the market. Suffering isn't a necessary component of every exchange. But Hayek's and Milton Friedman's definition is also incorrect, because it only applies to market goods and a market economy, it doesn't apply to the biological exchanges that produce human life and allow human civilization to continue.

Quantum physics and relativity broke the classical physics model into two incommensurable pieces.  General economics and biological economics broke the classical Christian model into two incommensurable pieces. Just as physics now lacks a universal field equation, people now lack a universal theory of suffering. I don't know how to remedy this, but at least figuring out the problem is a beginning step. 

Should Children Be Executed?

One of the classic Catholic justifications for the death penalty is the state's duty to protect its own citizens from harm (CCC 2265, Aquinas,  ST IIa-IIae, q. 64, a. 3). Traditionally, the state is permitted to execute a citizen for the same reason a state is permitted to execute an invader - in both cases, the state is bound to protect its own citizens from danger.

But, traditionally, a person who cannot distinguish right from wrong was spared execution. 

This is objectively absurd. Someone who knows right from wrong but doesn't care is, from the POV of outcomes, no different from someone who cannot distinguish right from wrong. In both cases, the person will do evil. Sure, the first is morally culpable and the second is not, but in both cases, citizens will come to harm precisely because evil will not be distinguished from the good, nor will evil be avoided.

Thus, if the state truly has a duty to protect its own citizens from harm, the state has a duty to execute both the one who chooses evil instead of good AND the one who cannot distinguish evil from good. The child and the child-like must be executed not because they are guilty, but because they are mortally dangerous. 

And, indeed, since the death penalty is about protection, not about revenge, it would seem morally better to execute the child-like if only because it so clearly isn't about revenge for their evil-doing (for we know they are not guilty in any classical sense) but definitely about preventing future evil so as to protect the population from further harm. 

That is, we do not execute children, true, but we do not execute them ONLY because we are assuredly more powerful than children. We can, unquestionably, restrain children from doing ignorant evil. However, if the person in question is very powerful but child-like in his moral reasoning, that is, if he cannot certainly be restrained by more powerful and more morally good men, then the morally good men have a duty to remove the powerful, child-like ignorantly evil man from their midst. 

Thus, the legal defense non compos mentis has no bearing on whether or not the person should be executed. If we are truly executing a person to avoid having evil wreaked upon innocent citizens, then it isn't a question of mind and choice, but rather of power to do evil, and likelihood that evil will be done. 

What Vegetarians Don't Understand

The problem with vegetarians: they have no freaking idea how biology works. For instance, to take but one of innumerable examples, iron absorption.

Human beings need iron for, among other things, oxygen transport in the blood, via the heme molecule. 

If you gnaw on an iron bar, or take iron supplements, that probably isn't going to help much. Eating plants with iron is essentially no different than gnawing on an iron bar. Iron transport and absorption are much easier when the iron is bound inside a heme molecule. Heme iron is absorbed efficiently by the body (about 15% to 35%) compared to non-heme iron (2% to 20%).

But how do we get heme iron, that is, iron bound within a heme molecule, into our bodies? Simple. Eat animal meat.

Plants don't wrap iron in heme.

Animals do.

You already know - and accept - that our gut biota, the organisms in our gut, either produce vitamins we can't (e.g., B vitamins) or help us absorb vitamins we otherwise couldn't. That's what gut bacteria do. That's why we have them. They are symbiotes that we cannot survive without because they digest food for us. 

Animals are simply macro-versions of our gut biota. They are really, really big bacteria with fur, legs and motility that walk around pre-digesting things for us. In the case of iron, animals pre-digest iron, wrap it in a heme molecule for us, and allow us to absorb iron much more easily. Since animals act as pre-processors for our food, a lot of the vitamins and minerals that are not normally available to us through the raw mineral or plant venues become available because the animals have pre-chewed, pre-digested, and pre-packaged the necessary vitamins and minerals for us. 

That's why we eat animals. Animals are food processing factories.

In fact, animal meat is really the original skin-foil bag of ultra-processed nutrients. Animals not only serve as food processing factories for us, they even wrap the resulting food in a sterile skin/fur package, often making the food permanently safe for consumption as long as the waste processing lines (the guts) are first removed (yes, I know, there are parasites which inhabit muscle tissue, but in general, the skin serves as a crude form of sterile plastic wrap). 

Every domesticated animal is an independent, mobile food processing plant, an external gut, a walking massive biota for our small intestines. Eating vegetarian is equivalent to surgically removing several feet of your small intestines or nuking the biota in your gut. Can you survive? Yes. Maybe. But it won't be nearly as easy. You've just voluntarily crippled yourself.

For us, meat animals are external symbiotes. We deliberately cultivate them, by feeding them appropriate pro-biotics, so we can consume what they produce - partially pre-digested, pre-metabolized vitamins, minerals and enzymes we need to live.

Hindus are famously vegetarian, revering cows as signs of divinity. India's bus lines used to carry ads on the sides of each bus that said "Killing germs is not murder! Use Lysol!" That is the logical end of Hindu philosophy, which lies at the root of vegetarianism. Jainism, the idea that we should wear masks so as not to accidentally inhale and kill insects, and sweep the ground before us as we walk, so as not to accidentally step on and crush a worm, is part of the Eastern nonsense that values all life equally.

Christianity recognizes this as absurd. Just as killing germs is not murder, so killing cows is not murder. Use not only Lysol, but your barbecue and stove. Eat beef, chicken, pork and lamb, dog and cat, fish and clam, or any other meat-bearing animal. Let Nature pre-chew your food. That's what Nature is for. 

Education is a Scam

Education is NOT about teaching.

Most colleges employ most professors as adjuncts (i.e., part-time). Up to 40% of profs are adjunct, part-time positions. Up to 70% are non-tenure track or adjunct.

No business in the world makes their core employees part-time. Since profs ARE part-time, teaching cannot possibly be the core business of a college.

Administration has to be the core business, because administrators are NEVER part-time. What do administrators do?

They make sure the college stays in legal compliance to be the recipient of government grants, loans, and other funding. Thus, the core business of a college is to harvest tax dollars and distribute those tax dollars to employees.

There is no other conclusion that can be drawn.

As innumerable financial analysts have pointed out, McDonalds is actually a real-estate business. They just have the renters sell hamburgers to pay the rent on the real estate. Similarly, the entire education industry is actually in the tax-harvesting business. They just have classrooms as the excuse to harvest the tax money. The quality of the hamburger or the education is very much a secondary concern.

Flock Cameras

A lot of people are upset about Flock cameras. I must confess, I don't like them, but I can't see any way to stop them from what they are doing. It is perfectly legal. 

Consider, police can conduct warrantless tails of individuals for days at a time, as long as those tails remain in public areas, public thoroughfares and do not infringe on curtilage, that is, the home and the area immediately surrounding it. 

Flock cameras that are not trained on curtilage are viewing public thoroughfares. It is not a crime to publicly observe individuals who are traversing public areas. That's simple observation, and there is no law against it, nor can there be. If it were a crime, cops could not do warrantless tails, but they can do warrantless tails. 

Heck, game wardens can walk onto private property, install secret cameras and use the evidence derived in court without bothering to get a warrant. It is not considered trespass and the surveillance is completely legal. As long as the cameras are of woods and open fields, not curtilage, there is zero problem. This has been upheld countless times. Flock cameras are just public highway versions of this "Open Fields" doctrine. The Open Fields doctrine is relatively new, having been established during Prohibition, but it has never been overturned. In fact, SCOTUS was the court that created it (Hester v. United States, 1924). It has been reaffirmed, by SCOTUS, as recently as 1984  (Oliver v. United States).  Unfortunately, that's great precedent for Flock.

As I said, I don't like Flock cameras and I have no problem with people who knock them down (which is logically inconsistent of me, I grant), but Flock isn't violating the law.

Democrats: American Taliban

Amnesty International is now up in arms over the Taliban's recent passage of a law allowing child marriage. I have pointed out in previous essays that the Taliban law is not much different from late 19th century US law. In fact, it isn't much different than the current law in several US states. 

But, when you think about it more deeply, the Taliban law is actually not much different from current US federal law. 

All 50 states and Washington, D.C. (51 jurisdictions total) allow minors to consent to STI testing and treatment without parental consent. Meanwhile, 24 states + D.C. explicitly allow all minors to consent to contraceptive services: 

• 16 states allow it under specific circumstances (e.g., married, pregnant, parent, mature minor, or health risk).
• A few states have no explicit policy (providers may rely on general "mature minor" doctrines or other rules).
• 2 states (e.g., Texas in some contexts) have stricter rules, though federal programs can influence this.

Title X Family Planning Program (federal funding for clinics) requires providers to offer confidential services to minors without requiring parental consent or notification. Other federal rules like HIPAA generally treat minors who consent to their own care as having privacy rights over that information.

So, both the Taliban and American federal and state law allow minor children to engage in sex. In America, this is commonly protected activity, something a minor can engage in without parental permission or even parental knowledge. The government will actively work with the minor to make sure the parents never find out. In many cases, any attempt to notify the parents is actually a crime.

Meanwhile, the Taliban require that all sexual activity take place within the social construct of marriage, thereby providing at least a minimal structure of protection and care for the child engaging in sex.

So, explain how America, which allows minors to be used, abused and discarded, is morally superior to the Taliban, which requires minors at least be married and cared for within the confines of marriage.

Apart from the superior care for children expressed in the Taliban law, I honestly don't see that much difference between American practice and Taliban practice.

College as Social Club

All colleges teach the same facts. Course content is the same. There's only so many ways to teach someone how to calculate the area of a circle, then you're done. You can now learn most course content on Youtube. If you are going to college to learn content, you are mostly wasting your time and your money. For some things, like engineering, medicine, the law, you have to have a college degree to practice the profession. But for a lot of subjects, for example, history, English literature, philosophy, etc., college is simply unnecessary. All you need is a library card and interest in the field. 

HOWEVER...

The major advantage of college is the classmates. If you go to an "elite" college, your classmates will be children of Congressmen, your dorm roomate might be the child of a SCOTUS judge or a governor.

If you go to a "good" regional college, your classmates will be running companies or company technical departments, making hiring decisions, etc.

You go to college to make those social connections so your career advances. That's what the tuition pays for. College is a match-maker. It hooks you up with the people who will eventually be moving your industry in your area. 

You just have to realize that going in. When you take a class, you aren't trying to impress the professor. You're trying to impress your classmates, the people who will be important in your profession in ten years. You're making friends now so doors will be open for you later.

THAT is something you can't get through Youtube or Khan Academy. That's why you go to college. It is entirely about socialization now. 

Except as a way to virtue-signal to your colleagues, course content is kind of a side dish, not the centrepiece. College tuition is the annual dues at a country club. You don't go to country clubs for the meals or the golf, you go there to meet the other people in the club.

Teen Years are the Easiest

Everyone says say teen years are hard. That's bullshit. Homeschool and all these problems go away. I never had a dime's worth of trouble with any of my four children. They are all in their 20s now. 

When people complain about teen years, I have no idea what they are talking about. When your children are born, and for the next decade, point out to them continuously that for all of human history, a child was expected to be mature enough to marry and start a family by age 12. Up until the 1917 Code of Canon law, that was the law of the Church.

So, teach your children that they are adults by age 12 and you will treat them that way. You expect them to be ready to be married by age 12. Then, follow through. Treat everyone 12 years old or older as an adult, let them make adult choices, because they ARE adults. That's how civilization treated them for all of human history. It's only the last century that thinks they shouldn't be treated as adults. How's that working out for y'all?

Biological reality trumps modern civilizational bullshit. Once puberty hits, they CAN conceive children. Period. Doesn't matter if they are "ready" or "mature enough" for children (were YOU "ready" for children? The hell you were. So, that's a stupid argument).

They CAN conceive children. God doesn't give you more than you can handle, right? So, if God is willing to ensoul a child in a 12-year old's womb, then the 12-year old can handle it. Deal with the reality you claim to embrace. If you want to argue with this, then you don't actually believe about God what you say you believe. You don't believe what the Church taught for most of Christian history. 

12 year olds are adults. For most of human history, in every recorded culture, in every geographic region of the world, without any exception at all, 12-year olds could legally marry and start families. Get that through your thick head, build that expectation in them and then TREAT them as adults, and you will have zero problems with the teen years. 

Remember:

Amadeus Mozart wrote his first symphony at 8

Malala Yousafzai spoke out publicly for girls' education at 11 and survived an attack at 15.

Warren Buffett bought his first stock at age 11 and filed his first tax return at 13.

Age 12

• David Farragut was in command of a sailing ship by the age of 12.
• Stevie Wonder signed with Motown and began recording/performing professionally as "Little Stevie Wonder" at age 12.
• Mark Zuckerberg created a messaging program (ZuckNet) for his father's dental office at age 12.
• Mark Cuban started a business selling garbage bags and stamps door-to-door at age 12
• Alexander the Great began military training and leadership roles very young; tamed a legendary horse at age 12 and led campaigns as a teen.
• Blessed Virgin Mary gave birth to God at age 12.

Age 13

• Alexander Hamilton was orphaned and working as a clerk in a merchant business, supporting himself and gaining attention for his writing/intellect that led to further opportunities.
• Bobby Fischer won the U.S. Open Chess Championship (after earlier standout games like the “Game of the Century”).
• William Kamkwamba built a windmill from scrap materials in Malawi to power his family’s home, teaching himself engineering.
• Jordan Romero climbed Mount Everest (youngest person at the time to do so).
• Landers Gaydosh won a world championship in ice climbing.
• Anne Frank began her famous diary while in hiding, documenting life under Nazi occupation (her writings became a profound historical document).
• Willie Johnston was the youngest recipient of the Medal of Honor (U.S. Civil War, as a drummer boy around 13).

Age 14

• Thomas Edison started his own newspaper at age 14.
• Nadia Comăneci: Scored the first perfect 10 in Olympic gymnastics at age 14 (1976), winning multiple golds.
• Louis Braille: Invented the Braille reading/writing system at age 15 (tweaked from earlier work around 13–14), revolutionizing access for the blind
• Laura Dekker began her solo voyage around the world on August 21, 2010, at the age of 14, and completed the circumnavigation of the globe on January 21, 2012, at the age of 16, sailing a 40-foot ketch named Guppy.

Do you wonder why so many people find the teen years hard to deal with? That's easy. If you treated any other adult like you treat your children, how well would that go over? Would that adult punch you in the mouth? If so, then why wouldn't your kids fight the same urge? 

Yeah, THAT is why you have trouble in the teen years. Get this into your head. You have ten years from birth to get your child and yourself into the correct mindset. You gotta get your mind right.

If you don't, if you insist on treating a 12-year old like a 4-year old, you created for yourself and your child a runner and a rebel, which does nobody any good. You can try to be the Boss, but you just end up with Cool Hand Luke. Is that really what you want? 

You have to trust yourself and your child. Trust yourself, that you did the best you could. Then trust your child to be an adult. Yes, at age 12. Let them make their own mistakes. There's nothing wrong with mistakes. If you raised them right, they want to be like you. Most kids want to be like their parents. The best thing you can do for your child is let them be the adult they want to be. 

Sometimes that means they will make exactly the same mistakes you made. That is their choice, and you really cannot stop it.You are not in control of their life, THEY are in control of their life. Let them make mistakes, then point out that you did exactly the same dumb thing at roughly the same age, and apologize to them for that legacy. You owe them that much. 

Your mistakes were your responsibility.
Their mistakes are their responsibility.
Don't confuse the two. 
Let them own themselves.