Above Via Raconteur Report: PSA
Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.
Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice.
With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress.
In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountains start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.
– – WH Auden
Sometimes it seems I had a dream, and, as a dreamer woke immersed in mineral baths closed within a cool, dark chamber fed by streams flowing in from the center of nowhere.
Hanging from the granite ceiling a kerosene lantern cast shards of light through the pale steam rising from the surface of the pools.
Ripples radiated outwards from the edges of my body and tapping faintly on the rock revealed the edges of the chamber.
Outside I could hear the wind slide across the spine of the mountains, speaking in a language that I remembered but could no longer understand.
Steam filled my nostrils and heat penetrated my bones until, after a time, I had no body, only a sense of silence and distance and calm.
As if I had just woken from all water into dream.
— Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, 1973
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The steel mill sky is alive.
The fire breaks white and zigzag
shot on a gun-metal gloaming.
Man is a long time coming.
Man will yet win.
Brother may yet line up with brother:
This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.
There are men who can’t be bought.
The fireborn are at home in fire.
The stars make no noise,
You can’t hinder the wind from blowing.
Time is a great teacher.
Who can live without hope?
In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps, the people
march:
“Where to? what next?”
— Carl Sandberg
Down valley a smoke haze
Three days heat, after five days rain
Pitch glows on the fir-cones
Across rocks and meadows
Swarms of new flies.
I cannot remember things I once read
A few friends, but they are in cities.
Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup
Looking down for miles
Through high still air.
BY GARY SNYDER
Starry-eyed an’ laughing as I recall when we were caught
Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended
As we listened one last time an’ we watched with one last look
Spellbound an’ swallowed ’til the tolling ended
Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an’ worse
An’ for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
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That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
– – W. B. Yeats, 1865 – 1939
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Challengers of oblivion
Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down,
The square-limbed Roman letters
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well
Builds his monument mockingly;
For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun
Die blind and blacken to the heart:
Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained
thoughts found
The honey of peace in old poems.
— Robinson Jeffers
Sometimes it seems I had a dream, and, as a dreamer woke immersed in mineral baths closed within a cool, dark chamber fed by streams flowing in from the center of nowhere.
Hanging from the granite ceiling a kerosene lantern cast shards of light through the pale steam rising from the surface of the pools.
Ripples radiated outwards from the edges of my body and tapping faintly on the rock revealed the edges of the chamber.
Outside I could hear the wind slide across the spine of the mountains, speaking in a language that I remembered but could no longer understand.
Steam filled my nostrils and heat penetrated my bones until, after a time, I had no body, only a sense of silence and distance and calm.
As if I had just woken from all water into dream.
— Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, 1973
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Mrs. B. J. Smegma…. lmao.
Camo’s come along ways, we’ll see a major tech growth in camo clothing in the very near future. The rock boat pic was awesome, the Jews are working on a rock looking camo, two sided to blend with different rock types.
Very effective. Won’t be long before IR will be full time functional built directly into uniforms. The problem with camo is, it’s a game of keeping up with tech. We will see stealth uniforms in our life time. Kinda like clingons!
VI
Camouflage, cover, and concealment. Camo: fool the eye in plain sight to blend or break up your “signature,” outline, or form. Cover: actual farking protection, like a berm, wall, parapet, or armor. Concealment: intervening objects to hide behind. You can hide in a screen of leaves and it will fool a turkey, while you can fully see them and maneuver.
Best of all, there is an old warrior’s trick: don’t be there at all.
A colorblind WWII vet I knew told me that he and others with that trait were used for spotting camouflaged vessels – they could see ships and other objects that had been camouflaged from people with normal vision.
In a place long long ago, I attended a very advanced sniper school, a team of Brits didn’t get caught on the stalking exercise. These guys were using mirrors. Maybe 18/20 tall, with one angle to create an L shaped hide.
I’d caught sight of just a fraction of ones leg protruding g from their L shape, at that time I’d only read about the use of mirrors, at the time thought the mirror to fragile, cumbersome.
What I caught wasn’t the Brits but something that would not be in mature, something out of the ordinary. Was glassing with bino’s,,,,,,with the naked eye,at the roughly 100 m distance would not have noticed the discrepancy.
At the end of the stalking exercise, we all had a chance to set up our hide and the other guys came out of a building and from a minimum of 100m, to 400m stood on the deck and scanned. We were all eventually caught, the walkers often gave us up.
Last up were the Brits. Man they were tough, I stepped to left on the deck,maybe ten fifteen feet, and boom I caught just a smidge of something! That should not have been their.
I call I had em, nobody believed me especially the instructors. I put the walker literally on top of the object, he stood to the left, the right in front of and behind. I finally ran out their and sat on the spotter.
Mark the walker knew he was caught! Over beer at a bbq after class, the Brits wanted to know how on earth I caught them. I initially wasn’t going to tell them, but thought my observation may help in them never getting caught.
So I explained that I’d spotted a dark linear line when I was preparing to range the target. That my angle was just such that I caught something out of the ordinary. And that’s what I again saw from the deck, something that should not have been there.
Last day of class the Brits shared with us their mirror kit, was a flexible mirror, very thin and flexible, and they told us very expensive. This was like 2008 and the Brits were in the SF Bay Area for the Alameda county sponsored anti terror week long exercise. Most of the Bay Area agencies participated in the exercise.
We’ve remain friends to this day, every now and then I get a box of once fired British 338 Lapua mag brass from the boys. I’ve never had to purchased 338 brass since then.
VI
Dear Sirs, Why must there be so much violence on the BBC? Why can’t there be uplifting stories such as Miss Gloria Higgingsbottom winning the 1934, 100 yard dash in Lincolnshire SW.
Yours Truly. J.B. Twitt Esq. JBB. Sfk. Jr. [Mrs]
1 pixel x 1 pixel 1080p dual camera/monitors on every millimeter of your garments, bluetoothed to each other showing the opposite side of what they are facing. Someone looking at you from the front would see what’s behind you, rather than you, and therefore you would “disappear”.
I have seen this done at 2″x2″ and it was pretty convincing, but visible. But if done at 1pix x 1pix it would fool just about anyone. A person could stand against a white wall and disappear. Except for their shadow. You can’t fool mother nature.
I have walked right up on coyotes, and deer. In their house. Gotten within 3 or 4 yards of them, and only being made at those close ranges. You must understand the viewer’s point of view. His capabilities, his proclivities, and his judgements. Coyote is better than satellites, or drones. His ears and nose are spooky good at keeping him both safe, and well fed. But, he’s got built in weaknesses, and you need to get inside those weakness loops.
Deer focus at fairly far distances, and have a blind area in their immediate surroundings. Coyote do not, they see all and know all. The way to outwit a coyote is to be downwind of him, and to not move like a human being. You can walk right up on him, if you take 2 or 3 steps at a time, and then pause for the same or more amount of time. It’s a sort of scout walk. Also, coyote has certain mission statements that make him more or less vulnerable at a given time. Best to go after him when he’s hunting.
Humans. They suck greatly at observation. Fooling actual humans is kids’ play.
I am skeptical about the mirrors thing. Mirrors reflect light so that has to be controlled to a “t” or else you are more vulnerable. Always shade your binoculars, optics or eyeglasses if looking into the sun.
I have experienced actual helicopters sneaking up on me. I know you think that’s impossible, but terrain will mask sound if you organize it a certain way.
Color. Animals cannot see the same colors as you, and vice versa, they see colors that you don’t.
I think one simple way to fool these tech devices may be the use of masks. That needs to be looked into. Also, false identities.
While we’re at it, we need to see the enemy. See him, and make fun of him. Embarrass him.