A first for me this year, getting a photo of a comma butterfly. Maybe I have seen them before, but thought they were something else with slightly damaged wings. Now I now they are a whole different type 🙂
(c) K Wicks
Comma butterfly
Author: MKW Publishing
A little bit of privacy
I gave it thought after explaining what privacy meant in childhood for me. It was limited and coveted, and I snatched it up where I could.
If you grew up with siblings, you might remember mornings being noisy, and hectic. Sleepy and having to get ready for school. The journey to which being noisy and busy, either walking or on the bus. Then you get to school, surrounded by lots of people, maybe you get a few minutes to yourself in the toilet or at break, but not often. There was stuff to talk about, and things to do before you had to go back to the confinement of the classroom.
After a long day of constant people and learning, back home again to then do the domestic routine. Getting to be able to go out after school used to be time to unwind. Even though usually spent with friends, it didn’t seem as demanding. Just relaxing and checking things out or being silly. Weekends and school holidays used to be the best for knowing you didn’t have that stupid daily bind. And if you were able to be out of the house, it was great. No-one knew where you were, what you were doing. It was nice, as is the nostalgic thought of it, because I enjoyed those moments then as I do now. My mother wanted to know what I was always up to, and I had an older sibling who was not my ally. And as you learn along the way, some ‘friends’ can’t be trusted either. So, trying to find a bit of peace in yourself in your own time can be a full-time job sometimes. I guess that’s why it seems that privacy and freedom go hand in hand.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t ever go away just because you get older. It turns into employment instead of education, where you still have a schedule and it needs to be maintained. It can be the same for people who chose to stay at home and bring up the kids rather than employment (or insanely juggle both). I realise the need for just five minutes on your own sometimes is necessary for everyone. Especially if you spend a lot of time around people, not everyone understands how draining it can be. Even if it’s your nearest and dearest. (The funny videos on the internet showing this by way of a closed bathroom door and a horde of animals and kids outside waiting). And now there is a new world of busy without even leaving your house or being in the company of anyone, you have The Internet. Where you can feel surrounded and drained without physically being around people at all, it’s an odd thing really. That we allow the perception of it being real, and that they are people we are engaging with, therefore use real emotions and time to deal with it. Maybe that’s why we have so many bots taking up people’s time and stirring the pot perhaps – if that is the case. To take that energy that people freely give and leave them drained and unsatisfied. Not just the fake profiles, real people can do it too, strange though that so many allow it from people who aren’t anywhere near them, or anything to do with them, or who aren’t even people.
Maybe it’s been with us now for so long, the internet, that people don’t understand what privacy and time to yourself is anymore, that it has lost its meaning. Or for some, perhaps they were never comfortable with just their own company, so the idea that they can be ‘with people’ all the time is better for them, which is why they do not complain about the digital society taking over every aspect of life. They welcome it because it gives them a feeling of security, where the previous society caused them anxiety and uncertainty. The digital one appears to offer a friendly network of life and opportunity, people and virtual experiences. Where they will monitor you to tailor everything to you, making it seem as if you are important. And you are, in coding and for numbers only. They need a certain number of ‘players’ to make it work, and see it through to conclusion, and so far, unfortunately, there seems to be lots of willing bodies happy to oblige them. But what of the ones who do not wish to play the game, to insert ourselves into this buckled mainframe and help to create their fantasy illusion of omnipotent overseer. Like skynet, but with a face. I guess we have to see what happens next and how they plan to target the remaining freedoms we have, and those who choose to stand up for them…
(c) MKW Publishing
Apple and Blackberry Cake
After foraging some blackberries, I decided to give apple and blackberry cake a go.
186g blackberries
2 x small gala apples
2 eggs beaten
1/2 tps cinnamon
4 oz butter
6 oz demerera sugar
8 oz self raising flour
orange zest
1tps baking powder
Oven at 160°c (fan assisted or 180 if not), line loaf tin with baking paper, or butter so the cake doesn’t stick.
Beat the eggs and greate the two apples including the skin down to the core into the egg, put in cinnamon and orange zest.
Cream together the butter and sugar.
Add the two together until you have a big bowl of runny, lumpy goo. Now add the flour and baking powder until you have a decent cake batter, then stir through most of the blackberries, careful not to break them up too much. Save a few for putting on top before it goes in the oven, and I sprinkled a small bit of demerera over the top as well.
Bake for around 50 mins to over an hour. I had to check a few times because it browned well early on. The knife test did it though, and it was perfect at about 1 hour and 5 minutes I think.
It was rather nice.
(c) K Wicks
Sawfly Larvae
They look like caterpillars but aren’t. I haven’t had any before in the garden so quite excited to see different things this year as the garden develops. I found them while still small and only a tiny section of redcurrant leaf missing, but it soon spiralled and they have stripped a small section. It doesn’t really show and hasn’t harmed the plant, so just let them be.
(c) K Wicks
The sum of all recent… (poetry)
The sum of all recent
And worldly fears
Destroying the future
Now taking our years
Time we should realise
That can’t be redone
A darkness that’s spreading
We just can’t outrun
But if you could see
And now understand
That what did occur
Was meticulously planned
And put into place
From the longest age
Laying foundations
And setting the stage
For a sinister plan
No longer in mind
An audacious plot
The heist of mankind
There’s still but a chance
Although maybe slim
That we don’t have to be
At their beck and their whim
~
We do not have to be slaves to the system
(c) K Wicks
Farmer vs Pharma
The attack on farmers continues, and how our food is produced, transported, sold and consumed. All neatly tied up by rules, regulations, quotas and targets. Under the guise of ‘for the planets health’ because, you know, they’ve already used it towards people and too many lapped it up. Imagine handing someone a strait-jacket and they put it on themselves and let you tie it up. That’s what’s happening here.
It’s a slow strangulation of resources and current sustainability. Lots of people have noticed, and aren’t having it, and rightly so. Covered previously in It seems an attack, Because from what they seem to be trying to roll out is worse, won’t work and will ruin the systems and land already in place. Which is the point. Farmland being appropriated for other use, orders for rewilding and paid culls on the horizon. Mysterious fires of wheat fields, food processing plants and no doubt they will declare more animal-based infections and cull loads more. It takes out a huge part of the food chain we rely on, while they simultaneously stop processes in other areas. They will have their own islands, areas and compounds where everything is just fine. But for everyone else, they want to upset the applecart.
And while they slowly try to remove the word, livelihood and previous terms associated with farmer, it gets replaced with a new ‘feeder’. Big pharma, wanting to pump you full of chemical food, needing medications to survive and for them to be the new cradle to grave overseer. So far, they have just been the nanny for a few decades (like the one in The Hand that Rocks the Cradle), quietly assisting and watching, waiting. Now making their move, when ‘suddenly’ there is a huge need for pharmaceutical intervention with lots of adverse reactions to the recent trials on the mostly unsuspecting populations in various countries.
But it seems a small chance of hope is spreading, farmers are following the initial lead of the truckers and trying to fight back by way of protest. All the industries as we know them will be obsolete if they have their way. Just robots doing everything with minimal people contact and interaction. Or at least that’s the picture they paint of what they are shooting for. There appears little or no room for normal everyday people just getting on with their lives in their vision, so it should be a concern for everyone where this is all going. Because it doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere good…
(c) K Wicks
Sunset – 03.08.22 #2
(c) K Wicks
Hummingbird hawkmoth in the garden
A real treat to see one of these in my garden, a few times in one day, and actually saw one again this morning. The buddleia is doing a very good job this year, catering for plenty of bees, butterflies, moth, hoverflies, beetles and various other small insects. Got a few good pics and fottage of it flying around, but they aren’t easy!
(c) K Wicks
The Ministry of Monitoring
A further look at the way our digital prison is trying to encircle us. Covered already in previous articles, but as it continues, so does the observation of it.
This is an updated look, seen as things are still moving along at quite a pace. New staffless shops being revealed, robots in place of people in factories, robotic dogs shown marching in formation, some with weapons loaded on them. You know, all totally normal for a harmonious ordinary functioning society. But today I have read through a few comments of the reality for some starting to hit home, women in particular after a certain move by a certain social media company a few weeks ago in the states. Showing people what the consequences are of sharing very personal information online, and giving rise to finally understanding that ‘private messages’ are only so to a point. Imagine someone being able to eavesdrop on every conversation you have ever had, and were ever going to have, omnipotence of a godly nature hanging over you. Many are close to it, as they share most of their lives online, publicly and privately, but when it’s all online, maybe there is no difference in the two.
With microphones in telephones and TV’s, they don’t even need to bug people’s homes anymore. We invited the devil in ourselves, paid for it, gave our time to it, and still do. The saying ‘you have nothing to fear, if you have nothing to hide’ is apt here, or would have been if the game was fair. Alas, it isn’t. Or they would have cracked down and stopped all the nefarious online activities that flourished as they were given free reign. Now being used as a weapon against normality to monitor everyone, while still not curbing anything.
The latest move bringing charges in a home abortion case, using messages between a mother and daughter to prove something. Women have rightly pricked up their ears on this and have started to think it through. Whether the girl was right or wrong isn’t the issue, it’s about privacy. Why people had apps to monitor their cycle is beyond me, I didn’t even like having a calorie app for a day for the idea that it was then recorded somewhere. By who? For what? No need. Population, pregnancy and the future of humanity have featured in many a storyline and I wonder sometimes if it’s a head up, speculated upon in They Tell Us.
But it really does seem as though they want to know what you think, what you eat, what you feel, where you go, when you travel, where you travel, who you talk to, what you say. They have access to most of that with lots of people, freely given to them on a daily basis, and that wouldn’t be an issue ordinarily. Like people said, ‘I’m very boring, why would they want to monitor me?’. And that is right, and monitoring all by itself wasn’t important, yet the overall point of what it leads to was for me. Why do they want all that info? In my mind, it would lead to being able to control those things. And here we are. Because while it wasn’t so much an issue before, now it is. Because they want to decide things about you and for you (and those around you), based on that monitoring.
There is also a big push and lots of restructuring going on around medicine. They want that all online too. Monitored appointments, checked and reviewed, doctors and patients alike will feel the scrutiny. This is where the idea that they are implanting digital tracers in people would come into play. They could monitor your heartbeat, circulation, location, intake of calories etc all from an internal sensor. They keep saying they want to integrate people with their phones, and they are already a beacon on us. Once fully integrated, we will be the data. They make no secret of that being a goal. To augment humans and machine to create something weird and seemingly not necessary. But as history and the present shows us, just because we can, does not mean we should…
(c) MKW Publishing
Notes and ideas
It all starts with an idea…
(c) K Wicks
MKW Publishing 