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[ by Charles Cameron — how ISIS imitates the French state ]
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Laïcité! Jahiliyyah!

Once again, the jihadists are borrowing our western ideas, only to turn them against us — this time, after a lapse of fours years.

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My title? How could you forget..

[ by Charles Cameron — Saudi-sourced jihadism, the FBI, Baader-Meinhof — hey, it’s all about terrosism ]
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Will McCants explains [upper panel, below] how the Saudis are and are not promoting terrorism —

— while a screen-cap from episode 9 in the first season of Quantico explains just why such an approach is logically bound to be defective.

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Oh well, not to worry. It’s just another example of the illusion colloquially known as the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. I wouldn’t want to go all irrational on you, so I’ll let RationalWiki explain:

The frequency illusion (also known as the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon) is the phenomenon in which people who just learn or notice something start seeing it everywhere.

Except that — well, there it is again — Baader-Meinhof — it’s all terrorism!

[ by Charles Cameron — a resource, mostly for myself ]
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I’ll use this post to drop in random DoubleQuotes I run across, for storage — so I won’t need to trouble you with every example I find, but they’ll all still here for your consideration should you choose — and for any future writing I may do on the topic.

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From the Rio Olympics, the celebrated women’s basketball match with hijab vs bukini:

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Two options for a child in Syria, enshrined in two “iconic” photos, and presented as a lose-lose choice by Khalid Albaih.

Albaih has a terrific eye for symmetries, as you can see from these two other examples:

Khalid Albaih, Tree of Life

Khalid Albaih, Egypt sentences more than 680 people to death

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Quite different — but also Syria — is this tweet with its paired images of Aleppo —

16th-c. Ottoman miniature by Matrakçi Nasuh depicting the city of Aleppo in Syria w/ historic citadel in center pic.twitter.com/kM2Mtirm25

— Ballandalus (@Ballandalus) August 1, 2016

If I had my druthers I’d move from photo-reality into illuminated-manuscript-world, and from now into back then. Or would I? And are we really in photo-reality anyway, or is that an optical illusion?

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There will be more — I’ll just drop them quietly in, here or in the comments section.

[ by Charles Cameron — from science and religion, two prime resources for scenario planners ]
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Here are two versions of how close we may be to The End of Story. In the upper panel, a glimpse of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday Dashboard, representing their version of the scientific view:

In the lower panel, the current state of the Rapture Index, representing the view of a Christian website dedicated to reading the signs and keeping us updated on our proximity to a day that, per scripturam, “knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.”

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Sources:

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Doomsday Dashboard

The Rapture Index, updated June 20, 2016

Matthew 24.36 (KJV), But of that day and hour knoweth no man

Subzin movie quotes, Synchronize watches

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Who you gonna believe?

As Tim Furnish might say, BREXIT is not the Apocalypse, not even close — it hasn’t even merited an uptick in the Rapture Index.

[ by Charles Cameron — the Brits, Google & Brexit, plus some arcane religious info for netizens ]
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A Brit response to Brexit results: Google!!

"What is the EU?" is the second top UK question on the EU since the #EURefResults were officially announced pic.twitter.com/1q4VAX3qcm

— GoogleTrends (@GoogleTrends) June 24, 2016

No, really!

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And while we’re at it — you’ve probably seen this before —

Wondering which religion to choose? Google!!

4th most popular religion to convert to #pdf #Google pic.twitter.com/fdMIg80Bf0

— Jules Michaël (@mk_jules) October 22, 2015

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Somewhere, a couple of machine learning algorithms are laughing at us.