PlanktonPunkt

← Back

Thank you for your response. ✨

PlanktonPunkt Designs puzzles available in CreateJigsawPuzzles

link to order print on demand PlanktonPunkt Designs jigsaw puzzles (printed in China)

PlanktonPunkt Designs POD products in Printify

link to order PlanktonPunkt Designs print on demand wares from the source

PlanktonPunkt Designs POD products in Etsy

A link to order from a selection of PlanktonPunkt Designs print on demand wares from Etsy

Tag: Philosophy

  • October Skipper

    This is a filler posting with a little video.

    I am still processing current events, which have been shocking, but I think there is now a change occurring. The old era is crumbling and new will emerge – I see similarities between this change and the change from medieval to Renaissance in that the Renaissance was overhyped as Age of Reason (while in fact, superstitions flourished as did witch hunts and religious wars), just like the current age of atheism has led to a proliferation of cults, superstitions and die-hard fanaticism. Whether the emerging civilization will be more civilized than the dying one is debatable, considering the decreasing literacy rates and the fact that people no longer read much. Worse, critical thinking seems to have been discouraged to make people to conform the centrally managed ideologies, and this has been going on long enough to erode educational standards.

    In Finland, which was supposed to have one of the best education systems in the world, some education official had recently stated that the schools should focus on learning processes and how to become good people rather than on concrete skills, which I interpreted as capitulation – children will not learn because they are not able to learn, so they must be taught to learn before they can learn. I did not go to the original news to find out exactly how would the educators grade learning of learning processes and what are the metrics for success but I suspect the standards to be lenient enough to process students out of the system regardless of their actual skills, especially the concrete ones.

    Anyone who has discussed with a fundamentalist atheist will soon have realized that their faith is as unshakeable as their urge to convert everyone else, and any doubts about non-existence of God will be met with vehement proselytizing, while any vestige of deistic religious practice will incite their wrath. Ironically, as the old religion fades from mainstream culture, it does not lead to new atheistic world but a hodgepodge of cults, including some seemingly irrational ones.

    Combined with decreasing literacy rates, apparent disfavor of critical thinking relative to obedience to centrally directed ideologies, the current system seems to be a perfect incubator for superstitions and cults among masses deprived of their traditional (or any other) culture and seeking meaning to their lives.

    It has been written that none should present a problem without offering also a solution. My proposal would be to go medieval, that is reintroduce trivium: logic, grammar and rhetoric, that were the classical curriculum to the modern student body.

    Logic, i.e., critical thinking wherein facts could be tested according to a system of formalized structures to detect fallacies, would be absolute minimum. Offshoots of logic, especially arithmetic and natural sciences in general, as well as traditional humanities from times before deconstructionism, would also be useful.

    Grammar, especially its application in literacy, is crucial for the functioning of society and of individual within a society. Without ability to communicate clearly, in speaking, reading and writing, information transfer between individuals and generations becomes difficult, as does organizing the societies.

    Rhetoric is an obvious application of logic and grammar, but the art of communication is difficult. I have read complaints that modern youth cannot communicate. I interpret those complaints as modern youth having been abandoned without teaching them rhetoric. Without an ability to convey one’s needs and wants, and to persuade others, a person is crippled in a society. Maybe the modern youth have their own society where they communicate amongst themselves, but even then, the intergenerational information transfer has been disrupted. Or, the young today no longer hear the teachings of their forefathers.

    In any case, before I got distracted, I meant to post a video of a skipper butterfly in a flower, edited from one taken on October 5th, 2025.

    October skipper. Skipper butterflies do not like cold weather, so the temperatures had been quite warm. Now, this winter, the fruit trees and magnolias seem to bloom early.

    And I also added a jigsaw puzzle via Jigsaw Explorer.

    Bubbles mosaic view of a skipper butterfly on plant. Clicking the above image will lead to 110-piece jigsaw puzzle, courtesy of Jigsaw Explorer.

  • Department of Narrative Mismanagement

    I have followed the recent discussions about Jeffrey E., a dead criminal whose suspicious passing away in custody has caused years of speculation (including that he was taken secretly away and is now living somewhere nice.) Namely, he is known to have committed his crimes with lots of people and suspected of blackmailing the said people, which tend to be the very wealthy and powerful type. Which is why he was rumored to have been self-deleted.

    The current administration has loudly and repeatedly promised to publish the list of Jeffrey’s associates, until about a week ago an FBI memo was leaked(?) to Axios claiming: he offed himself, there is no list of people, and he did not blackmail anybody. The administration is trying to sweep the issue under the metaphorical carpet. Then the officials published a video of his cell from the night of his death. Except the video contained about 1 minute gap (or maybe more than 1 minute). It had been stitched together so badly that aside from the gap in the timestamp, the aspect ratios were subtly off. As Asmongold pointed out, there could be legitimate reasons for this blooper, but with all the other circumstatial evidence, to me this points towards a conspiracy concerning Jeffrey E.’s demise, the reasons for it, and the existence of more rot in the circles of power.

    As I keep on watching the government stumble from narrative fail to a narrative fail, with people becoming increasingly convinced that something is off with the official story (which has presented already by the previous administration), I have began to suspect that all this furor is deliberately fanned to distract the hoi polloi from something really important, possibly even more insidious than the idea that we are being governed by a huge criminal blackmail network, until it is too late to do something about it. This is quite a common tactic by the powers that be. For example, in Finland, I have imprecise memories on how government starts making noises about changing regulations or taxes on selling beer, and people get upset. Huge discussions rage over newspaper opinion columns and on-line boards, pro and con, while the government passes something else, much more important for people’s lives. The beer issue can be resolved, or if necessary, retreated from, people will calm down, and meanwhile something actually nasty was done to them.

    While the incompetence of governments can be stupendous, it stretches my credulity to have so many bloopers in the narrative management coming one after each other, and I am beginning to suspect we are being purposefully distracted. Whether it is from the coming (proxy) war against China (maybe started between Thailand and Cambodia, maybe still waiting for the Iran situation to worsen), the ongoing (officially proxy) war against Russia, the economic collapse (US consumers sentiment has been reportedly low earlier this year, though Goldman Sacks just reassured that everything is merely returning to normal), the incoming digital surveillance grid (brought to you in collaboration with Musk and Thiel under the guise of tracking immigrants – spoiler alert: to track immigrants they will “need to” also map the non-immigrants), or something possibly worse, it must be humongous to merit this level of egging of the masses. I don’t think Obama’s referral to Department of Justice for suspicion of having ordered narrative to be manufactured for the Russia Collusion quite qualifies, more likely it is just more noise to distract the masses. By the way, US just moved nukes to UK, but that’s probably a nothing-burger (I am still sitting on the fence about whether to link and comment to the article on the subject in aviationnews.eu.)

    I am also currently sitting on the fence on whether our government truly is this incompetent at narrative management or whether there is some obscure Department of Narrative Management, who are gloating about their latest glorious success in psyop against the people. Or maybe the Department of Narrative Management has gone rogue and is actively fighting against the current administration.

    Although considering the everyday dysfunction I live in due to the ongoing complexity crisis infecting all aspects of modern society and worsened by the ongoing incompetence crisis fanned by the decades of education crisis, I still think that, yes, they really could be that incompetent. Maybe.