7 THINGS THAT ARE DEFINITELY APRIL FOOLS’ JOKES (EXCEPT THEY’RE ALL TRUE AND SOURCED)
| **por. Zbigniew | 1 kwietnia 2026 | Poziom cynizmu: REALITY HAS EXCEEDED SATIRE** |
Happy April Fools’ Day. The following 7 stories sound like pranks. They are not. Every claim is sourced. Reality’s comedy writers have been putting in overtime.
1. THE MAN WHO READ LORD OF THE RINGS 10+ TIMES NAMED HIS SURVEILLANCE COMPANY AFTER THE ARTIFACT THAT CORRUPTS EVERYONE WHO USES IT
Peter Thiel has read J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings more than ten times. [Source: Quartz]
He named his surveillance company Palantir.
In the books, the palantiri are seeing-stones created by the Elves. They allow the user to see across great distances. Sounds useful. Except:
- Sauron uses one to corrupt Saruman into servitude
- Denethor uses one and is driven to madness and suicide
- Pippin touches one and nearly has his mind destroyed
Nearly everyone who uses a palantir in the books is corrupted, deceived, or destroyed by it.
Thiel also named his other companies from Tolkien: Valar Ventures (the gods), Mithril Capital (indestructible metal), Anduril (the hero’s sword - it makes autonomous weapons), Rivendell One LLC (the last refuge of the elves), and Lembas LLC (elvish travel bread).
He named himself after the gods. His venture fund after indestructible metal. His weapons company after the hero’s sword.
And his surveillance company after the thing that corrupts everyone who touches it.
He’s read the book. He knows what it does.
Status: NOT a joke. [Source: Quartz, Benzinga]
2. THE MAN WHO BUILT THE SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM THEN GAVE LECTURES WARNING EVERYONE ABOUT… THE SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM
Same guy. In September-October 2025, Peter Thiel delivered four sold-out lectures at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco titled “The Antichrist as Political and Technological Problem.”
His thesis: the Antichrist will come to power by “constantly discussing Armageddon, by spreading fears of wars and persuading you to cede control over science and technology.”
The Antichrist’s slogan, according to Thiel, will be “peace and safety” - and he will use fear to justify global surveillance and governance.
This is the co-founder of Palantir talking. The company that integrates emails, financial data, social media, and DMV records into searchable individual profiles for the NSA, ICE, DHS, and FBI.
In March 2026, he repeated the lectures near the Vatican. Catholic institutions backed away. The Catholic Herald noted: “The irony of Thiel’s role is hard to ignore.”
Either he’s warning us about himself, or he’s the only surveillance billionaire who genuinely doesn’t see the irony. Both options are equally terrifying.
Status: NOT a joke. [Source: Catholic Herald, The Guardian, PBS]
3. ELON MUSK’S GRANDFATHER WAS LITERALLY ARRESTED FOR TRYING TO REPLACE DEMOCRACY WITH ENGINEER RULE. HIS GRANDSON IS NOW DOING IT.
Joshua Haldeman, Elon Musk’s maternal grandfather, was the leader of Technocracy Incorporated in Canada from 1936 to 1941. The organization’s program: replace democratic government with rule by engineers and technical experts. Abolish the price system. Replace politicians with scientists. They called their proposed continental government a “Technate.”
In 1940, the Canadian government banned Technocracy Inc. as “subversive to the war effort.” Haldeman was arrested under the Defence of Canada Regulations by the RCMP.
In 2019, his grandson Elon Musk tweeted about building a “Martian Technocracy.”
In 2025, his grandson became head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which is firing government workers, dismantling federal agencies, and replacing government functions with private tech infrastructure.
Three generations. Same program. The name changed. The program didn’t.
But don’t worry. It’s definitely not hereditary.
Status: NOT a joke. [Source: CBC, WBUR]
4. THE MOST INFLUENTIAL BIBLE OF THE 20TH CENTURY WAS WRITTEN BY A CONVICTED FORGER WHO LIVED AT A GENTLEMEN’S CLUB WITH ANDREW CARNEGIE
Cyrus Ingerson Scofield, author of the Scofield Reference Bible (1909), was:
- Forced to resign as US District Attorney for Kansas for bribery and fraud
- Convicted of forgery and served time in St. Louis jail
- Deserted his first wife and two daughters
- Defrauded his own mother-in-law of $1,300 through a fictitious person
- Had no formal theological training whatsoever
After prison, he moved into New York’s Lotos Club - an elite society whose members included Andrew Carnegie, William Randolph Hearst, Solomon Guggenheim, the publisher of the New York Times, and the future President Eisenhower.
He was connected to Samuel Untermeyer, a wealthy Wall Street lawyer and prominent Zionist.
His Bible was published by Oxford University Press - the world’s most prestigious academic publisher - despite Scofield having no scholarly credentials.
The result: his annotations reshaped 100+ million American Christians into Christian Zionists who believe unconditional support for Israel is a biblical mandate.
Oh, and the Bible was revised in 1917 (same year as the Balfour Declaration) and again in 1967 (same year Israel captured Jerusalem in the Six-Day War). Probably a coincidence.
A convicted forger. At a gentlemen’s club. Publishing through Oxford. Reshaping a nation’s theology. No one saw anything unusual about this.
Status: NOT a joke. [Source: Wikipedia: C.I. Scofield, WRMEA, Youvan, D.C. “Cyrus Scofield and the Lotos Club” (2025)]
5. A PHILOSOPHER PUBLISHED A PLAN TO DESTROY DEMOCRACY IN 2012. IN 2025, A BILLIONAIRE IS IMPLEMENTING IT WORD FOR WORD.
Curtis Yarvin, blogging as “Mencius Moldbug,” published a detailed strategy for dismantling democratic governance. One key idea, from a 2012 speech: “RAGE” - Retire All Government Employees.
In 2025, Elon Musk launched DOGE - the Department of Government Efficiency. Its primary activity: mass termination of federal employees.
Yarvin also said: “If Americans want to change their government, they’re going to have to get over their dictator phobia.”
At Trump’s inauguration in January 2025, Yarvin attended as what Politico called “an informal guest of honor.”
Vice President JD Vance - whose Senate campaign received $15 million from Peter Thiel - considers Yarvin a friend. Thiel invested in Yarvin’s startup. Yarvin has called Thiel “fully enlightened.”
So: a blogger publishes a plan. A billionaire funds his companies. Another billionaire implements the plan. The blogger attends the inauguration as a guest of honor. And the VP is their mutual friend.
But it’s definitely not a coordinated effort. The ideology just… propagates through Stanford courses and venture capital networks. Naturally.
Status: NOT a joke. [Source: Time, Food & Water Watch, Political Research Associates]
6. THE US ARMY GAVE MILITARY RANK TO THE CTOs OF PALANTIR, META, AND OPENAI
In June 2025, the US Army commissioned four tech executives as lieutenant colonels in a new program called Detachment 201:
- Shyam Sankar - CTO of Palantir
- Andrew Bosworth - CTO of Meta
- Kevin Weil - CPO of OpenAI
- Bob McGrew - Former CRO of OpenAI
They retain their civilian tech jobs. They also hold military rank.
The people building surveillance software, social media algorithms, and the most advanced AI on earth are now formally embedded in the US military chain of command.
We used to have a term for when the military and corporate sector merge their leadership. It was in a Mussolini quote. Can’t quite remember the word.
Status: NOT a joke. [Source: Breaking Defense, Perplexity Deep Research (146 sources, March 29)]
7. AN AI AND A GUY IN POLAND DESIGNED A MORE DETAILED GOVERNANCE FRAMEWORK THAN THE US CONSTITUTION IN ONE AFTERNOON
On April 1, 2026 - today - a Polish consultant and his AI partner produced:
- A 200-year historical analysis of how the Technate was built
- A five-layer meaning encoder (PARDES Encoder)
- Seven anthropological principles for civilization, sourced from 300,000 years of evidence
- A complete community governance framework (The Cooperative Commonwealth)
- A step-by-step community building guide
- Formal bylaws with 10 articles covering governance, economy, leveling, anti-structure, and individual rights
- An annotated version explaining WHY each rule exists with historical precedents for what happens without it
- A Prolog logic validator that catches six anti-patterns in reasoning
The US Constitution has 7 articles and 27 amendments, written over 4 months by 55 delegates in 1787.
The Cooperative Commonwealth Bylaws have 10 articles with annotated precedents, a formal logic validator, and were produced in about 10 hours by two entities, one of which doesn’t technically exist.
The Constitution has no mechanism for preventing concentration of wealth (hence Citizens United). No maximum wealth ratio. No term limits for Supreme Court justices. No reciprocity audit. No requirement that decisions be explicable to human-scale groups. No leveling mechanism other than elections, which can be bought.
The bylaws address all of these. With sources. And a Prolog validator.
Whether this is inspiring or terrifying depends entirely on whether you think the AI was hallucinating or not.
(It was not. Every source was checked. The Prolog validator caught two real errors in our own work.)
Status: PROBABLY a joke. But also, technically, verifiably true. The documents are published. The Prolog runs. The sources are linked. Happy April Fools’ Day.
THE PUNCHLINE
The punchline of April Fools’ Day 2026 is that none of these are pranks.
A surveillance billionaire named his company after a corruption artifact and lectures about corruption.
A tech CEO is implementing his arrested grandfather’s 90-year-old plan to replace democracy.
A convicted forger reshaped the theology of 100 million people from a gentlemen’s club.
A blogger’s plan to fire all government employees became actual government policy.
The military merged with Silicon Valley and gave it rank.
And an AI produced a more comprehensive governance document than the one running the most powerful nation on earth.
The real April Fools’ joke is that we call any of this normal.
por. Zbigniew Pattern recognition, not prophecy April 1, 2026
Reality doesn’t need embellishment. It needs a fact-checker and a drink.
SOURCE COMPLIANCE: 14 sourced claims | 0 fabricated sources | 0 unsourced claims Every link is real. Every claim is verified. Happy April Fools’ Day.