Lighten up – Ride the Storm

“Something is interacting with humanity, whether through UFOs, psychic intrusions, art, or technology. We are at the mercy of an impenetrable something, like a sailing ship, blown along by unknowable winds.” – Mike Clelland

Big energy shift – highlighted by the intensity of the weather pattern[US]: snow warning. A significant, long-duration winter storm will bring widespread heavy snow, sleet, and freezing rain from the Southern Rockies to New England through Monday. Widespread travel disruptions, prolonged power outages, and vast tree damage is likely.

My nightlight is hyperactive. Change up.

News headlines worth amplifying – including a bit of comic relief

“As the rest of the world figured out the finer points of launching a human more than 800 feet down a snowy embankment, the sport increasingly became a heavily optimized game of inches.”

• – Headline: Norway’s National Sports Scandal Involves a Few Extra Stitches in the Crotch of a Ski-Jumping Suit.
  
  Writer’s comment regarding the defense: “Ah yes, the “cheating hasn’t previously been punished very seriously, so clearly we had no choice but to cheat” defense. A classic.” Link
• – Outstanding find! “The AFU website is the online tip of a very large physical archive held by a Swedish charitable foundation, which has a collection of materials relating to UFOs and other unexplained phenomena, including the Hilary Evans Library, plus 88,000 issues of 8,000 magazines focused on UFOs from the UK, USA and around the world.” Enjoy! Link
  
  Details: Archives for the Unexplained (AFU) preserves a rich world-wide heritage of paper archives, book libraries, recordings, e-files, objects and other materials related to all kinds of unexplained phenomena. Our aim is to continuously develop an independent archive foundation for research by generations to come. Link – https://www.afu.se/
• – Meet the Alaska Student Arrested for Eating an AI Art Exhibit. Link
  
  Excerpted exchange between Graham Granger and Colin Warren:
  CW: Have you ever been in an eating contest?
  GG: Yeah, a long long time ago. I did a mashed-potato eating contest at a renaissance fair back in Georgia.
  CW: Do you have any qualms about the fact that AI art is made by scraping other artists?
  GG: Yeah, I mean, that’s part of why I spat it out, because AI chews up and spits out art made by other people.
• – Thinning the veil…”Mysterious mushroom from China – without fail – causes users to hallucinate tiny people: crawling up walls, popping out from under furniture and marching under doors.” Link
• – Not the interview you expected. Request: “Set up an interview with an organ shipping company.” Result: link
  
  More fun like that? Follow #HowToWithJohnWilson
  
  – The Daily Beast Review: Sundance’s Funniest Film Is a Documentary About… Concrete? “The first feature-length film from the “How to With John Wilson” star is an absolute riot.” Link, The Guardian Review. Link
  
  Documentary – The History of Concrete: “After attending a workshop on how to write and sell a Hallmark movie, filmmaker John Wilson tries to use the same formula to sell a documentary about concrete.”
  3 seasons on HBO Max. Trailer for the show. Link [Darn. I don’t have HBO Max.]
  Reddit comments. Link
• – A cautionary tale about disinformation, Saucers, Spooks and Kooks follows the story of scientist, Paul Bennewitz. Bennewitz was targeted by a mind-bending counter-intelligence campaign that birthed enduring UFO lore.
  
  “Because the point of Saucer, Spooks & Kooks is not just that some people want to believe in flying saucers and aliens; but that Intelligence agencies are more than willing to exploit that belief for their own obscure agendas.”
  
  Based on the book Saucers, Spooks and Kooks: UFO Disinformation in the Age of Aquarius by Adam Gorightly, the documentary explores how disinformation and shadowy narratives became entwined with the UFO mythos, and how that fog continues to cloud what we think we know. YouTube Trailer
• – Headline: “The outline of a hand made with red pigment on the wall of a cave in Indonesia at least 67,800 years ago may be the world’s oldest rock art, according to a new study.” Link
• – For those of us who have experienced Faerie encounters, a documentary: Artist John Curtis Crawford and writer/story-teller Bridget Wolfe of Faerie Woodland lead us on a journey of discovery to find the Gateways of Faerie. YouTube
• – “Something is interacting with humanity, whether through UFOs, psychic intrusions, art, or technology. We are at the mercy of an impenetrable something, like a sailing ship, blown along by unknowable winds.” – Mike Clelland, Substack Link
  
  Mike says, “It was my deepest honor to be asked to write the introduction for the reprinting of Mac’s first book. Illumined Black was published in 1995, when he was a college freshman.
  
  Originally published in 1995, Illumined Black was a sensation among the science-fiction community. Mac Tonnies was a radical new voice in the genre, and his storytelling — combining JG Ballard, Philip K Dick, and internet-age verve — was a breath of fresh air. Unfortunately, due to Mac Tonnies’ untimely passing at just 34 years old, Illumined Black remains the only volume of fiction he ever published. Paul Kimball wrote the Afterword for this new printing, and it’s available through Solar Press, linked HERE
• – A First. Cow astonishes scientists with rare use of tools. Link
• – Snore ambiance. This dog is a viral hit. Link

Life is a circus. And the moment you realize that, you stop trying to control the tightrope and start enjoying the balance.

The joker represents permission to laugh mid-act, to miss a step and bow anyway, to notice the hidden doors behind the curtain. The circus reminds us spectacle and wisdom can share the same ring.

For the Oracle, this card says:

Don’t confuse seriousness with truth.

Wonder keeps you agile.
Curiosity keeps you alive.

Make time out for laughter and joy.