Translation is a 5-step process of “straight thinking in the abstract” comparing and contrasting what seems to be truth with what you can syllogistically, axiomatically and mathematically (using word equations) prove is the truth. It is not an effort to change, alter or heal anything other than our consciousness.
The claims in a Translation should be outrageous and mind-blowing, but they are always (or should always be) based on self-evident syllogistic reasoning. Here is one Translation from this week.
1) Truth is that which is so. That which is not truth is not so. Therefore truth is all that is. Truth being all is therefore total, therefore whole, therefore complete, therefore satisfied, therefore satiated. I think therefore I am. Since I am and since Truth is all that is, therefore I, being, am Truth. Since there is no being without consciousness of it, therefore I, consciousness, am Truth. Since I, consciousness, am Truth, therefore Truth is consciousness. Since Truth is total, whole, complete, satisfied, and satiated and since I, being consciousness, am Truth, therefore I, being am total, whole complete, satisfied, satiated.
2) I’d love to move out of my home but I have nowhere to move to.
Word-tracking: home: residence, domicile, home, habitat, HQ, dwelling place, estate, village, apartment move: to strongly affect the feelings of someone, monumental, important love to: want, desire, unsatiated nowhere: place, location
3) Truth being all that is, there is no place where Truth is not, therefore Truth is everywhere. To love to, to want to, to hope to, implies dissatisfaction, but since Truth is satisfied, satiated, there is no dissatisfaction in Truth. Since I, being, am Truth, therefore I, being, am satiated, satisfied. Truth being all that is must therefore be all that dwells. Since Truth is all that dwells, therefore Truth is the only dwelling. And being one, there is no other dwelling place but Truth. Therefore Truth is the only dwelling, the only dwelling place.
4) Truth is everywhere. There is no dissatisfaction in Truth. I, being, am satiated, satisfied. Truth is the only dwelling. Truth is the only dwelling, the only dwelling place.
5) I, Consciousness, am the only satisfaction, the only satiation.
Or, if you have taken Translation class, join us each Saturday for Translation Saturday Meeting at 11 a.m. Pacific time for current, up-to-the-minute Translations on the issues of the day. Email zonta1111@aol.com for the Zoom link.
In a crisis — any crisis — The Prosperos offers Translation. Translation Saturday Meetings is a weekly series of Translation presentations by veteran Translators, live and up to date on the issues of the day.
It is not a Translation workshop, It is not a Translation class. It is not a group Translation in the usual sense, though group participation is encouraged.
It is, however, restricted to those who have taken Translation class. So if you have never taken Translation class, check the calendar tab on The Prosperos website (TheProsperos.org) or get in touch with us and we will schedule a class.
Last week our sense testimony was: Brain bleed deprives the brain of oxygen. Dizziness and loss of consciousness without apparent reason can cause self-doubt. Overwork can cause stroke. Ischemia. Life depends on oxygen which comes through breathing and blood. And our conclusion was: Life circulates everywhere in unrestrainable, thriving, blooming Consciousness.
Prometheus might have handed humanity fire, but he certainly did not give us a smartphone. Digital technology is not God-given. Nor is digital technology a natural kind, an object of nature, like strawberries or lakes. We don’t find smartphones growing from trees. The digital gadgets that populate our lives – smartphones, laptops, smartwatches and more – are artefacts.
An artefact exists because human beings have created it. Hammers, laws and symphonies are artefacts too. Their existence depends on human minds and purposes. No artefact, in all the richness of its details, is inevitable. That’s partly because artefacts are designed by human beings, and there are choices in design – choices that could’ve been different. Every one of the letters you are reading right now, for instance, could’ve had a different shape by design.
Shape is not the only choice we make in designing artefacts. In addition to making choices about the sensorial attributes of artefacts – their tactile qualities, what they look, sound, smell and sometimes taste like – we make choices about what the artefact is supposed to do. An artefact is created for a purpose; it’s intended to do some things and not others. Pillows are supposed to be comfortable, pens are meant to smoothly transfer ink onto paper, and toasters should brown your bread.
Some artefacts do many things. A perfect chair, say an Eames chair, is both an object of beauty, something that is pleasurable to behold, and a useful tool for the comfort of the body. I edited my last book on an Eames chair that was so comfortable, it allowed me to focus on the content of the book instead of worrying about my body.
Digital technology does many things too. A smartphone can enable you to make calls, send emails, and track how many minutes you meditate to destress from the calls and the emails, and then track how many hours you’ve been on your smartphone, and stress about that. Mixed in the flour that bakes digital technology sit two original sins pervading most gadgets, apps and platforms alike: surveillance and prediction; more specifically, surveillance at the service of prediction. Both lead to social control.
For the most part, digital technology has been developed by computer scientists, engineers, data analysts and ambitious businessmen (yes, mostly men) with little to no consideration of the impact their technology could have on democracy.
That’s partly because, when the fundamental blocks of the digital and the online were designed, it was hard to envision that they would grow to be what they are today, something that everyone has access to, every second of the day, including gadgets that are small enough to fit into a pocket. The internet was originally designed to be a tool for researchers to communicate easily with one another; it wasn’t meant to be a major way of communication for ordinary citizens.
But another influencing element is undoubtedly that the people designing our gadgets tend to be people well versed in programming, business, mathematics and other fields distant from a deep understanding of ethics or politics. (That said, there are notable exceptions like Reid Hoffman, who co-founded LinkedIn, one of the least toxic social media platforms we have.) Considerations about how technology could impact democracy were largely not part of the design of our digital environment. And whenever political considerations did come in, they’ve come in the form of an anti-government bent.
There is some tension between Peter Thiel’s supposed defence of freedom, and the systems of mass surveillance, prediction and control he’s building
Some of the pioneers of the digital strike me as naive idealists, assuming that freedom and fairness will magically come from having no government interference. ‘A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace’ (1996) is one of the most iconic documents of the early internet era, written by John Perry Barlow, as quirky a character as they come. A Republican and an anarchist, Barlow was raised as a devoted member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; he was also a cattle rancher and a lyricist for the band Grateful Dead.
The beginning of his declaration reads:
Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.
And it ends with:
We will create a civilisation of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before.
Those strike me as extremely naive sentiments, at best, barely plausible when the internet was populated by a handful of nerdy guys, and utterly unrealistic once it starts encompassing millions of people from around the world, including thieves, drug dealers and human traffickers, not to mention swathes of terrifyingly ordinary trolls who silence people they don’t like (women, often). Where did Barlow think fairness was going to come from?
In other instances, digital anarchism or libertarianism seems anything but naive. Peter Thiel is a German and American venture capitalist and a conservative political activist. He was the first outside investor in Facebook – you know, the company that popularised a model of surveillance for social media that led to the Cambridge Analytica scandal – and a co-founder of Palantir – you know, the company named after J R R Tolkien’s omniscient crystal balls in TheLord of the Rings that was partly funded by the CIA and helps governments surveil their populations, whose ads recently read ‘we build to dominate’. Before that, he co-founded PayPal, which he conceived of as a payment service to shield people from governmental reach.
Thiel is famous for his libertarianism and for expressing sceptical views about democracy. Although he is not shy about voicing his opinions, many of his perspectives seem contradictory, and listening to him – from the content of his words to the intensity of his goggle-eyed demeanour – can be a surreal experience. Thiel’s own biographer Max Chafkin said he finds what Thiel thinks an unsettling mystery.
Surely it doesn’t escape Thiel that there is some tension between his supposed defence of freedom, and the systems of mass surveillance, prediction and control that he is building. One rather depressing hypothesis is that Thiel is nothing more complex or sophisticated than an opportunist; someone who is mostly interested in earning money and gaining dominance over others; someone who is fighting for freedom for himself and his buddies, not caring if it comes at the price of slavery for everyone else. Sometimes Ockham’s Razor is right, sometimes the simplest explanation is the correct one. Whatever Thiel’s intentions might be, what is clear is that digital technology has not been and is still not being designed to support democracy.
One of the most deceptive narratives technology companies have been successfully peddling is that technology is neutral and it’s our use of the technology that determines whether it’s good or bad. How very convenient, to put all moral responsibility on the shoulders of people; I’m sure that is an entirely coincidental implication and not at all self-serving (eye roll). The crudest way to rebut this argument is to consider an extreme technology: a chemical weapon that would obliterate all life on Earth. Would it be morally acceptable to develop such an artefact under the pretence that technology is always neutral? No. Such a technology would not be neutral, and neither is any other technology.
Every piece of technology is an artefact, which means that it has been designed by someone to do something, and that fact alone strips it of neutrality. Even a blank page is not neutral: it’s inviting you to write (or to make a paper plane). Technology is never neutral because it embodies the belief in the value of what it was designed to do. You make an artefact because you think there is value in it doing what it does.
Philosophers describe the embodied values of artefacts by pointing out that artefacts have affordances. An affordance is what an artefact invites you to do. A paper book invites you to read it; it’s made to be light, to fit comfortably in your hands, be easy to store, and its words are designed to inform you, or persuade you, or move you. It’s the result of thousands of years of refinements to make it more portable, durable, reproducible – from stone tablets to papyrus scrolls to bound codices to the printed book. Of course, you can use a book as a hammer, or a brick, or a projectile, but since it wasn’t designed for that, you’d be better off using a hammer, or a brick, or a baseball. Affordances are how the designer of an object communicates with its user.
Because surveillance affords control, when it comes to politics, it tends to decrease freedom
Surveillance tools afford control; they invite you to keep track of things and people, or people through their things, or people as things. Given how highly social creatures we are, we are typically more interested in tracking people than things.
You keep track of people to have some amount of control over them. In some cases, it’s justified. It’s part of a parent’s job to watch a toddler at all times of the day in case they run into danger, and the world is a very dangerous place for a toddler. Parents are superheroes who intervene before heads hit the floor, hands touch hot objects, and marbles get swallowed; to be able to intercede on behalf of children, parents need to keep a watch on little ones. Parents surveil children to predict disasters and avert them.
The case to surveil becomes much harder when it comes to autonomous adults. First, when adult human beings are autonomous, their ability to keep reasonably safe is greatly enhanced; we get better at not falling head first, not touching hot objects, and not swallowing marbles. Second, other things being equal, the desires of autonomous people about how they lead their lives should be respected, and most people don’t want someone watching over their shoulders (again, other things being equal). Third, because surveillance affords control, when it comes to politics, it tends to decrease freedom, which tends to be bad for liberal democracies. It is no coincidence that authoritarian regimes rely on surveillance of their citizens.
Parents who surveil toddlers tend to do so benevolently, for the child’s own good. But not all watchers are as benevolent. People can have their own agenda, which is not always aligned with your best interests. Whoever surveils you gains more power over you by virtue of learning more about you, which makes it easier to predict what you’ll do next, and use that information in their favour. If I learn that you have gone to the movies every Monday night for the past year, I can use that information to predict that you’ll be at the movies next Monday night and plan to rob your house then.
Most digital tools, as they are currently designed, are built to surveil. They collect as much data as possible by default, and your ability to constrain that data collection is limited at best. Your phone not only has a microphone and a camera, it has an accelerometer, a gyroscope, a compass, a barometer, a light sensor, proximity sensor, humidity sensor, iris and fingerprint scanners and a GPS, among many items in a long list. That’s just your phone.
Many apps on our devices – maps, online documents and social media – were designed precisely with the creation of personal data in mind, to make our lives more trackable by machines. That they are useful to us is just the attractions used to make us inadvertently give up the data that is used to control us.
According to James C Scott, the American political scientist, digital records make society more ‘legible’ to machines – arguably the same applies whether the machine is a state, a corporation or an AI. Without a quantified record of the comings, goings, communications and purchases of people, institutions are blind. When we turn analogue records into digital ones, we make data much more easily retrievable, and we make it easier for that data to get copied and shared. Finally, digital records also make it easier for computers to analyse information: to identify people, catalogue them, track their income and location, and predict their lives.
The surveillance machinery we have built exists at the service of a prediction machinery. We collect so much data to monetise it, and we monetise it by using it to predict, or by selling it to others who want to use it for the purposes of prediction. But efforts to predict people’s behaviour are intrinsically linked to efforts to control it, because the easiest way to predict the future is to influence it; preferably to determine it.
We’ve seen similar dreams of folly, for instance, in the Soviet Union’s desire to plan the economy, or with East Germany’s Stasi, but the technology then was not nearly as powerful to surveil and control as it is today. In the 1960s, if you wanted to surveil one person, you had to hire someone else to bug them or follow them. Today, we surveil everyone by default; you just have to tap into the data collected by the spies in their pockets (smartphones), on their wrists and fingers (smart watches and rings), their work tools (laptops), and in the public sphere (CCTV cameras) – you’ll have more on any person than the Stasi could ever dream of.
You might think that there is nothing to worry about because, while the Soviet Union and East Germany had a clear political agenda, today’s surveillance is mostly about earning a profit. But, as the old adage goes, power corrupts, and surveillance conveys too much power to the watchers. Furthermore, human beings are political animals, as Aristotle pointed out. It’s a matter of time before things get heated and the powerful reveal their political colours, as we’re increasingly seeing tech barons like Thiel do.
Predictions about people have a tendency to become self-fulfilling prophecies
Even disregarding the terrifying implications of surveillance (how much more surveillance can liberal democracies take before falling into societies of control?), an overreliance on prediction is a democratic problem in itself, and today we are using prediction more than ever.
Predictions might sound like descriptions of the world, or like facts, but they are neither. When we analyse them as assertions, it becomes clear that they are what the philosopher J L Austin called ‘speech acts’, language that does something rather than describe. Predictions are often veiled commands, implicitly telling us what to do. When someone like Thiel prophesies that, if we fear or regulate technology, we will hasten the coming of the Antichrist, the message is an order. Paraphrasing, Thiel is telling people to not stand in the way of his technology, or else terrible things will happen. That he has a major financial stake in the technology is something he doesn’t remark on as much.
Predictions also invite foul play. Predictions about people have a tendency to become self-fulfilling prophecies, which creates the temptation to unduly influence the future. For example, politicians have bet on themselves in prediction markets to try to sway public opinion, making them look more popular than they are.
Predictions also stand in contrast to justice, and yet we are using algorithmic predictions to make decisions about sentencing and bail. Justice is supposed to give each one what they deserve on the basis of what they’ve done or who they are, not on the basis of who other people think they will become, which is what a prediction is. If we punish someone or deny them an opportunity on the basis of clear and contestable criteria, on the basis of facts, those decisions can be challenged; they can be proven wrong. But if we punish or deny opportunities based on predictions, there is no way to contest those. Since they are about the future, they cannot be proven false in the present.
Furthermore, if people’s behaviour becomes more predictable, there’s a good chance that’s because it’s being conditioned or even determined. At an extreme, the surest way to predict someone’s death is to murder them. People living in authoritarian regimes can be more predictable because their behaviour is being constrained by tyranny.
Healthy democracies are all about embracing and managing uncertainty. It’s only when we don’t know what the results of elections will be that we have true democracy. If we knew what the election results would be, there’d be no point in holding the elections.
We have been using prophecy since before the Oracle of Delphi. We have waged wars, married, and bet our livelihoods on account of predictions. Every day, we put our life and those of others on the line based on forecasts. It’s about time we thought more carefully about the ethics of prediction. When is it appropriate to make predictions and when is it not? Who is entitled to make which predictions? What do we owe the subjects of prediction? What are ethical methods of coming up with predictions, and what are ethical uses of prediction?
In some ways, our current prophetic environment is not that dissimilar to that of ancient Greece, where the most important decisions were often made through the filter of divination, from the Oracles of Delphi and Dodona to freelance soothsayers and seers. Philosophy arose as the voice of reason partly as a reaction against a context dominated by prophecies and myth.
When the priest Lampon declared that the finding of a single-horned ram prophesied that Pericles would overcome his political adversaries and become the sole political leader of Athens, the philosopher Anaxagoras had more questions. He instructed that the skull be cut in two, revealing an underdeveloped brain that could explain the single horn. To Anaxagoras, the physiological explanation was more satisfying than the magical one.
We should demand safer products that can be more supportive of democracies
Anaxagoras was also well known for his cosmological theories, taking a step in demystifying the sun, in a context in which ordinary Greeks prayed at daybreak to the sun-god Helios. Denying the divinity of the sun was a serious offence because it risked angering the gods and bringing punishment to the whole of the community. It is no coincidence that Anaxagoras, Socrates and Aristotle were all denounced for impiety.
Today, some aspects of tech have become such an ideology that to criticise fundamental elements like surveillance and predictions feels like an act of heresy. But perhaps philosophy can rise to the occasion once more. I don’t mean academic philosophy, although that would be nice. I mean critical thinking more generally. We should be asking more questions of our prophets. We should be less naive about prediction and surveillance, and we should demand safer products that can be more supportive of democracies. Technological systems designed to surveil, predict, and control are ideal for an authoritarian takeover.
Larry Ellison, the chairman of the tech giant Oracle, has predicted a modern surveillance state in which ‘citizens will be on their best behaviour’ because we’re constantly watched. Hannah Arendt argued that it’s pointless to argue with a potential murderer about whether his future victim is dead or alive. The only appropriate response is to ‘rescue the person whose death is predicted’. When today’s prophets are predicting the death of our democracy and building the systems to undermine it, the only appropriate response is to rescue it.
Harry S. Truman was the thirty-third President of the United States (1945–1953). As vice president, he succeeded Franklin D. Roosevelt, who died less than three months after he began his fourth term.
During World War I Truman served as an artillery officer. After the war he became part of the political machine of Tom Pendergast and was elected a county judge in Missouri and eventually a United States Senator. After he gained national prominence as head of the wartime Truman Committee, Truman replaced vice president Henry A. Wallace as Roosevelt’s running mate in 1944.
As president, Truman faced challenge after challenge in domestic affairs. The disorderly reconversion of the economy of the United States was marked by severe shortages, numerous strikes, and the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act over his veto. He confounded all predictions to win re-election in 1948, largely due to his famous Whistle Stop Tour of rural America. After his re-election he was able to pass only one of the proposals in his Fair Deal program. He used executive orders to begin desegregation of the U.S. armed forces and to launch a system of loyalty checks to remove thousands of communist sympathizers from government office, even though he strongly opposed mandatory loyalty oaths for governmental employees, a stance that led to charges that his administration was soft on communism. Truman’s presidency was also eventful in foreign affairs, with the end of World War II and his decision to use nuclear weapons against Japan, the founding of the United Nations, the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe, the Truman Doctrine to contain communism, the beginning of the Cold War, the creation of NATO, and the Korean War. Corruption in Truman’s administration reached the cabinet and senior White House staff. Republicans made corruption a central issue in the 1952 campaign.
Truman, whose demeanor was very different from that of the patrician Roosevelt, was a folksy, unassuming president. He popularized such phrases as “The buck stops here” and “If you can’t stand the heat, you better get out of the kitchen.” He overcame the low expectations of many political observers who compared him unfavorably with his highly regarded predecessor. At one point in his second term, near the end of the Korean War, Truman’s public opinion ratings reached the lowest of any United States president, but popular and scholarly assessments of his presidency became more positive after his retirement from politics and the publication of his memoirs. He died in 1972. Many U.S. scholars today rank him among the top ten presidents. Truman’s legendary upset victory in 1948 over Thomas E. Dewey is routinely invoked by underdog presidential candidates.
Gaumont Nov 10, 2025 A film y by Olivier Assayas Starring : Jude Law, Alicia Vikander, Jeffrey Wright A young Russian filmmaker becomes an unlikely advisor to Vladimir Putin as he rises to power in post-Soviet Russia, navigating the new era’s complexities and chaos.
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Astronomers depend on instruments to collect the observations that fuel their work, but they don’t spend every night glued to the stars. On overcast nights, they turn to what they have already gathered, digging into past measurements and reworking the data. You’re in a comparable phase, Aries. For now, looking farther out into the glittering world won’t give you anything essential. The guidance you need is folded into what you’ve previously seen, felt and taken in. It’s waiting for you to sort through and understand it on a deeper level.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): When lightning from a cloud hits sand or soil, the current travels down into the ground. It melts material along its path and forms tubular, branching glass structures that can penetrate deep below the surface. I believe that metaphorically similar phenomena will soon happen in your life, Taurus. Sudden insights or electrifying feelings will leave permanent traces in your psyche, creating new pathways for energy and information to flow. These disruptive inspirations and inspiring disruptions will rewire your internal circuitry, creating channels that will enhance your receptivity to future revelations. You’ll be able to absorb clues and hints from life that you weren’t tuned into before.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): I invite you to ruminate on death not as the conclusion of physical life, but as a metaphor for discarding what’s stale and outmoded. In that light, what would be the best deaths you could generate during the coming weeks? Use your imagination with verve and vigor as you dream up scenarios in which you purge parts of your life that are not serving your strongest, most vital yearnings. Visualize how much fresh potency that will liberate. (PS: To reiterate: You are NOT in physical danger.)
CANCER (June 21-July 22): What part of you is too tame? Maybe your imagination is politely well-behaved, or maybe your voice edits itself before it dares to say what it really thinks. Can you inspire it to be wilder and freer? Not reckless or destructive, but more honest and experimental? Here’s a suggestion: Go on regular excursions with your wild side, maybe once every two weeks. Follow it as it chooses what to explore and create. This might ultimately teach your tamed self that it’s safe to let primal wisdom help steer you.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): According to quantum physics, particles can become “entangled,” which means they share a single connected quantum state. Observing and measuring one particle reveals information about the other, even if they’re not in close proximity. Einstein called this “spooky action at a distance.” I predict that different parts of your life will also interweave in unlikely ways during the coming weeks, Leo. Moves you make in one area will seem to produce mysterious effects in other domains. For example, adjusting your morning routine may boost your creative output. Healing an old alliance could unlock a professional opportunity. Everything will be more intermingled than the visible evidence suggests.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Your key power word for now is stretch. Speak it aloud multiple times every day, and write it on a card that you put in a place where you will keep seeing it. Also, make a point of physically and spiritually living out these three senses of stretch: 1. to lengthen, widen or expand without snapping or tearing; 2. to unfurl your body to its full reach, boosting circulation and warding off stiffness or cramps; 3. to take on challenging tasks that push you to amplify your abilities and move beyond what you previously believed you could do.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Four oracles for you, Libra: 1. You’re in possession of keys to doors that haven’t been built yet. Tuck those keys away somewhere safe. 2. You’re ready to dream up titles for stories your life hasn’t lived through yet. Write those titles down. 3. You are being granted sneak previews of your future, even though you can’t yet see the bridge that will carry you there. Imprint these glimpses on your memory. 4. You have everything required to grow a more muscular faith that’s grounded in real evidence, not in vague hopes and wishful thinking. Take advantage.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): At the ancient Library of Alexandria, editors did far more than copy manuscripts. They compared multiple versions of important works and produced editions that aimed at definitively reliable texts. Their efforts at preservation required active intervention rather than mere reproduction. In the coming weeks, Scorpio, I think it will be fun and transformative for you to make similar adjustments to your own life story. How might your memories of the past need to be corrected and refined? How could you make your personal mythology more accurate and liberating? I invite you to revise and revivify the tales you tell yourself about your magnificent journey from the moment you were born until now.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): The speed of light is how fast it travels through a vacuum. When moving through water and other media, though, light’s swiftness decreases. The fastest possible speed in the universe only applies in emptiness. If you put anything in light’s way, it slows down. Let’s use this as a metaphor for your life. I suspect you may be frustrated by how incrementally things are moving. But you’re not in a vacuum. Your bright intelligence is traveling through the complex situations that life has brought you. So of course you’re not zipping along with maximum haste. My advice: Be grateful for the slowdowns. Learn all you can about how they are educating and transforming your brilliance.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Cryptographer Claude Shannon (1916–2001) was the father of information theory. His achievements were comparable to those of Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin. Here’s one of his secrets: He kept his office filled with juggling equipment, unicycles and mechanical toys, which inspired him to solve abstract problems. His playful tinkering helped inspire breakthroughs that ultimately created the digital age. For him, recreation and innovation happened at the same time. I invite you to try a similar approach in the coming weeks, Capricorn. Blend “serious work” with “just messing around.” Be alert for key insights that emerge from improvisation and experimentation. Your diversions won’t be distractions from your purpose but rather pathways toward it.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Master calligrapher Yukimi Annand is an Aquarius. She teaches that beautiful letters emerge not just from the hand that holds the brush, but from the entire body and relaxed awareness. Breath, posture, centered weight and quiet mind all flow through the arm to create each stroke. Trying to control the outcome with arduous effort produces rigid, lifeless art. This is an excellent teaching for you right now, Aquarius. Whatever you’re striving to accomplish, I beg you to refrain from forcing results through grueling, overly laborious exertion. Instead, align your whole being so that graceful outcomes flow naturally from your soulful coherence.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): The placebo effect is getting stronger over time. Placebos in drug trials are becoming increasingly effective, to the point where it’s sometimes becoming harder to prove that actual drugs work better than sugar pills. Are we getting better at healing ourselves through belief? That would be a problem for pharmaceutical companies but interesting for the rest of us. Dear Pisces, I believe your placebo response is exceptionally strong right now. In the coming weeks, use it deliberately. Be daring and exuberant in your efforts to heal yourself.
New Thinking Allowed with Jeffrey Mishlove May 6, 2026 Karen Frances McCarthy, a spiritualist medium and healer, received years of intensive training at the Arthur Findlay College in England. She is author of Till Death Don’t Us Part: A True Story of Awakening to Love After Life. Prior to the awakening of her mediumistic talents she worked as a major media journalist and war correspondent. Her website is / www In this 2020 video, she describes the slow and reluctant unfolding of her career as a spiritualist medium, which began with the sudden death of her fiancé. The process started with an assortment of “signs” that are sometimes noticed by bereaved individuals. Then more direct forms of communication began to occur, prompting this atheistic journalist to seek classes, mentors, and eventually serious training. New Thinking Allowed host, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, is author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems, and The PK Man. Between 1986 and 2002 he hosted and co-produced the original Thinking Allowed public television series. He is the recipient of the only doctoral diploma in “parapsychology” ever awarded by an accredited university (University of California, Berkeley, 1980). He is also the Grand Prize winner of the 2021 Bigelow Institute essay competition regarding the best evidence for survival of human consciousness after permanent bodily death. He is Co-Director of Parapsychology Education at the California Institute for Human Science. (Recorded on November 11, 2020)
Oliver Milman, Environmental Reporter – The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: Based on my precognitive remote viewing research, and what I have seen in the science journals, I have been telling you for over a decade (see SR archive) that a time was coming when millions of Americans would be forced to internally migrate away from coastal areas and out of drought-ridden areas because of climate change. Well, here is proof that what I predicted is coming to pass.
Ongoing sea level rise and the rampant erosion of wetlands in southern Louisiana will swallow up the New Orleans area within a few generations, a new study concluded. Credit: Reuters
The process of relocating people from New Orleans should start immediately, as the city has reached a “point of no return” that will see it surrounded by the ocean within decades due to the climate crisis, a stark new study has concluded.
Ongoing sea-level rise and the rampant erosion of wetlands in southern Louisiana will swallow up the New Orleans area within a few generations, with the new paper estimating the city “may well be surrounded by the Gulf of Mexico before the end of this century”.
Low-lying southern Louisiana faces multiple threats, with rising sea levels driven by global heating, compounded by strengthening hurricanes, also a feature of the climate crisis, and the gradual subsidence of a coastline that has been carved apart by the oil and gas industry.
Southern Louisiana is facing 3-7 metres of sea-level rise and the loss of three-quarters of its […]
