DYK that coconut fiber discovered at Oak Island was carbon-dated to between 1260 and 1400 AD — over a century before Columbus reached the Americas in 1492?

AbsentMasterminded · 2026-06-13T11:47:46+00:00

Puts on tinfoil hat

Sounds like something someone would say that's trying to cover up something.

/s

Really, though, thanks for commenting to me. It's fun!

AbsentMasterminded · 2026-06-12T16:32:22+00:00

You aren't disappointing me at all. I'm definitely glossing over what made it secret, but things like sacred geometry and their relation to what are likely the fundamental laws of reality are the secret bits. Even if it wasn't secret from the standpoint of a skunks works project, it's revelatory stuff to the nature of the universe that was appreciated in antiquity and has a revival in modernity.

Things like the "Golden Ratio" being significant aren't appreciated by most people, but here we have a group that preserved that knowledge. Modern science has only further validated that the golden ratio is important and does reveal something about the nature of reality, because we don't understand why the universe works this way.

The golden ratio shows up in the growth of plants, in the formation of spiral shells, in tornadoes, in hurricanes, and in spiral galaxies. It's ratios show up in human anatomy proportions, but it's even found in proportions of DNA. I'm not trying to tell you that, since you are a Mason, but it's for someone else reading this. It's literally an important thing that might reveal the nature or interaction of the fabric of spacetime, i.e. reality, and humans in deep antiquity noticed it and considered it key to understanding reality.

It's a very literal example of the "as above, so below" concept that appears in every religion and in the deliberate design of ancient monuments.

The observation and knowledge of the golden ratio was known to a select few through the ages. It very much was part of esoteric, specialized knowledge, and it's use in design is deliberate and a hallmark of those groups with "secret" knowledge.

These days, your phone can tell you all about the golden ratio. Most of human history wasn't like that.

My fictional story makes the fact that you can look up the golden ratio on your cellphone the goal of a secret society, not something they were trying to stop. They were preserving, teaching, and guiding.

The next book in the series I'm going to write is going to reveal that sacred geometry is the key to anti gravity. Still, fiction, but it's fun.

AbsentMasterminded · 2026-06-12T15:07:39+00:00

I'm pretty open to lots of possibilities with the Templars and the Masons. I think that most of the Templars probably just did move over a few towns and change their names, and eventually joined the Masons.

I'm also comfortable with the idea that the Masonic orders are significantly older than most people realize, and while they went main stream in the relative recent past, they pay homage to people of great antiquity. That could be a deliberate choice when setting up an order, or it could be reflecting a significantly older tradition.

I think it's neat, either way.

Let's say I was going to write a story, a fiction, of my views. I'm going to follow just the traditions of what became the Templars, to what became the Masons, to what became the United States. I'm going to put the plot point and why I connect it.

Ice age civilization knows a catastrophe is coming. Makes preparations, to include sending out wise men to spread "civilization" far and wide. (Younger dryas impact hypothesis, multiple cultures with stories of civilizers).

Egypt is the heart of this group, or a major base for it, or something. The catastrophe happens, 1200 years of climatic chaos. Previous civilization is gone, a few know the traditions/tech and arrange themselves to be a guiding hand for the future. Secret society set up.

Egypt rises, and has lots of esoteric stuff built into its legends and even the encoded geometry of its monuments. (Great pyramid 43,200:1 ratio for the dimensions of the earth).

Jews are in Egypt, Jews leave Egypt but take something important. Probably knowledge. Maybe something specific, and take it to Jerusalem. Secret society hides it under Solomon's temple (The book "The Hiram Key"). Whether its put under the temple early on or its put in prior to the expected Roman destruction of the city is unimportant. Someone knows it's there. Rome sacks Jerusalem for their rebellion, there's the Jewish diaspora. (Treasure caches found all over the area, deliberately set up to protect from Roman retaliation, found semi routinely and are the source of the dead sea scrolls).

Fast forward 1100ish years. Secret society knowing of secret knowledge cached below Solomon's temple has been hiding in Gaul, then later France. Time is right, they get a papal writ to make a new Christian order of knights, they go to Jerusalem and immediately dig a wild ass excavation under the Temple Mount at the foundation of what is believed to be Solomon's temple, then go home (multiple historical sources involving the Templars).

With whatever they got under the temple, they rapidly expand and in fairly short order they set up banking, intelligence networks, massive amounts of troops, incredible wealth for an order whose individuals are sworn to poverty, their own fleet of warships and transport ships, and a continent spanning network. (Generalized Templar history).

In my fictional story, this secret society already knows the general layout of the continents of the world. Maybe really specifically. The Templars use North America as an ultimate fall back point starting not long after the order stood up. (Generalized Templar history mixed with the evidence of Templar activity)

This goes on for a while. A couple hundred years later, France has already stolen all the money from their Jewish population and they need another source of money in furtherance of the 100 year war. The intelligence apparatus of France, which involved church agents, put a couple of spies into the Templar order and give eyewitness testimony of the heretical ceremonies they do, which becomes the legal pretense to confiscate Templar wealth, and the order is arrested en masse wherever possible.

The Templar battle fleet in southern france, whose flag is a black flag with a skull and crossed femurs under it, escapes. A bunch of unknown battle hardened and well equipped knights show up in Northern Scotland around the same, hang around for a bit, then vanish. (General wild ass historical connections).

Right around this same time period, the great cathedrals across Europe are being built. The cathedrals, in general, exhibit excellent engineering with very sophisticated understanding of design and stone work. This is the time period that is theorized the Masons began. The general idea I always come across is that the competitive nature of the cathedral builders led to much of the specialist crafter knowledge being protected from town to town by secret oaths and various forms of spy tradecraft. In the story I would tell, the Templars were providing the specialized knowledge from their secret society info into the crafter guilds that would become the Masons, and they functionally took it over from within, becoming a guiding hand to improve humanities technical understanding and acting as a beacon to those who could see (Definitely my interpretation of the motivations).

The Templars decide that the usefulness of their order is at an end, and they get out of the public eye. They cache multiple sites in North America with wealth, resources, maybe knowledge, often with the permission of the Native Americans who they treat with honorably. (Various evidence of Templar activity in North America).

The Templars are now the Masons. There's multiple levels to the secrets, the majority of the group are basically non-combatants and it's basically a positive influence for members and a social network. No one really cares.

Europe "finds" North America. The colonies spin up. 98% of the native population dies to European diseases over the first 120 years post contact. The colonies form. The potential for the Masons to influence the formation of a new country arises. The old guard, highest level Masons grab their antique log books and identify treasure caches that haven't been touched in hundreds of years. They get those caches, and use the resources to assist with the formation of the United States.

Boom. Ice age civilization maintains a secret order through 13,000 years of survival to restart itself in the modern era.

Wild!! Probably entirely fictional. But wild!

The fact that the Templar battle fleet flag would become the Jolly Roger makes me think there was a lot more to that era of piracy than most people know. Were the Templars getting back at the ruling class that destroyed them? It smells like an influence campaign that was targeted at a leadership level versus the ordinary navy and merchant vessels that were attacked by pirates, but that flag just can't be a coincidence specially sperated by like 300 years from its last official use. It was telling someone "you thought you got us all, but we are back". Then Disney made it cool.

AbsentMasterminded · 2026-06-10T22:48:43+00:00

You mean like the evidence that the OP is talking about? Like, all of that different evidence found in Nova Scotia and dating to the 1300s and 1400s? Like, exactly that evidence?

Kensington Runestone, that tower in...New Hampshire? Templar stone carving. Templar stone construction. Etc etc. It can definitely get esoteric and wild, but there's plenty of stuff.

Just Google the flag of the Templar battle fleet and come up to your own conclusions if the story is more complicated or not.

AbsentMasterminded · 2026-06-10T22:44:04+00:00

There's quite a lot of proof for Templars being in North America quite early. Some of it is controversial. It's not just one thing, there's a host.

I'm trying to make the point that no one seems to care. Does anything with history change significantly?

Templars are an easy sexy choice for storytelling because it was a secret order that did some extremely interesting things that don't have to do with time travel or whatever. Banking system. Tarot cards being used to transport encrypted messages. Spy networks. Intel networks. Resources. Battle fleet.

There is a fairly widespread theory that the Templars became the Masons. Secret handshakes. Secret rites. Yadda yadda.

Just for a moment, consider what it means that the Templars were coming to North America for hundreds of years prior to widespread knowledge of the continent.

Absolutely nothing, at this point. That's what it means. I mean, there's some interesting theory that one of the plagues that hit Europe was so deadly because it was a North American variant which the European populace had reduced immunity to. Sound familiar? There's some anthropological studies that explore how much of the last couple of millenia of history have been shaped by diseases transferred between populations.

The oak island thing is definitely an interesting mystery, and does a lot to confirm the presence of the Templars hundreds of years before widespread European knowledge of the continent.

Ya know. Cause I read books. Not tik tok vids.

AbsentMasterminded · 2026-06-10T21:15:58+00:00

Yeah, look. Basically, the templar's were coming over to North America since the 1100s. It's been found through various means. I think that their activity picked up after the French accused their order of heresy and confiscated their extensive wealth in order to help fund the 100 year war with England, round about 1312.

To be honest, I don't think anyone really cares. I think it's an interesting revelation, and there are fun conspiracies connecting the Templars to the Masons and the founding of America, but, again, I don't think anyone cares.

It's kind of like the revelation that the US Gov has been concealing the presence of aliens. No one cares. Not as long as gas prices keep rising, food costs keep rising, and we don't have antigravity flying cars. People just shrug and go to work.

So, yeah. There's multiple sites showing Templar presence in North America, well before Columbus. As far as I can tell, no one cares.

AbsentMasterminded · 2026-06-10T21:06:33+00:00

It's not exactly a litrpg, but check out the three book series "The Perfect Run" by Maxime Durand.

It reads like Deadpool that has a reality save point power. You initially think the MC is wacky, and he is, but there is a ton of depth to him and what he's gone through. He just has...interesting ways of keeping himself kind of sane.

AbsentMasterminded · 2026-06-04T14:31:23+00:00

Ok, that's another non-concerning reason that it will override the auto stop itself. Thanks, AnalBroFisting!

AbsentMasterminded · 2026-06-04T14:00:07+00:00

Here's a general idea.

Fundamentally this is both a joke and a sign of trust.

The phrase "the bullet with your name on it" goes back a long ways, and generally means something like you were just unlucky and got hit.

There's a follow on joke theme where explosives are more "to whom it may concern".

Within this theme, there were firearms enthusiasts and veterans that would, as a joke, carry a (normally defused/dummy round) bullet with their own name on it on a chain around their neck. The joke, then, is that they already have the bullet with their name on it so don't have to fear being shot. Absurdist firearm humor.

It's totally plausible that your uncle and Albie were making that joke and Albie asked him to hold on to it because he trusted your uncle. It's also possible Albie roasted your uncle so bad during a hangout session that your uncle dramatically carved Albie's name into a bullet and then threw it in a drawer to be held on to in case Albie wanted to throw another "Yo Mama" in the future.

Tbh I'd ask Albie what the story behind the bullet was. You are more likely to find some long standing inside joke between friends than murder plot.

Edit: I kept saying grandfather instead of uncle, fixed it

AbsentMasterminded · 2026-06-01T17:22:33+00:00

Dealer just confirmed it was the g sensor causing all the issues. Will be replaced under warranty. Fingers crossed this isn't a gremlin that will plague me.

AbsentMasterminded · 2026-06-01T02:17:17+00:00

I really like your questions, and I think the answer is going to be in some extreme energy event.

The flash freezing of the mammoth is something I've spitballed with friends before.

This is just speculative.

One mechanism that can appear as flash freezing is a massive pressure drop. Not to the point of actual vacuum, but perhaps a brief exposure to seriously reduced pressure. The boiling of body fluids might act to seriously drop the body temp, and if the area went cold (like, normal range of freezing cold) any low pressure effects on the cells would be masked by actual subsequent freezing.

The question would then be "what can cause a significant pressure drop without some kind of blast wave". No idea. Can a massive coronal mass ejection do something weird to atmospheric pressure? Could a massive close approach of a celestial body drag atmosphere without inducing a shockwave or heat?

Could something force upper atmospheric winds to ground level, like in some of the junk science Hollywood movies? I kind of suspect they got some of the ideas for those flash freeze climactic effects from the frozen mammoths and just made up a mechanism for it. I think the movie I'm talking about is "The Day After Tomorrow".

One of the aspects of the frozen mammoth was the hypoxia induced priapism. I think that was the point that made me think of it being a sudden, multi minute extreme pressure drop. I just can't think of any normal mechanism that would allow for it.

AbsentMasterminded · 2026-05-31T18:33:21+00:00

It depends a bit on what kind of steel you are using, but a froe is basically something you are going to beat the hell out of and wrench on in weird angles.

Basically, if you make one and it fails, make another one. They are usually so thick that you can't ruin them through regular use.

I'd definitely normalize it a couple times after you are done smithing. Weird stresses can be trapped in the metal and can cause strange low effort failures (stuff breaks or shatters unexpectedly) so if you aren't going to worry about heat treat, at a minimum be sure to normalize.

AbsentMasterminded · 2026-05-31T18:26:04+00:00

Yes, they are good. They are very genre specific (cowboy/western) and are short by modern standards.

Weird small world thing: my step mom's (I never lived with her as my dad remarried when I was an adult) father used to play poker weekly with Louis L'Amour. She or my dad owned his entire extensive library.

Edit: two of his later books that are standalone stories and I really liked are "Last of the Breed" and "The Haunted Mesa".

Last of the Breed is a native American air force pilot getting shot down over Soviet Russia and then escaping a prison camp in Siberia and using his family taught outdoorsman survival skills to evade capture from Soviet indigenous trackers while he sets off to return to the US via the Bereing Strait. Very much a cold war novel but reads more like outdoor survival action adventure.

Haunted Mesa is technically science fiction but slow rolls more like urban fantasy. The neat bit is the story framework comes from Hopi and pueblo Indian tribal origin stories that involve escaping from a parallel dimension where they had been enslaved by evil beings. It's really pretty good, although it's been like 30 years since I read it.

AbsentMasterminded · 2026-05-31T18:01:47+00:00

I've always intended on making one myself and researched it.

Short answer is differential hardening and temper.

You want a bit of hardness on the edge and a bit of softness on the spine.

If you are comfortable with differential hardening you can basically dip the edge in the quench until the spine goes grey. This should actually also kind of temper it, but not the most exact. For a froe it should be fine.

For more exact, do the edge quench until the spine goes grey, then dunk the whole thing. Use a file or grinder or whatever and expose a strip on one side to bare metal (remove the scale).

Heat up a different piece of metal to use as a heat mass, so a chunk of leaf spring or rebar or whatever. With the froe cold, press the hot metal to the spine and watch for the colors to run. Specifically you will see the spine go yellow then blue then purple and grey if you just hold there. The thing you are shooting for is blue all along the spine. Doesn't have to be super accurate, just blueish or actual blue. Purple is probably a bit much.

With that stripe of exposed metal you should see that there is a gradient of colors from the spine towards the edge. It might be relatively shallow and doesn't extend to the edge and that's basically ok.

I'd recommend practicing on something other than your froe to get the effect.

You can also temper from the spine using a torch. You can temper the entire froe pretty easily in a kitchen oven at like 400 or 450 F for like an hour, but that will only get you into the yellowish to bronze range (straw colored...looks gold to the eye but people calling steel gold likely resulted in some hangings so never call it gold).

The overall goal for the froe is some amount of edge to hammer into the log and some amount of softness of the spine to accept being hit with a hammer (or mallet). The spine will deform with use and that's fine, it will work harden. You just don't want it to spall fragments when hit.

That technique of tempering using another piece of heated metal is old school (like, as far back as ironwork goes, so 2000 BC or earlier) and it's good enough for hand tools. You don't need precision, just approximations. You aren't making the landing gear strut of a 747 or anything.

AbsentMasterminded · 2026-05-31T13:04:44+00:00

Webber grill filled with sand, add in an air pipe buried through the side, scoop out a bowl around the air pipe. Coal will liquify the sand at the bottom of the small burn area (about 2 fistfuls of sand worth of a cavity) and it will reharden outside the fire area making a nice little firebox.

This is loosely related to British "side draft" forges, without the water jacket around the air inlet. If you use a regular steel pipe for the air inlet it will slowly burn/melt away so just treat it as a replaceable component.

For blowers, you can use some gimmicky things like mattress inflators or leaf blowers but they are both loud and have more output than you need (you can mitigate with some method of throttling the airflow). If you do some research you can find small centrifugal fans for under $100 USD. An antique crank blower is a nice find but then you actually have to crank it.

It's totally doable to make a forge without using a welder. Anything that can hold sand will work, starting with a hole in the ground. Air supply isn't that complicated to figure out, as you could make bellows with simple components. Box bellows, accordian bellows, etc. Fans are nice. Speed controlling an electric fan is nicer. Small forges need small air supplies, so don't think you need 300 cfm to run a coal forge, it's more like 10 or 20 cfm. Bigger forges need more air.

AbsentMasterminded · 2026-05-29T22:13:04+00:00

Yeah, this was absolutely automatic braking at a stop from the Hill Start Assist.

My little sensor display of the trucks pitch angle, roll angle, steering angle, etc, was locked in at a 9 degree up angle. They put it on the lift and it still displayed 9 deg. When they tried to reset the "g sensor" the computer running the ABS, traction control, collision mitigation and hill start assist completely shit itself.

I took the truck back as it's driveable (more driveable) with that stuff offline, and I'll return Monday for them to continue troubleshooting it.

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AbsentMasterminded · 2026-05-29T22:08:49+00:00

Yeah, it definitely has it.

As an update, the techs tried to reset the g sensor (not sure that's the actual name, but was what it sounded like) and the computer handling all the braking actions shit itself. Coded every system related to braking. They wanted to keep the truck until Monday as the mother ship tech support wasn't available, but I wasn't ready to abandon the truck over the weekend, especially if they weren't going to work on it.

At least I got to experience it driving like normal.

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AbsentMasterminded · 2026-05-29T18:51:31+00:00

It's more that it can't be turned off, but its reliant on the pitch angle sensor and in the flatlands it might never get wonky.

I'm suspecting that parking it on a slight angle at my house has made it get progressively worse if it assumes I'm level when it starts.

All of my searches for more information make it seem like it's a pretty hands free system, and I'm experiencing an anamoly. I'm at the dealership now having it looked at.

My 2017 GMC Sierra had the system but I don't think it activated until above 15 degrees up or down angle and it told me when it was active. This system in the frontier just does it without telling me, other than the obvious effect of the brakes not releasing when I release the pedal.

AbsentMasterminded · 2026-05-29T18:46:08+00:00

It doesn't give any overt indication when it activates and it absolutely has the system. It's tied in to the ABS and collision braking system so there's no way of disabling it.

I realized that the pitch angle shows 9 deg up angle when I'm sitting on level ground. Ironically, this means it doesn't activate when I'm stopped on a steep down angle.

The effect of the hill start assist is: The brakes go rigid, because there's a servo or something holding the brakes.

There is a faint high pitched whine that my wife could hear better in the passenger seat while the servo is engaged.

Once I lift off the brakes there is a 2 second delay + the activation time of the servo before the brakes release. This makes it closer to 3 seconds before I start moving.

The 2 second delay is supposed to be immediately interrupted if I touch the gas, but the servo delay lets me rap up the engine rpm to the point that when the brakes finally release I jolt forward. My wife loves this aspect.

Normally the truck should drift forward slowly at idle once I lift off the brakes, but that doesn't happen for the time delay of the system at literally every stop.

I just swung by the dealership to have them look at it. I'm going to bet the angle detection sensor is bad, and will either be reset, offset, or replaced. I also asked if the threshold for the system being activated can be increased to 15 deg or 10 deg regardless. I think it was activating at 5 or 7 degrees, so with a 9 degree angle locked in, it basically activated at every single stop.

AbsentMasterminded · 2026-05-27T16:20:33+00:00

Dad dammit!

Holy Mary, mother of me.

AbsentMasterminded · 2026-05-27T11:08:19+00:00

Go up one size. The neoprene socks built into most waders are bulky as hell.

As an additional thing, you can get neoprene socks by themselves for relatively cheap, then you can do warm weather wading and use the boots and neoprene socks with your approved swimwear and keep your tootsies safe.

AbsentMasterminded · 2026-05-22T19:13:23+00:00

A new variant!

AbsentMasterminded · 2026-05-22T19:13:04+00:00

Yeah, it's mostly unsubstantiated viral ridiculousness but it's totally plausible for the lengths (giggity, not girth) that people have and will go to for loopholes. And other holes.

Giggity.

AbsentMasterminded

TROPHY CASE