Energy is a subject that is greatly misunderstood. Its role in our lives is truly amazing. We humans are able to live and move because of the energy that we get from food. We count this energy in calories.
Green plants are also energy dependent. In photosynthesis, plants use energy from the sun to convert carbon dioxide and water into the glucose that they need to grow.
Ecosystems are energy dependent as well. The ecologist Howard T. Odum in Environment, Power, and Society explains that ecosystems self-organize in a way that maximizes the useful energy obtained by the group of plants and animals.
Economies created by humans are in some respects very similar to ecosystems. They, too, self-organize and seem to be energy dependent. The big difference is that over one million years ago, pre-humans learned to control fire. As a result, they were able to burn biomass and indirectly add the energy this provided to the food energy that they otherwise had available. The energy from burning biomass was an early form of supplemental energy. How important was this change?
How Humans Gained Dominion Over Other Animals
James C. Scott, in Against the Grain, explains that being able to burn biomass was sufficient to turn around who was in charge: pre-humans or large animals. In one cave in South Africa, he indicates that a lower layer of remains found in the cave did not show any carbon deposits, and hence were created before pre-humans occupying the cave gained control of fire. In this layer, skeletons of big cats were found, along with scattered gnawed bones of pre-humans.
In a higher layer, carbon deposits were found. In this layer, pre-humans were clearly in charge. Their skeletons were much more intact, and the bones of big cats were scattered about and showed signs of gnawing. Who was in charge had changed.
There is other evidence of human domination becoming possible with the controlled use of fire. Studies show a dramatic drop in numbers of large mammals not long after settlement by humans in several areas outside Africa. (Jeremy Lent, The Patterning Instinct, based on P. S. Martin’s “Prehistoric overkill: A global model” in Quaternary Extinctions: A Prehistoric Revolution.)
In recent times, humans have added fossil fuel energy, hydroelectric energy and nuclear energy to their “toolbox.” All of these energy sources have allowed humans to stay in charge.
Whether humans’ control of energy is good or bad depends on a person’s point of view. Without humans being in charge, the human population would likely be similar in size to that of the populations of chimps or gorillas–in other words, tiny in comparison to today’s human population. Furthermore, humans would be located only in the warmer parts of the world. As we will see in the next section, humans would not have evolved in the direction they did. Instead, they would have continued with only the abilities they had as pre-humans. They would have continued living in the wild, eating raw food and spending half of the day chewing it.
How the Controlled Burning of Biomass Produced Amazing Results
Pre-humans learned to control the burning of sticks and other biomass over one million years ago. This new-found ability helped our ancestors in many ways:
(1) Pre-humans could cook part of their food. (Richard Wrangham, Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human) The ability to cook food increased the variety of food that could be eaten because some foods need to be cooked to be edible. Chewing time could be greatly reduced (Chris Organ et al.), leaving more time for tool making. Moreover, cooking allowed nutrients in food to be better absorbed.
(2) Less of the energy from food was needed for the maintenance of large teeth, jaws, and guts. Instead, more energy could go into building a larger brain. In this way, our ancestors could outsmart their predators, instead of depending on their muscles and teeth.
(3) Pre-humans could use fire as a tool to burn down unwanted trees and brush, making it easier to capture prey and encouraging new plant growth of a type more suitable as human food. Also, the fire itself could be used to frighten predators.
(4) Stone tools could be made sharper using heat.
(5) The heat from fire could be used to enlarge the range where pre-humans were able to live.
(6) Larger brains and frequent gatherings around campfires allowed language to develop.
(7) Humans, with their larger brains, were able to selectively breed different types of plants and animals, choosing characteristics that were better suited to their needs. As humans tamed fire and animals, they themselves became (in some sense) tamer.
The Physics Reason Why Energy Is So Important
We are all familiar with how the energy from food allows humans to grow. We also know how solar energy allows green plants to grow. Most physics instruction focuses on thermodynamically closed systems—that is, systems to which no new energy supply is added. Sometimes isolated systems are discussed—again a situation where no additional energy is available. In these situations, there is no growth—only a gradual depletion of the available energy supply, leading ultimately to “heat death.”
More recent analysis has shown that thermodynamically open systems, which are characterized by inflows of energy, are very different. They can, and do, change and grow. Hurricanes grow when heat from warm seawater is available. Stars grow as the result of the chemical reactions taking place within them. All of these structures (known as dissipative structures) are temporary in that they cannot continue to exist when suitable flows of energy are no longer available. They can also be undone in other ways, such as too much pollution or by other forms of “entropy.”
On earth, the energy system we experience is an open system. Energy from the sun is constantly being supplied. Energy made available by burning biomass and from burning fossil fuels is also being supplied, as is nuclear energy, in the form of electricity. The energy obtained from burned fossil fuels, in fact, reflects the re-release of ancient solar energy that was once stored in the bodies of small plants and animals. Under the proper temperature and pressure conditions, this stored energy had been slowly transformed into fossil fuels.
The Hidden Nature of Energy Consumption
When humans burn fossil fuels today, they are able to access the use of this stored energy. Some researchers have talked about the ability to utilize fossil fuel energy as being similar to having “energy slaves.” In making this analogy, it has been observed that a human adult produces roughly the energy output of an always-on 100 watt light bulb. Even when humans were still hunter-gatherers, they made some use of energy slaves, approximately tripling the amount of energy available to the economy at that time. By the time the industrial period was reached, always-on watts per capita had climbed to 8000, indicating that energy available to industrialized humans was 80 times as high (8000/100 = 80) as the amount expected based on food energy alone. The huge increase represented primarily the use of fossil fuels.
Figure 1. Relationship between human energy use and population.
In Against the Grain, Scott finds that slave labor was very widely used in early civilizations. Male slaves were often used for tasks requiring heavy labor, such as mining and building roads. Today’s fossil fuel energy slaves can do these things and much more. For example, a truck operated on a road makes liberal use of fossil fuel energy slaves partly to make the road, partly to build the truck and partly as fuel to operate the truck.
Any commercial process requires energy in one or more forms. Part of the energy can be human energy. This human energy can be used in many ways such as typing on a computer, listening, thinking, operating machinery, speaking, digging in the ground, and walking. The rest of the energy is likely to consist partly of electricity and partly of fossil fuels burned for heat. (Some of this heat energy is converted to rotary motion in order to power vehicles.) Constructing a building requires a tremendous amount of energy; manufacturing a car is also energy-intensive. Heating and lighting a building require energy. Even obtaining a potable glass of cold water requires energy.
Figure 2 is a chart showing a breakdown of non-transportation energy consumption in the United States, based on data from the United States Energy Information Administration.
Figure 2. United States non-transportation energy consumption by sector, based on information from the US Energy Information Administration.
The residential percentage of non-transportation energy consumption rose from 23% in 1949 to 29% in 2017. We don’t have a world estimate of the breakdown of energy consumption for residential use, but the United States is probably unusually high with its 29% residential share. According to a study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, China’s energy consumption was only 11% residential in 2014.
If people do not understand how much of our energy consumption is hidden, it is easy for them to overestimate the benefit that can be achieved through energy conservation by individual citizens. A major use of supplemental energy (that is, beyond that available from food consumption) is to provide finished goods of all sorts, such as cars, homes, electricity transmission lines and roads. Supplemental energy consumption also provides the gift of free time. Without modern agricultural equipment, many more of us would be working long hours in the fields, leaving little time for advanced education and other modern pursuits. Another benefit of supplemental energy consumption is a much longer life expectancy, thanks to such things as clean water and antibiotics. Indirectly, supplemental energy consumption also provides jobs that pay well. Without supplemental energy consumption, there would be few jobs other than digging in the ground with a stick, in an attempt to grow food.
In a very real sense, the availability of inexpensive energy supplies that work to power existing machinery and equipment is what allows today’s economy to function.
How Can We Tell If Human Carrying Capacity Has Been Reached?
If we are discussing primates such as chimpanzees, baboons and gorillas, it is fairly easy to tell when the carrying capacity of the environments they inhabit has been reached. These primates depend on local food and water supplies. If there is not enough food to go around, the weakest and the lowest ranking will find themselves without enough high quality food, bringing the population back below the carrying capacity. In some cases, as population density rises, there may be aggression toward immigrants to the territory. Females have even been observed to kill the infant newborns of community members.
Humans have control of various types of energy supplies, in addition to food. These energy supplies make it easier to produce enough food for the overall population. People today are used to having things that wild animals do not have, such as clothing, education, climate controlled homes, transportation, medical care and retirement benefits. It should not be surprising that in our case, the first sign of reaching carrying capacity is something other than running out of food. In fact, the laws of physics suggest that reaching human carrying capacity is unlikely to be signaled by running out of any energy product, such as oil.
Instead, the issue that tends to arise as humans reach carrying capacity is increasing wage disparity. This issue arose in the 1930s, and it seems to be rising again now. Increasing wage disparity is a way, within our economy, of squeezing out some members, if there are not enough energy supplies to go around. Providing climate-controlled homes, automobiles, paved roads and electricity transmission lines for people all over the world would take a huge amount of energy supplies–far more than we have available today. Wage disparity assures that some groups cannot afford these goods and services, thereby effectively holding down demand for these goods and services.
Many people believe that oil prices are likely to rise very high, if there is a shortage. However, if wage disparity grows sufficiently large, any spike in prices is likely to be short lived. Instead, the energy limit that we are reaching may be prices that do not rise high enough to encourage adequate production of energy products. Without sufficient production of these energy products, there will be a shortfall of finished goods and services.
Physicist François Roddier in Thermodynamique de l’évolution : Un essai de thermo-bio-sociologie explains that when there is inadequate energy for an economy, the situation is similar to some members of the economy being “frozen out” through low wages. The same forces allow a rising portion of the wages (and other wealth) to go to the very rich. This situation is like steam rising. These individuals do not use very much of their wages to purchase goods and services made with commodities. Instead, they tend to use their wages for services (such as tax avoidance) that are not very energy intensive. Also, they tend to use their wealth in ways that tends to drive up asset prices, without adding true value. For example, buying previously issued shares of stock can have this effect.
Eventually, the poor are frozen out. In fact, in cases of extreme wage disparity, the problems can spread further as governments find it impossible to collect enough taxes to finance their spending.
What Characteristics Do Energy Supplies Need to Have?
Unless we are willing to give up our dominion over other species, including microbes, humans need to secure a supply of energy products that grows with human population. These energy products must precisely match the needs of current infrastructure. They also need to be inexpensive and non-polluting. They cannot add new problems of their own–new types of entropy.
At this point, we are running into difficulties. Fossil fuels are becoming ever more expensive to extract. They also lead to carbon dioxide and other pollution problems. Nuclear energy seems to be quite dangerous, given the problems with waste disposal and multiple accidents, including the one at Fukushima.
Wind and solar, and indeed hydropower, are not really solutions, either. For one thing, they are not very controllable. If humans expect to control their environment, they need to be in control of their energy resources. Even waterpower can vary by a huge amount, from month to month and from year to year.
Figure 3. California Hydroelectric Generation by Year, Based on data of the US Energy Information Administration.
Hydroelectric, wind and solar can be used in limited amounts, as part of a portfolio of energy products, but they cannot be used on their own, unless they are hugely overbuilt. In that case, only a very small portion (which can then be controlled) is used. Many people believe that storage can be used as an alternative to backup energy supplies, but the cost of adequate storage seems to be extraordinarily high because of the long-term nature of required storage. (Note also the apparent need for multiple-year storage indicated by the pattern on hydroelectric generation shown in Figure 3.) If humans expect to be in control of other species, humans need to be in control of the supply of energy resources.
Of course, choosing not to be in control is another option. In such a case, we can expect human death rates to rise rapidly. If this happens, women will again be valued for their ability to produce large numbers of children. Men will be valued for their strong muscles. The world will become a very different place.
plus water crisis in flint
https://youtu.be/pd2qxi2mF_4
Here’s one way to fight higher oil costs
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-08-12/philippines-fight-inflation-sell-dirtier-cheaper-oil
I can imagine countries rolling back restrictions aimed at helping the environment, if it will keep oil price from rising as much.
Not so good for the air quality in Baguio city tho
Average IQ
Sub-Sahara 65 = moron
North Africa 85 = moron
Europe 100 = moron
Nobel prize winner 145 = moron
E.T 1000 = brainy bug
Our monkey based life form is not going to solve the energy equation.
Let’s have some fun
Booze and music will bring out the best in us!
Don’t forget the Chechen raves – ‘zhikrs’.
Splendid choreography in the Turkish Sufi ones too – answers the question as to what they did before TV came along.
Oh no! Does that mean Ricky Gervais is a yehudi?
You are in the right country Not keen on your crew…Try mine
Well, it depends on what kind of intelligence you are measuring and what we tend to just glance over;
for example in 2001 someone zapped almost .2Mtons of structural steel and the rest of ~1Mtons of the material into warmish and away of the site sucking up dust cloud with very high spike of tritium in the samples. In other words, some sort of very weird $hite happening there as in “transmutation” or “cold nuclear reaction” or what ever..
Now, I recall that time very well, office PCs where 300-500W beasts, CRT monitors heavy polluting boxes, and fast forward nowadays kids have more computational power in their pocket mobile phone just sipping few watts..
It gets a bit crazier still, the re-known chicken little Russians for some strange reason feel so unsafe these days they had to resort to showing on their RT channel hints of response action via swarms of torpedoes causing tsunamis in the Gulf and Atlantic/Pacific shorelines among other newer stuff such as next gen MIRVs and supersonic cruise missiles..
It has been correctly pointed out that people of the late 19th – early 20th century mindset, i.e. adults of the era, exposed to looking at the shadows of other “evaporated” peoples after the effects of Hiroshima/Nagasaki blasts won’t be able to find much detailed answers to what actually happened either..
So it rhymes..
https://youtu.be/OmdwJRrMFQ4
the guy saying in the video that infrastructure is decay in south Africa
which country on this planet does not have its infrastructure decay
and plus he talking that south africa was paradise in 90s
hahaha every country was a paradise in 90 to now
reason is less population except the countries who have its
population decline
Not sure what your point is third, but SA is now a hell hole of theft and murder.
It wasn’t always that way.
As I mentioned elsewhere, its energy consumption per capita has been falling since 2008. Not a good situation.
Russia says will cut holdings of US securities amid sanctions – RIA
In response to a new round of U.S. sanctions, Russia is pledging to sell more of its U.S. dollar denominated holdings.
Russia has sold off more than 84% of its US holdings in recent months, Treasury data released last month shows.
yes, Russia wants economic independence…
that last 16% is no big deal…
They import very little– with the resources and educated population its becoming a moot point.
They do enjoy selling all that oil– keeps the coffers full.
Chicago’s deadly summer: guns, gangs and the legacy of racial inequality
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/aug/12/chicago-gun-violence-racial-inequality-segregation-activism
Hands up Eastern Europeans on FW… Yorichan?
Story Time!
Driving into Poland a few years ago — we stop for petrol — M Fast orders a tea … I go to the washroom… M Fast (Asian) is close to tears — the water for the tea was luke warm and she asked for another cup full….
Apparently the counter person did not even acknowledge her presence when she asked… she asked again …and the same sh it.
Thus…. I took the cup and approached (with steam coming from my ears)…. and said – hey – what’s the problem here — the lady has asked you for a cup of hot water — the lady hesitates… then decides she will do the right thing and makes up some bs excuse about being charged each time they pull water from the machine….. to which I respond — now why would you not tell the lady the same thing?
Of course we all know the reason — clearly she thought M Fast was of low IQ and of a lower race… so undeserving of a response.
Hitler would of course stuffed this bi tch into an oven given his views on Eastern Europeans….
Short story long…. she could sense the powder keg was about to explode…. so I got my cup of hot water … without paying.
So I know where you Eastern Europeans are coming from…
I suppose this is the obvious reaction to be being referred to as ‘subhumans’
Nobody wants to believe that they are at the bottom of the race barrel.
due to her conditioning or upbringing the counterperson required instructions from a male that is why you suceeded whereas madame fast failed
I think it was rather a case of her and the other male attendant feeling that at any second I might snap….
Such people would see any attempt at reasoning with them as weakness… and because at the end of the day they are cowards (for only cowards hide behind the veil of racism)…. just a whiff of violence… sends them scurrying into the sewers… like the vermin that they are
I hope that unpleasant incident was a one off and that otherwise Poland treated you both well.
Mrs Tim (an Asian lady) reports that she often receives preferential treatment when in the UK, and that Scottish people have treated her particularly kindly. One time she was on a country bus going around Loch Lomond and the driver voluntarily asked her to pay only a reduced fare for pensioners, although she was well below the qualifying age for the discount and she didn’t ask for it. He said they were happy that tourists were visiting and wanted to show his appreciation. Then, at the end of his route, he went over to the driver of the next bus that was due to take Mrs Tim on the next leg of her journey, and had a word with him to get him to extend the same discount.
On the other hand, in Cornwall, she was taking a ferry trip somewhere and another passenger on the boat, a young Chinese man, was haggling for a half price fare on the grounds that he was a child. The ferry man gave him a smile and said “Nice Try!”
Poles regard themselves as Central Europeans, like the Austrians, Swiss, Czechs, Slovenes and Hungarians. East Europeans are Serbs, Bulgarians, Albanians, Ukrainians, etc.
“I know where you Eastern Europeans are coming from”
Fighting racism with racism? There are lots of Central and Eastern Europeans, and like us, they are individuals, with their own different attitudes.
I am focusing on the ones with .. bad attitudes…
BTW – I have eastern European heritage coursing through me…
Another thing that is increasing the operating costs of internal combustion vehicles,
, aside from high fuel prices, and the computerized components is the catalytic converter.. It doesn’t stop pollution from being released into the environment.. It seems to delay when that pollution will be released…all in the meantime causing vehicles to use more fuel to operate it. https://phys.org/news/2016-01-hidden-danger-heavy-metals-catalytic.html
The stated aim of regulation is to save lives, use less resources and produce less waste but in the case of the internal combustion vehicle, the opposite seems to be true. There’s a link between smaller, lighter and fuel efficient cars and fatal crashes but I don’ think it’s a strong one but it’s out there.
Maybe one of the tools to fight low demand, or prices that are too low, is regulation. Regulation could make products and services more expensive if the increased costs are passed to consumers. Regulation as economic stimulus. Who would’ve thought?
.
Oil prices too low? They are triple the price they were during the entire 20th century..
https://imgur.com/a/cByJbWp
The article does you link to doesn’t sound like research is very far along in this field. It concludes that more research is needed.
I am sure that a lot of regulations are job-making arrangements. Think of security at airports. Or the requirement that truck drivers drive only so many hours. You need more truck drivers, and more people building trucks, if each truck is driven fewer hours.
The US president is cutting China off from Iranian oil. The deep state is shutting down dissenting voices. The US is moving to a war footing. You are either with them or against them.
If it means I get to live another year… I am WITH THEM!!!
What do they need me to do?
Excellent, the five eyes have one common cause..
“…with Russia hinting that it is close to giving up on the dollar entirely in oil trade and shifting to a petroyuan-based regime, how long before other nations follow suit, especially as China no longer shows any qualms when it comes to severing existing US energy ties – whether in retaliation to trade war or otherwise – and pursuing alternative sources of production?”
Well—-
“China may may have a more strategic view: yesterday Iran announced that another state-owned Chinese giant, China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) had taken over the share of France major Total in the development of the giant South Pars oil field, giving the Chinese company an 80.1% stake in the project.
Clearly unconcerned about the threat of US sanctions, and taking advantage of the ongoing chaos in the middle east, China – which recently launched its own petroleum futures contract which many say is the first step toward internationalizing the PetroYuan – is aggressively ramping up its influence in the Gulf with the intention of becoming a dominant force in the regional energy market.
Meanwhile, Russia is making no secret of its intention to dedollarize its oil industry, with the unstated purpose of shifting toward the Petroyuan axis.”
Not sure if that is a good move for China. Iran may not be long for this world.
I wonder if they know the hatred china has for Islam.
Someone thinks that Myanmar may play a role in keeping China’s imports of Iranian crude up.
http://blogs.platts.com/2018/08/10/myanmar-china-iranian-crude-oil/
“The US president is cutting China off from Iranian oil.”
do you believe this will actually succeed? ha…
“The deep state is shutting down dissenting voices.”
if true, then the “deep state” is only about 1% done… wake me when it gets to 50%…
“The US is moving to a war footing.”
Trump seems to be the least warring POTUS in the last few decades…
“You are either with them or against them.”
perhaps I am “them”… 😉
Chinese troops are ready to join with Russian and Syrian forces for the final assault on Turkish occupied Idlib. Apparently Russians are also about to call time on the Ukrainian abortion/experiment too. Turkey is the foil.
“Analyses of large representative samples, from both the United States and the United Kingdom, confirm this prediction. In both countries, more intelligent children are more likely to grow up to be liberals than less intelligent children. For example, among the American sample, those who identify themselves as “very liberal” in early adulthood have a mean childhood IQ of 106.4, whereas those who identify themselves as “very conservative” in early adulthood have a mean childhood IQ of 94.8.”
But that is rather obvious.
And those with 140+ IQs…. identify as neither.
Really?
Not that it is a issue with you——
Well… I must admit … I am neither… interpret that as you will
Ok– meaningless
https://i.redd.it/votjd0z74kf11.jpg
You’ve displayed your room temperature IQ again … nice
I expect that coming from a well off family will yield enough privilige to be interested in a Liberal outlook and to have the background that leads to doing well on intelligence tests.
Coming from a less well of family will yield less privilege, and less interest in helping those besides themselves and “protecting the environment” and other liberal cause. With less privilege, they quite possibly will test lower. But the doesn’t mean that they are any less needed by the economy.
Thank you.
https://imgur.com/a/M5g8nNa
Well, it does look like Homo Erectus will have existed for a lot longer than Homo Sapiens, for whom the clock is ticking rather loudly now.
For instance, at one site they seemed to have been quite content to pick up and use stones that rolled down the hill to them, rather than explore and get to the source of the stones.
The Onward and Upward March didn’t seem to grab them – very wise.
Microbes with their ability to evolve quickly seem to have close to an advantage over humans, at this time. We can produce temporary work-arounds, but not long term work-arounds.
Arthur C. Clark: Is that a bogie you are pointing to at the end of your nose, Dr. Asimov?
Isaac Asimov: No, it’s snot.
It’s not obvious at all and is in fact rather meaningless. How do you define liberal? Most of us are a mixture of conservative and liberal impulses. Take Fast Eddy: he’s liberal on race, not so on transgenderism.
I’m sure you can perform analyses of large representative samples that show cat-lovers are more intelligent than dog-lovers – or just the opposite, if you’re so inclined.
Fast Eddy is about logic and facts. If the facts change… then Fast Eddy changes. It is inevitable that sometimes Fast Eddy will align with the liberals… sometimes with the conservatives… neither group should latch onto these coincidences. They are both re tar ded delusional MORE ons
I agree with you Ohadi. Political labels have meant different things in different times and in different places, and even in the same time and place different people use them to mean very different things. Often today they are little more than names for teams people join, to adopt to provide a sense of identity, or to give their particular bag of policies or beliefs a semblance of order and method. Bernie Sanders a “socialist”? Gimme a break!
“If a man is not a socialist by the time he is 20, he has no heart. If he is not a conservative by the time he is 40, he has no brain.”
Bismark or Churchill
I could boast an IQ of 145 when I was a lot younger, more liberal and into astronomy, chess and reading two or three science fiction novels a day. I was the kid who used to blurt out all the right answers to questions on Mastermind and University Challenge, often before the contestants could say “Pass” in the former or were busily conferring in the latter. I must have been nauseating company for my dumber and more conservative siblings.
These days I would be hard pressed to outdo Forrest Gump. And I have had to become conservative in order to conserve what brains I have left. So I freely admit that there could be something to these survey results.
One interpretation is that smarter, brainier, more gifted kids tend to be more influenced by political propaganda than MORE-ons are. They can follow arguments better and they gain satisfaction out of being able to understand what they are being told. They also respond better to appeals for altruism, without suspecting that these appeals are often made by devious people with deceitful motives. There is a world of difference between IQ test/problem solving ability and street savvy, which is a kind of intelligence /self-preservation instinct that is useful in allowing you to live among and recognize predators.
https://youtu.be/rwdxIUeMrSM
Intelligence is overrated.
It’s not just intelligence that is being selected for in the upper classes but a more agreeable personality (hence the compassion for the marginalized , the ability to delay gratification, and sometimes, even introversion. These are traits that have very limited appeal outside the context of being a knowledge worker in a complex society.
In poorer environments, the ability to stand up for oneself (being disagreeable), living for today (life is short because you have less material comforts) and extroversion (which is related to the ability to stand up for oneself) are much more more important traits for success.
It doesn’t matter if white people are, on average, have a higher IQ than black people because human intelligence is still an experiment that nature is running, and it is the higher IQ people, the “civilized and cultured” people who are threatening the human race with extinction, and are continuously pushing us towards behavior that is not natural to us.
https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2012/julyweb-only/views-of-the-weird.html
https://experimentaltheology.blogspot.com/2010/08/weird-western-educated-industrialized.html
P.S. I’m not a devout Christian. Christians are guilty of what they accuse the group with the majority high IQ people of with of doing.For example, loving one’s enemies is extremely unnatural.
We live in a complex society, We benefit from a combination of traits–We seem to need disagreeable people and people who can delay gratification. We need abstract thinkers and people who can think on their feet. And brawn still matters–physical fitness is still important no matter how much we try to diminish the importance of the nature with spiritual and intellectual activity.
I agree. Self-organization has given us religions that reinforce the traits needed at a given time, given the level of energy per capita available.
The traits needed seem to depend on both the level of energy consumption per capita available, and its growth rate. As we move into a period of flat energy consumption per capita, and falling energy consumption per capita in some places, the traits needed are different–more disagreeableness, for example. Let’s not just do what was done before.
Perhaps some of the traits are needed, but the circle that gets the benefit of them needs to be much smaller. Instead of the whole world being drawn in, it is one’s own country, or group of countries, that benefits. Or perhaps only an individuals own family members, when viewed at a local level. If there is less and less surplus energy to share, it gets shared in ever-smaller circles.
it is the higher IQ people, the “civilized and cultured” people who are threatening the human race with extinction
Yet we worship those of the high IQ…. as if the outcome they bring … is a good thing…
But then humans — even the high IQ ones — are stewpid More ons.
People who pride themselves in being more intelligent than the rest of us often come across as insufferably conceited. I think the rest of us should “get ’em”. Instead of blaming men, whites, Jews, the Elders, the Russians or the globalists for our problems, let’s pin the rap on MENSA members! The nerve of those poseurs! Getting together in a private club and not letting the rest of us join just because we can’t pass their silly IQ test!
I can determine someone’s intelligence by asking the following:
Do you regular read/watch any of the following: NYT, BBC, CNN, etc… and do you think these media do a good job of informing you?
You have a Tee Vee FE?
Only idiots have a Tee vee.
“… those who identify themselves as “very liberal” in early adulthood have a mean childhood IQ of 106.4”
that number is embarrassingly low…
My dog has a higher IQ than a liberal
While liberals are marginally smart, conservatives at 94 are as dumb as the act and look.
Us radicals laugh at both. They believe reform is possible.
Then … we have what is known as The Core.
“intelligence is the tool that enables man to measure the wideness of his misfortune”
“l’intelligence est l’outil qui permet à l’homme de mesurer l’étendue de son malheur”
Pierre Desproges _ a famous and subtle departed French humorist
“Analyses of large representative samples, from both the United States and the United Kingdom, confirm this prediction. In both countries, more intelligent children are more likely to grow up to be liberals than less intelligent children. For example, among the American sample, those who identify themselves as “very liberal” in early adulthood have a mean childhood IQ of 106.4, whereas those who identify themselves as “very conservative” in early adulthood have a mean childhood IQ of 94.8.”
Children Who Are Spanked Have Lower IQs, New Research Finds
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090924231749.htm
Duncan, Yorichan… there is a study to determine the impact of being so do mized by Uncle Creepy every Christmas has on IQ…. I’ve taken the liberty to sign both of you up
Are you saying that Little Johnny …who had a tutor since kindergarten …parents who give a f789… who was shuffled off to math and computer camp…fed exclusively Whole Foods… and didn’t get whupped for buying mom the wrong brand of ciggies…. and whose father does not pimp out his older sister to make ends meet….
Is going to score higher on the IQ test than Billy Bob?
I believe that and also breast feeding helps
This guy has lots of info on the topic
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCC3L8QaxqEGUiBC252GHy3w
Any one today who is not a Socialist, Communist, Progressive, Liberal, Democrat, Green Party supporter or true believer in the Cult of Globbly Wobbly at Jup’s age is a psychopath. Any one who is still one of the above at Duncan’s age is a MORE-on.
The earliest known version of this observation is attributed to mid-nineteenth century historian and statesman François Guizot, who quipped:
Not to be a republican at 20 is proof of want of heart; to be one at 30 is proof of want of head.
Incidentally, a republican in 19th century France was the equivalent of a lib-tard in 21st century America.
Variations on this theme were later attributed to Disraeli, Shaw, Churchill, and Bertrand Russell.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DkQWX5pWsAALFtP.jpg
I bought that on audible a few months ago — listened to about 45 minutes… and returned it…
Here is a link to “Genesis” you can find almost any book or science paper on it..And you can Google free Ebook reader and download one that will format PDF files, so you can read them like an ebook
http://libgen.io/
I’ll take Rumi over Jordan any day, not that Jordan isn’t saying some important things that need to be said. It’s just that I find Rumi’s poetry inspiring and Jordan’s entire presentation style a bit lame. But that’s just me.
And in any case, hit a girl with a few of Rumi’s couplets these days and chances are she’ll hit you with a sexual harassment complaint.
Here’s a selections of quotes from both dudes. I wonder if you can identify which are Jordan’s and which are Rumi’s?
There is a candle in your heart, ready to be kindled. There is a void in your soul, ready to be filled. You feel it, don’t you?
I don’t think that you have any insight whatsoever into your capacity for good until you have some well-developed insight into your capacity for evil.
That which is false troubles the heart, but truth brings joyous tranquility.
You’re going to pay a price for every bloody thing you do and everything you don’t do. You don’t get to choose to not pay a price. You get to choose which poison you’re going to take. That’s it.
Why should I be unhappy? Every parcel of my being is in full bloom.
The purpose of life is finding the largest burden that you can bear and bearing it.
Except Iranian girls,Tim: Rumi makes them very emotional indeed.
And I had one delightful girlfriend who got very excited by….Dante!
As a friend said: ‘Only you could find a girl like that X!’
14th century Italian, the food of love. Or 13th century Persian…… 🙂
The Turkish lira is down 28% today against the USD. Goldman warned the Turkish banks would be wiped out if the lira falls to 7.1 against the dollar…well…the lira is now 7.1
Frackers Burn Cash to Sustain U.S. Oil Boom
Many U.S. drillers have increased spending, but not production forecasts, pointing to possible slowdown
American oil companies—primed to reap the benefits of rising prices after years of wringing more from wells for less—are seeing profits erode in the face of rising costs.
Those operational challenges make balancing lofty growth objectives and demands for fiscal restraint increasingly difficult. If the companies continue to stumble, the result could be a higher cost of capital to finance the ongoing U.S. energy boom or a slower pace of growth.
Two-thirds of U.S. oil producers failed to live within their means in the second quarter, even as oil rose above $70 a barrel. Collectively, 50 major U.S. oil companies reported in their second-quarter results that they have spent $2 billion more than they took in, according to an analysis of free cash flow by FactSet.
As oil prices have risen, profits “have improved, but they’re not there yet in terms of making money,” said Todd Heltman, a senior energy analyst at investment firm Neuberger Berman Group LLC. “The realization is setting in that it’s going to take longer than investors thought for them to generate free cash flow and deliver more powerful earnings.”
Pioneer Natural Resources Co. , one of the biggest operators in the Permian Basin of West Texas and New Mexico, told investors a year ago it expected to largely make up for rising operating costs with “efficiency gains” such as producing more from each well. Last week , Pioneer reversed course and raised its annual spending forecast to $3.3 to $3.4 billion, from $2.9 billion, to produce roughly the same amount of oil.
“We’ve had a more significant increase in cost issue than we would have assumed,” Pioneer Chief Executive Tim Dove told investors. Some of the new spending will push up output next year, he said.
The drilling frenzy has increased demand for materials like sand and water that are used in hydraulic fracturing, driving up prices.
In recently reported second-quarter earnings, more than a dozen shale companies either lowered this year’s production targets, said they would have to spend more to extract roughly the same amount of oil and gas or missed analyst expectations for growth. To be sure, many continue to expect their production to increase compared to last year, but they are having to spend more to meet those goals.
Among them was Noble Energy Inc., which this month revised its annual capital spending plan to $3 billion, up from $2.7 to $2.9 billion, while saying it likely would hit the lower end of its targeted production range.
The company had incorporated some service cost increases into its initial spending budget, said Gary Willingham, executive vice president for operations. “But we also assumed that given our track record,” he said, “we’d be able to offset a large part of that with efficiencies.” That has proved more difficult than expected, he said.
The days of rapid efficiency improvements appear to be waning industry-wide. Producers during the downturn figured out how to produce more from each well for less money. Since 2016, however, the oil price at which operators can turn a profit drilling a new shale well has flatlined in some parts of the Permian and increased by an average of 17% in others, according to data from Rystad Energy.
“You can’t continue to get 50% better every year,” Randy Foutch, chief executive of Laredo Petroleum Inc., said in an interview. “We will get better, but I don’t expect it to be at that kind of rate.”
Laredo increased its yearly spending forecast by $45 million, or about 8%, while holding its oil output target steady, although it raised production goals for natural gas and natural gas liquids. The company said it was spending more now to produce more next year.
Some see the weak quarterly performance and operational challenges in the Permian, which now pumps more crude than Kuwait, as indicators that the pace of growth in U.S. oil production is about to slow down considerably.
U.S. oil production fell slightly in May, the latest month tracked by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, and has remained at just below 10.5 million barrels a day since March. Last week, the EIA cut its forecast for average daily crude output in 2018 by about 100,000 barrels. Federal forecasters expect the U.S. to produce an average of 11.7 million barrels a day in 2019.
Some see that forecast as too high and predict that U.S. oil growth will moderate due to service costs, slowed technological gains, pipeline constraints in the Permian basin and pressure on U.S. producers to keep spending in check and emphasize profits over growth.
A slowdown in Permian oil output could push crude prices above $100 a barrel before the end of the year as supply fails to meet rising demand, according to Leigh Goehring, managing partner of Goehring & Rozencwajg, a small investment firm focused on natural resources.
“Many companies have promised to live within cash flow and grow by 10% or 20%, and it’s looking more and more like some are going to have to choose between the two,” said Mr. Goehring. “If the Permian growth engine slows, there aren’t many other easy sources of global supply.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/frackers-burn-cash-to-sustain-u-s-oil-boom-1534078844
“Two-thirds of U.S. oil producers failed to live within their means in the second quarter, even as oil rose above $70 a barrel. Collectuvely, 50 major U.S. oil companies reported in their second-quarter results that they have spent $2 billion more than they took in, according to an analysis of free cash flow by FactSet.”
https://www.godlikeproductions.com/sm/c3549d16.gif
The thing that is likely to confuse readers is the chart that goes with the article. If you believe it, the breakeven oil price has been $30 to $40 per barrel. So how could an 8% (or whatever small percentage) increase make a big difference, if the price is $67 per barrel? What readers don’t understand is that the $30 to $40 is only a piece of total costs.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2018/08/wsj-breakeven-prices-on-wells.png
July marked a year since Iraq declared Mosul to be completely liberated from ISIS — but much of the city is still in ruins.
With the fighting over, the world’s interest in Mosul has waned, so too have international commitments to help with the massive task of rebuilding.
Iraq says it needs $88 billion to repair all the damage caused during the battle to drive Islamic State fighters from the country. So far, it’s only received a fraction of that — and the U.S. has said it won’t help with the shortfall.
On the ground, it means there are still neighborhoods that are ghost towns, with block after block of destroyed homes and endless piles of rubble yet to be removed. It’s estimated that the bombardment of Mosul left more than 10 million tons of debris behind.
For many Mosul residents, the process of trying to rebuild their lives is swamped in dysfunction or bureaucracy — and frustration is beginning to rise.
https://youtu.be/4XfxqSTJU8E
Lost my cash at Mosque
‘WORSE THAN 2007’: Top central banker warns of looming wave of worldwide bankruptcies
http://www.businessinsider.com/worse-than-2007-top-banker-warns-of-looming-wave-of-worldwide-bankruptcies-2016-1
Government Intervention is triggered by a Keynesian belief that aggregate demand can be increased by lower interest rates and by increasing government deficits thereby somehow spurring economic growth. Debt grows faster than income growth and eventually has to be restructured, i.e., everyone loses in the end. Since 2007, global debt has grown by US$57 trillion and it’s had disastrous results. Greece, Detroit, Puerto Richo, Venezuela are just the beginning of this trend. Soon, it will be followed by larger countries like China and United States.
https://imgur.com/a/XYl8YIB
Venezuela’s government debt is only 23% of GDP. Russia’s is only 12% of GDP. Nigeria is at 21%. How could there be a problem?
Maybe low oil prices are also a problem.
The Economist Poll: Is capitalism rigged in favor of elites?
https://debates.economist.com/debate/capitalism?state=summary
The only reason for someone to invent ANY system is to gain favours?
Soviet Collapse Echoes in China’s Belt and Road
https://www.bloombergquint.com/gadfly/2018/08/12/soviet-collapse-echoes-in-china-s-belt-and-road-investment.amp
Enjoy these last few years everyone..Because over the next decade you are going to witness the “unthinkable”..
“Enjoy these last few years everyone…”
oh, don’t worry, I am…
I’ve been mostly winning at gambling lately…
and food has been quite good lately…
excellent meats…
and a newly discovered brand of dark chocolate…
“… these last few years…”
it’s interesting that you seem to be agreeing with the position that The Collapse is at least a few years away…
me too!
The important thing for me is that we are within the “event horizon” of Collapse. No possible trajectory apart from Warp Factor 8 is going to get us out of our appointment with doom.
In this sense, Collapse is a bit like Judgement Day or Domesday was for the medieval Christians. I have no inkling of when it will arrive, and if I don’t get to see it in my lifetime I will die with a smile on my face.
Because when Collapse arrives we will all be chastised and individually punished for our collective sins, no doubt about it. And there will be wailing and a gnashing of teeth.
Also, after Collapse, I don’t expect I’ll be able to watch Dave Allen any more.
https://youtu.be/IeWyF6wkK4k
sure…
it’s been at a record high recently…
it’s inevitable that it would start to fall…
Why ‘Deaths of Despair’ May Be a Warning Sign for America
Does a decades-long rise in suicide among white Americans signal an emerging crisis for U.S. capitalism and democracy? Nobel prize-winning economist Angus Deaton, and his wife, fellow Princeton Prof. Anne Case
https://youtu.be/yXf-xcR8bdA
this how black Americans feel when Ronald Reagan destroyed
family of black Americans through war on drugs
Heroin’s Children: Inside the US opioid crisis
The United States is going through the worst drug crisis in its history. It now claims more lives than gun deaths, tears families apart – and shows no signs of abating.
As US President Donald Trump declares America’s opioid crisis a “national emergency,” Fault Lines looks at the “invisible victims” of the epidemic – a generation of children who are being neglected, abandoned or orphaned by parents addicted to heroin.
So, how is the opioid crisis shaping the next generation of Americans?
https://youtu.be/tNWU6XSjb-c
A slow an inefficient way to kill off the unneeded stock.
they’re not intelligent enough to tell that “life is but a joke”–Dylan. and, they take life too seriously and worry that “his shirt’s not as white as mine”—Jagger.
This is rather low on my list of concerns….
I do admit to being amused and entertained by the ‘crisis’….
Everyone has their breaking point. Why deny them?
But peckerwoods are the superior race with the high iq’s rite?
LMFAO!
Doing the cull the slow way makes the Princeton professors feel safe.
Tell me FE, will there full professorships at an Ivy League University save them better than a doomstead?
No, they will just be extremely well educated dead people.
they will be asked to vacate their offices and labs to make room for homeless people now occupying the campus. or, they can hire these folks as live-in lab assistants.
You are so jealous of educated successful people..I understand though you generation got paid insane wages to turn screws without an education..
Well, I’m extremely well educated. But I’m not dead yet.
Why Liberals Are More Intelligent Than Conservatives
(Liberals think they’re more intelligent than conservatives because they are)
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/201003/why-liberals-are-more-intelligent-conservatives
This why I cannot stand liberals… surely they have enough firepower upstairs that they should know better.
Also conservatives actually have a lot more things right than liberals.
But both groups are DelusisTANI MOre Ons
I was struck by the dates mentioned in this video. All boats rose together, starting with World War II up until 1970. Then, things started falling apart. Sounds like US oil supply, and the need to start outsourcing more of what we did.
Of course, there were other things going on as well, including the expectation that all would do well, but without the safety net that Europe provides workers. The recent interest in workers having a college education was enabled by the rising number of people with college degrees–not that the education itself was of all that much benefit.
In Asia, and perhaps in Europe, the emphasis is being on a team, and the team doing reasonably well. Here, there is a lot more emphasis on personal success or failure.
I wonder who would score higher on an IQ test…
Her daughter:
https://thumb101.shutterstock.com/display_pic_with_logo/502846/139781017/stock-photo-a-young-beautiful-african-american-female-poses-as-a-track-whore-shooting-up-narcotics-in-this-dark-139781017.jpg
Or these two daughters
https://www.ncadd.org/media/k2/items/cache/c4416d79eef6dd018bcee3cd8b8ba561_L.jpg
That’s the thing with IQ tests… you kinda need to even everything out and compare apples with apples … otherwise you get bad results…
In fact the only way to really get something even remotely useful…. would be to test babies just after they are born…. some sort of objective test of brain function.
Because once the environmental factors kick in … comparisons are useless … there is no way to create a test that is not prejudiced.
Obviously a white American person is more likely to test higher than a black American person … because the odds are the white American has attended better schools… has eaten better food… has had access to extra educational opportunities outside of school … is far less likely to have a mother who spends the kid’s lunch money on crack cocaine
This is not difficult to get… anyone who cannot get it … is obviously a ra cist MORE on … and/or operating with a room temperature IQ.
Funny thing is some people do better on the flag test stoned.
It has no questions that require reading…Just pretty flags.
The Indiana Jones of collapsed cultures: Our Western civilization itself is a bubble
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/indiana-jones-collapsed-cultures-western-civilization-bubble
Good read.
“important virtual power platform”. are they going to offer fake food and diesel fuel to power their virtual platform? glad they’re so enthusiastic about their future.
I hereby present… totaly insanity
What they say…
Commenting on the partnership, James Gratton, Senior Engineering Manager, Limejump said: “The flexibility of mobile connectivity means that our smart box deployments into a customer’s working environment is less-invasive. We therefore hold great store in the secure communications provided by Wireless Logic along with their ‘rolled-up’ service delivery. We can focus on our day to day activities knowing that our systems are communicating reliably and to budget.”
Oliver Wallington, Business Development Manager, Wireless Logic said: “Supporting an innovative brand like Limejump demonstrates how M2M/IoT technology can deliver real immediacy in critical areas such as energy management. Wireless Logic’s infrastructure, control platform and connectivity have been designed to complement Limejump’s highly scaleable business model. We look forward to the adoption of this important virtual power platform as it continues its growth throughout the UK.”
https://www.wirelesslogic.com/case_study/limejump/
I want to bring up the Alex Jones thing again because I think it’s important. A whole bunch of platforms have taken the decision almost simultaneously to ban his content. Now Gavin McInnes and the Proud Boys have been deplatformed From Twitter for no apparent reason. Why is this happening? Damned if I know, but Styx is on the case and is explaining it as a coordinated attempt by the legacy media to silence alternative voices that are antagonistic to the legacy media, especially with the mid-term elections on the way, and because the legacy media is loosing ground to these alternative voices.
https://youtu.be/dRTiyfechLw
What would our world be like if we didn’t have the Internet—meaning the Internet as we know it? What would it be like if we didn’t have unfettered access to whatever content and information we can find there? It’s probably worse than most of you would think. Imagine for a minute if we didn’t have the Internet. We would know next to nothing about anything. If all we had was Radio,TV, newspapers, magazines and whatever we could find in bookshops and libraries, our knowledge of current affairs would be limited to what those in charge wanted us to know and good luck anybody trying to dig up information that they want to keep a lid on. We wouldn’t have each other here at OFW or at any of a million other forums. We wouldn’t be doubting the official nine 11 story, or the Iraq WMD story or the Sandy Hook story or Obama’s birth certificate or the viability of renewables or whatever the MSM was telling us about Brexit or collusion with Russia. For better or worse, there would be no Alex Jones and no David Icke to provide “edgy” entertainment or spout “con-sipracy theories”, but there would be precious little margin for anyone to publish content that was not in line with “the consensus” as forced down our throats by those in charge.
More than that, we would no nothing about what’s going on today in all sorts of areas that most of us probably know nothing about in any case because we aren’t paying attention to it.
The sort of Internet the globalists have in mind for us is something more along the lines of the sort of Internet they have in China. Elements of Western Big Tech are happily collaborating with the Chinese government in censoring and monitoring the Chinese people’s every move and keeping their communication options within acceptable bounds. Apple has long built its I-Phones and PCs in China where labor is cheap and docile, and now Tesla is opening a factory in China to produce electric vehicles there.
How does that song go? Anything we can do they can do cheaper. They can do anything cheaper than us. Bezos was apparently so impressed with Chinese work practices that he has attempted to emulate them around the world. The globalists in general are happy to grind down working people’s incomes and increase their working time to levels just high enough to allow them to exist but not high enough to allow them to live. Remember what Gina Rinehart let slip? “Australians need to work harder to compete with Africans who will labour for less than $2 a day.”
And if we didn’t have the Internet, how many of us would know anything about any of the above? If the globalists get there way, we are going to be locked into an information gulag. We will be living in Cyberia. Call Alex Jones a con-spiracy theorist or a buffoon or a tool or a conman if you like. You’re entitled to air your opinions at present. But consider this. By shutting him and his ilk out beyond the pale of SNS decency, they are helping to validate his key claim that the powers want to turn the world into a prison planet—a claim that up to now I for one never took seriously.
This is the thin edge of the wedge for the edgy Internet. So enjoy it while you can and celebrate the freedom it gives you to talk about the things you think are important and to call other people rude names. Those of us who after all these years have learned nothing substantial from the Internet will probably not notice the difference, but the rest of us should be very concerned about this latest coordinated move to restrict freedom of expression.
Note that the MSM — enmasse – removed the comments sections on their sites…. citing difficulty in monitoring unacceptable content… They could hire a person in the Philippines for under 1k per month to do this job….
What would we do without Fast Eddy…. I think I would turn to Fentanyl
CNN does allow comments in my market And I do call them on the BS.
The last time was when they were freaking out about being called fake news on a live feed.
So I played them a CNN clip of waters
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCYEDOZH29k
And I said replace Trump with CNN you said it was legal after all
do you call bullshit also on fake fox news
https://youtu.be/UEQmB5n7JqE
Fake news sharing in US is a rightwing thing, says Oxford study
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/feb/06/sharing-fake-news-us-rightwing-study-trump-university-of-oxford
I wonder what Fox News would say.
Left wing university claims only right wing uses fake news. In other news, dog bites man!
Oxford is a center/right source at best, neoliberal in its outlook.
Kinda like the NYT’s.
FOX and CNN were singing from the same hymnbook on Iraq back in 2003, if I recall correctly.
Any Tee Vee source from a major network is MSM– or it wouldn’t exist.
You really need to get offshore, if you are in the States.
The babies thrown out of incubators was fake news ok, but the Kuwaiti drilling into Iraqi oil fields wasn’t even mentioned. Later, the WMD was fake news, but 1.25million mad-as-hell Sunni refugees fleeing to Syria from a smashed-up Iraq were armed and took over Syria’s oilfields, not good news for that economy. History is Whosestory, after all!
not seeing comments here https://edition.cnn.com/2018/08/11/us/plane-crash-unauthorized-takeoff/index.html
Have at it
Here’s a funny story relating to SeaTac. That’s their cute name for the Seattle Airport. My wife and I were driving down the highway looking for signs to the Seattle airport and didn’t know it was referred to as SeaTac, so we drove past the turn off. Time was getting short on getting the flight so we started debating if SeaTac is the name for their airport. So we turned around, took that turn off and sure enough we got the flight just in time. Is it so hard to just put AIRPORT?
SeaTac sounds military, airport just sound civilian. Americans love the military.
”What would our world be like if we didn’t have the Internet”
It would be like 1984. Again.
For most people 1994 was the same.
I would likely still be mired in DelusiSTAN without the internet …I would still believe in GW
But still, +++++
True: the MSM now offers little more than a comic book view of the world, however ‘serious’ the publication concerned.
As for work conditions in online fulfillment warehouses, they are worse than those which the medieval laws of England gave workers – 2 hours of breaks for meals, and a half-hour siesta!
“Elements of Western Big Tech are happily collaborating with the Chinese government in censoring and monitoring the Chinese people’s every move and keeping their communication options within acceptable bounds. Apple has long built its I-Phones and PCs in China where labor is cheap and docile…”
Although these oppressive SV companies had seemed to be on the side if Internet “freedom.”
of
https://twitter.com/NotABonerGarage/status/1028255334069092352
Margaret Atwood: ‘The Handmaid’s Tale is being read very differently’
Read more at https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/in-conversation/interviews/2018/apr/margaret-atwood-interview/#xO0HBc8WgQKUXbGl.99
She is like the female version of George Orwell..Genius!
I agree—
One of the best.
How does the book compare to tv series? I wasn’t very impressed with s02, thinking maybe the book didn’t cover much more than s01.
Tee Vee?
People still use that?
Great read—-
Well … actually it was a laptop …
Utah man who built bunkers fearing ‘end times’ charged
https://kutv.com/news/local/utah-man-who-built-bunkers-fearing-end-times-charged
Dude was doomsday prepping almost longer than I have been alive..
If only he had listened to Fast Eddy would he have realized it was a waste of time and when you are 82 yrs old you are 98% dead anyway. 🙂
Correction, make that 99.99% dead already. 😉
http://cdn-webimages.wimages.net/0548a6c8c67678ac3c9d98df7f614bbd000316-v5-wm.jpg?v=0
Your friends may be right. I have heard similar stories elsewhere. When we see pictures of violence, they usually are not typical. They are the worst things that happened in some central area of a major city.
The U.S. is a “black hole” destroying global prosperity, Chinese state media says
https://www.newsweek.com/us-black-hole-destroying-global-prosperity-chinese-state-media-says-1068796
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/10/us/puerto-rico-aid.html
Essentially, debt is a claim against future production. If the projected production, or projected increase in production, happens then the debt can be repaid. If not, then the debt is defaulted. If there are a lot of debt defaults, then people and businesses lose expected income at some point in the future. At that point, they lose the ability to consume/produce and/or reinvest off the back of that income.
If there is a big market crash (likely sooner or later) and if this crash is in some way permanent, meaning wholly or partially irreversible, (also quite likely since we are approaching limits to growth), then many investment monies will disappear. Along with that, much ability to consume and/or reinvest disappears in our money and markets mediated system. Under the current market system and without government intervention, this starts a depressionary loop in the economy and the feed-backs of the system make the depression worse and worse.
To sum up from the beginning, the circulation of real goods and services slows due to real restraints meaning scarcer resources and difficulties caused by wastes. This process eventually crashes the market as investors realize asset values are not backed by future possible production and hence not backed by future possible earnings.
The writing off of immense amounts of money (as “debt money”) means less money for wages and profits and thence less money for consumption spending and productive investment spending. This slows the economy further and reduces money for the next step in the loop and so it goes around several loops, depressing the economy even further than the lack of real resources depressed it in the first instance.
To this point, I think Gail and I are in agreement. From this point, our analyses seem to diverge. Gail seems to assume that, faced by this crisis, a government and/or a people will or can do nothing to ameliorate the crisis. Note that I say “ameliorate” as the best case. Nobody, governments or otherwise, will be able to completely solve the problems at that point (meaning a resource-scarcity-determined permanent contraction to complete or partial or even partially-arrested collapse).
I think governments and peoples will do things or at least attempt to do them. Whether these attempts are positive or negative (making matters better or worse) will depend on the precise actions.
The first option open to a government in an existential emergency (one which threatens the nation’s existence) is to go on a command footing. This is what governments, including the government of the USA, did during world war 2. On a command footing, governments will requisition and conscript. Materials, goods and services will be requisitioned. Payment for same will be any or all of deferred, partial or non-existent. Workers and even companies and corporations will be conscripted. That is to say they will be ordered what to do, where to work and what to produce. Market mechanisms will be partially, though not wholly, supplanted. Rationing will be introduced.
These are examples of what can happen under a command system when the nation faces an existential crisis. To think that governments, elites and even the common people will just let things fall apart and let themselves collapse and die without national and communal efforts, is to ignore the lessons of history. Strong, cohesive nations find a way to survive, even in the face of extreme challenges and even at large levels of loss and sacrifice.
Who knows, the losses may be as high as 50% per generation. Nevertheless, I think strong nations, strong peoples, with strong community values can and will fight on. The survival instinct is very strong. People will adjust to lower living standards, lower expectations and so on. There will be remnant peoples, most likely. There will be remnant levels of civilization in some regions, most likely. Note, I say “most likely” and I don’t nominate the remaining level of civilization. I don’t claim certain knowledge.
“The survival instinct is very strong. People will adjust to lower living standards, lower expectations and so on.”
yes… good conclusion…
what I am seeing is that all the people I know who have jobs keep showing up one work day after another…
I’m sure most of them are blind optimists, but still, what should we do if we think that the major problems in the world are going to collapse IC very soon?
give up?
that’s my suggestion when I’m joking about the futility of human existence…
but, in practice, that’s not what most of us do…
the opioid addicts are in a sense “giving up”…
not all of us can laugh in the face of the coming doom…
The joker in the pack is the level of ecological damage which global industrial civilization has inflicted.
Earlier great cities usually damaged their hinterland, leaving much which was further afield comparatively untouched – both natural resources and human societies.
But this is very far from the case today.
We are destroying our own possible refuges.
And previous civilisations were building their tools and buildings using less transformed materials. The people surviving a collapse could use it to build what they needed instead, as raw material.
In our case, rebuilding tools and building using what was left of civilisation before collapse, to build what we need to survive, will be harder.
We will have plenty of highly transformed material, like concrete. But without enough energy, concrete can’t be reused to build an other more appropriate building, unlike stones. Or big asphalted areas impossible to grow food.
The facilities we have now are not useful without our energy system. And can’t be transformed without this system.
David Stockman: The World Economy Is At An Epochal Pivot
A ‘great reset’ approaches…
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-08-11/david-stockman-world-economy-epochal-pivot
No reset
That reminds me of those people who say…”Can’t we just delete all the debts?”
This debt bubble is behind quite a few people’s wages. Stop the debt; stop the wages. The price of commodities will drop through the floor. What does all of this do to the system? How do we get an increase in commodity production again?
– negative interest rates (gov blockchain) = cash ban
– selective debt jubilees proping up core hub JITs
– UBI keeping the desired consumption level
.. denying the periphery where possible
..
=> high probability it would work at least for a while..
No need to ban cash for slightly negative interest rates.
With negative interest rates less need for debt jubilees.
UBI could replace pensions about to fail.
Done globally, at least US+EU, so currencies only lose value relative to reality, not to each other.
Yes, that’s a good point in many parts of the world the commercial-employer pension component is big enough or bigger than the gov pension system, so the UBI phase in would be tweaked accordingly.
“Stockman’s main warning is that there’s no bid underneath this market — that when perception shifts from greed to fear, the bottom is much farther down than most investors realize. In his words, it’s “rigged for implosion”.
He predicts a Great Reset is imminent. One that, for those who see it coming and take prudent action today, will offer tremendous, perhaps once-in-a-lifetime, investment opportunity once the dust settles.”
I think he’s correct that soon there will be a “reset”…
assets will plunge to much lower valuations…
but he’s probably wrong about the “investment opportunity”…
I doubt asset prices will recover much at all…
we will be in a lower economic level…
to be clear: an asset “reset” does not equal The Collapse…
but someday down the road, one of these types of resets/recessions/depressions may bring on The Collapse…
doesn’t look like 2018, though the obvious problems in UK Turkey Brazil etc makes the timeline appear to be getting closer…
but, whatever:
BAU tonight, baby!
Steve over at Scrocco report says buy gold and silver and you will be set….
Steve is delusional
Given they are capable of at least some level of “transmutation” one wonders what the costs are, perhaps still bad vs. mining, that’s perhaps why Vlad’s supposedly still stacking – not able to produce these short cut toys at the moment..
Otherwise why bother.
Ten years left to redesign lithium-ion batteries
Reserves of cobalt and nickel used in electric-vehicle cells will not meet future demand.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05752-3?utm_source=twt_na&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=NNPnature&error=cookies_not_supported&code=513b3e0d-37e5-4dfe-bac6-81c551f8bc1d
But Tesla is claiming a breakthrough already.
https://www.reuters.com/article/cobalt-evs-ahome/column-tesla-leads-electric-vehicle-race-to-cut-cobalt-dependency-andy-home-idUSL5N1T8366
Benchmark Minerals, a specialist battery research company, estimates that over the last six years Tesla has reduced the average amount of cobalt used in its vehicles by 60 percent from 11 kilograms to 4.5 kilograms per car.
That may have been the easy bit. Eliminating it altogether is going to be much harder, Benchmark Minerals argues.
. . .
Indeed, Musk boasted in a letter to shareholders that the latest Panasonic battery design means cobalt usage “is already lower than next-generation cathodes that will be made by other cell producers with a nickel-manganese-cobalt ratio of 8:1:1”.
Never believe a liar
Tesla CEO Elon Musk was sued on Friday for an alleged scheme one investor claimed was concocted to ‘completely decimate’ short-sellers.
Tesla Inc. and its chief executive Elon Musk were sued twice on Friday by investors who said they fraudulently engineered a scheme to squeeze short-sellers, including through Musk’s proposal to take the electric car company private.
The lawsuits were filed three days after Musk stunned investors by announcing on Twitter that he might take Tesla private in a record $72 billion US transaction that valued the company at $420 per share, and that “funding” had been “secured.”
In one of the lawsuits, the plaintiff Kalman Isaacs said Musk’s tweets were false and misleading, and together with Tesla’s failure to correct them amounted to a “nuclear attack” designed to “completely decimate” short-sellers.
The lawsuits filed by Isaacs and William Chamberlain said Musk’s and Tesla’s conduct artificially inflated Tesla’s stock price and violated federal securities laws.
Tesla did not respond to a request for comment on the proposed class-action complaint filed in the federal court in San Francisco. The company is based in nearby Palo Alto, Calif.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/elon-musk-tesla-lawsuit-tweets-1.4781880
Liar, over funded BAU extension messiah or not the actual reality remains solid as “his” factories are churning out hi-end batts (and other components) which will be useful next 20+ yrs..
Tell me this is meant to be sarcasm….
I’m ~[60:40] person; so roughly 60% sarcasm and 40% realism potential.
lithium ion was commercialized in the early 1990’s by the Japanese.
It has been a while– and something had better happen soon—
Just saying, my techno centric friends——-
There are many flavors (chemistry) under this lithium batt umbrella..
One can be happy with the ~2003year generation stuff, Goodenough no pun (in-)tended lolz, for the lifespan of two decades in stationary use. If you insist on sport carz and or high output stationary, well that’s more advanced-costly stuff obviously..
Gail – thanks for the recommendation – this is excellent
https://www.audible.com/pd/Nonfiction/Catching-Fire-Audiobook/B003ZTCURO?ref=a_a_library_c4_libItem_3_B003ZTCURO&pf_rd_p=ae76b2bb-e63d-4a67-b357-dab3dee05ca1&pf_rd_r=6CGWF5H065ZRKX28XC1Z&
Utah Man Who Built Bunkers Fearing ‘End Times’ Charged
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/utah/articles/2018-08-10/utah-man-who-built-bunkers-fearing-end-times-charged
Speaking of pipelines..
Having little “Middle East fatique” lately? Well watch this comedy gem to cure then.
Priceless thank you
Nevertheless, sorry to spoil it a bit, lets be real, there are only two options:
1/ Jeffrey Sachs probably just has got higher security clearance than the speaking heads at that msm studio, scripted event to more or less announce the withdrawal in Q1, and force this and other msm outlets to finally admit it, which effectively happened by now.
2/ Jeffrey Sachs despite his crazy role during early mid 1990s, luring every CEE+former Soviet govs on introducing shock market therapy there, which crippled these countries and eventually transferred billions out in various crime schemes and much more in aggregate rent since then, was just “innocent” zealot academic some sort of naive-libertarianish buddy ala Ron Paul or such..
Sachs has made some major mistakes, Russia he totally miscalculated. He has some insight here, but a majorly flawed person.
Addendum to above
Option 1/
They all sit in the studio pretty stiff, evidently awaiting good prof. to deliver onto them some unpleasant revenge “truth talk” bomb ala ” I told you so ~7yrs ago !” Now he is not being interrupted, screamed, questioned, at all, etc., highly unusual given msm standards on these topics.
So, someone somewhere okayed this, lets invite Jeffrey to work there like inserting rod into the reactor chamber doing the chain reaction vs. the average navy-military satanist guest (right screen). So, time wise it did happen as Q1-Q2 2018 the US withdrew from the plan of overthrowing Assad (for now), obviously because of many failures and other pressures, e.g. allied Turkey in the invasion changing sides etc.
Jeffrey is an asset 39% probability..
—
Option 2/
There is indeed econ-political ~club of free market zealots, who are stellar on understanding empire politics corruption, this permanent-deep state nexus etc., while peddling market orthodoxies, Ron/Rand Pauls narrative probably the best examples for the US audience. Now these scholars have been also present through out Europe since late 1960s and Jeffrey was flanked by these types in each individual country in the early mid 1990s when he went there, that’s known fact.
I tend to like Jeffrey’s prankster style revenge style, and he was not spoon feeding the CEE region to sign on the devilish deal then (well int money-loans and other goodies where cleverly attached indeed by IMF and so on), nevertheless lets grant him the benefit of the doubt he is just free market orthodox and maverick public policy commentator.
Jeffrey is not intel asset 59%..
The owning class and military elite state. Joe six pack will never be allowed to make policy.
The implosion of the former producer of substantial amounts of oil in the Eastern Europe continues:
Thousands Of Romanians Protest Against Government In Bucharest
https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-seaRl6oxfl0/Txeki9wHRiI/AAAAAAAAEmg/jRPtmmplfvw/s1600/3%2BRomanian%2Boil%2Bproduction.png
so it look like nothing has change for Romanians since
revolution of 1989
https://youtu.be/HFBnP1HQ7rQ
https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1097&bih=529&ei=34FvW5HBIIKIsQXXyJfYBA&q=romanian+capital+building&oq=romanian+capital&gs_l=img.1.2.0l2j0i30k1j0i24k1.2014.6099.0.12113.16.12.0.4.4.0.140.1399.0j11.11.0….0…1ac.1.64.img..1.15.1442…0i8i30k1.0.l-qDEN9CWKo#imgrc=7jrRsmt4sMblNM:&spf=1534034424571
That’s a photo of Romania’s capital building Nicolae Ceaseasu had built back in the 80’s that left the common Romanian abjectly poor with 10’s of thousands of orphans, and why they violently revolted and did away with the maniac. Now it’s for different reasons but probably same old story of too little to go around along with corruption and further down the timeline of the oil age.
The construction is cheap, it keeps the population occupied. The regime simply could not afford higher wages for its population. Building of such insane buildings is part of the situation when there is not enough, like the construction of the Empire State Building during the Great Depression in 1929 – the workforce was incredibly cheap and abundant.
Life expectancy up, infant mortality down, GDP/cap way up.
Well, when the population goes down, the things may become a bit better, as long as there are resources (energy) that can be imported.
Communism seems like a really bad way to get value out of oil.
It does not matter if it is called communism, socialism, capitalism or whatever. The problem is the misconception about the value of the human resources in the world with the declining energy available for the human species, i.e. the less chldren is more, as, in the end, the parents must fight over resources with their own children, the population is aged and full of genetic mutations and the only help is more and more machines that can do the work instead of the people. The costs of raising new members of the population surpass the value they can provide.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Romania
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/timeline/56928a3901c0d909d43cbbd4cdc0f087.png
“Romania’s population declined steadily in recent years, from 21.7 million in 2002 to 19.9 million in 2014.[7] More specifically, in the last decade, the population of Romania decreased by 7.5%, the most important moment for the country’s demography being 2008, when the number of inhabitants dropped by 600,000 people.[8] Among the causes of population decline are high mortality, low fertility rate after 1989, and emigration.[7]”
It is interesting that exactly the year of 2008 recorded such a big decline of population. It is also interesting that Romania is counted among the pioneering countries in the oil production in the world.
“Romania is the first country in the world that officially recorded the oil production- the world’s first refinery in Ploieşti – Bucharest, the first city in the world illuminated with kerosene”
http://www.imperialtransilvania.com/2017/05/13/read-more/argomenti/events-1/articolo/romania-has-marked-the-world-history-of-oil.html
Still oil consumption/capita is way down at the same time (I suspect) most romanians think things are better now than 1988.
The oil consumption may be much lower also due to the fact that the numbers of people working outside Romania are higher than the statistics show, so they do not consume oil in Romania.
The lower population surely contributes to better situation in Romania, as those, who can work, can find better jobs elswhere.
Energy consumption reflects what those who live within Romania can afford to use. Also, it includes what businesses in Romania use.
Romania’s oil, coal, and gas production are all declining, and it is not making up the difference in imports. The country has been failing in some sense, since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. This is another chart from the same series, updated with data through 2016.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2018/08/romania-energy-consumption-through-2016-mazamascience.png
plus lot of land grabbing is happening in Romania
https://youtu.be/UbLxyZm4jVk
When the population is going down and the demand for food with it, the costs of food production are rising, then the only income, that land can generate, can be the EU subsidies.
The Italians know how to milk the EU cow from their depopulating Italy:
Italian Farms, Slovak Soil
https://www.occrp.org/en/amurderedjournalistslastinvestigation/italian-farms-slovak-soil
“Reporters found that the Vadala and the Roda have ties to the ‘Ndrangheta, one of Italy’s most powerful and dangerous criminal groups. It is known for its skill at cheating the EU out of pots of public money, such as farm subsidies.”
Thank you 3WP, will have a more careful look later.
Beautiful views, could be a place sitting out the apocalypse in.
Very nice indeed..
Well, if we eventually get back feudalism proper, .. , especially the northerly based dutchy out of today’s Romania played some token role in European/CEE politics, i.e. as the most Eastern outpost in that area, meaning Latin schools, christian churches, nobility of the area hired and intermarried within the wider Hapsburg, Bavarian, Polish kingdom houses etc.. Well, it was the time of the peak of Turkish invasion, so that played a role, as every little noble and piece of productive land close to the front counted.. so that’s why they were fairly well naturally connected to the more central areas of Europe..
What is the price for land? Can I buy?
Do not forget that you will have to pay the taxes.
And care for the land, i.e. mowing, removing weeds and shrubs etc. It requires a lot of energy.
The rich get richer, and millennials miss out
More than half of global wealth is owned by the top 1%
BUOYANT financial markets meant that global wealth rose by 6.4% in the 12 months to June, the fastest pace since 2012. And the ranks of the rich expanded again, with 2.3m new millionaires added to the total, according to the Credit Suisse Research Institute’s global wealth report.
The report underlines the sharp divide between the wealthy and the rest. If the world’s wealth were divided equally, each household would have $56,540. Instead, the top 1% own more than half of all global wealth. The median wealth per household is just $3,582; if you own more than that, you are in the richest 50% of the world’s population.
America continues to dominate the ranks of millionaires with 43% of the global total. Both Japan and Britain had fewer dollar millionaires than they did in June 2016, thanks to declines in the yen and sterling. Emerging economies have been catching up in the millionaire stakes; they now have 8.4% of the global total, up from 2.7% in 2000.
In the 12 months covered by the report, the biggest proportionate gains in wealth occurred in Poland, Israel and South Africa, thanks to a combination of stockmarket and currency gains. Egypt is by far the biggest loser, having lost almost half its wealth in dollar terms. Switzerland is still the country with the highest mean and median wealth per person.
There is a wide generational gap: millennials (those who reached adulthood in the current millennium) have a lot of catching up to do in the wealth stakes. Americans currently aged between 30 and 39 years of age are calculated to have amassed 46% less wealth on average in 2017 than the equivalent cohort had gathered in 2007.
Higher student debts and the difficulty of getting on the housing ladder have made it harder for millennials to build a nest-egg. That disparity might come back to bite the baby-boomer generation, who are fast moving into retirement. When baby-boomers want to cash in their assets, they may find millennials can’t afford to buy them at current prices.
https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2017/11/16/the-rich-get-richer-and-millennials-miss-out
The millennials are holding off on starting families, too. They have good reason to feel insecure in their jobs, and too many have debt.
“Americans currently aged between 30 and 39 years of age are calculated to have amassed 46% less wealth on average in 2017 than the equivalent cohort had gathered in 2007.”
they are still one of the luckiest generations ever… for now, anyway…
imagine the “wealth” of the generation that is now between 0 and 9 years of age when they get to the year 2047…
does the phrase “dirt poor” seem appropriate?
does anyone feel a numb sadness when they now see a pregnant woman?
Well, pregnant women usually look quite contented – at least some happiness for them. It’s even worse when listening to parents planning the glorious futures of their –
pretty, clever children: but parenthood has always been a slightly delusional state I suppose.
And starting savings account for them so they can buy in to the real estate marked, anno 2035…
Here in Japan, a lot of the over 60s have lived fairly frugally and have plenty of money stashed away, but their middle aged children are earning relatively less, facing greater financial commitments, and finding it harder to remain middle class, so it has become common for the oldsters to pay towards the college educations of their grandchildren, taking on a responsibility that was formerly in the hands of parents.
Also, the youngsters of 40 years ago used to be happy to stay in dormitories or to take one room in a boarding house and share the bath., but these days they want their own “apartment” with all mod cons, their own smartphone, and, and outside of the urban areas, their own car. A part time job at McDonald’s is not going to cover costs of that magnitude and so the grandparents are often tapped for funds.
It is not just the young ones.
We were at a housewarming party A new house 3000 sq foot for 2 people age 50 something after the party people were saying it was a bit small.
PS 50 KG of blueberry’s cost about 100 bucks Canadian at farm gate in NS.
If you know any one interested we have a glut…See Oxford frozen foods I think they peak at 400 employees just for wild blueberry’s.
And then there is of all that student debt that will attach the inheritance of these millennials as their baby boomer parents pass on. Big Brother thinks of everything.
New Zealand to ban foreigners from buying houses after a spending splurge by millionaires seeking doomsday bolt-holes crowded out local buyers and pushed up property prices.
https://www.smh.com.au/world/oceania/new-zealand-to-ban-foreigners-from-buying-homes-20180811-p4zwwi.html
Ya but they are not restricted from buying new builds….
Did I mention a couple of builders that I play hockey with were telling me about mega homes they worked on for foreigners? They built them and they are sitting empty…. one of them was apparently a 5 million dollar log cabin brought in from Canada and finished here.
America is going to implode but NZ will carry on as if nothing happened…. not
Migrant farmers strike in Italy after 16 road deaths
African migrant labourers have gone on strike in Italy in protest at their poor working conditions, after 16 workers died in road crashes.
Shouting “we are not slaves”, farm workers downed tools and marched on the city of Foggia in southern Italy.
The strike comes after 16 migrants died in two separate accidents in 48 hours.
In both cases, lorries carrying tomatoes collided with vans carrying the labourers home after their day’s work.
Four workers died in a crash in the Puglia region on Saturday, and 12 more perished in a head-on collision near Lesina north of Foggia two days later.
The labourers say recruiters who may be linked to organised crime drive them from farm to farm in overcrowded vans, and fail to give them work contracts.
A “red hat march” was announced by farm workers on Saturday – echoing the hats worn by tomato pickers in the fields around Foggia.
Thousands of migrant labourers come to Italy in the summer, earning as little as one euro (£0.90; $1.15) for picking 100kg (221lb) of tomatoes.
Most of them have regular papers, but they are usually paid below the legal wage. Many are forced to live in shanty towns without electricity or water.
Ibrahim Sissoko told Reuters that they are “treated like slaves” in the unregulated industry.
“There is no other work here for us and they know it, so they take advantage,” he said.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45117063
this show how much Italians are dependent on cheap Africans slaves
for farming
Yep, TWP: we can think of that when the people in Brussels talk about ‘European traditions and ideals’…..
funny thing is if Italy remove these Africans slaves
and put native Italians on the farms
the food price will become so high
that people of Italy will do riots over it
So they pick about 600 tomatoes and get about a dollar. If they paid 2x that it would not change the price at the market.
ok then why not Italians who are very high iq people
are not finding solution to this issue
More than one country has a problem finding enough low wage workers to pick fruit and vegetables.
It is slow going for me, when I pick a few blueberries from my three bushes, and a few figs from my tree. I always wonder how the grocery supply chain can provide fruit as cheaply as it can.
Quality fruits and vegetables are quite expensive here in Europe according to wages. They say eat 5 fruit or vegetables each day to keep healthy but poor people can’t. And if it has too be organic… I do. I have a tiny garden, I have a great crop of very sweet and tasty tomatoes due to a nice spring and hot summer. But right, lot of work, and it’s just for the pleasure. I’m not a DP, hold your fire FE.
For those poor slaves in Italy, industry needs a huge amount of low quality tomatoes for junk food, industrial pizzas, tomato sauces….
Given the amount of poison sprayed onto crops… it makes total sense to grow food. We’ve got a neighbour who runs a commercial organic operation — we will approach to purchase food….
Many people are aware of this operation … many….
Just to give you an idea what we are paying
https://www.gatewaymeatmarket.com/about.php
This is a small mom and pop so is a bit more pricey than a big box but is a quick in and out with a floor space of a half a basketball court
We buy 50 kg of blueberries a year from a farm in NS it is just him and his wife no employees and he has over 100 HA. He also does maple products and he hires family members mostly for kids parties…pour it on the snow hot and they eat it.
That’s a lot of blueberries, Zenny. If you eat those kind of quantities you’ll be getting hunter-gatherer levels of nutrients and antioxidants. The only downside I can think of is you might turn purple! I buy a few kg of dry blueberries a year to eat with raw oats, walnuts, sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds swimming in milk—a favorite snack of mine. And like Gail I have a few blueberry bushes that are producing fresh berries at this time of year. But 50 kg?!!! How do you manage to much through that much?
Dry frozen juice jam jelly and in muffins and pancakes also as a concentrate.
From the MSM I was getting the impression -as I was meant to – that Iran was in a state of great turmoil and violent protests: but talking to Iranians last night at a party, they say it’s the same old same old, and nothing can break that regime (much as they want it). A bit like the ‘imminent collapse of Russia’ meme we were fed a few years ago?
https://gizadeathstar.com/2018/08/you-might-want-to-save-those-typewriters-and-steam-locomotives/
“Many people may not be aware, but the Union Pacific Railroad in this country has been busy, for some years now, buying up old steam locomotives, including the big articulated steam locomotives – the 4-6-6-4 Challengers, and the 4-8-8-4 Big Boy – and restoring them, converting them to oil use. They call this their “heritage fleet,” and the old engines are seen occasionally at “railroad heritage” celebrations around the country hauling passengers. Which raised a significant question to my mind: why would a major railroad be going to all the expense to buy and restore these old clanking mechanical monsters, seemingly almost alive with their snorting, huffing, and puffing?”
I thought this comment in the article was interesting:
“So one can restore all the steam locomotives one wishes, but the engineer still has to follow the signals on the track… and if that signalling goes down, no trains roll…”
Restoring the trains seems to be a way from getting back to the old way of doing things, with analog controls, without dependency on electricity. But there are still the controls that operate the system. If grid electricity goes down, we still can’t operate oil-based locomotives. (We also can’t pump gasoline at gas stations. And many of the pipelines carrying fuel won’t work. Some natural gas pipelines burn natural gas for power, but as far as I know, petroleum pipelines are powered by electricity.
If the grid goes down trains couldstill roll regionally at a much reduced rate.
i think earth is in peak of life circle
first were bacteria who start life on earth
the growth phase of earth came Dinosaur
the peak of the earth are homo sapiens
and when we will gone for this planet
the earth will go in decay phase
and then collapse of earth through sun become red giant
Now your being specieist … homo sapiens the peak … pff
I am wondering if you may be correct. We have used most of the easy-to-extract fossil fuels. This gave humans a big advantage over other species. The world that is left will evolve in different ways, but it hard to see another species like humans evolving.
An hour of Alex Jones on how and why he’s being deplatformed, how the US is headed for civil war, and how big tech is a nest of CIA/Chinese communist enabled cultists who our out to destroy our freedoms and make us all as miserable as they are.
Taking down Infowars is a beta test for the globalists, says Alex. If they can get away with this play, then gagging the rest of us will be child’s play. This blog, for instance, probably doesn’t please the ruling cabal, if they’ve noticed its existence. So it could be made to disappear on the pretext that harboring doubts about the benefits of wind turbines or making fun of Elon was “hate speech”.
https://youtu.be/7r_3Bstma7g
Alex is a buffoon at best, but most likely an active disinfo operation tasked with herding specific segment of pop/social segment into some predefined corrals/boxes of control on one hand, And on the other end keeping the matrix intact for the silent majority, aka “don’t dare look there it’s Alex’s crazy stuff – enough said”..
It’s kind of interesting this style of kindergarten crowd control techniques are not seen for what they clearly are..
So you say about AJ, yet he has revealed many truths not revealed by MSM.
I guess I’ve already answered it above. If you like it translated – more specific:
– AJ just should know better, he’s is well versed in history relatively speaking (for msm personality), similarly to many of his production collaborators of lets say more tame personality, yet he is actively corralling souls for dubious characters such as the Orange Don as supposed champion of the poor working guy-family, while he is actively associating himself with many neocon cadre etc., well it could be on the Don’s side naivete-laziness-lack of knowledge-actual impossibility not to be eaten by the swamp, whatever, .. but this has been very well known as risk or possibility way before and voiced by many..
– perhaps I’m to biased / harsh on AJ as the US political system party duopoly and msm situation is much insular than in most other industrial and or even 1.5/2/3rd world countries, so to put some information out demands half crazy presentation theatricals
– sorry nevertheless my overall summary remains the same, AJ simply shows most of the signs as actively dancing with the msm on encapsulating all the dissenting info into sort of dog’s bowel mess, which is easy to repel people..
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/10/26/13418304/alex-jones-j
ew
ish-mafia
But you are correct, should the staffers at major corp. and gov start running around with fresh print outs of OFWs, wild red eyes, people manically talking about it at office cafeteria and slowly bringing it up at office meetings challenging the bosses as well, you can bet they would zap this site in an instant as the early trend becomes noticeable to them..
But such wide spreading awareness-curiosity tide pickup in FW issues most likely never happens prior to major realignments aka drop out in civ organizational density .. and then after the event it doesn’t matter, so ..
‘They’ will only zap the non-paranoid segment of this site, which is to say the ones who don’t use collapse issues as a safe space for developing their unique derangements without fear. When collapse is just another excuse for being edgy and nihilistic while avoiding real analysis or introspection, it is anodyne and probably even beneficial.
Thar’s seemingly valid point, but the problem is the scale and evaluation of the unknown, who is then the “most edgy” or not nihilistic among us enough so to speak? For example I usually try to offer the reductive approach and then go for the jugular, it works most of the time. On the other hand some mega trends needs their “4th turnings” and or entire human lifespan to fruition (acceptance-confirmation) – who’s got the patience for that on the internet forum, lolz?
People who have an objective interest in this subject – at least as objective as humanly possible – tend not to be edgy and nihilistic. There is no point to it without some ulterior egoistic motive.
How do you judge who has an objective interest in this subject? How can you be sure your own judgements are not subjective? What makes you so sure that the sweeping statements and generalizations you often make are any more than personal opinions influenced by your own subjective biases and prejudices? Just askin’.
What makes you so sure of the veracity of any number of i-diotic things you say, or for that matter of the validity of the questions you asked? Same here, except I lack a motive other than simple curiosity, or perhaps curiosity caused by fear.
Me? I’m not sure of the veracity of anything I say. I admit to being one of the permanently perplexed. But then again, I follow the proverbial Buddhist advice not to cherish opinions and to hold no head above my own, so I don’t view lack of certainty as a particular problem.
You’ve responded to my questions with another question and a snide putdown. Now that I’ve been good enough to answer it, perhaps you could be so good as to answer just one of mine. I’ll keep it to one simple question this time so as not to give you too much wiggle room. That way, if you make a really big effort, you might surprise us all by coming up with a straight answer.
How do you judge who has an objective interest in this subject?
@Tim every comment of yours features snide putdowns, so who are you bs’ing? Anyway, I already answered your question, but to clarify – one can reliably judge one’s own objectivity, and the only way to do that is via truthful introspection (of motives, contradictions etc). When it comes to others, only speculation is possible.
Tim is a key member of The Core. That gives him the right to make snide putdowns. He also has the god given right to shoot dead DelusisTANIS
Who are you?
Thanks for a straight answer.
Tim every comment of yours features snide putdowns
Every single one? OK, if you say so, Jup.
And you’re not prone to exaggeration, are you? 🙂
QED!
Jup and his low IQ will now perform a Stewpid MORE on Trick.
He will type inane comments and breath at the same time
FE, you need to see a demonologist.
Well done. Come and get it
https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/bone-shaped-dog-treat-close-up-31687704.jpg
I don’t want to kick your axs FE. You can have it.
Next thing Jup will be asking you for an autograph
Basic survival skill in an insane society, know when to keep your mouth shut.
I know people hate him but they are not fact checking.
He is one of the first out of the gate on lots of info.
Gay frogs is true and people are in jail for giving kids computers and spying on them.
Were does your kid keep its laptop
Well, if you are as Alex tasked with mind/opinion control of specific segment of population – you are by definition necessarily (co-)leading the debate on the potentially hottest topics etc. That’s the nature of it, art of the trade.
We can’t downplay it as money scheme only (or craziness only), he is evidently and actively flip flopping on active citizen participation (democracy on/off) while intermixing various hot topic of “his” priority list be it from elite dark rituals to chemtrails to poisoned water to black helicopters to … whatever …
Sorry, the probability this is some sort of deliberate mind washing apparatus and diversion is like 99% in my book.
Perfect human for late stage capitalism.
Perhaps you are tasked with mind control on this website. After all, the social media and MSM, with all their trillions, could hire many disinformation agents….perhaps like yourself. I listen to AJ on and off and I have never heard the outlandish stuff they claim he says. And for Sandy Hook….show me the CCT video confiscated by the FBI…or shut up about knowing anything factual.
oh this funny guy who said that
nasa has child sex slavery on mars
https://youtu.be/kSQA87k2kwU
Declare a state of national emergency, and doubting the Windy-Solar God becomes ‘defeatism’.
I believe all regimes shoot people for that sort of thing: just as armies feel entitled to shoot soldiers who dare to discuss the progress of the war and performance of their generals in anything but the most positive terms.
When I was at The Guardian, I casually pointed out that certain forms of marketing ‘obviously never worked at all’: horror all round.
Office life taught me a lot about totalitarianism and self-censorship.
Working in a serious atmosphere white collar job with hundreds of other people, I taped a Mad Magazine joke on the wall in the coffee room, then started to pour myself some coffee, when the 2nd highest head haunch walked in saw the joke and said, “Do you know who stuck this here!!” I quickly said, “No.” He tore it from the wall and stormed off to try and find out who did. Lesson: One must adhere to groupthink if it’s part of the job.
Even OFW has censorship. True freedom is nowhere.
Just wait till Alex Jones finds out that Gail is dating Wile E Coyote. That would be illegal in some states. Or maybe it was Alex that started the rumor?
My husband wouldn’t be too happy about my dating Wile E Coyote, either!
I’m not going to believe that particular rumor until Gail expressly denies it.
Fox news is now talking about alien conspiracies in their “Science” section..
Astronaut claims he witnessed an ‘organic, alien-like’ creature but NASA is denying it
http://www.foxnews.com/science/2018/08/10/astronaut-claims-witnessed-organic-alien-like-creature-but-nasa-is-denying-it.html
You can’t make this stuff up..LOL
Ties in with Enron Musk’s Mars Colony PR campaign…
Now even the ECB is beginning to fret about the potential impact the plummeting Turkish Lira may have on Eurozone banks that are heavily exposed to Turkey’s economy via large amounts in loans — much of it in euros — through banks they acquired in Turkey. Given the plunge in the lira, companies have trouble servicing their euro loans and are beginning to default. And loans in local currency are plunging in value along with the currency. This is how the currency crisis in Turkey, which is turning into a debt crisis, could set off contagion effects among banks in France, Spain and Italy — a risk we have been exposing for two years.
The ECB is concerned that Turkish borrowers might not be hedged against the lira’s weakness and begin to default on foreign currency loans, which account for a staggering 40% of the Turkish banking sector’s assets, the FT reported. Turkey leads all other major emerging markets on total foreign-currency-denominated debt (including public debt), which hit nearly 70% of GDP last year (up from 39% in 2009).
https://wolfstreet.com/2018/08/10/bbva-bnp-unicredit-european-banks-plunge-ecb-contagion-turkey-lira/
Again, the sudden focus on Turkey now is only because it has become an outcast after the failed coup to topple the Erdogan gov, actually the situation got much out of hand with the consecutive reaction when he deleted most of the real or prospective “traitors” from the mil and gov structures, in parallel seeking broader alliances in the East. In recent days Don sanctioned Turkey, key NATO ally, go figure..
Italy and Greece and others are in comparable or actually much worse economic situation, however they are still considered somewhat docile sheepanian provinces, albeit Italy has been lately rising its head a bit with the populist element in the gov focusing on the migrant question.
actually imposed higher tariffs to be more precise but it’s just from the same toolbox of overall domination projecting package..
If you don’t do as the captain of the life boat tells you …. you end up in the sea?
I had the pleasure of working in Turkey. Man they put the low in low IQ.
I know people that went as a tourist and liked it I always tell them Try working with them.
Man they put the low in low IQ.
I know people that went as a tourist and liked it I always tell them Try working with them.
again iq bullshit
btw why greece is so bad position when has very high iq population ?
Hint: You live in a Greek World.
Q: Why is Greece in such a bad position when it has very high IQ population?
A: Greece doesn’t have a very high IQ population.
The smart fraction theory of IQ and the wealth of nations.
Greece has expensive fuel sources. A large share of its energy consumption is oil. This makes high oil prices a huge problem for the economy.
in this article showing that high iq has means high gdp per capita
if this true then
why china was in so bad situation before opening up of china market
In a word: communism.
A coefficient of correlation of 0.73 is high. It cannot be argued against merely by giving counter examples.
I would agree with Yorchichan, regarding the fact that communism does not work well. The incentives don’t work correctly. What report is the 0.73 correlation from? (There is not response link to Yorchchan, so I am responding here.)
From what I’ve read, Lynn and Vanahem’s study had serious flaws in methodology – like comparing the IQs of children & adults in different countries (!!!) BTW the modal IQ of any country is 100, which means the only truthful result you will get when comparing countries’ IQ is a comparison with the no 100. If you try to include all countries as one population source for your calculation, you run into difficulties attempting to standardise the participants for age, s-ex, social grouping, etc, and these things invalidate any meaningful data that can be extracted. Learn some basic math before running your mouth off on IQ.
The white-hating, leftist, lying, sophists controlling the media and academia would love to be able to point to some research showing no difference in IQ between the races. The fact they cannot tells you all you need to know about the truth of the matter. Every study on race and IQ ever done shows there is a strong link between race and IQ.
There are myriad genetic differences between races, genders, and individuals, IQ being one of them. The degree to which they are correlated with specific properties like IQ or wealth is highly case-sensitive. That is what the accepted research shows.
The collapse worldview especially isn’t compatible with any specific causal link between intelligence, genetics and race that is independent of the surplus energy acquisition/availability factor. This latter is of course part of the white-hating, leftist, lying, sophist category of “environment”.
The connection between race and intelligence has been a subject of debate in both popular science and academic research since the inception of IQ testing in the early 20th century.
There remains some debate as to whether and to what extent differences in intelligence test scores reflect environmental factors as opposed to genetic ones, as well as to the definitions of what “race” and “intelligence” are, and whether they can be objectively defined at all.
Currently, there is no non-circumstantial evidence that these differences in test scores have a genetic component, although some researchers believe that the existing circumstantial evidence makes it at least plausible that hard evidence for a genetic component will eventually be found.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence
What exactly is a race anyway? Is a white Russian the same as a white American?
So how do you generalize about a race?
And who is putting together these IQ tests? Is a hunter gatherer smarter or dumber than an investment banker? Let’s dump a banker into the bush and see how smart he is
Anyone who attempts to make the argument that one race is smarter than another is a f789ing MORE on.
You … are a MORE on.
And you are so f789ing stewpid… that no matter how simple the terms I use to explain why you are a MORE on… you will never understand
Feel free to demonstrate more stewpidity… I expect it… because there is no cure for it.
East Asians score higher on IQ tests than whites who score higher than blacks. Man made glowbal walming is real. Refugees have caused a huge uptick in crimes in Europe. Many people will be eating turkey again this coming Christmas in spite of the fact you wrote three years ago that we’d be enjoying turkey at Christmas for the last time. The list of things you get wrong is almost as long as the list of topics you post on.
Throwing a tantrum every time someone posts a comment you don’t like does not make you correct. If you want to see the greatest mor-on posting on OFW look in a mirror.
Again, without standardised samples such differences in scores mean little when trying to establish Bayesian causation to external entities.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sl9-tY1oZNw
https://www.nationalreview.com/2015/10/c
limate-c
hange-no-its-not-97-percent-consensus-ian-tuttle/
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/feb/5/c
limate-c
hange-whistleblower-alleges-noaa-manipula/
And there is no cure for what you have
East Asians – do you mean this Korean farmer?
http://res.heraldm.com/content/image/2013/10/28/20131028000854_0.jpg
Or
These korean students who study 14 hours per day?
http://www.koogle.tv/static/media/uploads/news/9-16_math.jpeg
I would expect that the latter would score far higher on an IQ test….. yet both are Koreans.
See how I have twisted you into a pretzel here? Where do you go know with your argument?
You have basically f789ed yourself. Or as Anthony Scaramucci would say ‘you are sucking your own ____’
Now how do we explain this … is it because I have a higher IQ than you — or that I am just far more clever than you?
Or is it because you are just plain thick?
I have no idea how Lynn and Vanhanen obtained the samples used in the graph of per capita GDP v Avg IQ. Very remiss of me not to spend a week investigating their sampling methodology before posting. I trust you’ll be holding everybody else to such high standards of source checking whenever they post a link on OFW in future.
As regards race and IQ, how about this study:
https://www.news-medical.net/news/2005/04/26/Race-differences-in-average-IQ-are-largely-genetic.aspx
“Neither the existence nor the size of race differences in IQ are a matter of dispute, only their cause,” write the authors. The Black-White difference has been found consistently from the time of the massive World War I Army testing of 90 years ago to a massive study of over 6 million corporate, military, and higher-education test-takers in 2001.
“Race differences show up by 3 years of age, even after matching on maternal education and other variables,” said Rushton. “Therefore they cannot be due to poor education since this has not yet begun to exert an effect.”
A sample size of 6 million sounds like it might produce pretty significant results to me.
Still waiting for a counter example of an IQ study which found no differences in IQ between the races. Any study will do…
You need to up your reading comprehension skills. I didn’t ask for any sample, but rather made a statement about one. I also didn’t say that race differences in IQ aren’t accepted, but that views claiming any single factor plays an inherent or drastic role aren’t accepted.
“A sample size of 6 million sounds like it might produce pretty significant results to me.”
Lol…you don’t know what you’re talking about, which is ironic since you think you’re talking about IQ. BTW you linked to an article from 2005 which itself links to a non-existent source. Here is a paper about the heritability of B/W IQ gap:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~nisbett/racegen.pdf
“Of the studies that control for home environment, all indicate strong environmental effects. One of these studies is consistent with moderate African genetic superiority and one is consistent with substantial European genetic superiority. Thus, the most relevant studies provide no evidence for genetic superiority for one race or the other while providing strong evidence for a substantial environmental contribution to the B/W IQ gap.”
Frankly you can make a much stronger case for men being more intelligent than women.
We stand in awe of the high IQ…
Yet those with high IQ correlate very closely with success i.e. raping and pillaging the planet more quickly.
Did it ever occur to anyone that high IQ is what has us on the precipice….
Kill all engineers
If none of us went beyond fourth grade, the problems we would have would be much different.
I am wondering … how would one come up with an IQ test that would fairly measure the intelligence of both of these men
https://fm.cnbc.com/applications/cnbc.com/resources/img/editorial/2017/06/06/104513466-GettyImages-692404516-jamie-dimon.1910×1000.jpg
http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4153/5094106106_7462e71abc_z.jpg
And is it not likely that since the people creating the test … would be from the tribe of the first man… that the test will be prejudiced in favour of someone with a western education.
You really would have to have a low IQ to not get this
That IQ differs between different groups of historically isolated people is no more surprising than the fact that height, bone structure, and the rate of genetic diseases differs between them as well. You would expect differences to accumulate by virtue of different environmental pressures selecting for different traits. It always amuses me that people then make the leap from the group level down to the individual. That Jews on average outperform Blacks on IQ tests and Blacks outperform Jews in the 100 meter dash doesn’t tell you anything about the performance of the individual Jewish or Black person. There are surely dull Jews and genius Blacks. Fast Jews and slow Blacks. Knowing the rates of each is only useful at the group level.
Prejudging individuals makes you, well, prejudiced. Likewise, it makes no sense to ignore group differences and assume racist or prejudiced intent when individual categories of achievement (like employment) don’t perfectly mirror total population ethnic group percentages. (I also find it ironic that most of the racists, be they KKK or Nation of Islam, tend to be people who are firmly on the left side of their respective groups bell curve IQ distribution.)
I suspect in the future that is coming, both IQ and raw athleticism will be much less important than the ability to cooperate with whomever you find yourself surrounded by for survival. Not going to be many collegiate professorships or professional athletes in 100 years time……..
@jupiviv
Ok, I was wrong and there are some virtue signalling (pseudo)scientists dumb enough to claim the average IQ of different races is fully explained by environmental factors.
Plenty of damning critiques of Richard E Nesbitt around, however, e.g:
https://notpoliticallycorrect.me/2016/01/21/refuting-richard-nisbett/
Racism, particularly intellectual racism, is refuge of MORE ons.
@Fast Eddy
If IQ is correlated with the ability to create a straw man argument, then yours truly is off the scale.
Here is a typical IQ question:
Studying 14 hours a day will not help one to answer the question. Doing a few sample questions to understand their nature will help, but after that it comes down to innate cognitive ability.
As to whether or not I am racist, that depends on how one defines it. If believing that there are differences in average abilities between different races makes one a racist, then guilty as charged. However, my wife is just as Asian as yours is (but much younger and prettier).
I understand that some of the girls in Patpong are pretty hot… but generally dumb as stumps…. clearly opposites don’t always attract
Damn it, image didn’t post. Try again:
Nope, anyone interested will have to click on the link.
https://iqpro.org/images/q/raven-progressive-matrics-iq-test-example3.png
Ever wanted a job in the STEM sector? You have to take a test featuring children’s puzzles like that at some point. Yes, they are basically roundabout children’s puzzles, and those unfamiliar with such puzzles cannot solve them solely by aid of their magic racial IQ.
Millions of people study puzzles like that every year to qualify for jobs/promotions. BTW the one you posted is very easy. Try taking this test:
http://www.iqtest.dk/main.swf
If you score below 130, you are ineligible for any tech job.
Argh!
Chiang Mai actually, and bar girls were never my style.
IQ is bullshit to you OK
Did you forget to mention that you worked in the school for the mentally ‘challenged’ (otherwise known as the school for MORE ons re tard s and f789wits)
You actually hit on something very important I tried to address recently as well.
Correlation is not exact causation, but smarter people in the sense of actionable – applicable smarts have to be either on their own and or closely surrounded/soaked in environment of profit focus oriented mindset as well in order to delivery prosperity.
That’s why you have historical champions, laggards and the so-called “also runs” within broader human culture.
That’s why “pirate culture” seem to always win over studious less aggressive opponents.
That’s why you can have nowadays illiterate bordering (+gang culture drowning) domestic US pop, while the elite is importing EU, Slavic, Korean, Jap, Chinese, Indian brains to run particular sectors on management and research level. So, as long as the pull – the dollar preference attraction works, the empire can’t fail, and will endure any seemingly “history end threatening” GFC again, and again to the surprise of many pundits..
So, taking it back for our example of Turkey it likely won’t end up good, when he arrested or kicked out of country the most devout wor$hippers, these people simply tend to deliver “tze prosperity” through their scheming activities – although it obviously starts with their pocket and then the spill over effect could benefit the wider society if the conditions are right.
Doomsday prepping: how ready are you for disaster?
Apocalyptic thinking is about asserting some control – any control – over an unpredictable reality
A year ago I made a compromise with my husband. He could buy a single packet of water purification tablets, but that had to be it. He couldn’t start bulk ordering freeze-dried food or emergency antibiotics. We were not going to descend into full-blown disaster preparedness.
My husband has mild prepper tendencies. He spent much of his childhood living on a boat in Florida, with an annual hurricane season that prompted his family to literally batten down the hatches on numerous occasions. Add to this years of playing apocalyptic computer games and it’s little wonder he has a vivid picture of what the end of the world will look like.
Before I met him, I’d never heard of prepping. Now, it feels like part of the culture — from the viral New Yorker feature on tech billionaires buying remote luxury bunkers to the advice a US friend shared on Facebook last week, entitled “Where to Hide If a Nuclear Bomb Goes Off in Your Area” (“I live in a primary target so it doesn’t matter,” one person replied).
Lying awake in the early hours in our flat in Hackney, I have occasionally found a tiny, stupid sense of comfort in those water purification tablets. Not that they’d last long, my husband tells me, when I decline his suggestion that we stockpile more. At which point he starts talking about the baseball bat we keep by the bed in case of burglars, and whether this would achieve much when roaming gangs desperate to steal our precious clean water reach the flat.
It can feel preposterous to engage in this play-acting at disaster, when so many people around the world — in Iraq or Syria, say — face imminent danger. Yet as Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un have traded threats, it’s been hard to keep a sense of perspective on how close we are to civilisational peril.
Apocalyptic thinking has always been with us, but its power waxes and wanes. “We live in an extremely unstable and insecure time,” says Ash Amin, a Cambridge University geography professor who studies urban culture. “Risks are much bigger and globally integrated.”
The psychology of prepping rests on this sense of chaos, of needing to assert some control — any control — over an unpredictable reality. There is solace in practical, orderly steps you can tick off a list. Buy a three-day supply of non-perishable food, a few gallons of water, a torch, a multi-tool. Identify your family meeting place, evacuation route, shelter. These are achievable aims.
Many everyday catastrophes, in contrast, are unwieldy and intractable. Rather than arriving with the sudden bloom of a mushroom cloud, they unfold slowly, in quiet, unobtrusive ways. Some 52,000 people died of drug overdoses in the US in 2015, more than from guns or cars, or from HIV/Aids in the year the epidemic reached its height. Mothers, fathers, teenagers collapsing in shopping aisles and sports pitches is its own kind of Armageddon; most of us feel helpless in its wake.
Of course, calamities do occur. One morning in September 1859, British astronomer Richard Carrington was in his observatory when he saw a white-light solar flare — a huge magnetic explosion on the sun. It was followed by the largest geomagnetic storm ever recorded on Earth. Telegraphs were disrupted across Europe and the US. My husband’s fear is of a repeat Carrington event — a severe geomagnetic storm that this time would take down the electrical grid, GPS and satellites. In 2012, scientists suggested that the likelihood of such a storm within a decade was as high as 12 per cent. Worst-case scenario: millions of people, hospitals, businesses without power for months.
Perhaps it’s worth preparing for this one-in-eight possibility of chaos. So when is prepping not paranoia — but planning? Tom Martin, founder of the American Preppers Network, which has 35,000 forum members and 230,000 fans on Facebook, tells me: “The definition of a prepper is quite simply ‘one who prepares’. So if someone stores extra food and emergency supplies in case of a disaster, then by definition they are a prepper . . . It’s all varying degrees.”
I find myself browsing ready.gov, a website run by the US government. The homepage shows a family sitting on sofas, smiling. “Plan Ahead for Disasters,” the text reads. “Talk with your family.” Perusing the list of items the government recommends, I am dismayed to discover how few we own. Should I buy a wind-up radio and a whistle?
Amin points out that the emphasis on individual prepping may be misplaced. “Where you find really resilient populations, they often share responsibility with their families and communities. And the history of managing for apocalypse is the history of governmental and infrastructure preparedness.”
I take this to mean that instead of building up supplies, we should invite the neighbours round for cake and pressure the government to invest in things such as transport and back-up energy. That’s the kind of prepping I can get behind. But I might buy a wind-up radio as well, just in case.
https://www.ft.com/content/4c09ea46-878b-11e7-bf50-e1c239b45787
Oh yes, let’s just get all chummy and we can survive the end of the world.
My neighbours are so ghastly, I’d only invite them round for cake in order to poison them.
Have you actually seen the denizens of a typical English village? 🙂
Well the broader point about local cooperation and community building is valid, but within a very different context than the one she assumes. If a community cannot provide for its members’ basic needs *pre* collapse, it won’t help.anyone survive.
what do you do with next-door neighbors that invite their professional yard trimmers on Sunday morning whilst they leave to attend church? these guys use weed whackers to mow the lawns, which take hours to accomplish.
Like donkeys with bad teeth?
Does this mean that Midsomer Murders is not quite as outlandish as I’d assumed?
“Apocalyptic thinking is about asserting some control – any control – over an unpredictable reality”
Which can be said about pretty much any thought or action, so her point is? The question was rhetorical. Obviously her point is that she has reached a paltry and palpable conclusion about a subject which she believes herself capable of analysing within a few hours, on behalf of her readers. That’s her job, after all!
I was a bit of a prepper in the past however most of my “prepping” also revolved around my lifestyle with hunting, camping, living in pretty rural areas, etc. Given the nature of my work I find myself in some pretty harsh environments (Alaskan bush, California Trinity Alps where the fires are, Puerto Rico with a category 3 hurricane, Texas with hurricanes Rita, Ike, and Harvey). So having “supplies” or being prepared to me is a natural fit and necessity.
The deeper we go into the rabbit hole I think it is growing obvious that there is no amount of prepping to escape what is coming. From economic collapse, energy shortages, JIT supply links coming to a halt, riots, nuclear war, spent fuel rods, resource depletion, etc… It will be a nightmare.
That being said I’m going down fighting even for a lost cause.
Note to self – Don’t accept cake from xabier
Quite right.
My kitchen was raided by rats once: they ate the cardboard packaging, etc, and didn’t touch any if the left-overs from my cooking.
The most wounding comment on my culinary skills yet.
Smart beasts.
Rats probably the most sentient beings in this house currently. 🙂
I had an ice hockey helmet in storage in Bali — rats ate it.
Having cake with Xabier and Fast Eddy
My cake has a cesium centre!!!
Dan – I recommend the 20ft container… fill it up with guns ammo food etc… lock the door….
I reckon that is as good a compromise as there is….. other than loading what’s in the container onto a sailboat.
I’m not that much of a die hard but after Hurricane Rita we had no power or water for over 2 months and it was a few weeks before places like walmart reopened. No problems but that was about the limits of my preparedness.
The sail boat sounds appealing for being able to wisk my stash up and down the latitudes with the seasons. Do you know of any good water filters that removes both salinity and radiation? I’ve worked on boats before and I can assure you my family would not be happy campers.
Here’s the thing about prepping…. generally it is seen as a hedge against a prolonged downturn…. catastrophe… or collapse…
Most preppers believe there will be a reset — if they can just survive for a few months… maybe a year…. there will be a reset…. and we get back to BAU.
There will be no reset — because there will be no energy. Once your life boat runs out of supplies you end up scratching in the dirt.
Of course this is all moot… you won’t scratch the dirt…. the radiation will finish you off long before that
FE, the longer I ponder our grand dilemma, the more I think you are probably correct. The facts seem to be on your side. The main reasons most people will reject your arguments out of hand are that (a) they’ve simply never heard these arguments anywhere else, and (b) you don’t offer them any cookies at all. You don’t promise them “good times”.
Unlike this guy.
https://youtu.be/LXMyRorrOdg
Gail hinted at this years ago…. It took me a long time to get the hint… and a lot of wasted cash…
Wanna be DPs… heed Fast Eddy…. FE will not hint… he will smash you over the head with a sauce pan
My concern voting rights for our sentient friends and neighbors.
Voting rights are the least of your problems.
the right to vote should be universal…
let’s expand voting rights!
(AI) robots!
dolphins and porpoises!
birds!
apes!
octopuses!
(octopi is grammatically incorrect…)
on the top of the list should be AI computers…
they are so nearly human…
dogs, too…
perhaps some cats…
Maine Coons are very intelligent…
Improvement over today when most voters are sheeps.
You have sentient friends and neighbors? I’m almost envious.
FE mentioned shoulder launch missiles taking down aircraft landing or taking off at airports. This has never happened in the US. In the US with 12,000 miles of border. This tells us how good the real part of the “intelligence community” is. Thank you ladies and gentlemen.
That has not happened anywhere in the world….
I heard the word “arson” in the news tonight…
regarding a large wildfire in the American west…
surprising to hear that word…
https://old.reddit.com/r/Whatcouldgowrong/comments/96bqmz/lighting_5_gallons_of_gas_on_a_bonfire_wcgw/