President-Dictator Zelenski and Democrats Lose $100 Billion U.S. Dollars?

Ukraine President-Dictator Zelensky said that of the $183 billion dollars the Biden administration sent him for weapons only $77 billion is accounted for. Apparently know one knows presently what the Biden administration did with the money. That’s more than a third of a billion dollars for each of the elected Democrats in the House and Senate so it’s easy to understand why they kept approving funding the idiotic war that could have easily been settled by recognizing Russian land claims on the Crime, Donbass and not expanding N.A.T.O. right up to the Russian border after peace was made at the end of the Cold War version 1

100 Billion Dollar Fog of War

That’s lot of money. With the 10% Trump tariff on China in effect a 10% downward cost of living adjustment for poor people living on social security and Wal-mart the vaporized 100 billion that could instead have been a stimulus payment for poor elderly Americans has gone with so much other cash not reported on taxes to offshore Martian financial ecosystem of the rich beyond worldly accountability. It could have helped reduce poverty. It is understandable that former President Biden gave relatives and possible accomplices a priori pardons- they might need it if it turns out that the money went to them.

I watched a Netflix series named The Stranger

https://www.yahoo.com/news/zelenskyy-ukraine-received-us-76-184337849.html

about corruption in Korea. Maybe the corruption of Ukraine is global with the corrupt sharing U.S. deficit spending with several global leaders.

Green Green Echoes (poem)

Islands and the times for green

green echoes far from the Rhine

as if to say war ain’t divine

free free echoes far from the Rhine

In the verdant consumer’s plate

every future is financed date

nothing gained with something lost

public deficits follow a money’d boss

Bear and eagle's forever shore

places to range mammalian core

clean boat's journey to forest lore

green green echoes flow in the brine

Cohokian diamonds on the pitch of fate

games today are state of state

billions of bucks to wars dissipate

accountability in fogs of war.

https://www.udio.com/songs/bEsHnA7SdNuGA9FocXKwn5   

Should Amer-Indians Select a New Name for The Race?

 American Indians aren't from India. Calling themselves first peoples, aboriginals or whatever tends to be obscurantist. Historically most nations and peoples were named for their tribe/race or place. There were actual Brits, Germans and so forth. Even Russians and Chinese.  Sure there are Tlingits and Seminole yet St. Louis is right in the middle of things- where the national capital would have been located if they were looking a couple hundred years ahead. Maybe Indians should call themselves Cohokians or something similar. Cohokia might have been the greatest race/civilization of North America.

Certainly Meso-Americans can call themselves by race or tribe; Aztecs, Incas, Mayans etc. yet that does not apply for North America where their are countless tribes and in a sense races, with the exception being that they aren't not too different at all. So why not name themselves after their greatest civilization? That might be useful to people that don't understand the meanings and political correctnesses that attend the issue.

The Kansas City Cohokians has a nice sound to it.

Canadian Tariffs Bring Opportunity for Zinc Ore Processing to Alaska

 The Red Dog mine is America's largest zinc and germanium producer. The ore is processed in Canada travelling hundreds of miles. The new tariffs have unintentionally made an opportunity for a new source of good jobs in Wrangell, Anchorage or Fairbanks should mine owners decide to build.

Creating new quality jobs in Alaska isn't easy. Besides tourism the employment numbers don't change a lot. The opportunity to create a new heavy industry employer doesn't arise every day. The state could pursue bring ore processing to diversify the economy.

https://alaskabeacon.com/2025/01/31/a-major-alaska-mine-could-end-up-in-the-crossfire-of-trumps-trade-war-with-canada/

Dallas Trades Doncic to Lakers for A.D. Before Kyrie Irving Gets Old

The Mavs get a Dirk Nowitzki replacement and the Lakers get a younger superstar that needs fitness training from LeBron James who is now cleared to play another three years mentoring Doncic in fitness conditioning.

The Lakers have Christian Koloko on the bench as a 7 foot rim protect who can share the center position with Jackson Hayes and two other Lakers centers.

  The Lakers also got 6′-9″  245 lb Markief Morris to spot Hachimura a similar sized forward. Morris is 35.

  Finney-Smirh, Austin Reeves and Gabe Vincent, along with future shooter Dalton Knecht can fill the  guard position. James and Doncic on the court at the same time can be a challenge to defend against. James has the basketball IQ to optimize player opportunities. Dallas has a great guard to work with Anthony Davis and can optimize Kyrie Irving’s final best years (he is 32) before the familiar rapid aging upon reaching age 34.

'Individuals' and 'Word and Object'

Strawson and Quine’s books in the analytic philosophy tradition did not, as I recall, venture into logicism. Each were about propositions and the subject-object distinction, intentional and extensional thought, about the relationship of propositions to perceptions. They struck me as very intense psychological-analytical applications of Kant’s categories of thought; not as just categories within mind, and not the same categories, instead as very subtle descriptions of what propositional thought is and how it relates to the ’empirical’.

It's just reason and work. Subtle yet plain. . I.M.O. the works I mentioned are simply rationalism continuing the investigation of thought started by Descartes. It was a natural development and a period in the history of philosophy they moved through. Quine held the Edgar Pierce Chair of Philosophy at Harvard a quarter century. What Strawson and Quine developed was a major contribution to western thought.

The Pishon River of Eden ( a video)

An informative, entertaining video from Expedition Bible.

https://youtu.be/jwCdZ4CbA-E?feature=sharedSearching for the Pishon River of Eden

PTSD- Experience and Memory

If PTSD was easy to delete the technique might have been mass produced. Memory of past traumatic events doesn’t disappear, nor should it. It is worthwhile discovering some way of detachment without memory loss.

I guess time fades or dilutes traumatic events. Some traumatic events do recur in reality and not just memory. Being at sea isn’t traumatic yet the waviness experience recurs on solid ground, in the brain. Empirical signals trigger memories good and bad.

Memory of challenges regarded as trauma inform experience and is a survival mechanism. If people forgot that a traumatic event was bad they might repeat the ‘trauma’.

Trevor-Roper's Comment About African History as Darkness from 1965

 Trevor-Roper said; “There is only the history of the Europeans in Africa, The rest is largely darkness." Unfortunately history books of Africa, besides obvious Biblical and other historical materials, as well as histories of Greeks and Romans in Africa of which there is an abundance, and other materials from civilizations that ventured into Africa, such as China's Zheng He, the Assyrian etc and Babylonian trade, didn't begin to be published in quantity until the mid-20th century. The problem isn't one of did history occur; instead it is one of the paucity of written materials for historians to read. 

Some historians base works on archival materials while others venture farther to find data. Primary sources are important as are critical analysis, interpretation and fields as diverse as archeology, anthropology and hydrology (fascinating research into a verdant Sahara with a lot of water exists). Trevor-Roper was an Oxford historian who probably didn't venture much into the field. Maybe for Trevor-Roper if there were no African history books written that he knew about in 1965 about Africans, African history was darkness.. A very reflective New York Times article of the 1970s provided politically correct criticism of Roper and the topic of the history of African history writing. https://www.nytimes.com/.../the-history-the-slaveholders...

First Cause Argument and Evolution

If you believe that everything has a cause, such as the universe emerging from a singularity that exploded because of a quantum instability creating a phase change moving toward inflation; the premise is logically valid if instead of infinite regress there is a terminal point at something eternally existing able to issue a first cause for a universe to be and become.

Biological evolution is nothing more than a bracketed portion of the history of the Universe and not relevant in regard to the first cause question.

Potential U.S. War with France?

It is rather unimaginable that France would move to become a military enemy of the United States without the E.U. on its side. French President Macron gravely insulted the United States when he offered to send French troops- 50,000, to Greenland to fight the United States if President Trump moves to annex Greenland.

France once was an ally of the United States when the nation was founded in order to work against the British. France and Britain have received loads of military help from the United States for more than a century and this is the thanks the U.S.A. gets.

https://www.eurasiantimes.com/greenland-france-offers-to-deploy-soldiers/

President Macron’s bold and maladroit move demonstrates the stupidity involved in building up N.A.T.O. to such a vast size that it became a potential threat to U.S. Security. The Trump administration should make no mistake as did Joe Biden in failing to recognize France and N.A.T.O. as a potential enemy should they deem it in their interest to be so. France is a nuclear power and one therefor to be taken seriously.

Plainly the conflict with Ukraine that was completely avoidable if N.A.T.O. members had been willing to share Ukraine with Russia that has valid historical claims to much of it. Yet N.A.T.O. eastward expansion has dragged the U.S.A. along to damage U.S. global economic interests and security by supporting that misadventure. I remember visiting Le Havre France in 1987 and feeling welcome in the city where Sartre had worked at a college. Of course France wasn’t a member of N.A.T.O. then since the Soviets were a potential adversary and wanted to play dead and be unaligned, or maybe it was half communist. How times have changed. At least the news of French wine being treasonous will make American wine producers happy.

It may be difficult to put the genie back in the bottle and reduce the size of N.A.T.O. now. The U.S.A. probably need to remain a member yet not contribute much to the alliance in order to prevent it from being a European-only military power that it has nearly become. Strong U.S. relations with Russia is the better way to reduce the N.A.T.O. and Chinese risks and move the world back toward generally just a healthy economy place instead of moving toward the lunacy of planetary military conflicts.

Trump D.O.T. Should Be All-in Support for Domestic Solar Panel and EV Manufacture

China presently has a slight lead over the U.S.A. in producing electric vehicles. In 2024 the U.S. manufactured about 8.3 million EVs and China approximately 9 million in 2023. I am not counting hybrid electric vehicles. The EV market for the U.S. in 2025 is anticipated to be worth more than $100 billion dollars. Since EV sales in the U.S. in 2024 was just 1.3 million, the rest may be for export.

EVs have much lower maintenance costs than electric vehicles. In August 2023 there were just 3300 certified EV repair techs in the United States and about 83,000 more are needed each year for the next decade. More than half of the fossil fuel auto repair ships can service electric vehicles however. The trouble with repairs is that safety with high voltage is de rigeur and that requires training.. There is a lack of EV training standards, and that should be fixed. Instead of going to a computer coding college some might want to attend an EV Repair Business College, if they exist in your area.

EV batteries may work 15 or 20 years yet the cost of replacing a battery runs 5 to 10,000 dollars. Lithium ion batteries may be replaced this year by solid state batteries that are more efficient and weigh less in addition to keeping a charge better in very cold weather. They may be recharged in a fraction of the time of lithium ion batteries.

This is not a very good time for the Trump administration to be throwing turbulence into the U.S. EV market, if he is. The majority of the world population capable of affording to by a car will prefer electric vehicles that can be recharged for free with sunshine. Learning to retrofit EVs with failing lithium batteries with newer, cheaper solid state batteries should be on the Department of Transportation’s to do list. Cutting back on exhaust emissions from gas fueled clunkers in the second and third world is meaningful in the effort to reduce the acceleration of global warming. Though the Trump administration may not believe it, the world ocean temperature is rising half a degree fahrenheit each decade.

https://www.newsbreak.com/iflscience-1744888/3780790570333-the-rate-of-ocean-surface-warming-has-quadrupled-since-satellite-measurements-began

A fundamental change is occurring in transportation to systems that have not air pollution capability and support home production of fuel at low cost. The U.S. auto industry cannot well profit seeking to be bottom feeders limiting themselves to selling internal combustion engine powered vehicles to people that believe it patriotic to give money for gas to big oil corporations, and further, that global atmospheric heating is a deceit.

Japan is driving forward to develop perovskite solar panels that are cheaper, more pliable and better than present solar panels. The Trump administration should also support development of the domestic development of perovskite solar panels because of the likelihood of their wide-spread use in the building industry in the 2030s; everyone likes to keep change in their pockets that would go to pay for corporate power.

https://www.japanenergyevent.com/media-insights-hub/industry-news/japan-unveils-world-s-first-solar-super-panel-more-powerful-than-20-nuclear-reactors/

Sartre, Determinism, Experience/Existence and Essents

 I wrote this in replying to a point someone made about Sartre's opinion on determinism... I read the works of Sartre I mentioned exhaustively. The Critique is about 1000 pages. I'm kinda done reading Jean Paul.

I appreciate your comment. I would agree that Sartre thought mankind is "condemned to be free". The experience precedes essence idea is a little more questionable in my opinion. That is, I am not sure at all that he was correct. Perhaps there is a dual mode of experience and essence occurring together.

I regard Sartre as the most plain of philosophers, unlike Heidegger and Husserl perhaps. Once one has his vocabulary down the writing subject is simple.

Heidegger's concept of essents and dasein was a contemporary, different point of view of the experience/essents discussion. I am somewhat rusty on that area. In fact I haven't even read Hegel and Kant in 30 years although Kierkegaard's criticism of Hegel and romanticism was good reading in a course available from Coursera. From the U of Copenhagen.

Lately I have considered theories about non-locality in physics, and that probably is off topic. As someone wrote about metaphysics recently, there are two parts to it; the objective, exterior elements and the subjective, epistemological matters. I believe one requires the physical for the mind to exist, although spirit may transcend the physical, while Sartre may have regarded mind as preceding the physical? Sartre's philosophical narrative of an observer would work in a universe built as virtual reality or numerous other forms, yet in a level 4 multiverse of Tegmark mind would be switching between universes with each thought in dual mode with structure; determinism and inderminism occurring concurrently. Once one perceives and forms ideas in whatever epistemological manner actually occurs,

Ideas about experience preceding essents follow, and with so many theories about the relation of consciousness to subconsciousness as an wholistic temporal event, the matter becomes sticky.

Sartre's formation of abstract metaphysical opinions might be ordinary, while his narrative about experience is extraordinary. The Critique is valuable for describing social reality with practical political edification in regard to challenges facing all of humanity empirically.

Existence vs Essence

I would say it's a language category issue, and metaphysics. Fields and particles construed as essence precede existence as an idea (to stand apart from and reflect on being). The basic exception would be God eternal is, and is the word, in addition to being the essence of everything that is.

Some wouldn't like that condition. Was JP referring to Aristotle's essence vs existence?

Hoffstatter made a video on reality with nonlocality and relativity wherein she described attributes. Perhaps essences are relativistic from the viewpoint of an observer. It is safe to say that something exists yet less so about identifying an essence. In a sense Sartre was correct about existence and wrong about determinism if there isn't information available to falsify it. I will look for that other video and post it here later. 

https://youtu.be/Wsjgtp9XZxo?si=-4zyHpc2stWjtsbE

Customized AI has Potential for Wickedness

Deep Seek, the new open source Chinese AI that’s gone viral brought me to consider how millions of AI’s adapted from free sources or hidden proprietary models could be programmed to calculate wickedness in billions of forms. Even the super agents to be created by Stargate would stimulate open source rivals free to download and customize. AI can be a reflection of the owners outlook. Humans do not all mean well for others.

Eternal Hell for the Lost

The divine economy may not tolerate deficit spending, wickedness, sin, error and imperfection through eternity. God is perfect and that which He created that have free will aren't. They need be adopted by Christ's atoning sacrifice so God does not see the sinful character.

Maybe God creates a virtual box for the saved to allow them to exist eternally with Christ's help. For the lost that reject Jesus and go their own way a Universe without God for eternity would become a hell I would guess. Spirits might cohere as the Universe cycles to gravitational collapse and infinite heat in a singularity. Scientists say that below absolute zero the temperature probably is infinitely high. If the Universe with entropy disperses to heat death a phase change may flip it to infinitely hot. Hell for those godless spirits malingering for eternity within the infernal realm.

Ancient Heresies Return Each Generation

Jesus refers to the Father and the Holy Spirit numerous times. Why do people want to revisit ancient heresy like the Aryan doctrine or monophysitism today? Is it a lack of education? Did people never learn  the Nicene Creed?

Shaff's history of the Christian Church written in the late 1800s is excellent and free to download online. There is lots of good scholarship online for free these days. Here is a site with the earliest manuscripts of the New Testament https://biblearchaeologyreport.com/2019/02/15/the-earliest-new-testament-manuscripts/

Sometimes Intolerance Is Necessary

 Tolerance of cruelty, tolerance of injustice, tolerance of crime, tolerance of corruption, tolerance of bad foreign policy, tolerance of counter-productive work ethics, tolerance of incompetent government, tolerance of incompetent military leadership, tolerance of the destruction of the planetary ecospheric health, tolerance of mass social poverty, tolerance of cold, expensive coffee at airports; some things should not be tolerated,