Editing Blog/2025-10-12/Word Magic (section)

=== VEW's Serious Approach ===

Well here's a similar sort of high-inference reading of Bacon's ''New Atlantis''<ref name=new-atlantis/> in VEW

{{Blockquote
|text=Joabin’s being Jewish and gay fulfills two of Daniel’s Antichrist prophecies: “Neither shall he regard the God of his fathers, nor the desire of women” (Dan. 11:37). We also know that Joabin descends from a lost tribe of Israel, implied of the Antichrist in Revelation 7:4–8. And in Paul’s telling, the words that herald the Antichrist’s appearance are “Peace and safety!” (1 Thess. 5:3). As we recall, Bensalem translates as “son of peace” or “son of safety.” We should also consider Joabin’s odd boast of Bensalem’s virginity in light of Saint Jerome’s speculation that the Antichrist would be born of a virgin. In the apocryphal “Testament of Solomon,” Solomon commanded demons to build his temple. Salomon’s House, the temple rebuilt, employs the same labor.
|author=Peter Thiel & Sam Wolfe
|title=Voyages to the End of the World
|source=First Things<ref name=bensalem/>
}}

This essay, too, draws all these lines between various ancient allusions in a similarly word2vec cosine similarity approach. But rather than treating them as world-building entertainment they play them straight. In the essay, we are to believe that this is real and in this world. The writing style isn't unusual. The "everything is linked" thing and historical coincidences are in everything from Marvel characters having been kings or heroes of old<ref name=ac/> to conspiracy theorists positing the idea of Masonic control of the world. But this is an earnest attempt by a successful person to convince us that the Antichrist is real and coming which makes it somewhat interesting.