Tag: Crime

The Lasting Legacy of Heaven’s Gate: A Cult’s Continuing Online Presence | February 28 2026, 04:09

Remember the American cult that had 39 members simultaneously self-extinguish in a mansion near San Diego, believing that they would be picked up by aliens? Well, their website is still up and running. The earliest version of this site from 1999 is virtually indistinguishable from what’s on the site now. The only difference is the ® symbol, which was after the name of the cult in 1999, but not now.

I Googled what’s up with their trademark registration. Just recently, in 2020, the company “The Evolutionary Level Above Human Foundation” registered (or renewed) rights to this trademark. The category is indeed listed as Lace, Ribbons, Embroidery, Fancy Goods, but the name of the company leaves no doubt that they are thinking about aliens.

I Googled some more. Turns out, this foundation, The Evolutionary Level Above Human (TELAH), acts as the “guardian of the legacy of the group ‘Heaven’s Gate'”, and has sued Stephen Havel and other defendants for copyright and trademark infringements, accusing them of illegally distributing archival materials and selling themed merchandise. The last update shows the parties are obligated to hold a meeting by the end of March 2024 to try to negotiate confidentiality and authentication of evidence without further judicial intervention.

Specifically, the foundation consists of real people from Arizona, Mark and Sara King, and the organization is registered as a corporation. They respond to emails and send out books and cassettes if you transfer them money.

Other former members are trying to challenge their “right” to use cult materials, such as recordings on tapes in court.

In short, some kind of life goes on there.

That is, the next time you think of Flat Earthers as “some pranksters pretending to be weirdos”, remember these folks, maintaining their website and selling books by their “prophets”.

The Sole Excommunication of the 21st Century: The Case of Monk Nikolai Romanov | February 21 2026, 00:10

I wanted to find out who was excommunicated in the 21st century, and it turned out that there was only one person. That was Nikolai Romanov (schema-monk Sergius). He was the founder, builder, and spiritual father of the Sredneuralsk Women’s Monastery.

Do you know why? He asked the nuns and parishioners, “are you ready to die for Russia?” The investigation saw this as incitement to suicide. He also called the COVID-19 pandemic “non-existent,” cursed those who closed churches for quarantine, opposed vaccination and the “digital camp,” and called for civil disobedience to church and secular authorities.

In November 2021, he was sentenced to 3.5 years in a colony. Later, in 2023, his sentence was increased to 7 years on a second charge (of inciting hatred). In April 2021, court bailiffs completely evicted all residents of the monastery (nuns and laypeople) due to violations of fire safety requirements and urban planning regulations.

The Russian Orthodox Church could not say “he was not with us by that time,” so they simply excommunicated him.

The Unintended Consequences of Misguided Incentives | January 04 2026, 13:30

About KPIs. In English, there’s a concept called perverse incentive, “a harmful stimulus.” It occurs when you try to quash evil, but the methods become the perfect fertilizer for it. There’s a saying, “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure” (Marilyn Strathern based on Goodhart’s Law).

A classic example is the “Cobra Effect.” In colonial India, the British decided to reduce the snake population and offered a reward for every head. The plan seemed as reliable as a Swiss watch until Indians began breeding cobras on farms for the “harvest.” When the authorities realized they were being duped and cancelled the payments, the farmers simply released the now-useless snakes into the wild. As a result, there were many more cobras than before the program started 🙂

In a similar way, the French in Hanoi battled rats by paying money for severed tails. The city became overrun with lively yet tailless rats: the Vietnamese cut off the “currency” and released the creatures to breed further, to not lose a stable income.

In the 19th century, archaeologists searching for dinosaur bones and ancient fossils paid locals for every piece found. As a result, resourceful diggers intentionally shattered whole, priceless skeletons into small pieces to earn more by submitting them separately. Science wept, but the KPI for “number of finds” soared. A similar tragedy occurred with the Dead Sea Scrolls: Bedouins cut the found scrolls into small pieces to sell each fragment separately.

In the USA, this malady struck infrastructure. When building the Transcontinental Railroad, the government paid Union Pacific subsidies for every mile laid. In Nebraska, engineers, in a single corrupt impulse, drew a huge loop—the Oxbow Route. The extra 9 miles of detour made no sense for logistics but brought the builders hundreds of thousands of dollars “out of thin air.”

But if the “loop” in Nebraska was just theft, then the mistakes of U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara were a tragedy. An aficionado of numbers and mathematical models, he tried to manage the Vietnam War like a Ford assembly line.

When General Edward Lansdale timidly noted that McNamara’s formulas lacked the variable “the spirit and will of the Vietnamese people,” the secretary noted it in pencil in his notebook. And then erased it. He said that if something cannot be measured, it’s unimportant. The main metric became the body count. Officers onsite, eager to curry favor, began labeling everyone indiscriminately as “enemies,” painting an illusion of imminent victory in Washington, while the actual situation spiraled into the abyss.

In science, there’s a radical principle similar to Occam’s Razor— “Newton’s Flaming Laser Sword” (also known as “Alder’s Razor”). Its essence: if something cannot be tested by experiment (or measurement), it’s not even worthy of discussion.

It sounds reasonable for physics, but in life, it’s a direct path to what sociologist Daniel Yankelovich called the degradation of perception. He described this as a descent through four steps:

1. First, we measure only what is easy to measure.

2. Then we ignore what is difficult to measure or requires qualitative assessment.

3. The third step—we decide that what cannot be measured is not so important.

4. And the final step—we declare that what cannot be measured actually does not exist.

And at that moment, we become blind. We view the world through the keyhole of metrics, while in the room behind the door, cobras are bred, dinosaur bones are broken, and wars are lost.

Dreams of Power: Cocaine, Rare Earth Metals, and Unexpected Diplomacy | January 03 2026, 13:40

I slept through everything. What are you betting on 1) all the cocaine is ours now? 2) they’ll release them in exchange for a deal on rare earth metals and oil? 3) Maduro turns up in Saratov?

The Mysterious Early Morning Explosion in Leesburg: Unanswered Questions and the Hunt for Clues | December 06 2025, 16:58

Two months ago, there was a loud bang at four in the morning in the neighboring village. Firefighters, police, and medics arrived but found nothing at the scene except for several open manhole covers and the smell of burning. No fire, no casualties, no consequences (besides the displaced covers). Yesterday I read that the local fire marshal has offered a $10,000 reward for information that helps find and arrest four suspects who had the audacity to look suspicious in that village shortly before the bang. No faces, only the colors of their shorts and t-shirts.