Friday, March 31, 2023
PROPAGATION CHANGES MAKE FOR A RELAXED 17 METER POTA ACTIVATION AT PILOT MOUNTAIN STATE PARK by THOMAS WITHERSPOON
On Saturday, February 18, 2023, I had a rare opportunity: a full day to play radio.
Instead of doing a five park POTA rove, I chose instead to do a summit activation followed by a park activation.
I published the summit activation on Moore’s Knob (W4C/EP-001) a couple weeks ago and planned to immediately follow that up with this report from my POTA activation at Pilot Mountain State Park (which I activated the same day).
In the process of moving my videos from the camera, to my laptop, and then to PC where I do my remote uploads (my bandwidth at the QTH is far too poor to upload large videos) I somehow managed to delete this particular video file.
I was quite frustrated, actually, because this particular POTA activation was challenging. Lately, I’ve had so few examples of just how quiet a band can be when propagation is less stable.
The SOTA activation I performed only a few hours earlier had some of the deepest pileups I’ve ever experienced. By the time I started my POTA activation a couple hours later, all of this had changed–at least on the bands above 20 meters and I’d chosen 17 meters (a WARC band) since a contest was in progress on 20 and 40 meters.
I’m incredibly pleased that I stumbled upon the raw video files on my backup drive. I was able to reproduce the video in its entirety. I’m so pleased it wasn’t lost!
This is why it’s a little out of sync date-wise with my other reports.
I hope you enjoy this field report:
Pilot Mountain State Park (K-2750)
After capping off a beautiful 4+ mile hike and SOTA/POTA activation at Hanging Rock State Park, I put my SOTA pack in the car and drove 30 minutes to Pilot Mountain State Park.
It being a gorgeous Saturday afternoon, the park was so full of guests the parking lot was completely full. A park ranger had incoming cars form a line and he allowed cars in as guests departed one by one. When I arrived, there were five cars in front of me. I was very tempted to do a three-point turn and head back down the mountain to the visitor’s center to do the activation. There was plenty of parking there.
Instead, I decided to wait and within 10 minutes, I was directed to a free parking spot.
As I got out of the car, I started my activation video (see below).
I was in a bit of a hurry because the SOTA activation earlier that day took longer than expected. I still had a nearly 2 hour drive ahead of me and needed to prepare for a live stream that evening.
Setting up
The park was busy, of course, but it wasn’t difficult to find a spot to set up. In fact, I located a picnic shelter I could have all to myself.
I decided to pair my Elecraft KX2 with the AX1 antenna to cut down on set-up and pack-up time. Side note: in the activation video, you’ll see how I disassemble the AX1’s bipod in order to properly tighten it prior to starting the activation.
The AX1 can operate on 20, 17, and even 15 meters using the KX2’s excellent internal ATU.
I chose 17 meters to escape the contest in progress.
Gear
Note: All Amazon, CW Morse, and eBay links are affiliate links that support the QRPer.com at no cost to you.
- Elecraft KX2
- Elecraft AX1 packed in a Maxpedition Fatty Pouch
- CW Morse SP4 Paddles
- Spec-Ops Brand T.H.E. Pack EDC
- Elecraft KXBT2 Li-Ion Battery Pack
- Rite In The Rain Weatherproof Cover/Pouch
- Moleskine Cahier Journal
- GraphGear 0.9mm 1000 Automatic Drafting Pencil
- Camera: OSMO Action Camera with Joby tripod
- Leatherman Signal Multitool (my favorite multitool!)
On The Air
I hopped on 17 meters and starting calling CQ POTA.
I mentioned in the video that I was hoping for a more relaxed cadence of hunters compared the pileup insanity I received on 30 meters during my SOTA activation early. Wow! Did I ever get my wish!
Seventeen meters wasn’t in the best of shape. Instead of logging one hunter per minute, it was more like one hunter every 3 minutes.
It took 36 minutes to log the ten contacts needed for a valid park activation.
During that time, I also QSYed to 15 meters for a bit, but didn’t log anyone there.
After logging my 10, I checked the POTA spots page and hunted Jonathan (KM4CFT) who was activating a park in Colorado. I was very pleased to put him in the logs.
At that point, I ended my activation video and planned to pack up, but I noticed that my avid POTA activator buddy, Jim (WB0RLJ), was on the air and I was able to call and log him as well.
All-in, I logged 12 stations! I walked away a very happy activator.
QSO Map
Here’s what this activation looked like when plotted out on a QSO Map.
Activation Video
Here’s my real-time, real-life video of the entire activation. As with all of my videos, I don’t edit out any parts of the on-air activation time. In addition, I have monetization turned off on YouTube, although that doesn’t stop them from inserting ads before and after my videos.
Note that Patreon supporters can watch and even download this video 100% ad-free through Vimeo on my Patreon page:
Click here to watch on YouTube.
Better bands
Had I deployed one of my random wire antennas or larger verticals and performed my activation on 20 or 30 meters, I know I would have logged three or four times the number of contacts because those lower bands were in better shape.
Then again? I look at the QSO map above and am still in awe that five watts and a 4.5′ pocket antenna can make contact from North Carolina to Newfoundland and Oregon. It’s a little hard to fathom!
Plus, my goal was to have a more relaxed activation and I certainly achieved that. It was a beautiful day and I’m all the better for detouring to Pilot Mountain to play POTA!
Thank you
Thank you for joining me on this activation!
I hope you enjoyed the field report and my activation video as much as I enjoyed creating them.
Of course, I’d also like to send a special thanks to those of you who have been supporting the site and channel through Patreon and the Coffee Fund. While certainly not a requirement as my content will always be free, I really appreciate the support.
As I mentioned before, the Patreon platform connected to Vimeo make it possible for me to share videos that are not only 100% ad-free, but also downloadable for offline viewing. The Vimeo account also serves as a third backup for my video files.
Thanks for spending part of your day with me and have a wonderful weekend!
Cheers & 72,
Thomas (K4SWL)
America, Arm Your Schools Now! - LewRockwell
Thursday, March 30, 2023
For the First Time, Astronomers Have Linked a Mysterious Fast Radio Burst With Gravitational Waves By Clancy William James
A team of scientists has just published evidence in Nature Astronomy for what might be producing mysterious bursts of radio waves coming from distant galaxies, known as fast radio bursts or FRBs.
Two colliding neutron stars—each the super-dense core of an exploded star—produced a burst of gravitational waves when they merged into a “supramassive” neutron star. The team found that two and a half hours later they produced an FRB when the neutron star collapsed into a black hole.
Or so they think. The key piece of evidence that would confirm or refute their theory—an optical or gamma-ray flash coming from the direction of the fast radio burst—vanished almost four years ago. In a few months, they might get another chance to find out if they are correct.
Brief and Powerful
FRBs are incredibly powerful pulses of radio waves from space lasting about a thousandth of a second. Using data from a radio telescope in Australia, the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP), astronomers have found that most FRBs come from galaxies so distant, light takes billions of years to reach us. But what produces these radio wave bursts has been puzzling astronomers since an initial detection in 2007.
The best clue comes from an object in our galaxy known as SGR 1935+2154. It’s a magnetar, which is a neutron star with magnetic fields about a trillion times stronger than a fridge magnet. On April 28 2020, it produced a violent burst of radio waves—similar to an FRB, although less powerful.
Astronomers have long predicted that two neutron stars—a binary—merging to produce a black hole should also produce a burst of radio waves. The two neutron stars will be highly magnetic, and black holes cannot have magnetic fields. The idea is the sudden vanishing of magnetic fields when the neutron stars merge and collapse to a black hole produces a fast radio burst. Changing magnetic fields produce electric fields—it’s how most power stations produce electricity. And the huge change in magnetic fields at the time of collapse could produce the intense electromagnetic fields of an FRB.
The Search for the Smoking Gun
To test this idea, Alexandra Moroianu, a masters student at the University of Western Australia, looked for merging neutron stars detected by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in the US. The gravitational waves LIGO searches for are ripples in spacetime, produced by the collisions of two massive objects, such as neutron stars.
LIGO has found two binary neutron star mergers. Crucially, the second, known as GW190425, occurred when a new FRB-hunting telescope called CHIME was also operational. However, being new, it took CHIME two years to release its first batch of data. When it did so, Moroianu quickly identified a fast radio burst called FRB 20190425A which occurred only two and a half hours after GW190425.
Exciting as this was, there was a problem—only one of LIGO’s two detectors was working at the time, making it very uncertain where exactly GW190425 had come from. In fact, there was a five percent chance this could just be a coincidence.
Worse, the Fermi satellite, which could have detected gamma rays from the merger—the “smoking gun” confirming the origin of GW190425—was blocked by Earth at the time.
Unlikely to Be a Coincidence
However, the critical clue was that FRBs trace the total amount of gas they have passed through. We know this because high-frequency radio waves travel faster through the gas than low-frequency waves, so the time difference between them tells us the amount of gas.
Because we know the average gas density of the universe, we can relate this gas content to distance, which is known as the Macquart relation. And the distance travelled by FRB 20190425A was a near-perfect match for the distance to GW190425. Bingo!
So have we discovered the source of all FRBs? No. There are not enough merging neutron stars in the Universe to explain the number of FRBs—some must still come from magnetars, like SGR 1935+2154 did.
And even with all the evidence, there’s still a 1 in 200 chance this could all be a giant coincidence. However, LIGO and two other gravitational wave detectors, Virgo and KAGRA, will turn back on in May this year, and be more sensitive than ever, while CHIME and other radio telescopes are ready to immediately detect any FRBs from neutron star mergers.
In a few months, we may find out if we’ve made a key breakthrough—or if it was just a flash in the pan.
Clancy W. James would like to acknowledge Alexandra Moroianu, the lead author of the study; his co-authors, Linqing Wen, Fiona Panther, Manoj Kovalem (University of Western Australia), Bing Zhang and Shunke Ai (University of Nevada); and his late mentor, Jean-Pierre Macquart, who experimentally verified the gas-distance relation, which is now named after him.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Image Credit: CSIRO/Alex Cherney
What is an Adventure Radio Society Spartan Sprint? by Richard Fisher, KI6SN
The Adventure Radio Society Spartan Sprint is a two hour QRP contest on the first Monday of every month encouraging QRP operators to get on, or near standard QRP frequencies for an evening of fun.
EASTERN 8:00 p.m. to 10 p.m.
CENTRAL 7:00 p.m. to 9 p.m.
MOUNTAIN 6:00 p.m. to 8 p.m.
PACIFIC 5:00 p.m. to 7 p.m.
UTC STANDARD TIME 0100Z to 0300Z
UTC DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME 0000Z to 0200Z
Your state or province
Power output
There is scoring in both Skinny and Tubby divisions. The weight of your station consists everything except your antenna and feedline. If your station includes your home-based rig, antenna tuner, DC power supply, heavy paddle or bug - obviously not lightweight - simply report 30 lbs. That is the default weight for the Tubby division.
Working the same station on two bands counts as two contacts.
To report your results, send an e-mail no later than Thursday, to spartansprint@yahoo.com with the following information:
Your call.
Total number of contacts (all bands) during the sprint.
The weight of your station in pounds.
Soapbox comments, which may include power, equipment, antennas, band conditions, outdoor experiences, and anything else, are encouraged.
We look forward to seeing you in the next Spartan Sprint.
73,
Richard Fisher, KI6SN
Co-founder, The Adventure Radio Society
KI6SN@aol.com
(951) 232-1373
The Workings of the Woke Cult by JAMES LINDSAY
Recently, I published an essay describing the structure of cults, particularly the Woke Marxist cult. I explained that cults have an internal structure in three types of layers: an “Outer School” of low-information initiates, an “Inner School” of informed adepts, and then one or more “Inner Circles” of disciples, leaders, and directors. At the end of that essay, I promised to elaborate on the workings of these various levels in greater detail, to which I am now turning.
Before elaborating, to make an important note, the internal structure of cults can be quite formal or quite informal and vague. In Wokeness, the structure of the cult is extremely vague because it is not a formal cult. In fact, it’s almost wholly decentralized, which leads it to be described as a “mind virus” at least as often as a cult. Thanks to the influence of Paulo Freire and the development of Critical Pedagogy in education from his work, Woke can be taught merely as an attitude of dissatisfaction and disposition toward finding oppressive systems everywhere and denouncing them (and the people who “support” them). Anyone can learn that without learning almost anything, and then suddenly there’s “racism” in literally everything. In Woke, there’s not necessarily any particular first initiation rite one must pass through like with various fraternities, for example, and the distinctions between what function like “levels,” especially in the middle part of the cult structure, is almost entirely ambiguous, even though it can be discerned. Do not let this fact distract you from the general discussion.
This isn’t to be confused with the delivery mechanism of the cult doctrine, which can also be quite formal or informal. In Woke, unlike with secretive fraternal orders, it is both at once. There are formal trainings like people suffer at work or school, educational programs at every level (pre-K, primary, secondary, and college), and various seminars and programs people can sign up for or be made to sign up for, say as “professional development.” There’s also entertainment, social media, interaction between family, friends, and associates, and just everyday culture, all of which are quite informal in their delivery of Woke themes, theory, and practice.
Most of the cult consists of followers who are emotionally, socially, psychologically, and/or morally committed to the idea of the cult and the “communities” it fosters without actually knowing much cult doctrine, if any. This group is the Outer School. The goal of the cult is to make the uninitiated want to join the Outer School and then to increase interest, commitment, and a sense of identity among those who have been initiated. The Outer School carries most of the water for the cult, especially in terms of resources (including human capital). Its commitment is usually social, moral, or hopeful (to grow in the fruits of the doctrine), and the deeper layers of the cult have the objective not only to direct the Outer School members but also to strengthen those commitments. They are, in some sense, like the children of the cult, whether literally children or legally minors or not.
To bring this “thought reform” into the cult doctrine, which Mao Zedong referred to as “remoulding” and his CCP prisons called “brainwashing,” members of the Outer School are subjected to a period of alternating affirmation, acceptance, criticism, and struggle. As Mao explains it, first, there must be the “desire for unity” (with the cult). Ironically, this begins with a period of alienation: being made to feel as though you don’t fit in with the social group around you or the current of society as it progresses in some new direction. Wanting to fit in is a powerful motivator, and when that feeling of alienation is strong enough, acceptance and affirmation will flood a person with desperately wanted good feelings and the illusions of friendships and social bonds. Acceptance and affirmation are commonly used to create the initial social and moral commitment, along with interest, in the earliest phases of initiation.
This alternating cycle of alienation and affirmation is then continued with increasing intensity once inside the cult structure in the “criticism” phases, which are meant not only to criticize you for failing to live up to the cult expectations but also to teach you to reflect upon yourself and criticize yourself in the same way. Woke praxis has been described as a “lifelong commitment to an ongoing process” that includes “self-reflection,” “self-critique,” and “social activism.” What this does is creates, exploits, and channels a shame and guilt spiral into aims the cult finds productive. As explained by Robert Jay Lifton in Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, the impact of this abuse on the psyche is profound.
Not only did making these accusations increase their feelings of guilt and shame, it put them in the position of subverting the structures of their own lives. They were, in effect, being made to renounce the people, the organizations, and the standards of behavior which had formed the matrix of their previous existence. They were being forced to betray—not so much their friends and colleagues, as a vital core of themselves. (pp. 68–69)
In destroying your own vital core, the cult supplies you with a false one. The process of cult induction from initiation forward drags its victims through this pattern again and again so that it can destroy the individual and turn him into a cultist.
But it is only after commitment is achieved—through social isolation, moral reorientation, exhortation, and extortion, psychological manipulation, etc.—that the “desire for unity” will be transitioned into criticism and struggle. Mao’s full transformative formula, which he openly bragged about, was “unity – criticism – unity.” Once the desire for unity (with the cult) is established, criticism begins. Initiation is over and how the process of cult deepening starts on suitable members. As indicated, this is done by repeatedly subjecting initiates to hazing-type circumstances in which they are criticized for the flaws in their comprehension of the cult doctrine, shortcomings past and present, outside relationships, etc., and in which they are called to account for them, repent of them, or otherwise strongly increase the moral, emotional, social, and psychological commitment (and dependency upon) the cult. The message is simple: “we would have unity, the exact unity you claim to desire, but you’re too problematic and need to do better.”
We see this kind of initiation taking place in Wokeness, for example, in workplace, institutional, and school “DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion),” “unconscious bias,” “sustainability,” and other training sessions, which are often a mandatory job requirement. These introduce the doctrine and force people to take place in a pathetically bureaucratic initiation rite that often includes struggle sessions, confessions, evocative presentations, and more. Criticism about “structural racism” or “unconscious homophobia” or any other number of thought-crimes is usually a part of the affair, and reflection, confession, and pledges to “do better” are often present, if not required, of participants.
“Unity” takes on a number of names, not just literally unity. It might be “social justice,” “racial justice” or “an end to hate.” It might be “environmental sustainability” or “climate justice.” It might be “equity” or a “sustainable and inclusive future.” It might be “liberation” or “socialism,” but in all cases you are the problem because you aren’t doing better enough. You aren’t doing the work, so unity is impossible—because of you. You and also them, the outsiders who haven’t been converted yet, and the enemies who refuse to and must be demonized for their refusal. But you have to leverage your desire for unity to engage in that “lifelong commitment to an ongoing process” of “self-reflection, self-critique, and social activism” as the remedy for this shameful personal failure. This is how it works.
Obviously, these cult dynamics aren’t something someone would just take. They have to be leveraged socially. It has to matter to who you are and who you are to your peers or you would never tolerate any of it. In analyzing the way this phenomenon played out in practice in CCP thought-reform prisons in the 1950s in China, Robert Jay Lifton indicated that the social milieu brings upon the person a tremendous psychological and social pressure while offering only a few ways to resolve the tension. The pressure not only to confess to crimes only visible from “the people’s standpoint” (the cult view) but more specifically to want to confess as a means of resolving the psychosocial pressures put upon you are emphasized. The treatments as such are often sold as “help.”
In the Woke cult, this desire for unity into criticism pathway applied to members of the Outer School may also be completely informal, apparently socially organic and spontaneous, with friends and family members “calling out” their less-Woke associates. It doesn’t have to take place in a captive-audience DEI session at work or school. The process and phenomenon are the same, even when diffuse and undirected. In this case, an initiated person rather than an adept (e.g., paid consultant or corporate political officer) facilitates the same pathway: first, make them desire unity (or peace, or getting along), and, second, make that only be possible by renormalizing to the cult view about racism, transphobia, or some other vector of Woke manipulation. There can be no unity with a “racist,” and you can’t stop being “racist” until you want to be “antiracist” and start the “ongoing process” of “self-reflection” and “self-critique” that will ultimately transform you. Shame and humiliation are key tools in this process. The people doing this do not have to know virtually any Woke Marxist ideology or even that there is such a thing, but they’re following its moral strictures nonetheless because those can be learned without reading a single page of “the work.”
That implies someone knows the Theory and is somehow channeling it into people. It’s true, and it happens in a variety of ways. It’s diffused into society through entertainment, mass media, and public displays. Adepts are behind this. It’s taught in schools, explicitly and implicitly, by Inner School adepts posing as teachers and other teachers who are sometimes Outer School initiates and sometimes are just forced to go along with the programming, conscious of the problems with it or not. From there it bubbles up into society as thought-reformed young people interact, create, and put pressure on each other, parents, relatives, and other members of society. It’s also forced upon people in workplace training sessions led by Inner School adepts that function effectively like prisons, though with a lower adoption rate than through other means. Every bit of this infection of society is informed by the Inner School adepts and socially enforced by the initiates who have already been taken in on it.
Learning the Theory yourself and becoming an Inner School adept in the cult is something mostly done by people already committed to it through the above processes. The first grip the cult has on people is moral and social. That proceeds through the above alienation, criticism, affirmation cycles into the psychological domain through vitiating the essential core of initiates’ identities and replacing that core with the cult moral and linguistic frameworks. If you feel like a cultist and talk like a cultist, you’ll start to identify as a cultist. Only after the commitment is made personal through this process will studying the doctrine be likely to stick, outside of rare cases in which people “find a voice” for things they already feel in the literature. Primarily, moral commitment is followed by social commitment is followed by psychological commitment and is then sealed through study, which teaches the skill of cult apologetics to close off any avenue to doubt. Theory becomes a set of elaborate, complicated rationalizations for why the cultist should stay a cultist despite literally everything in the world saying otherwise.
As both Lifton and Mao make clear in their various materials, progression from the Outer School to the Inner School is a matter of “study.” It’s also one of action, namely “praxis,” which is a fancy word that means putting the cult doctrine into practice and shaping your life’s activities around it. So, after enough criticism and struggle, you will want to start “doing the work,” which is your initiation rite into the Inner School of the Woke cult. You’ll study the theorists and maybe their antecedents, especially the pop-theorists, read lots of their books, watch their videos, and deepen your understanding of the issues from the cult perspective. Or, maybe you’ll learn about these things in schools or your college classroom. When you become conversant in the basic theoretical worldview—that is, the roots of the cult doctrine—you have graduated from the Outer School into the Inner School. The axis here, in the vague realm of the decentralized Woke cult, is one of being student, scholar, activist, and/or organizer.
Some people think because the Outer School of the (Woke) cult carries almost all of its water and only the Inner School members really know anything about the theory, and only the “scholars” and “organizers” among those actually know the antecedent theory, that the theory itself isn’t that relevant to the cult. This is wrong. The theory is the cult doctrine. The Inner School members, who are adepts, largely end up directing and facilitating the criticism, struggle, affirmation, and acceptance cycles mentioned above. These not only solidify and consolidate those in the Outer School but keep their ideas and activities in line with the doctrine.
Most of your life as an adept in the Inner School is devoted to study of theory and application of praxis, according to your understanding, but you’re still subject to the criticism and struggle cycle as you grow in cult doctrine. Again, not only does this keep you on the “right” path according to the cult, it also continues to deepen your psychological, social, and moral commitment to the cult. It also serves as a useful lesson for others, especially initiates, who might waver. The purpose of “study” is to develop an intellectual commitment on top of those other commitments to the cult doctrine, which will also enable you to reframe and rationalize away contradictory information, ideas, and evidence, or to subsume it skillfully into cult doctrine.
Only the most committed and loyal members of the cult’s Inner School have any chance of progressing into the outer circuit of the Inner Circle; that is, to become disciples. Disciples are very few in number relatively speaking because they will actually start to learn the real purposes of the cult and its “mysteries.” Only the most committed, most interested, and most useful members will ever have a chance to learn these mysteries, but they will primarily be selected for their loyalty, ability to keep secrets, and willingness to provide guarantees of those traits. There very well may be an initiation rite that might also involve generating blackmail on you so that you remain a safe keeper of those secrets, purposes, and mysteries even if you come to waver later.
While the Inner School advances most of the cult’s theory and activism, the Inner Circle actually advances and directs the cult’s activity, usually for their own glorification, benefit, enrichment, and power. They’re the directors and producers of the cult’s Truman Show. They use the Inner School members and exploit the Outer School initiates to achieve their aims. Mao explains this clearly when discussing intellectuals and businessmen in 1950s China, who by a few years into his CCP-run regime in China were almost all committed to the idea of socialism (initiates, Outer School) but that only a few were becoming Communists (adepts, Inner School), though more would follow through diligent and right study. Party members (disciples, outer Inner Circle) will be chosen from among those in various domains, and some will become Party officials (leaders, inner Inner Circle) depending on their skill, utility, commitment, and loyalty, perhaps inter alia.
With regard to Woke, most Woke people are Outer Circle. They’ve morally accepted the idea of a “just and equitable” or “sustainable” society, but they don’t know they’re practicing Neo-Communism. The longer they are in, as their commitment rises, the more study they will begin to do. These will become students, scholars, activists, organizers, and consultants; they’ll recruit “co-conspirators” in institutions like schools from among higher-level Outer Circle initiates and create pressures that sway, manipulate, and lead the Outer Circle to follow the cult doctrine and increase commitment and understanding of it. The leadership is more vague, and, as with many cults, may not be veridically Woke themselves. They are operatives working in the large organizations that fund and promote Woke initiatives, which they can use to their advantage whether they agree with the ideas and premises or not. Entities like the World Economic Forum and United Nations, for two examples, push these initiatives vigorously, as do many others, often will billions of dollars behind them.
Understanding that Woke is a cult and is structured like a cult—with its closest parallels in Maoist Communism—is crucial to understanding it and formulating our responses to it. It’s very difficult to make sense of the behavior of our captured friends and family without realizing how they have been captured and how they’re being kept. It’s challenging to tie what seems to be (and is, in a very real way) highly esoteric Theory to people we all know haven’t read a word of it and couldn’t name almost any of the relevant Theorists. It’s not clear how this thing gets the kind of funding and strategic coordination that it gets from a bunch of people who don’t quite seem to be the type for that kind of high-level executive activity. It’s confusing why people who get pulled into this way of thinking about the world can very quickly let it color and contour their interpretations of everything they experience in the world, which is a feature of ideological totalism. All of this becomes clear, however, when we understand that it is a cult and how cults are structured.
Woke is a cult. Being woke means having “critical consciousness,” which means your understanding of the world has been reorganized through Critical Theory. Critical Theory, which is shorthand for Critical Marxist Theory, is the doctrine of this cult. Doing something about it begins with rightly understanding these facts, and doing something about it is absolutely necessary.
Hello, Spring! from https://missoulaavalanche.org/
WHAT’S ON TAP
We’re entering the final stretch of our forecasting season, and with spring upon us, many people are thinking about warm weather activities. If you’re like us, you’re hoping for a few more days in the powder or corn before we hang up our boards or stow our sleds. With an eye on longer days and bigger objectives, we have a couple of ways for you to connect with the Avalanche Center and your fellow community of winter backcountry enthusiasts before we’re forced to admit that winter is over. We have 2 EVENTS on tap with RAFFLE PRIZES, and we’d love for you to join us!
ADVOCACY | LOLO NATIONAL FOREST PLAN REVISION
Avalanches and winter backcountry safety are inherently apolitical, so it’s not often we ask our users to advocate to government officials for our services. However, given the growing needs of our communities, we’re delighted to have an opportunity to do just that! The Lolo National Forest is revising their Forest Plan. Forest Plans are documents that lend guidance about land management activities. While we are not an organization that engages in land management activities, we can use this as an opportunity to let our local Forest Service officials know that we, backcountry recreationists, use the services provided by the avalanche center and would like to see those services supported and expanded!
The Forest Service has been a reliable partner and friend to the West Central Montana Avalanche Center! We would not be able to provide our products without their support! However, we want to do more! Our objective is to provide a full week forecast! And improve our product by offering more data through weather stations and mapping services! Getting there as a non-profit is a big lift, and the most straightforward path forward would be for the Forest Service to employ our Forecasters directly.
Please consider contacting the agency to make your voice heard! You can find a list of talking points by following this link: Click HERE.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
The Missoulian did a great story on the West Central Montana Avalanche Center, detailing our history and current situation. If you haven’t read it, you can find it here: Click HERE.
Also, the story of Marshall Mountain was featured in the 2023 Photo Annual of Backcountry Magazine (issue 148) and included a quote from our amazing Board Member, Kara Daume. Look for it at your local magazine stand or view it online! Click HERE
HELP US HELP YOU
Are you using the Avalanche Forecasts provided by the WCMAC? Have you taken an Avy 1 or 2 through us? Has your kids’ school participated in our free Know Before You Go educational events? We’re doing our best to keep you informed, but our forecasts are only as robust as our supporters. We dream of a day when we can provide you with an avalanche forecast every day of the winter! Please help us get there!! If you, or someone you love, plays in the backcountry, please consider donating to the West Central Montana Avalanche Center.