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It is now popular to talk about leaving fossil fuels to prevent climate change. Pretty much the same result occurs if we run short of fossil fuels: We lose fossil fuels, but it is because we cannot extract them. Practically no one tells us about the extent to which the current system depends upon fossil fuels, however.
The economy is extraordinarily dependent on fossil fuels. If there are not enough fossil fuels to go around, there is likely to be fighting over what is available. Some countries are likely to get far more than their fair share, while the rest of the world’s population will be left with very little or no fossil fuels.
If losing fossil fuels completely, or nearly completely, is a risk for some of the world’s population, it might be useful to think through some of the things that go wrong. The following are some of my ideas about things that change, mostly for the worse, in a fossil fuel-deprived economy.
[1] Banks, as we know them, will likely fail.
Before banks fail in areas with virtually no fossil fuels, my guess is that we will generally see hyperinflation. Governments will greatly increase the money supply in a vain attempt to get people to believe that more goods and services are being produced. This approach will be used because people equate having more money with the ability to buy more goods and services. Unfortunately, without fossil fuels it will be very difficult to produce very many goods.
More money will simply provide more inflation because it takes physical resources, including the proper types of energy, to operate machinery of all kinds to make goods. Creating services also requires fossil fuel energy, but generally, to a lesser extent than creating goods. For example, the pair of scissors used in cutting hair is made using fossil fuel energy. The person cutting hair needs to be paid; his or her pay needs to be high enough to cover energy-related costs such as buying and cooking food to eat. The shop where hair cutting is operated will also need to pay for the fossil fuel energy required for heat and light, assuming such energy is even available.
Banks will fail because too large a share of debts cannot be repaid with interest. Part of the problem will be that while wages will rise, the prices of goods and services will rise even faster, making goods unaffordable. Another part of the problem is that service economies, such as those of the US and eurozone, will be disproportionately affected by a declining economy. In such an economy, people will get their hair cut less often. Instead, they will spend their money on essentials, including food, water, and cooking supplies. Service-providing businesses, such as hair salons and restaurants, will fail for lack of customers, leading to defaults on their debts.
[2] Today’s governments will fail.
With failing banks, today’s governments will also fail. Partly, they will fail because of attempts to bail out banks. Another problem will be declining tax revenue because fewer goods and services are produced. Pension programs will become increasingly difficult to fund. All these issues will lead to increasingly divisive politics. In some cases, central governments may dissolve, leaving states and other smaller units, such as today’s provinces, to continue on their own.
Intergovernmental organizations, such as the United Nations and NATO, will find their voices becoming less and less heeded before they fail. Getting sufficient funding from member states will become an increasing problem.
Dictatorships ruled by leaders who wield absolute power and aristocracies ruled by leaders with hereditary rights are the types of governments with the least energy requirements. These are likely to become more common without fossil fuels.
[3] Nearly all of today’s businesses will fail.
Fossil fuels are essential for all kinds of businesses. They are used in the extraction of raw materials and in the transportation of goods. We use fossil fuels to pave roads and to build nearly all of today’s buildings. Without fossil fuels, even simple repairs of existing infrastructure become impossible. Without adequate fossil fuels, international companies are especially at risk of breaking into smaller units. They will find it impossible to operate in parts of the world with virtually no fossil fuel supply.
Fossil fuels are even used in making solar panels, wind turbines, and replacement parts for electric vehicles. Talking about solar and wind as “renewables” is to a significant extent misleading. At best, they can be described as fossil fuel “extenders.” They might help a problem of a slightly low fossil fuel supply, but they are far from adequate substitutes.
[4] Grid electricity and the internet will disappear.
Fossil fuels are important for maintaining the electrical transmission system. For example, restoring downed power lines after storms requires fossil fuels. Hooking up solar panels or wind turbines to the electric grid requires fossil fuels. Home solar panel systems may operate until their inverters fail. Once their inverters fail, their usefulness will be greatly degraded. Fossil fuels are needed to manufacture new inverters.
Fossil fuels are also important for maintaining every part of the internet system. Furthermore, without grid electricity, it becomes impossible to use computers to connect to the internet.
[5] International trade will be scaled back greatly.
At this time of year, many of us remember the story of the three kings from the East coming to visit the baby Jesus with precious gifts. We also remember stories in the Bible of Paul traveling to distant countries. From these and many other examples, we know that international trade and travel can continue without fossil fuels.
The problem is that without fossil fuels, some parts of the world will have very little to offer in return for goods made with fossil fuels. Countries with fossil fuels will quickly figure out that government debt from countries without fossil fuels doesn’t really mean much when it comes to paying for goods and services. As a result, trade will be scaled back to match available exports. Exports of goods will likely be very limited for parts of the world operating without fossil fuels.
[6] Agriculture will become much less efficient.
Today’s agriculture has been made unbelievably efficient using large mechanical equipment, generally powered by diesel, together with a huge number of chemicals, including herbicides, insecticides, and fertilizers. In addition, fences and netting made with fossil fuels are used to keep out unwanted animal pests. In some cases, greenhouses are used to provide a controlled climate for plants. Using fossil fuels, specialized hybrid seeds are developed that emphasize characteristics that farmers consider desirable. All these “helps” will tend to disappear.
Without these helps, agriculture will become much less efficient. Figure 1 shows that even with the small cutback in fossil fuel use in 2020, the share of employment provided by agriculture rose.
Employment in agriculture is essential. These workers did not get laid off, even as workers in tourism and workers making fancy clothes lost their jobs, so agricultural jobs as a share of total employment rose.
[7] Future labor needs are likely to be disproportionately in the agricultural sector.
People need to eat. Even if the economy is operating in a very inefficient manner, people will need food. The share of people in agriculture (including hunting and gathering) can be expected to rise considerably.
Some people hope that a shift to the use of permaculture will solve the problem of the dependence of agriculture on fossil fuels. I see permaculture as mostly a fossil-fuel extender, rather than a solution for getting along without fossil fuels, because it assumes the use of many fossil fuel-based devices, such as modern fences and today’s tools. Also, at best, permaculture only partly solves the inefficiency problem because it requires a huge amount of hands-on labor.
Today, there is a wide divide between the share of employment in agriculture in the United States and in the same statistic for the UN group of least developed countries. Most of these countries are in sub-Saharan Africa. They use very little fossil fuels.
The US share of employment in agriculture has recently been about 1.7%. In the part of Europe using the Euro, the share of employment in agriculture has recently averaged about 3.0%. In either the US or Europe, it would take a huge change in employment to get to 70% in agricultural employment (as seen early in the 1990s for the UN least developed group), or even to 55% (as experienced recently by the same group).
[8] Home heating will become a luxury item available only to the wealthy.
Without fossil fuels, wood will come into high demand for its heat value. Wood will be needed for cooking food; it is very difficult to subsist on a diet of all raw foods. Wood will also be in demand for making charcoal, which in turn can be used to smelt some metals. With these demands on wood, deforestation is likely to become a major problem in many parts of the world. Wood in general will be quite expensive, given the considerable cost of harvesting and transporting it over long distances without the benefit of fossil fuels.
People living in sparsely populated wooded areas may be able to gather their own wood for home heating. For other people, home heating will likely become a luxury, affordable only by the very rich.
[9] Living alone will become a thing of the past.
Without enough heat, and with barely enough wood for cooking, people (and their animals) will have to huddle together more. Homes housing multiple generations, built over a place for keeping farm animals, may again become popular. It will be more efficient to cook for large groups than for one person at a time. People in cold areas will huddle together with each other in beds to keep warm. Or they will huddle together with their dogs, as in the saying, three dog night, meaning a night that is cold enough to need to have three dogs to keep a person warm.
Even in warm parts of the world, people will live together in groups, simply because maintaining a household for a single person will become impossibly expensive. Food and fuel for cooking will take up a huge share of a family’s income. There will be little left over for other expenses.
[10] Governments and their laws will shrink in importance. Instead, new traditions and new religions will play a greater role in keeping order.
Governments have made dozens of promises, but without a growing supply of fossil fuels (or an adequate substitute), they will not be able to keep them. Pensions will be gone. The ability of governments to enforce ownership laws will likely disappear. Without any good substitute for fossil fuels, mass disorder is a likely outcome.
People crave order. Without order, it is impossible to conduct business. We know from recent experience that “sustainability groups,” put together by people with a common interest in sustainability tend not to work well enough to provide order. They tend to fall apart as soon as obstacles arise.
What has seemed to work to provide order in the past is some combination of traditions and religions. With a changing world, both traditions and religions are likely to need to change. In the book, Communities that Abide, by Dmitry Orlov et al., the authors point out that having a strong (non-elected) leader, and a shared set of religious beliefs, helps keep a group together. In fact, it helps if the group is somewhat persecuted. Fighting for a common cause is part of what keeps the group together.
The Ten Commandments in the Bible are interpreted in a way that strongly suggests that they are rules for behavior within the group, not for behavior in general. For example, “Thou shalt not kill,” applies to other members of the group; wars against other groups were very much expected. In those wars, killing of members of another group was expected. This would seem to allow Israel’s killing of members of Hamas, today. Without enough fossil fuels to go around, fighting becomes more frequent.
Conclusion
In my opinion, the problem the world is facing today is like one that smaller economies have faced, over and over, in the past: The population has become too large for the economy’s resource base, which now includes fossil fuels. Today’s leaders reframe the problem as voluntarily moving away from fossil fuels to prevent climate change in order to make the situation sound less frightening.
As I see the situation, the world needs to scale down its use of fossil fuels because, ultimately, the laws of physics determine selling prices for fossil fuels. We extract the inexpensive-to-produce fossil fuels first. The problem is that fossil fuel selling prices cannot rise arbitrarily high. Prices must be both:
- High enough for producers to make a profit, with funds left over for reinvestment and for adequate taxes for their governments.
- Low enough for consumers to afford to buy food and other consumer goods produced with these fossil fuels.
If we assume that all the fossil fuels that seem to be under the ground can really be extracted, climate change from burning them may indeed be a problem. But it is hard to see that they can really be extracted, given the affordability issue. Politicians will hold down prices to get voters to vote for them if nothing else.
Researchers have been working diligently to find solutions, but to date, their success has been poor. Every supposed solution requires significant use of fossil fuels. So, we need to think through what might happen if we are forced to get along without fossil fuels and without an adequate substitute.
Good post by Tim Watkins @ https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2024/01/02/the-myth-of-redundancy/
He discusses various stages of history and industrialization and our current predicament.
He also explains why a population cull … is not viable
In this respect, the smartphone stands as a proxy for many of the worlds manufactured goods, which also depend upon extended supply chains and mass consumption to remain viable. And therein is the fundamental flaw in the belief that we can have our techno-utopian cake and eat it. Once the critical mass of consumption is lost, the complex network of global supply chains is no longer profitable – not just in financial terms, but in energy and material terms, it simply costs more than it delivers in return. So that any process of simplification – managed or catastrophic – must inevitably lose the beneficial technologies and services along with the apparently trivial and mundane.
absolutely brilliant post by watkins ivan
have saved that to study and pilfer later
thanks a lot
Gail, thanks so much for OFW. I hope you have a great year, with lots of visits with your little grandchild🤗. Happy New Year!
Lucky UK voters, this year they get to (holds breathe) cast a vote!
Pfizer said, “Expiry and destruction of doses can be an unavoidable consequence of a pandemic, a natural result of manufacturers and governments collectively aiming to address the public health crisis at speed with the overarching objective of protecting their populations.”
… The European country with the biggest expiry rate is the UK, where an estimated 1mln doses worth $700mln were out of date by early December, the data shows. Another 550,000 doses are expected to expire in February, with a further 650,000 by the end of June.
In December 2021, at the height of the Omicron wave, the UK agreed to buy 2.75mln courses of Paxlovid. The country’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, the public health body, recommends the drug be used only for people with serious underlying health conditions such as cancer and HIV or recipients of transplants.
The UK health and social care department said more courses had been used, without offering its own data. A spokesperson said the government had “acted fast to secure enough stock of antivirals” at a time of “high global demand”.
really; this stuff costs $700 a pop?
Deserts follow in the footsteps of Man.
Gal you wrote; ‘Climate change clearly played a role. There is no way that North Africa is today a breadbasket for Europe. It tends to be mostly desert. Leaders today can pretty much guess that climate change will be a problem in the future. It always has been a problem.’
Wrong.
Read ‘Topsoil and Civilisation’ or any other of the similar books.
North African soils were farmed to death.
It amuses me to read archeologists pontifications on why certain areas collapsed; they have often dug through metres of soil to ‘unearth’ the remnant villages to try and discover the reasons for their demise and never give any thought to the loss of trhe finite agricultural resource which is fertile soil.
Don’t default to AGW because its easy.
‘To believe the outcome of a climate model is to believe what the model makers have put in. This is precisely the problem of today’s climate discussion to which climate models are central. Climate science has degenerated into a discussion based on beliefs, not on sound self-critical science. Should not we free ourselves from the naive belief in immature climate models?’
https://off-guardian.org/2023/12/28/climate-change-the-unsettled-science-part-2/
Yes, I can believe that one, did not read the article. Modern machines or too many people, pick one can farm land to death to make money. Currently equipment is so very expensive and maintenance prone that it invites trading soil for money; a very poor choice.
Dennis L.
Exactly!
Good poin, LC. Farming or deforestation, or both?
The Nile can replenish topsoil every year near its banks and flood zones. Beyond that, not so much.
Lose the forest, lose the soil? I’ve read that forests serve as biologic and atmospheric water reservoirs.
It was the devastation of the great north African wildlife herds and their needed impact on the dry brittle lands which made the moving sand Sahara.
Roman intrusion for access to farm land and capture for coliseum removed the massed animal herds vital for nutrient recycling and the region turned to desert.
Larger climatic precipitation cycles also obviously played a role as well.
; ‘Climate change clearly played a role. There is no way that North Africa is today a breadbasket for Europe
The Romans only used the coastal areas of North Africa and their population was tiny compared to ours. They had no viable way to transport food from far inland there.
Great post, sums up all the important points in something short enough that even my correspondents with “TLDR syndrome” might be willing to read.
One interesting statement you made at the end: “Today’s leaders reframe the problem as voluntarily moving away from fossil fuels to prevent climate change in order to make the situation sound less frightening.” My own thought was that this is framed as climate change to make it sound MORE frightening. Most people don’t know how very large a part fossil fuels have in their very way of life, and wouldn’t see them running short as much more than an inconvenience. So they have spun up the threats of climate calamity, rising seas, etc. to create things people are more likely to fear.
You may be right. The average citizen has no idea how dependent the current economy is on inexpensive fossil fuels. The idea that climate change is a huge problem, and that we as citizens can voluntarily prevent it, is easy to understand. It does sound very frightening. It is nonsense, however. We are gradually starting to see this, as the transition to wind and solar and EVs is beginning to fail.
Posits:
We are biology and biology influences climate, we have released inorganics at a very rapid rate; we don’t know. The risks are huge, we look to have an option, Starship.
Solar does not currently work well for transmission of electricity, it is a first effort and many first efforts do not work but provide ideas for further progress. We will learn, we will adapt.
E.g.
Some/many here perceive me as delusional. I look around, believe you are correct solar/wind does not work as practiced. But, we farm in the summer, currently we use very large machines to spray weeds. A swarm of locusts which are biological can eat accumulated grain. Biology does not design one huge locust. A swarm of drones, charged locally, zapping one weed at a time, a solution? Don’t know until it is tried at a small scale. Who would really be upset if it worked, follow the money.
We are biology, not the scourge of the universe, but the best there is so far. I claim a door is being opened, Starship and AI, get inorganic production off spaceship earth. Stop inorganic conversion to CO2, it is not an experiment worth running any further, it was a step in our evolution.
Dennis L.
We are biological avatars……we are here to learn lessons…….we mainly refuse to.
The great void of space is a mocking challenge to trap material mindsets into static thought patterns……
The journey outside the construct does not take place “out there”….there is no out there”
A close friend of mine related yesterday one of his feline observations. He observed several of his house cats sitting by a window diligently watching “something” outside on his deck…..he claimed to have gotten up and looked multiple times to where their eyes where tracking “something”. He could see nada…..
It was quite the disconcerting experience apparently,
Point is…….we are literally blind to “reality”,,,,,,what we are immersed in is so much more than what we can see with our “normal” senses.
Intuitives know this,,,,,,,animals can “see” some of it.
UAP phenomena is rampant all around us…….
We are in a construct Dennis….we are not on a planet in space in a fundamental sense……we are within something far far more fascinating.
well dont keep it to yourself cro—tell us what it is
This is why most believe the UKEY war is real… is as cnnbbc tell us it is… it is not. There would be lots of clips … and rubble. 380k dead… people believe that… recently an TFI said jokingly … he was moving to Ukey cuz there were so few men he’d have his pick of the hotties… he believes what cnnbbc told him – that most of the men are dead.
Most on OFW believe that. Most on OFW believe that NATO has run out of weapons cuz they gave all of them to the UKEYS… but no rubble … where is Stalingrad?
Then there is this
https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/indiamoon_feat.jpg
And
https://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large/1-lunar-module-antares-apollo-14-nasa.jpg
All of the above are totally obviously fake… yet… …. and yet…..
The reason they have no idea is because cnnbbc told them to think otherwise… they are TFIs so they don’t question what cnnbbc told them to think
cnnbbc also told them to think this is on the moon https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/indiamoon_feat.jpg
That 380k Ukeys are dead … that NATO has run out of bombs cuz Ukeys fired them at Russian cities but there is no rubble… never mind that .. cnnbbc said so so it is so…
Critical thought is gone… bbccnn has replaced it… why think when cnnbbc can do that for us… the Borg centralizes all thought on cnnbbc… tune in for the news and be told what to think… what to believe…
India is on the moon …
yesterday a 10000 yr old skeleton of a man, was unearthed near stonehenge
notify eddy quick—obviously a very early covid case
It’s highly unlikely I’ll get cancer given my 100% sugar free — almost exclusively organic diet — and exercise regime … but if I did … F789 Chemo https://t.me/downtherabbitholewegofolks/90693
SCHAD
In one of the more tragic recent stories, the family of a young Australian nurse has been left devastated after she suddenly died on Christmas Eve.
Ashley Denness worked for Sydney‘s Royal Prince Alfred Hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit.
She was vacationing with her partner’s family in the Whitsunday islands off Queensland when she collapsed.
Her devastated mother Debbie Negru told Daily Mail Australia that Ms. Denness – who turned 34 during the trip – suffered a “kind of seizure” after spending a happy morning crab-catching,
An ambulance was called and Denness was rushed to Proserpine Hospital in the city of Mackay but had another seizure on the way there.
Despite desperately trying to save her life for 45 minutes, hospital emergency medics were unable to revive her.
Ms. Negru is now demanding answers from Brisbane‘s coroner as to “why a healthy 34-year-old woman has died so suddenly.”
“She had just told me what a great year it’s been and I know she didn’t want to die,” Negru said.
“I hear her calling ‘Mum’ when I try to go to sleep which isn’t much these days.
“The sparkle has just been taken out of our lives and we still cannot comprehend this.”
https://lionessofjudah.substack.com/p/must-be-the-climate-change-dentist
I wonder how many babies she injected with the Rat Juice? F789 her
You have done much right in your quest to avoid cancer.
However, living in sad new zealand increases your risk dramatically.
Firstly, the divine powers that be have cursed that broken country with a lack of ozone so skin cancer rates are very high.
Also, there may be a link between mental states and cancer. Living in such a socially toxic land may expose you to increased risk as well. Be careful that you mix with positive happy people if you can find any in those dying islands.
We are looking at a Feb 22 exit. We have requested that the purchaser allow us to extend to that date cuz we want to be clear of the year of the rabbit so as not to be caught in a maelstrom of death and misery … should Utopia be accurate.
Unfortunately we are hearing the rental market is very difficult in Perth — having dogs is not helpful… we may end up homeless
Airbnb is ruining the world.
It’s highly unlikely I’ll get cancer given my 100% sugar free — almost exclusively organic diet — and exercise regime … but if I did … F789 Chemo https://t.me/downtherabbitholewegofolks/90693
Video says chemo doesn’t work 97% of the time. Physician gets a cutback of the chemo price, so he or she has a monetary incentive to prescribe it. Otherwise, it would never be prescribed.
If the MOREONS would stop stuffing KFC crisps and cola down the maw… they’d not get cancer then they’d not need to poison themselves with chemo.
And why are the MOREONS so afraid of death anyway – most of them believe in the afterlife…
Didn’t watch, makes sense, probably partially/totally correct.
Mayo is increasing the ability of their proton beam, original was $200m. It avoids many complications, requires a director with a Ph.D. in EE, and a physician to run it, he consults the patients individually. Not a country doctor, one must have very good insurance to cover these things.
No solution, observation.
Dennis L.
Allopathic medicine is a racket. Today’s doctors, except in the area of traumatology, are no more than drug pushers for the pharmaceutical mafia, they know nothing about health, and almost nothing about illness.
I saw my last doctor more than ten years ago, and I hope to only see one again if I get run over by a tractor.
If the plandemic didn’t teach us this, it was of no use at all.
Most doctors are at the bottom of the barrel in terms of life forms… Super Snatch is a super model with more integrity than most doctors
Anyone else wonder if Anonymous is a Deep State creation?
https://youtu.be/kxLA6JrZpp8
The elite leaders of the world want to reduce world population, but don’t want us to know about their actions.
The thing is they do not want to reduce the population — yet we are being bombarded with this rubbish…
Reducing the population leads to collapse
https://www.forex-central.net/img/deflation.gif
They want to exterminate humans in a way that causes the least suffering…
Reducing population sounds not too bad… that’s why they tell us this — folks just assume they are not on the list
Extinction … well that’s really bad… that freaks out the MOREONS. They will never tell us this is the plan
Anyone know why they injected 6B with something that damages their immune systems – why not inject them with a repurposed harmless useless flu vaccine.
That question is up there with – if there are oceans of oil remaining why do we steam oil out of sand.
Japan’s had declining numbers since about 2010.
What cannot continue .. will stop….
The only reason Japan has not collapsed already is because it is too big to fail…. and because the rest of the world continues to grow — and Japan is able to stagger on by supplying those growing markets with export products…
The math dictates – if global population decreases — BAU will collapse… that is guaranteed. It might take a bit of time … (as in years) … but it will collapse.
That is absolutely guaranteed. If you cannot understand that then you are a TFI.
Japan keeps adding more debt, to hide the problem with deflation and to provide more jobs for otherwise unemployed Japanese people. But this debt clearly cannot be repaid. In fact, the interest on it cannot be paid, if the interest rate is much above zero.
Interpretation depends on standpoint. To be able to gather a quick glance of another point of view, here two texts regarding the gnosis, that I copy in German for precism. Please translate in your respective language.
A large project must without doubt include an array of multiple win-win-solutions, be it money, be it sadism, be it power.
The citations refer to modern interpretations of the religious syncretism called gnosis, deriving from ca. 200 bc. In the center is a transcendent (good) god, that man longs to unite with. The world is evil, created by a demiurg. For the human to act evil is a way to purify and gain enlightenment, which opens the possibility of uniting with the transcendent god. Bad acts will not be punished. As there is no hope, the only goal of man is death.
The ideas of the gnosis are widely spread in esotheric groups. Such groups are also connected to the Deep State.
The OFW point of view is: adaption to carrying capacity. The powers that be may think completely different.
“Es ist kaum vorstellbar, dass die Gnosis alles in allem nicht in erster Linie von einer düsteren Liebe zur Finsternis zeugt, von einem monströsen Gefallen an den obszönen und gesetzlosen Archonten und an dem solaren Eselskopf (dessen komisches und verzweifeltes Geschrei das Signal einer dreisten Revolte gegen den Idealismus an der Macht wäre). Die Existenz einer Sekte ausschweifender Gnostiker und bestimmter sexueller Riten bürgt für diese obskure Voreingenommenheit für eine Niedrigkeit, die nicht reduzierbar wäre und der sich die schamlosesten Beziehungen verdanken: Die schwarze Magie hat diese Tradition bis in unsere Tage fortgesetzt.
Freilich war der höchste Gegenstand der geistigen Tätigkeit der Manichäer wie auch der Gnostiker ständig das Gute und die Vollkommenheit: dadurch erhalten ihre Begriffe an sich ihre pessimistische Bedeutung. Aber es ist nahezu nutzlos, diesen Erscheinungen Rechnung zu tragen, und einzig das verworrene, dem Bösen gemachten Zugeständnis kann letztlich den Sinn dieser Bestrebungen bestimmen. Wenn wir heute offen den idealistischen Standpunkt aufgeben, so wie ihn die Gnostiker und Manichäer implizit aufgeben hatten, dann erscheint die Haltung jener, die in ihrem eigenen Leben eine Wirkung der schöpferischen Tätigkeit des Bösen sahen, sogar radikal optimistisch. Es ist möglich, in aller Freiheit ein Spielball des Bösen zu sein, wenn das Böse sich nicht vor Gott verantworten muss.”
Georges Battaille: Der niedere Materialismus und die Gnosis. Le bas matérialisme et la gnose aus: Documents, 2. Jg., Nr 1, 1930 aus dem Französischen von Bernd Mattheus
“Faktisch vollzieht sich der vom Gnostiker geplante Ausbruch aus dem Einfluss- und Herrschaftsbereich der Welt – und damit des Bösen – in drei Hauptschritten, die wir kurz skizzierten: Es geht darum, ‘der Welt fremd zu werden’, ‘sich von ihr zu entfremden’ (apallotriousthaï); ‘sich’ von ihr ‘zu trennen’ oder ‘abzusondern’ (apokoptesthaï), chôristhênaï); schließlich den Kosmos zu ‘verlassen’, wobei der ‘Ausgang’ (gr. diéxodos, diéleusis, kopt. ginei abal, parth. izgām) praktisch synonym ist mit ‘Hinscheiden’ und ‘Tod’.”
Henri-Charles Puech: Phänomenologie der Gnosis (Collège de Ftance, 1952-1957)
Phénoménologie de la Gnose aus: Henri-Charles Puech, En quête de la Gnose, I: La Gnose et le temps et autres essais, Paris 1978; aus dem Französischen von Andreas Knop
Is it possible the Gnostics were scapegoated as they were a threat to the secular and religious powers of the time? Isolationist, secret meetings with reports of unorthodox sexual practices, free thinkers? Sounds a bit like the way missionaries softened up native peoples and encouraged colonialists to other them for finishing the job of relocation, cash cropping, reeducation and taxation.
Zeig Heil!
saying—”the elite leaders want to reduce population”
is in effect saying those some leaders, fail to understand that the global system that supports them is what keeps them in office.—in other words their stupidity is cretinous.
reduce population by 90% and you have an economic system running at a medieval level (the last time world populatiuon was around that number.)
with numbers at that level, modern ”technology” becomes impossible.—-i think you would agree on that point.
which would mean that the wealth base of those ‘elites’ would literally evaporate.
one doesnt get to the elevation of be one of the elites, by being that stupid—at least grant them that.
our current lifestyle has been due to one thing only—colossal surpluses.–drastically reduced population cannot produce surpluses.
so—–there really is no ‘plot’ to kill us all off
This has been known since “The Population Bomb” of the sixties; we would all starve to death in the seventies. Rubbish.
Demographics is the problem, we are biology and our civilization has found ways for us to have more current fun and in so doing create a demographic which does not work, e.g. pensions.
So, we tax those with out children to pay for those who make the sacrifices to have and raise children. We stop giving our children the gift of debt for useless educations and pensions of those who contributed no contributors. Next problem please.
Dennis L.
those withe the strength of youth, carry the frailties of old age.
might be as well to remember that dennis, when you need a hand to do something you no longer have strength to do…if i interpret your comment correctly.
throughout my life i have been taxed to pay for the care of others—so far i’ve needed none—i’ve been lucky.
but i dont begrudge what ive paid out
Do SSRI Antidepressants Cause Mass Shootings? A Closer Look at Decades of Evidence
https://vigilantnews.com/post/do-ssri-antidepressants-cause-mass-shootings-a-closer-look-at-decades-of-evidence/
I think that the issue is that there are so many people on these drugs, it is hard to prove they are the cause of anything. If a large percentage of the population is on these drugs, and most of them don’t kill people, drug companies would like us to ignore the situation.
Recent research suggests that depression, anxiety and ADHD seem to be caused by a bad diet and resulting problems with the intestinal biome.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5641835/
Gut microbiota’s effect on mental health: The gut-brain axis
https://www.cas.org/resources/cas-insights/emerging-science/how-your-gut-microbiome-linked-depression-and-anxiety
How Your Gut Microbiome is Linked to Depression and Anxiety
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7830868/
Current Evidence on the Role of the Gut Microbiome in ADHD Pathophysiology and Therapeutic Implications
Instead of prescribing all of these SSRIs, people should be given a better diet–more fiber, less sugar, more vegetables.
ADHD mostly from thiomersal and the 918,394 injection schedule.
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CRECB-2005-pt10/html/CRECB-2005-pt10-Pg13935-3.htm
Depression and anxiety is a combination from brain fog from high carb/sugar / seed oil / IBS-fibre heavy diet as well as Wellbutrin and oversubscription of SSRIs.
Population measures including vaccines have been in play for many decades….
Zombie-land complete with mass shootings…
And btw – did you know almost everyone on this planet … eats food that is sprayed with poison? So that other organisms won’t eat the food…
Repeat… so that other organisms won’t eat the food hahaha
Only species with ugly >>> humans.
Surely we are a mistake
Earthquakes in Japan. Let’s hope our Timbo is OK.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/jan/01/japan-tsunami-earthquake-warning-latest-updates-live
Yeah, my thoughts exactly. When I read about that, my mind flashed back to Fukushima. Has that problem been resolved 10+ years later?
Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific cancels another 28 flights, blaming ‘higher than expected pilot absence’ due to seasonal illness
Post search finds 28 flights between Hong Kong and six cities – Shanghai, Beijing, Taipei, Dubai, Delhi and Dhaka – have been cancelled between Tuesday and Saturday
Hong Kong flag carrier Cathay Pacific Airways has called off another 28 flights this week, with at least one travel agency saying earlier disruptions delayed the return home of some customers.
The airline, which had called off at least 40 other flights since Christmas Eve, on Monday said the cancellations were again related to “higher than expected pilot absence caused by seasonal illness on certain days”.
https://www.msn.com/en-xl/travel/other/hong-kong-s-cathay-pacific-cancels-another-28-flights-with-carrier-blaming-higher-than-expected-pilot-absence-due-to-seasonal-illness/ar-AA1mjwGu
VAIDS.
Ed Dowd, the conspiracy theorist. 🥸
For a more complete list please see:
Crisis in the Cockpit: Three Airline Pilots ‘Die Suddenly’ in a Week!
https://drpanda.substack.com/p/happy-new-year-e1d
Wow – pilots and flies have something in common… beyond the fact that they both know how to fly
I posted a comment on the Gil De Ferran YT obit. I said that I have been watching sports since the late 60’s and I don’t ever recall reading or seeing on TV, the number of athletes in the prime of their lives and in peak physical condition, collapsing while playing their sport. I also don’t recall reading about athletes having to retire due to heart issues back then.
Someone responded by saying, that simply wasn’t true. Perhaps I missed all the athletes going into cardiac arrest in the 60’s 70’s 80’s 90’s. That person either belongs in TFI category or that person is a Google bot.
The PR Team pays people to post comments like that ….
They are thought leaders.
Fifth Singapore Airlines Pilot Dies at the World’s First Fully Vaccinated Airline
Captain Lee Meng Chye Martin, sadly, became the fifth Singapore Airlines pilot to die suddenly in the past seven months at the world’s first fully vaccinated airline.
https://drpanda.substack.com/p/happy-new-year-e1d
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbf1c02b1-5172-4b3f-b640-c6f0b435908e_1180x1234.jpeg
Well at least he wasn’t the Captain of this bird landing in a crosswind storm coming into London Heathrow.
Charles Hugh Smith has an article up called
Rome was eternal until it wasn’t
A few points I thought were interesting:
One of the problems was
This is a stored energy source, or perhaps the stored energy source for the Roman empire. Losing it was critical.
Climate change clearly played a role. There is no way that North Africa is today a breadbasket for Europe. It tends to be mostly desert. Leaders today can pretty much guess that climate change will be a problem in the future. It always has been a problem.
He later makes the point:
I would think that this might mean that the current world economy could break up into smaller, somewhat functioning units. For example, some states in the US could join forces with part of Canada, for example.
Regarding government, CHS says:
The more I think about it, governments and religions have been close to interchangeable during much of the history of mankind. They are both ways of providing order to an economy. Either can be used as a center for borrowing, and as a center for armies to defend an area. The US was founded with the plan of having church and state separate. China has, to a significant extent, discouraged religions. Religion can be used to temper the desire for growth and dominance at all costs. The Maximum Power Principle works best when the “little guy” can afford the goods provided by the system.
Yes,
“The Maximum Power Principle works best when the “little guy” can afford the goods provided by the system.”
Economy of scale, fixed costs are a depreciable asset over time, they are not variable. “little guys” need to eat.
Within limits, society seems to work best with a variety of people. If all are elites, genius level, they fight to be number one and the competition at the top is fierce.
Dennis L.
I agree.
In the book he references… GW also drove the Asiatic hordes in the direction of Europe …
What I don’t understand is why the kkklimate changed… sure they burned some wood … but pretty much no fossil fuels…
Climate always changes.
But I thought it was static and only changes if you burn a lot of coal and oil????
Oh Wow! Seems I was wrong.
Wait a moment while I Change My Mind.
There… that’s better. Now I am right.
Thanks for the help with this
Tell that to those that want to destroy industrial civilization!
“Climate Myth…
Climate’s changed before
Climate is always changing. We have had ice ages and warmer periods when alligators were found in Spitzbergen. Ice ages have occurred in a hundred thousand year cycle for the last 700 thousand years, and there have been previous periods that appear to have been warmer than the present despite CO2 levels being lower than they are now. More recently, we have had the medieval warm period and the little ice age. (Richard Lindzen)”
“Previous climates can be explained by natural causes, while current climate change can only be explained by an excess of CO2 released by human fossil fuel burning. Records of past climates indicate that change happened on time scales of thousands to millions of years. The global rise in temperature that has occurred over the past 150 years is unprecedented and has our fingerprints all over it.”?
https://skepticalscience.com/climate-change-little-ice-age-medieval-warm-period-intermediate.htm
In the Mesopotamia region the klimate changed dramatically within decades…. I read a lecture series on Audible Great Courses that detailed this … at the edges of the change they were able to determine that there was an ebb and flow of people — they shift out and back in as the klimate changed recommencing farming activities as conditions improved… leaving a few decades later after drought conditions returned.
I don’t know why Green Groopies get so worked up about this… your celebrity spokesperson Leo is building a resorts inches above sea level… Obama has a 10M house on the beach in Hawaii… the all the honchos fly to the klimate conferences in private jets…
Are ya’ll taking cold showers and turning off the heat/AC? Do you still drive a car… take vacations.. buy useless stuff???
Tell us about what YOU are doing to combat the overheating of the planet — other than moan about it…
Come on … tell us… how have you reduced your carbon footprint… how have you overcome Jevon’s Paradox
Otherwise f789 off.
I feel like an Asiatic Horde…….
and its really really warm up here right now…….2 C in January does not happen here……..
A couple of notes:
– How can we expect to learn ANYTHING from history when almost nobody knows it?
Roman empire did not collapse in 476AD (or some other similar date). The western part of the empire was weakened and lost over time but the Eastern part continued for another 1000 years. They even reconquered Italy and parts of Spain lost to germanic tribes. There is nothing Roman that disappeared in 476AD – from technology to literature it all continued to develop and slowly change.
This is a basic fact of history that the so-called “west” STILL IGNORES.
And btw Gail, you should research the history of Byzantine empire. They managed to intertwine religion and govt and (maybe?) that was part of their long term success.
I’ll second the book recommendation. The Inheritance of Rome is a very interesting and informative read on the transition from empire into smaller political powers.
Thanks! I ordered a used copy.
I thought that this was an interesting WSJ article:
Meet America’s Newest Oil-Trader Extraordinaire: Joe Biden
Oil prices have sputtered since the U.S. began selling its stockpiles
The article has nice charts. The article has a graph pointing out that the US doesn’t need as large an oil reserve now as it did years ago, because it no longer is as dependent on imports. (But, of course, it does need imported oil from Canada to allow it to make much diesel and jet fuel.)
Art Berman has a good discussion with Nate Hagens on oil. Art used to be much more optimistic on oil in the U.S not so much anymore. The sweet spots have been drilled. They are sucking more out with a larger straw. Yes the U.s can import more oil from Canada but the price will rise…until it can’t and then crash. Right now investors want returns not future exploration so there will be a shortage soon. Roller coaster ride from here on out. I expect that after 2024 shale will be on a downward slide
Sooner or later Art will be right; last heard him personally in an ASPO meeting in DC. Oil was going to be gone tomorrow. That was twenty years ago or therabouts.
Yes, it will run out, when?
Dennis L.
Art said in a recent interview (maybe the one Sam mentions) that he thinks oil production might only be 20% less in 2040. That sounds pretty optimistic to me.
PS – He would have been right, if shale hadn’t come along. ~70% of US production is shale (actually maybe that includes GOM, I don’t remember). Anyway, he said he didn’t think it would be economical, but they found a way. Shale wasn’t even a thing 20 years ago.
At least before your God makes a real Starship.
The whole earth’s effort is needed to make the Starship you want. A single guy doesn’t cut it
A totalitarian, absolutist govt is the only system which can make the starships you want, and i think it is a bit too late now.
kul,
It has lifted off the pad twice, third time is coming soon.
Every so often a single guy comes along and changes things, Heisenberg, Einstein, de Vinci, Musk.
Dennis L.
In other words, it is taking baby steps while the Hordes are at the gate.
How many stars these supposed starships have visited ? None.
Your god is a swindler, like the Wizard of Oz.
Shale just might be the trigger … when the volume through the larger straw declines… that could be the signal that The Pathogen release is imminent
They seem to be able to manage the financial situation … so this might require hitting the physical limits on resources.. to put the dagger in BAU’s heart
Yup! Shale was built on mountains of debt and the suckers who bought into the scheme. It’s a money losing business.
Correct Sam , Watch for reports in 1Q 2024 when the results of Q4 2023 come and then Q2 2024 when results of Q1 2024 come . The public does not understand ” lagging effect ” .The real oilman Mike S nailed this 6 months ago .
Here goes .
https://www.oilystuff.com/forumstuff/forum-stuff/surprise-eia-sees-production-falling-in-2024?origin=notification
https://www.oilystuff.com/forumstuff/forum-stuff/us-oil-output-fell-in-october-eia?origin=notification
Hope for the worst
As other oil producers realize the US Achilles Heel of lack of mid grade petroleum needed for diesel and jet fuels, and having only light grade from shale, they will gang up on us, especially to push back on the US dollar hegemony.
It could pose a theoretical conundrum. If diesel gets too costly, then Amazon, and various online deliveries of goods to consumers out in the boonies will not be possible. Distribution too costly. Instead of getting an answer to “where does food come from?: Ans: “The grocery store,” it certainly will no longer be “from the Amazon home delivery truck.”
Can Amazon truly be profitable based on its traditional on-line order and truck delivery system? Certainly its government contracts for cloud storage and data mining are the great enablers.
People will either have to be more self sufficient and learn to live with less in smaller communities, or congregate into cities where manufactured goods (including food, even zee bugs) can be mainlined in. “We promise! Just get your food fix and your UBI in the city. Al you have to do is sign up for the Vaxxes, CBDC, National ID and carbon footprint allowance! We’ll decide later whether you are worthy of collecting UBI and will be allowed to survive.
Which would be more cost effective? Growing your own food locally and avoid transportation costs, or going to big cities to load up on supplies, with economies of transport and sale?
I have posted this earlier . The end of nett oil exports by Lars Larsen .
https://archive.org/details/oil-exports.-34odt-1/Oil%20exports.80odt%20%281%29.pdf
What I would like to see is a value chain analysis of the “debt-fuelled” shale production itself. Everything is debt-fuelled one way or another but if you have a functioning heavy industrial base it doesn’t really matter how indebted you are. If shale oil/gas can sustain that absent factors dependent on continued NATO/OECD hegemony, everything is going to be okay.
The Offshore Magazine that is sent free to me says that offshore oil is the next big thing–investment had been cut back in offshore oil for several years, but is now being increased. In fact, US offshore Gulf of Mexico production does seem to be up recently.
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MCRFP3FM2&f=M
I am not sure whether Art follows offshore developments.
But US shale developments seem to be doing pretty well too.
George Kaplan is my go to guy for GOM matters . Not positive about GOM .
https://peakoilbarrel.com/july-non-opec-and-world-oil-production/#comment-766657
https://peakoilbarrel.com/eia-short-term-energy-outlook-and-tight-oil-update-december-2023/#comment-768000
But can that offshore+shale sustain actual industrial/military production at a healthy energy balance and for how long? The real questions at this point are all point-of-production not investment related. We should just go ahead and assume that the US will lose its hegemony status by 2030-40.
The Saudi prince has said recently, the USA wont play any role as oil producer by 2030. That is in 6 years. I suppose, Canada cannot make up for 30% of the world production? Nor can Venezuela be ramped up within a couple of years?
And there are the preconditions for world politics within the next years. Either the USA get a new ally with huge reserves – there are not so many to come into question – or the markets will – after the underachievers have failed in Germany – anticipate the impossibility of a switch to alternatives and run the banks.
All drag entertainment and forced jabs and the big question if the president can find the audience he is speaking to cannot distract from the elephant in the room.
If in 6 years is “no role”, when will be “a minor role only”?
There will be some sort of a crossing point between the inexhaustible demand for war going always up and the finite amount of diesel to wage it, going always down. Westerners or Israeli will not fight hand to hand, and surely some Israeli elders are contemplating the end in 20 years.
(Al Arabya)
….. “Exclusive: Israel says its focus remains on climate change, urges united action”
😀 😀 😀
https://english.alarabiya.net/infocus/2023/12/06/Exclusive-Israel-says-its-focus-remains-on-climate-change-urges-united-action
Good points Jan.
I think the whole series of wars that US is waging/starting are only intended to destroy the colonies.
By 2030 EU might use less oil than sub saharan Africa, freeing all that Russian sweet for US.
In the middle east, the more countries are destroyed (but keep producing oil) the better the ELM (export land model) will look like.
WHEN (not IF) US starts the proxy war with China, I predict Aus and NZ to be destroyed too – just like Germany is being destroyed now.
How much time will that gain? Idk, but the gas price is going down significantly already in US – so the strategy works.
There is the combination of coal and solar to make synthetic diesel. With the exception of submerged arc heaters for the coal, all the pieces exist. First pass cost is around $30/bbl for the synthetic diesel.
As long as I am at it.
More and more global warming may be real; is betting against it worth the risk?
Starship, move all that stuff off spaceship earth, earth is biology with challenges enough.
Does one really need to travel more than fifteen minutes anymore? I grew up in a town of 50K and basically that was my radius, auto was used 5K miles per year and needed two tune ups to do that, points. But of course, modern cars are not as good as the old ones which got 10mpg. Within limits, less is more unless some beautiful people on TV or whatever are telling you aren’t complete without……..
Gail and God permitting, I shall still be around to espouse optimism with a caveat, there are going to be bumps.
Happy New Year! It is 2024 and only 364 more days until doom and gloom!
Dennis L.
Well, space travel does take longer than 15 minutes.
Also your delusional optimism is becoming less coherent every day. Most people here don’t deal with you anymore. I deal with you, not because I am trying to convert you or anything, but to point out the weaknesses.
And it is not 364 days till doom and gloom. About 300 days. I don’t really care who wins, but the circus will be unprecedented.
You will die waiting for the starship, like the pagans who prayed for the Olympus gods to save them as the less educated xtians put the world back to barbarism.
kul,
Time will tell. Falcon X recently landed for the 200th time at Vandenberg. Falcon Heavy lifted off and launched an Air Force project.
Your alternative is destitution and misery; you are welcome to it. Life is very hard, there are many disappointments. If you make it through the hard stuff, each time gets easier mentally, or at least it does for me. My personal saying, “Yeah, same old, same old, next.”
kul, I am very coherent.
Starship and collect asteroids, perhaps moon(dust problem there) for refining, Jupiter metaphorically as a waste dump.
AI, no more pesticides, no more broadcast spraying, zap the weeds with a laser, basically facial recognition in vegetarian. Swarm of drones? Maybe, think grasshoppers; there is not one giant hopper, millions of them, self replicating.
Relative to ag., this stuff seems to being done, I am going to try, I am terrified my brain will fail me. kul, last semester, all my labs were perfect, so as they say in Cali, “Yeah, but what have you done for me today?” Now, almost game time.
Film at eleven,
Dennis L.
Your argument boils down to that of a debtor, after living high on the hock for all his life, tells the collector that there are unicorns in the sky who will shit gold nuggets to pay his debt.
Destruction and misery are the price humanity has to pay for living high on the hock for centuries without any plan. The debt has to be paid. Your schemes to avoid payment will not be tolerated by the collectors.
kul,
Laughing quietly. Arguing is pointless, time will tell. My bet is biology is such a long shot there is a thumb on the scale, it is not what should, but what will be that counts and the thumb makes the rules.
Have a good 2024.
Dennis L.
Time will tell, you will die waiting for Messiah and the world returns back to barbarism.
I nit pick with Dennis, but he is generally right. Asteroids mining is a really large scale operation but not outside with we can do with AI and a thousand Starship launches.
The big difference between now and when the Roman empire fell apart is that we understand a lot more about the world. Particularly there are a lot of engineers who are busy solving problems. And now they have AI to speed up the work.
We feed a lot of food to animals that could be diverted to human consumption. It would not be as fancy, but even a major hit on agriculture from a volcanic eruption is not likely to stave a serious fraction of the population.
I mass delete Dennis… I feel sorry for him if he actually believes what he posts… that is the work of a mentally ill DeluiSTANI who should be confined to The Asylum and denied internet privs
How do you mass delete guys? Asking for a friend.
tick the boxes next to their name in your email client — click Delete
FE, thanks, I appreciate your comment. While I basically skim most of your stuff, I do thank you for the jab messages. It was part of the reason an old man made it through both cancer and Covid at the same time. I am liked by the thumb, or better to be lucky than smart.
When Starship orbits in 2024, I shall not smirk but quietly remind you of the thumb, always the thumb.
Dennis L.
A ‘starship’ which goes to nowhere.
It all comes down to your wish to deny that you are mortal.
Sorry, none of your schemes will work.
There was someone who believed all these fantasy tales were real . His name was Don Quijote.
More on biology and humanism.
“A limitation to this research is that participants were female undergraduate students from American universities, with the majority having the option of pursuing high-paying careers. Women in more impoverished areas may not have this option, and thus seek out other strategies of securing paternal investment for their offspring.”
The study is about women in universities not finding enough men. Girls, they are in trade schools and the cosmetologists are snatching up all the welders so the well educated can become cat ladies. As for the high paying careers, women in general used to make less then men, look at the cost of the education and the NPV may be less than zero, bummer. Pretty easy for a good welder to make $100K and on off days, he can make things around the house, buy a fixer upper and in so doing gain equity, not debt. Guys should not believe the “beer” commercials, actors playing a role for which they have no talent. Oh, wait, those are politicians.
Life has never been easy, mostly is not fair. You can be anything you want to be is nonsense.
I watch a lot of YouTube, sleep with it on, helps an old man make it through the night. Current craze other than Lex Fridman is AI. It may be self selection, but no women. Appearing now is I think a South African with AI for agriculture. That my friends is going to be big, big, big! No stop lights or pesky pedestrians on the farm. We will zap weeds with lasers and go organic!
Meanwhile, back to the world ending, when was it? I recall 2016 was going to be the year, oil production in the US is up, up, up!
Dennis L.
The only man who has no trouble finding mates is your God.
kul,
I hold my own; I can dance and lead well. Very lucky, last coach a DWTS pro. Got to stick to the sixties and older now, bummer.
Dennis L.
B, the Honest Sorcerer, has an interesting post up.
https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/life-after-modern-technology
Life After Modern Technology
…and the power of saying no
B starts by recapping what he had said in recent articles:
“Technologies requiring hierarchies to build and operate will invariably lead to autocratic societies, while technologies available to everyone without the need for large scale coordination (larger than a handful of humans) foster democratic societies.”
Obvious, if a person thinks about it. (Religions often tell us to do unto others as we would have them do to us. In other words, tends to moderate the hierarchical tendency. )
B then says:
“A cornucopia of resources — brought about by an inherently autocratic technological ecosystem — gave birth to western colonialism and capitalism.”
I think the issue is that in warm, wet areas, it was possible to have a reasonable society without extra energy from stored energy available from grains, or from fossil fuels. This abundance was only available with the benefit of hierarchical organizations. In areas where people could live with root crops alone, or by hunting and gathering, there was no need for fossil fuels.
B then says:
“Thanks to the many energy slaves (first real humans, now machines powered by fossil fuels) the use of complex technologies became democratic the first time during human history. . . Thanks to the many energy slaves (first real humans, now machines powered by fossil fuels) the use of complex technologies became democratic the first time during human history. . . Since the maintenance of such technologies will still require massive hierarchies, democratic self organization will be no longer enough.”
The whole system has to tend toward concentration at the top, and practically nothing for those at the bottom.
B makes the point that different kinds of gods go with the different kinds of societies:
1. Societies where everyone has equal access to resources tend to have multiple gods, often ranked.
2. Societies based on technology and the hierarchical use of energy tend to have a single god. According to B: “These religions were based on a belief that only one god exists, and therefore any other theology must necessarily be wrong.”
B points out that now leaders have found a new religion:
Looking ahead several hundred years, B sees humans going back to a foraging lifestyle. I would add that humans can probably also live in areas that are warm and wet enough to be supported by year-around root crops. Today’s technology cannot last. Humans have lived through prior ice ages. They can likely survive any climate change which occurs, but in smaller numbers.
I would add that the whole progression is so strange and so well-organized that there is likely an invisible hand, or a Higher Power, orchestrating the whole thing. The outcome may be very different from this. It is up to the invisible hand, or a Higher Power, how this turns out.
It is necessary to have a society of hierarchy to build very advanced systems, which is why a dictatorship, or an oligarchy like what we have now, is needed to advance to a higher stage of being.
The ancient Greeks had a bunch of gods, but Zeus became the chief god. The Romans found Jupiter was not sufficient and the Emperors themselves became gods, reaching the zenith during the rule of Aurelian who put the Sun as the chief god, Sol Invictus.
The monotheism in scandinavian society was also replaced by xtianity as its society advanced. I have read Sigrid Undset’s novels about that period (the series ends with the heroine dying during the Plague so it is about late 13th -early 14th century).
I would rather die than live in a more egalitarian world without tech progress.
Sorry, I intended to say polytheism in Scandinavia.
Scandinavia cannot support hierarchical structure because it is too cold. People need to get along with each other, and share what is available. When I visited Norway, I saw many statutes of mothers and children, rather than military generals. My background is Norwegian. No one ever raises their voice at someone else.
Laughing quietly, mostly agree except……
At some family gatherings of the sisters at my grandmother’s farm, the voices did get pretty loud. The shanty(summer cook and eating house) was refuge for the men.
I too am Norwegian, we were the original multiculturalists. Farmers by summer, winter trips by row boat to visit the neighbors.
I like the idea of the statues.
Happy New Year.
Dennis L.
That is also a result of protestantism, where you let people be in their own responsibility in front of God. Spanish or Latin Catholicism has a completely different approach to mingle into the matter of other people. Orthodox people want to create some kind of community of independently responsible people, but they don’t let you be like protestant people.
It is also a point of population density. A friens fom northern Finland said, after you have not seen a living sould for two months you stop the next car on street and embrace the person whoever it is. In the Middle Ages Europe had 38 mio inhabitants, today Madrid has 3 mio, London 9 mio, Moscow 13 mio and Istanbul 16 mio.
Vienna has 2 mio inhabitants. I always imagine 2 mio hungry people, pouring into the countryside in order to grow their own potatoes after the government has finally failed.
I have the idea that these 38 mio lived on a smaller area than today as it were the late Middle Ages that started to drain swamps and to move up higher into the Alps.
Being dependent on each other might also restrict the ability to use slaves. The German Junker are said to have had a very paternal relation towards their bondsmen.
For the area of northern Germany there is evidence in pre-history, that groups after a failed harvest of hazelnuts or less prey could stay the winter with other groups on their storage expense until they could find a new habitat. I find that remarkable.
These ideas help a bit to locate measures of mandatory injections or plans of a centralized WHO health responsibility.
“Today’s technology cannot last.”
I don’t see it, build my own computers, they are much better today than the Imsai 8080’s of old with 8″ floppy drives. My car today is much better than those of my parents.
Dennis L.
If you can’t see it then I suggest you go see an ophthalmologist…..or a shrink……
Cause that’s just silly talk (even ignoring the space fantasy altogether)
Cro,
I enjoy taking risks once in a while when I like the odds. If the world ends, there will be no internet, nothing so no one can make fun of me. If Starship works and there is internet, I can smile, not smirk. Both comments, one on computers, one on cars are correct from what I see. Only problem with Imsai was the movie and the almost start of WWIII, one little problem. The Epson printer was not of the appropriate date, much later than the Imsai. RS Model II had a hard disk the size of a dinner plate in a box, 5 or 10 megs, the head walked to the data. Now run multi gig drives and also SSD which are almost instantaneous. Current machine as I think 64 gigs of memory, CPM computers had 64K.
Took computer classes on a 360 30, recall IBM technician lying on his back, heating core with a soldering iron to find a fault. That was the days of core as in small iron cores, fine wire matrix, very quaint.
Stuff is better now.
Dennis L.
classic cars are exquisite to look at—but mostly terrible and dangerous to drive
friend of mine has a jaguar xk120 from 1954—everybodys dream car—but he only takes it out on hot sunny days
new cars are so much better because they have so much more in them—-that input consumes resources which are finite
A lot of tremendously good sense in that essay.
Gonna be a b*tch getting through to the other side.
Wonder what simulacrum operations has in store?
I ruined the party by posting:
There are 4000 Spent Fuel Ponds Around the Globe…
If you don’t cool the spent fuel, the temperature will rise and there may be a swift chain reaction that leads to spontaneous combustion–an explosion and fire of the spent fuel assemblies. Such a scenario would emit radioactive particles into the atmosphere. Pick your poison. Fresh fuel is hotter and more radioactive, but is only one fuel assembly. A pool of spent fuel will have dozens of assemblies.
One report from Sankei News said that there are over 700 fuel assemblies stored in one pool at Fukushima. If they all caught fire, radioactive particles—including those lasting for as long as a decade—would be released into the air and eventually contaminate the land or, worse, be inhaled by people. “To me, the spent fuel is scarier. All those spent fuel assemblies are still extremely radioactive,” Dalnoki-Veress says.
It has been known for more than two decades that, in case of a loss of water in the pool, convective air cooling would be relatively ineffective in such a “dense-packed” pool. Spent fuel recently discharged from a reactor could heat up relatively rapidly to temperatures at which the zircaloy fuel cladding could catch fire and the fuel’s volatile fission product, including 30-year half-life Cs, would be released. The fire could well spread to older spent fuel. The long-term land-contamination consequences of such an event could be significantly worse than those from Chernobyl.
http://science.time.com/2011/03/15/a-new-threat-in-japan-radioactive-spent-fuel/
Japan’s chief cabinet secretary called it “the devil’s scenario.” Two weeks after the 11 March 2011 earthquake and tsunami devastated the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, causing three nuclear reactors to melt down and release radioactive plumes, officials were bracing for even worse. They feared that spent fuel stored in pools in the reactor halls would catch fire and send radioactive smoke across a much wider swath of eastern Japan, including Tokyo.
https://energyskeptic.com/2017/the-devils-scenario-near-miss-at-fukushima-is-a-warning-for-u-s/
The Chernobyl accident was relatively minor, involved no spent fuel ponds, and was controlled by pouring cement onto the reactor. This was breaking down so a few years back they re-entombed.
Estimates of the cancer burden in Europe from radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl accident
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16628547/
However, many of the radioactive elements in spent fuel have long half-lives. For example, plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,000 years, and plutonium-240 has a half-life of 6,800 years. Because it contains these long half-lived radioactive elements, spent fuel must be isolated and controlled for thousands of years.
So are you saying that the concrete sawdust mixture I am using to insulate my Cave Man/Jeremiah Johnston/Border Reiver stronghold is not enough to prevent terminal sloughing of my intestinal lining??
My cuboidal epithelium needs to know???
Attempts to survive… are futile
“We are the BORG”……
understood,…….
But…….
the great solar “event” that is on tap is gonna make nuke rods seem like hot dogs floating in the Amazon river.
More and more “edumacated” types seem to be openly talking about electro magnetic atmospheric weirdness caused by solar activities that seems to do very very very strange things to the earths crust,…….
LMAO
Cataclysm cometh.
This time by fire
Excellent — I like it.
https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/the-great-clarification/
For those silly or as ‘FE likes to say stoopid’, enough to think the internet doesn’t matter. Here’s JHK’s take on it:
“The “something big” could well be the Web-down crisis that is nervously tweeted about. If it went on for more than couple of weeks, most everything we depend on would cease to work, from food supplies to clean water to communications to what has been lately operating as “money.”
He neglects to mention there’d be no food … and the computers that run the ponds… would fail.
As Ron White the comedian likes to say: “You can’t fix stoopid”. Israel created problems for an Iranian nuclear facility by injecting a malware virus. Swift, which banks all over the world are tethered to the Internet along with the Cloud and you can’t access the Cloud unless you are connected to the Internet.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/11/israel-appears-confirm-cyberattack-iran-nuclear-facility
You can’t make this stuff up, a quote out of an article by a professor at Houston University.
” into the classes that historically have higher enrollments, like film courses. (For spring semester, I had proposed a course, based on decades of research and writing, that explores the parallels between the work of novelists and historians. However, I will instead teach a course on world cinema, based on decades of buying popcorn at movie theaters.)
This means my class on the history of nihilism, where I teach Kafka, is bound for the boutique boneyard. This is oddly apt, since a recent scientific study on the impact of big classes on some students borders on the nihilistic. ”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/the-humanities-are-in-a-bind-out-of-kafka/ar-AA1mimJQ?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=aea6c0dc66754b46ba3a6a9ada8db9be&ei=15
Houston University.
https://uh.edu/about/#uh-at-a-glance
It is a large school. Per TM seems like it is the discretionary/essential ratio coming into play.
Unless I were going to a professional school, medicine, engineering, a CC for me with minimal humanities(they are teaching agendas now, too many, too fast, too much change), and an extra year of math through diff. eq and physics.
Not an expert, but engineering might have changed; one doesn’t have to know as much why it works, but how to use it. In my hoped for area, programming seems essential if one wants to do machine learning with the devices.
I have great expectations for an old man, one semester at a time, each one a test of my senescence.
Dennis L.
Faculty with degrees in the humanities would like to continue to teach. They even like to continue to do “research,” of some sort. So schools will continue to offer some of these course.
But we have already reached a point at which young people cannot afford the high prices for advanced education. At the same time, we train too many young people for the jobs available.
Older people can sometimes get special deals on college courses. This can make college courses a better deal for those who are already retired than for young people.
“The Painful Reality of a Town Post-Coal”
https://youtu.be/kVV3fuNsIWU
Some here might enjoy this….a northern lad (descendant from miners) visits Wigan to see how the town is doing these days and to look for traces of it’s coal mining past.
He reads from Orwell’s “Road to Wigan Pier” throughout.
This YT channel (Wandering Turnip) as well as UK Explored and Turd Towns put visuals to the decline and decay Tim Watkins writes about.
thanks for that link jon—followed it up
makes my point that a house is worth nothing without the energy that people put into it
“Almost three million people were seen for an urgent cancer check over the last 12 months, according to new analysis from NHS England.
The number being tested has increased by more than a quarter compared with the same period before the pandemic.”?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-67841348
British economy without London is thirld world .
https://theautomaticearth.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/FTRichestGlobal.jpg
British governments over the past century have done a great job keeping our standard of living way higher than it should really be
It is said World War 2 would have ended 1 year before if the need to transport all the food and things to keep the British public fed did not exist.
After the Russian Revolution, the rulers of UK became afraid of the now armed and dangerous lower classes and gave them a lot of concessions, a problem which would not have existed if Chucky ‘didn’t do ‘his duty’.
https://youtu.be/I9Nc3vP7-WA?si=6TfvDvr7S5vanNi8
London 1910
The people of UK hated Europeans and liked the Hindus and Pakistanis so they will serve the Asians.
With,
That is a good thing, may it continue.
Dennis L.
It is and let’s hope it does
I beat Chrales “Chucky” Fitzclarence all the time, but his 200/400(accounts differ) Worcestershire men were no less guilty.
The people of United Kingdom, except those arriving after 1945, also participated messing Europe as much as possible.
It is time for them to pay the price of costing humanity a higher state of being. Some of them did contribute but the majority of people residing in the countryside did not, and it is time for them to pay.
But it seems like the rich cities are ones that are disproportionately losing population, at least in the US.
“I’m not in love, so don’t forget it,
it’s just a silly phase I’m going through…
I’m not in love…
I’m not in looooooove…”
wooooooo!
2024 and bAU as far as the eye can see.
I am sure he’ll fix Argentina… https://t.me/leaklive/17519?single
Is she a hooker?
Po rn star…
I may be wrong, but my impresssion is that he will end in a very bad way like also his friend Zelensky.
They are like those characters like Caligola, persons who go far beyond what can be tolerated to leaders.
Of course it is only my impression.
He’s only popular because Argentina has turned into a certified sh*thole via socialism. Their currency is broken, their banking and financial systems are broken. Melei is making a grave mistake pegging the Argentine peso to the USD. It would have been far better to peg it to a basket of currencies because all it will do is import inflation from America to Argentina, which is the last thing they need.
meant to say export
But at a much lower rate of inflation than they currently experience with their own currency surely?
For now, but that will surely change. Ask all those Chinese investors who took out loans in USD was it worth it? The CCP encouraged them to fund their development projects in Yuan’s but instead they were enticed by the low US interest rates. How quickly things can change.
Another clown to the world stage like BoJo!
Trudunce… Donkey Face Ardern….Macaroon … Bidet…. the Elders want bozos they are easy to control… anyone with half a brain would not seek public office
The Real Bill Clinton https://t.me/VigilantFox/10427
FE you are beautiful, dude.
just sayin’.
An FE bromance? I never would have expected that, not in a month, a year or even a decade!
sarc!
https://mishtalk.com/economics/government-social-assistance-and-health-is-over-100-of-job-creation-in-3-states/
https://youtu.be/GxADbMHfBok
“In three states, Government jobs plus Social Assistance/Health Care is over 100% of year-over-year job creation.”
Michigan, Illinois and New York are the three states with such huge growth in this type of job creation.
All most all jobs in New York State are government jobs.
A new archaeogenetic paper reveals that the Roman occupation left no detectable ‘Italian’ ancestry in the Balkans; rather the influx was from Anatolia and they left a lasting impact ~25% on the genetics of the Balkans. Other populations from the north came and went and left no trace. After the Romans left there was a massive influx from Eastern Europe (Slavs) into the Balkans ~50% impact on the genetics and that has largely remained the situation in the Balkans to this day. Notably the tribes in the Balkans tend to be quite competitive and even hostile but their origins lie in common historical demographic trends (which tends not to make any difference if groups have contrary identities.)
News report:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/12/231207161343.htm
Ancient DNA analysis reveals how the rise and fall of the Roman Empire shifted populations in the Balkans
“There have been debates about how impactful these migrations were and to what extent the spread of Slavic language was largely through cultural influences or movements of people, but our study shows that these migrations had a profound demographic effect,” says Reich. “More than half of the ancestry of most peoples in the Balkans today comes from the Slavic migrations, with around a third Slavic ancestry even in countries like Greece where no Slavic languages are spoken today.”
…. The researchers were surprised to find no evidence of Italian Iron Age ancestry in the Balkan populations during the height of the Roman Empire. Instead, they showed that there was an influx of people from Western Anatolia, another part of the Roman Empire, during that period. They also found evidence of individual migrations into the Balkans from both within and outside the Roman Empire….
During the late Imperial period, between 250 and 550 CE, the researchers detected migrants with mixed ancestry from Northern Europe and the Pontic-Kazakh steppe. “We found that those two ancestries — central/northern European and Sarmatian-Scythian — tended to come together, which suggests that these are likely to have been multi-ethnic confederations of moving people,” says senior author and population geneticist David Reich of Harvard University.
However, these sources of ancestry disappeared after 700 CE. From 600 CE, shortly after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, there was a major influx of individuals from Eastern Europe. After 700 CE, individuals in the Balkans had very similar ancestral composition to present-day groups in the region, suggesting that these migrations resulted in the last large demographic shift in the area. These migrations coincide with recorded Slavic migrations, but the DNA analysis provides insight into the scale of these migrations that is impossible to glean from historical resources.
“There have been debates about how impactful these migrations were and to what extent the spread of Slavic language was largely through cultural influences or movements of people, but our study shows that these migrations had a profound demographic effect,” says Reich. “More than half of the ancestry of most peoples in the Balkans today comes from the Slavic migrations, with around a third Slavic ancestry even in countries like Greece where no Slavic languages are spoken today.”
*
The paper:
https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(23)01135-2
A genetic history of the Balkans from Roman frontier to Slavic migrations
….
Large-scale demographic input from western Anatolia
…. Despite the exceptional number of Roman colonies in the region and the large military presence along this frontier, there is little ancestry contribution from populations long established in the Italian Peninsula, a pattern exemplified by the almost complete absence in our Balkan transect of Y chromosome lineage R1b-U152, the most common paternal lineage in Bronze Age and Iron Age populations in the Italian Peninsula.15,16,29 The prevalence of cremation burials in the earliest centuries could bias the sample, but even after the transition to inhumation burial around the 2nd century, ancestry contributions from populations of Italian descent are not detectable. Rome’s cultural impact on the Middle Danube was deep, but our findings suggest that it was not accompanied by large-scale population movement from the metropole, at least by the descendants of central Italian Iron Age populations.
The Roman Empire did, however, stimulate demographic change in the Balkans. In this early period, ∼1/3 of the individuals (15 of the 45) fall beyond the Balkan clines in PCA (Figures 1C and S4) but close to Near Easterners and can be modeled as deriving their ancestry predominantly from Roman/Byzantine populations from western Anatolia and, in one case, from Northern Levantine groups (Figure 2A; Data S2, Table 6). Most of these individuals were excavated at four different Viminacium necropolises, but we also found them at other urban centers such as Tragurium (Trogir) and Iader (Zadar). A very strong demographic shift toward Anatolia is also evident in Rome and central Italy during the same period15,25 and demonstrates long-distance mobility plausibly originating from the major eastern urban centers of the Empire such as Ephesus, Corinth, or Byzantium/Constantinople, and our results show that these migrants had a major demographic impact not only on the Imperial capital but also on other large towns on the Empire’s northern periphery.
…. The main source of migrants to the region shifted away from Anatolia after ∼300 CE (Figure 2A), but together with the ancestral legacy of local Balkan Iron Age groups, Anatolian-related ancestry persisted in admixed form into the later Medieval individuals (Figure 2A) with a mean of 23% (95% CI = 17%–29%), indicating that this was a deep and lasting demographic impact.
From internal to external migration during late antiquity
Beginning in the 3rd or 4th century CE, we observe individuals who are admixed with ancestry related to Central/Northern European and Pontic-Kazakh Steppe populations (Figure 4A; Data S2, Table 6). These two ancestry types tend to colocalize in the same individuals, suggesting that the stream of migrants into the Balkans included people who were admixtures of these two sources
…. It is also unexpected to find that Central/North European and Pontic-Kazakh Steppe ancestries vanished after 700 CE (95% CI for the sum of these two ancestry proportions = 0%–3%) (Figure 4A; Data S2, Table 6)…. Although this absence could reflect unknown sampling bias, it suggests that the population size of incoming Central/North European groups may have been limited as compared with the local Iron Age population and/or that selective demographic processes—out-migration, differential mortality due to urbanism or military service—acted to prevent a long-lasting demographic impact of these groups.
Slavic migrations and the formation of the present-day Balkan gene pool
…. After 700 CE, we observe a clear shift toward present-day Eastern European Slavic-speaking populations in the ancient Balkan transect, a shift mirrored by present-day Balkan populations (Figure 3A).
…. The vast majority of the individuals with Eastern European ancestry in our dataset appear in the 7th–10th centuries and are of admixed ancestry (Figure 4A). The Slavic migrations started as early as the 6th century,46 and our dataset may not reflect the early phases, although it provides insights into its dynamics.
…. Present-day Serbs, Croats, Bulgarians, and Romanians yielded a similar ancestral composition as ancient individuals after 900 CE at sites such as Timacum Minus, Tragurium, or Rudine necropolis at Viminacium, with ∼50%–60% Eastern European-related ancestry admixed with ancestry related to Iron Age Balkan populations and in some cases also a Roman Anatolian contribution (Figure 4B; Data S2, Table 8), implying substantial population continuity in the region over the last 1,000 years. The Eastern European signal significantly decreases in more southern modern groups, but it is still present in populations from mainland Greece (∼30%–40%) and even the Aegean islands (4%–20%). This confirms the observations from PCA (Figures 1C and 3A) and previous genetic studies, suggesting a substantial demographic impact in the southern Balkan Peninsula8 and the Aegean.46
Fig. 4B
https://www.cell.com/cms/attachment/2f97a853-d8e2-4adf-90c9-7f869f2e5f0c/gr4.jpg
(4B) Proportions of Eastern-European-related ancestry (in black) for present-day Balkan and Aegean populations.
So, sometimes the genes of invading populations seem to mix with the existing population, and other times they don’t? Perhaps different practices by invading armies.
It’s AD—Anno Domini, meaning “in the year of the Lord” and referring to a year after Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, was born in a manger—not CE, meaning “Common Era”, which is cultural Marxist Newspeak claptrap invented by wicked people who hate our freedoms.
Happy New Year to all those who want one!
Happy New Year! I am sure it is already New Year in Japan.
Usually such influxes come with some kind of superiour knowledge, like new agricultural techniques, metal worker’s knowhow, adaption to mountain regions. The boys can make some money and the girls marry them.
Post-Singularity, people will be like drones, no emotion whatsoever, no thinking, no judgment, no remorse, etc. They would be like walking machines, only following the orders of the Winners.
Human free will led to unbridled consumption, unchecked waste, unlimited overpopulation , etc.
After UEP, hopefully the remaining humanoids will be more obedient, less free, and more fit to the Narrative to maximize the advancement of civilization.
We don’t really need luxuries like national culture, indigenous culture, etc. Japan eliminated all of its indigenous culture with brutality, and these only exist in old books, and it has no separatist movement as a result.
The remaining hominids…..will be violent, have extremely low agreeableness, be around IQ 85-90. They will eat anything that moves and a lot that does not. They will be technology level of early iron age…..
That’s ALL “humans” that remain…….this reality will not tolerate “elites” or “winners” outside defined ecologic parameters.
Winners get best the meat cuts and all the women……
That’s reality talking……..the ecology of this simulacrum will ensure it.
This is SPARTA!
Agreed.
WIthout fossil fuels but with degraded agricultural lands and almost no healthy wild animal populations, the evolutionary pressures will push humans to smaller size, much smaller brains and less parental care.
Basically turn the clock back to monkeys.
Yes, it will take millions of years but the selection pressures are already here.
It will be interesting what will be the effects of FE’s spent fuel ponds – I doubt is complete extinction this century, but will the mutation and cancer rate push to earlier maturity? Think about the wild pigs in Chernobyl – they survive because they reproduce young and have big litters. Will people change in that direction?
In our little village, which has a population of about 20 people—down from about 200 in the Meiji Period—they have been arguing about which New Year decorations should be put up at the local Shinto shrine to the mountain god, and about who should make or provide them.
The most assertive middle aged male (I’m being anthropological here)—let’s call him Dear Leader—insisted that the “kumi-cho” who handles the village’s dealings on official matters for the current year, is the person responsible for platting the straw rope made from this year’s rice straw that is hung just above head height between the upright branch of freshly cut green pine one one side and freshly cut bamboo on the other.
This surprised the rest of the village, who formed the consensus that “Dear Leader” is making it up as he goes along.
Another consensus is forming that making the rope by hand is too much bother and you can get a more professional looking one for a few thousand yen from Amazon or Rakuten.
It is in a thousand such trivial decisions made on an ad hoc basis at the local or individual level that traditional culture withers and dies.
For instance, nobody around here ever tests a new samurai sword on a passing peasant these days.
Kulm, you are the best.
you too, Cro.
National culture is needed for the emotional side of war. Clausewitz writes (Vom Kriege):
Wollen wir den Gegner niederwerfen, so müssen wir unsere Anstrengung nsch seiner Widerstandskraft abmessen; diese drückt sich durch ein Produkt aus, dessen Faktoren sich nicht trennen lassen, nämlich: Die Größe der vorhandenen Mittel und die Willenskraft.
aber die Stärke der Willenskraft läßt sich viel weniger bestimmen, und nur etwa nach der Stärke des Motivs schätzen.
Resistence is a product of means and “power of will”. I think that’s the success factor of the national state.
I suppose in Habsbourgian Austria regional identity was also created to keep people in their home areas.
With degrowths the internationalists will fail. That’s why they are trying to erect the reign of the WHO right now. It is their last chance for a long time, but a large one.
National cultures are just detriments for extracting the world’s resources and concentrating them to those most likely to succeed.
We do need to eliminate all differences and just put all into one basket to reach the next level of civ.
Frustrated by a lack of progress by nonprofits and politicians, he said he got involved with a local coalition to try and improve conditions in his neighborhood.
The group planted greenery and installed new lights. He also painted a 300-foot mural on the side of his building at 1069 Howard St., where the late publisher William Randolph Hearst printed the San Francisco Examiner in the 1920s.
But now, he says, he has to paint out graffiti every day on the mural, and the plants were stolen—yanked out of the ground.
He said he was also attacked, not long ago, by a man with a switchblade near his business, and a couple of days later someone took a sledgehammer to one of his businesses’ windows. Often, he says, there are people passed out from fentanyl in front of his doorway. And more recently, he intervened—when security guards wouldn’t—to stop a woman from stealing merchandise from a local drug store.
https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/san-francisco-small-business-owners-calling-help
And he’s wondering why they won’t make the loan…. hahahahaha
We are on the verge of Mad Max
There are a lot of cities that are not doing too well. San Francisco gets a lot of publicity, but there are other cities with a lot of problems, as well. Seattle for example. Even Atlanta has its issues.
Anybody knows a good anthropological book on the collapse of Detroit?
I think it would be helpful for any of us that wants to know what to expect in these cities in 5 (?) years.
Did they starve in Detroit?
Did spent fuel ponds dump cancer on them?
Keep in mind … they can get away with this … because they assume everyone is a TFI…
They know that whatever they say will be believed… will not be questioned….
If you question what they say – without any way to verify it one way or the other… where does that leave you?
It leaves you adrift in an ocean of confusion — lost in space — what is true – what is a lie? How can you tell? You end up defaulting to– quoting cnnbbc … because there is nothing else….
It’s easier just to accept whatever they publish …. as if it is true… to not bother questioning… because what’s the point… seeking the truth is mostly futile…
Just default to the position of a TFI….
They know this is what the billions will do … that’s why they can get away with this
https://twitter.com/CENTCOM/status/1741259817602429357
What Twitter says:
Fast Eddy doesn’t believe this.
Fast Eddy wants clips … Fast Eddy wants to know why the US China Russia are not laying waste to the HOOTIES – remember the US killed 500k children in Iraq…
Fast Eddy wants to know what the HOOTIES want — why exactly would they try to close the canal.
Fast Eddy wants to know – now that winter is here – why POOTY doesn’t throttle back the gas to the EU.
Fake Fake Fake … everything is fake
Understand FE. Chimps in the woods are the same. As long as there’s enough, no problemo.
After that, we have central banks ‘ n shit to flatten the curve. And when that fails, all bets are off.
Monkey shit 2.0
So, we agree on that one. Its not fake, its just a more advanced form of monkeynism.
Firemonkeyism!
In the end, the Neanderthal will prevail, my dear Cromagnon.
Or magic?
Simulation is a kinda magic… so is the matrix that we are living…
Notice how Centcom has a twitter feed of this … and they surely have video of this (remember the clip Assange published that got him in trouble…) … but nothing …
Why? Cuz it’s fake
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/maersk-halts-red-sea-transit-after-container-ship-hit-missile
Neighbour … fully boosted…. has been looking like death warmed over in recent weeks… a mutual mate was doing some work for him and said one day he went into to see him and he was bent over his desk … holding his head… intense pain … and with tissue stuffed up both nostrils… bleeding out… he’s since been to the emergency as this has been worsening and I was told he has ‘blood leaking’… I assume it’s cranial…
Having read about aortic ruptures and similar damage to the arteries in the brain (Jamie Foxx etc) that are caused by the battery acid in the Rat Juice… I suspect he is not long for this life. He has corrosion of the brain — incurable … terminal.
Speaking of Jamie Foxx, I didn’t catch the news until you prompted me to google search that he’s near death again as of 2 days ago:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/jamie-foxx-is-at-deaths-door-family-says-he-needs-your-prayers/ar-AA1aGDwo
What does he need our prayers for. Is death refusing to open the door?
He needs a Rat Juice booster…
But … but … they said he was playing Pickle Ball recently …
Does anything thing that maybe that was…. fake????
In a Post Type I Civilization,
there is no freedom.
There is no free will.
Everything is all set up by sophisticated computers.
No dissent allowed.
All resources micromanaged to those who deserve it , and not to those who don’t.
No more human dignity, decency, et cetera.
That is Civilization, Singularity and Spacefaring Civilization, with nothing for those who are not worthy.
Hear, hear! You simply don’t get to the next level of civilization by being nice. To get to the next level of civilization, it is necessary to micromanage every single resource , to the last bit. To do that an absolute resource control is needed.
Which is true
Nice guys need not apply
The future will be very strict, no slack allowed.
Agreed….if you don’t put your crude lance, tipped with an old rusted steak knife into that feral razorback hog just right….both that enraged pig and your hungry pissed of tribesmen are gonna parboil your stringy gluteal muscles in a stewpot derived from an elegant salad bowl and a bunch of wire yanked from the backside of a vine encrusted hard drive in former wealthy bankers summerhouse.
The pigs contribution to the technical aspects might remain wanting…..
“Nice guys finish last.”
— Leo Durcocher
In the end, chaos wins. It always does.
Before world war 2, the Privileged Class basically did whatever they felt like, and the lower classes, with no hope , no chance of advancement (except maybe in the colonies) and no way to attack the status quo, just lived out their lives quietly. There were a few revolutionaries here and there but their impact was short and ephemeral.
After World War 2, the world lived in a hallucination, with the misguided notion of democracy for all, capitalism and eternal growth. The foolish notion of “Rule of Law”, where the law supposedly works equally for everyone, inhibited a great deal of progress.
Before 1915 people knew their place and progress was steady. After 1915 the optimism was gone forever .
The world is going in the correct direction. Good life, health and security for the top 10% of the world’s more advanced country, and nothing for the rest.
If we had reached 2030 without too much incident, the tech gap between the more important countries and the rest would have been insurmountable, and would have stuck, basically , forever.
The gap would have been so large that the other countries would just have dumped into ditch and never, ever rise again. NEVER.
Unfortunately the Hordes attacked at the most vulnerable time. And it is having a very hard time.
If the Hordes win, it is eternal barbarism, back to Eastern Despotism as described by Karl Wittvogel’s books, and everyone lives like this
https://youtu.be/liUd2tukV3E?si=q5CBukfq_kiVraf1
(An Earlier scene from Bertolucci’s Last Emperor)
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/consumers-are-rejecting-great-reset
Excerpt:
“A friend got a rental of a Tesla over the holidays. It’s undoubtedly the industry standard for EVs and a complete blast to drive. The problem: It’s not a practical car at all. He was driving in the cold, and the car was nearly drained after two hours. Searching for a charge was no easy task. The first one didn’t work. The second one stated that it would be charged in 10 hours, which he didn’t have. The third one charged in one hour but that was a full hour wasted.
His conclusion: This is indeed a glorified golf cart designed to keep you at home and under the thumb of the manufacturer. And this is just a test. The repairs are worse. Keep in mind that this is the best the industry has to offer. The other manufacturers of these things make products not nearly as high-rated, which is why so many of them are sitting on lots unsold and why orders for the machines are plummeting.
It seems like the EV craze has peaked already. Growth in gas cars is now far higher than electrics, flipping a trend from 12 months ago. Finally, consumers are figuring it out.”
I forgot to post this excerpt because it got me thinking about Klaus Schwab’s WEF idea of 15 minute cities which would compliment a digital currency:
“This is a good second car, provided you’re driving in your own town, you have a hook-up at home and can charge it overnight, and you don’t suddenly have to go out of town. It’s a toy, sometimes a fun one, but not a real car. For that, you need gas.
The idea that this car is going to transition the United States to “clean energy” is absurd. If every car were electric, the grid would crash and rationing would be the norm. And maybe that’s the whole point. You drive only with permission. Nothing about your transportation is within your control. Authorities will decide everything for you. It’s a perfect strategy for creating a society of dependents.
For people who most of the time only use a car for commuting and shopping and taking short drives within 30 minutes of their home, an EV would theoretically do as well as an IC or hybrid vehicle. But to get them to switch, it would be necessary to improve the marketing, and also to make the EV significantly cheaper than the IC or hybrid.
The latter will probably be attempted by artificially increasing the price of fuels such as gasoline and diesel to the point where the EV looks attractive by comparison.
Not that I would ever consider and EV. I am sticking with my mountain bike when the weather permits, and bumming rides off of friends and neighbors when needed.
There was a video posted here last month – one person drove a BMW petrol vehicle and the other a Tesla from the tip of Scotland to the bottom of the UK… it took the Tesla 19 hours longer to make the trip… and it was roughly 4x more costly to charge vs petrol.
Only a TFI buys an EV
Then there is the insurance cost, and the lack of adequate resale value. A person might wonder why anyone would buy an EV.
Ask a good question – get a good answer…
Cuz they are MOREONS… TFIs…. same reason they shoot Rat Juice and rot from the inside out ….
They got played….
This is why American Moon is so important … if after watching that (or refusing to watch it) a MOREON still believes we have been to the moon — the same MOREON will most definitely believe pretty much anything that cnnbcc tells him…
Danger Danger Danger…
Generally harmless — except when it comes to injecting Rat Juice….
If the MOREON would watch American Moon – and wake the f789 up — the MOREON would understand that if they can pull that moon landing scam off and lie to billions … they are capable of lying about anything… (including the Rat Juice and the UKE war)…
And that might lead the MOREON to actually questions bbccnn… and possibly avoid injecting the toxic corrosive Rat Juice… my neighbour no doubt believes we have been to the moon – and now he is paying the price… he’s got blood leaking out of his brain and draining onto the floor from his nose… at some point he surely is going to bust… cuz you can’t fix corroded arteries
F.E . believes that Laser reflectors magically appeared on the moon!
Time, date and mission number!
Otherwise B/S!
Have you yourself ever checked for the existence of said reflectors? How do you know they really exist? Space is fake, dumbo!
space is fake ivan?
how exactly does that figure out?
do you mean we are living on the back of a giant turtle after all?
No, Norm. Wrong yet again. A giant tortoise.
ah–thanks ivan
always good to get things right when dealing with space stuff
do you think there are asteroid tortoises as well?
It is hard carapaces all the way down anyway.
Of course there are asteroid tortoises. Here you have many asteroid tortoises, their shells plainly visible from top view. If you attack them, they divide in two and become even faster and more dangerous.
https://images.saymedia-content.com/.image/t_share/MTc0MDE0OTk4MzEyMzk2NjY3/asteroids-by-atari-classic-video-games-reviewed.jpg
well they look like eddyfakes to me
Student:
(Snip)
Again we think to be the only one in power in the world.
It was almost an obliged decision.
It is not possible to have a portion of the world which develops and another big portion that stand aside just looking at you.
If one part of the world is left only to see, sooner or later that part will come to you and will cut your throat in the night.
==
Not if the other part of the world is eternally stomped by your foot, for ever. I think George Orwell said that.
It IS possible to have a portion of the world which develops and another much larger portion standing aside just looking at the better part.
That was the norm before World War 2.
So many things got messed up because Gabby Princip, the cross dresser, thought her stupid country, whose most famous mind Nikola Tesla NEVER stepped a foot in there, was worth saving , and Brigadier Charles “Chucky” Fitzclarence ‘did his duty’.
For the umpteenth time,if Chucky didn’t ‘do his duty’ and ran, India is still British, Ethiopia is still Italian, Vietnam is still French, etc and they would NEVER be able to ‘cut your throat in the night’.
Lower class people in UK, Canada and USA had a boom time. Generally speaking, we bartered the world’s future , Type I Civ, etc for the better standard of living for those who did NOT deserve it in UK, Canada, USA (and later some of their allies) for a century.
Withiout Chucky, the Abu Saids would have remained as bandits, as the Turkish government would still have maintained the control of Arabian peninsula. Lawrence of Arabia is another f’kup but since his crime is smaller than that of Chucky I don’t beat the figure too much.
Italy had its share of f’kup, namely Armando Diaz, whose surname suggests a Spanish ancestry, but again his crime is smaller than that of Gabby, Joe Gallieni(another Italian who led lots of French to their deaths) and Chucky, I give Diaz a pass. These three deserve their places in the deepest abyss of hell.
>> her stupid country, whose most famous mind Nikola Tesla NEVER stepped a foot in there
Interesting, I checked and you’re right, Tesla was ethnic Serb but born in what is today Croatia and educated outside Serbia (Croatia, Austria). I guess some things never change: folks from smaller countries move around a lot if they have talent, because larger countries have more developed industries and capital pools. Serbia continues to have large emigration, even today.
The only reasons smaller countries exist are
1) to provide lower cost labor for the larger countries
2) to act as buffer states.
They should have no ambitions and no aspirations, like poorer people.
The smaller countries without sea access have a particular problem, partly because it takes a lot of energy to ship goods across land. Also, there can be a problem if the country’s neighbors won’t give access to the sea, or demand high payment for such access.
Also, smaller countries that are island countries at a distance from everything else have a problem, because everything has to be shipped. New Zealand comes to mind.
Kulm, your analysis are very interesting and you demonstrate to have a very good historical and military background.
Actually it almost seems that you are a former general of the army.
But that it is not the point I want to make.
What I would like to say is that in my view your analysis misses the social and cultural developments that our societies have had during these last 100 years.
Weather we like it or not, movies, literature, political ideologies, fashion, sport , everything has modified the way people think today, so, even if the west would have managed in its own favour its superiority (from strtategical point of view), it would have never kept it, because the masses now don’t accept anymore a complete slavery of another part of the world just for the sake to live well.
In general, in order to justify the mistreatment of other populations, people need to be manipulated by own religions or own political ideologies, but now they are over.
I think that in history exist cycles, every civilization reaches a peak and then falls.
I think that we deserve our fall, mainly because we are now morally corrupted and we cannot offer anymore a good example neither to ourselves.
After the Great War. people without a stake in Civilization came to power, and they had a devil may care attitude on civilization, only caring about their own legacy.
For example, MacArthur, from an old military family (i.e. had a stake in civ), suggested dropping nuclear bombs to China, a measure which would have prevented the calamities now happening today. Truman, who didn’t even have a college degree, opposed it and fired MacArthur, one of the more foolish movements of all time.
Truman valued the lives of ordinary grunts, half-witted rednecks, more than the long term future of civilization, and we now know what happened.
It is possible to stomp a majority of peoples basically forever, like China under Mongol or Manchu rule. The Manchu rule would have stuck to today if the English didn’t feel like attacking it in 1839.
One can argue whether that is jutifiable or not till hell freezes over, but it cannot be denied that civilization moved much faster when only a select group dominated everything and the rest had cold feet.
Truman was something of a placebo against the health of FDR, much like Harris and Biden as I see it.
Gore Vidal, among comments how much of mistake that was
maybe someone else would have looted the Manchu
but it’s all the wot ifs of history
maya – it’s all an illusion
Isn’t it understood universally in this century that the past is all stuff and nonsense of no more than curiosity value
entertaining plots; dead morality
vengeance of the deities?
or ebb and flow of history, innocent of cause? You decide
Rereading in the bath this week Henry James’ 1886 novel The Bostonians the preeminent genius comedy of nineteenth century America. He proposes:
I don’t know what we have ever done to them that they should keep us out of everything. We have trusted them too much, and I think the time has come now for us to judge them, and say that by keeping us out we don’t think they have done so well. When I look around me at the world, and at the state that men have brought it to, I confess I say to myself, “Well, if women had fixed it this way I should like to know what they would think of it!” When I see the dreadful misery of mankind and think of the suffering which at any hour, at any moment, the world is full, I say that if this is the best they can do by themselves, they had better let us come in and see what we can do. We couldn’t possibly make it worse, could we?
Well, they did, and the result of a century and a bit before us today shows how they turned the delightful world of Dickens into the present state of enlightened governance, peace and universal prosperity
Chucky was no one
Henry James, who mostly stayed in England after he got established, spent his entire life to reconcile the Eastern Elites, among which he belonged to, and the British Elites. He realized it was a futile project and died as a British citizen.
It is incredible Kulm how you divide western contributes on civilization from other kind of contributes in civilization that other cultures brought to the overall civilization of humans on the earth.
During middle age (when US was the land of the natives) the progress in Europe (the place of your ancestors) was mainly driven by Arab developments brought to Europe.
Sorry to tell you, but I think that only a person from US could make these kind of reasoning, no European or even English person could make such a net division on civilizations.
And I think that is the problem of our current times, US is not able to rule the world without bringing conflict against others even if, in many cases, conflicts are not necessary (besides the normal physiological conflicts of being an Empire).
“the preeminent genius comedy of nineteenth century America”
I was referring to the book, not the author. Do you have another work you suggest would better qualify for this tag?
Did not the Irish author, Wilde, write the preeminent genius comedy of nineteenth century England, The Importance of Being Earnest?
Happy survival day survivors
That’s a whoopsy it’s not new year in USA it is in aussie land but I’ve got a good excuse I’m pissed that allows us another 15 hours for collapse finite worlders I’m hoping collapse will not happen till 2050
The Core until 2050!
good for you.
if Australia stays in.
it’s bAU 2024 tonight, baby!
2024 without a financial crash of a magnitude greater than the crash of 2008 would be amazing. Can it be postponed to 2025?
Davidinamonth is the local expert. David? Financial crash time? 2024? 2025? 2030?
yes 2024 will be amazing with most financial predicaments kicked like cans down the road into 2025.
and beyond!
I have got two bucks that say the financial crisis will hit before the end pf 2025. It’s an even chance that there will be significant (+20% or more) inflation. We are alrready at half that.
Until David arrives to provide his indubitable forecast, let me hazard that indeed, we will have BAU until at least 2027 and perhaps even 2030!
yes 2027 is such a beautiful number!
One more thing – this “crash” might not look like previous crashes. If and when folks start doubt the USA itself rather than simply the present mood and economic conditions, they might try to get out of the devaluing dollar-income streams (treasuries, bonds), for which they receive cash outright, and then buy US dollar-denominated assets like stocks and real estate. In other words, you could have a stock market rocket ship against USD devaluation.
Europe is fubar first, though, so USA might still be the relative safe haven.
That is a very good question. By late 2007, it was becoming clear that the world economy was heading into a recession. This time, it is not as obvious that the world economy is headed for recession, although there are many troubling pieces. Central Bankers seem to have more tricks up their sleeves now than they did in 2007.
It is hard to believe that everything has stayed together as well as it has, given the many problems the world is facing.
Which kind of tricks? it seems to me the printer is the only trick. BTW, Happy 2024 everyone (it is 2024 in Istanbul airport)! You will not get economic growth, but hopefully you can get plenty dark chocolate and some eves in front of the fire.
Some of the bailout tricks for banks. Repos and reverse repos. There seems to be a temporary 12 month facility for banks in trouble to get increased funding, also.
It is still a printer. The tricks are which segment of the population to give it to. Helicopter money (also known as Universal Basic Income) has also already been tried. Now they are mostly going back to giving it to banks, but not only. For example the Inflation Reduction Act.
OMG!!! https://t.me/leaklive/17502
“Russia. 4 dead in Belgorod, air alert working again.
The moment of the explosion in Belgorod.
According to some reports, it was a drone or a rocket.
“All residents should go down to shelter. The danger remains,” reports Governor.”
As we can see — it’s orchestrated.. fakery
Surreal. Response to major warfare backup the car when you see bombardment in front of you.
USDA allows genetically engineered vaccines to infiltrate organic food production. The OrganicEye, an industry watchdog, said some USDA-certified organic producers are already using GE vaccines in their livestock even though it goes against the principles of organic farming. The watchdog also pointed out that consumers cannot determine whether USDA-certified organic meat, eggs or milk have been produced using GE or GMO-containing vaccines.
https://www.naturalnews.com/2023-08-22-usda-allows-ge-vaccines-in-organic-food-production.html
We need to become more vegetarian, perhaps.
It is a per capita problem. We need fewer humans. Which will happen due to declining fertilizer production due to declining energy.
Wild fish is no doubt saturated with mercury etc….
We’ve made a fine mess of the planet
What we need is to carry our own water…..
But most are “to good” for that sorta thing….best some one else far, far away gets dirty ( or stays clean while running earth destroying, multimillion dollar technology) so we can go to overflowing grocery stores.
My son and I are eating bison sirloin steaks and garden potatoes. We are dirty hillbillies….but well fed dirty hillbillies.
After you finish go to the town and beat some Vaxxers… show em who’s the BOSS!
You have no idea how appealing that actually sounds……
Gates has that unremovable “Apeel” coating substance goin’ on, even for organics.
Always peel your apples! (seriously)
(Blondet news)
Some disturbing videos from the war in Gaza. Don’t watch if you think to be impressed, they are very hard.
https://www.maurizioblondet.it/non-offendiamo-il-nazismo-prego/
The man carrying his daughter blind for the bomb and his child without life is very strong.
No sanctions to Israel of course.
That is how to properly treat an uncivilized people by the civilized
There is no need to sanction Israel. It is like cutting your own foot
I am not there, will not judge, but I don’t think this is something one does. You have to be above it or one perhaps sinks to a level that one would not want to go.
There is some thought the US teaching its soldiers how to kill more of the “enemy” have caused PST in the soldiers. What they are displaying is not a good place to go. Perhaps killing people changes the killer, some make it, some never recover mentally even if physically come out a winner.
Dennis L.
what was it patton said…….
i dont want you to die for your country
i want you to make sure some other guy dies for his damn country
Sorry, your God probably doesn’t want someone with remorse.
A famous quote
Someone asked a famous US sniper what he did after he put down a famous terrorist leader or something. The sniper said, ‘recoil’.
A good soldier is completely devoid of emotion. He accomplishes what he was ordered to, without any question or reservation.
Removing humanity is the most important step for reaching the next level of civilization
“Removing humanity is the most important step for reaching the next level of civilization.”
Disagree, don’t want to live there, sounds like Chicago, or similar.
VA in Wood(Milwaukee) had what was called a domiciliary, old soldier’s home. Not all were old, many had mental issues, solved that problem at a bar next to the grounds.
“During World War II it was estimated that 45,000 rounds of small arms ammunition was fired to kill one enemy soldier. In Vietnam the American military establishment consumed an estimated 50,000 rounds of ammunition for every enemy killed.”
https://www.faac.com/blog/2018/01/28/killer-instinct-how-many-soldiers-actually-fired-their-weapons-in-past-wars-how-has-simulation-other-training-helped/
I have read somewhere that many soldiers missed on purpose, they did not want to kill. US Army solved this issue with training and close combat, PTS went up. Only a small percentage of humans are designed to kill other humans, they are the psychopaths.
Trivia, some of the old wooden rocking chairs in the dom rooms were large, dated from the Civil War. There was a racial incident while I was there. Some old white guys were roughed up for their beer money, old guys used their canes(they were not modern, large wooden ones, perhaps used in the Civil War period) for attitude adjustment, respect and peace ensued, they bought each other a few beers.
Dennis L.
I could train them to think of the folks they kill as TFIs … not worthy of life… and deserving of extermination … no PTDS afterwards
Thanks for the warning I will forego watching I am already completely against the Zionist Occupation of Palestine.
Humans slaughtering humans … great entertainment!
I don’t get it … folks won’t watch yet they’ll gladly partake in a feast powered by the horrific torture inflicted on animals in the industrial farm settings… no problem with that at all….
Industrial Farm Cruelty
https://t.me/leaklive/11666
https://cubeoftruth.com/av
Horrifying Animal Experimentation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuKaHh3ZKIk
The UKE war is so much bigger yet… they have to use photos of damage from other wars… and stock footage of war machines firing weapons… remember the one of the tanks firing at the already demolished buildings? As the drone circled…
Why fire at demolished buildings? Oh .. right … for the photo opp to be used in the latest PR to play the TFIs and make them believe it’s real… knowing TFIs will not ask – why are they doing that – why are there no bodies?
FE is not a TFI. FE asks questions
No answer?
F.E . believes that Laser reflectors magically appeared on the moon!
Time, date and mission number!
Otherwise B/S!
Got you!
Interesting thought on another blog .
” To put it very finely, we have two serious problems.
The first one has no solution. Finite planet, there is no possibility of infinite growth and at some point forced decrease will begin.
The second is where we can protect ourselves.
The capitalist system only works with perpetual growth. Companies have to earn more money to pay their debts and if they don’t, the system blows up. But until that time comes, the printer works.
Debts continue to grow, apparently like Japan, without limit and confidence in fiat currency is not eroded. When inflation hits, rates are first raised to curb demand and when price increases cool, rates are lowered again. The problem is that inflation is not easy to tame, especially if we want to continue growing. The BCs know very well that if they lower rates without having killed inflation, it will rise from its ashes and come with much more force. Therefore, they have to risk economic decline until reaching recession, to kill inflation.
At this time, having a recession with the size of the debt is suicidal, so BCs must deal with very precise timing. They cannot wait too long, nor lower rates in advance.
What I expect is that a recession will begin marked above all by the increase in unemployment and a few months later the BCs will lower rates. Inflation will return as soon as oil becomes scarce and the cycle will restart, but at a higher level.
In the end, the economy will threaten to collapse and the BCs will surrender to inflation. At that point, it is possible that foreigners’ confidence in the dollar will disappear. That is to say, an inflation of 3% is well tolerated, but 10% or more implies that the owners of raw materials are not going to want inflated pieces of paper created out of nothing. They are going to demand something solid for their scarce oil and that is the beginning of hyperinflation.
How long does this process take?
Sometimes it is fast and other times slow and we will never know a priori.
But a deflationary collapse without hyperinflation beforehand cannot occur, because the printer would still be usable. BCs have used the printer consistently and governments around the world applaud it. Let’s not fool ourselves, they are not going to stop using free money, if they are not forced to do so and only the loss of confidence that hyperinflation implies can bend their arm, so they will go to the end.
The BRICS+ know this and are preparing for that moment.
Greetings.
PS In my opinion, we have already entered the acceleration phase, but before the final explosion, a stock market crash is needed. It could be perfectly this year, but it could also be delayed…
I would like to have the crystal ball, but I’m afraid I don’t have it.
This substack author offers a more sobering and realistic assessment of the Ukraine War. The good thing about runaway debt and diminishing cheap easily accessible fuel (diesel) is that it will make large scale wars more difficult to wage. No nuclear wars, but major players will have so many domestic debt, demographic, and energy troubles that they will hesitate to commit.
Interestingly, Doomberg has done an about face on fossil fuel supply, and thinks there will be plenty in the coming decade and beyond, thanks to “technology.” Steven St Angelo posted a rebuttal to this on his srsroccoreport.com website which is behind a pay wall, but opining that “you can’t fix stupid.”
But local civil wars are another story, regretfully, as I take stock of all my ammo and arms. I still think it will take a collapse of the currency and/or the grid, knocking out the truckers, fuel pumps, ATMs, etc. to percipitate a SHTF event in 2024.
The people are not pissed off enough to do anything about the outcome of the 2024 election, probably because it really won’t change things as much as all these bloggers try to make us think. Not that things would improve, just that the course of events doesn’t have much wiggle room and will continue to grind down.
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/end-of-2023-roundup-update-on-the?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email#media-f25c02ba-209c-4fe8-8b18-c064eabc0028
Clips of war machines with action music… but no clips of death and destruction… never much in the way of rubble — given 380k dead and more bombing than WW2…
Fake
Prediction for 2024
AI does no harm. AI poses no threat.
The middle east does not fall for the bait. Only Palestine has war.
China and Taiwan agree to reunite.
The new settlers take control of the poorer cities like Chicago, St Louis.
Germany has higher unemployment and wide spread rioting and uncontrolled immigration.
Interesting ideas! “The new settlers take control of the poorer cities like Chicago, St Louis,” seems a little iffy.
Ah, that is an idea; there is a certain, vocal, ethnic group which will suffer most as the new arrivals don’t have guilt. New arrivals often become cops, e.g. the Irish.
Hubris is not a good thing and the future is always before us until our end.
Dennis L.
Catherine Austin Fitts worked for the George Bush Sr. Administration.
https://usawatchdog.com/pushback-to-tyranny-control-increases-in-2024-catherine-austin-fitts/
“We had another story about taking it to the streets and have a whole section on ‘Pushback Heros.’ . . . in 2023 people started to realize that it is kill or be killed. We have to pushback because there is no going along with this. They are trying to kill us number one. Then they are trying to take all of our stuff, and we can’t let them.”
who is pushing back?
what did they accomplish in 2023?
my prediction is they will accomplish just as little in 2024.
😎
This is pushback against ESG investment, and pushback against all things woke. I am sure the pushback will increasingly be against the way Donald Trump is being attacked from all sides, at the same time Biden seems to be terribly corrupt. Whether anything can come of it remains to be seen.
“Before banks fail in areas with virtually no fossil fuels, my guess is that we will generally see hyperinflation.” What is your opinion on holding precious metals, what do you think would be a means of protecting yourself from depreciating currency.
The general, the long term direction of precious metals is downward in a collapse.
In another comment, I recently quoted a passage from Lamentations pointing this out. Lamentations 4:1 says
How the gold has lost its luster,
the fine gold become dull!
The sacred gems are scattered
at every street corner.
Revelation 18, in talking about the possibility of a future collapse like that of Babylon says:
11 “The merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her because no one buys their cargoes anymore— 12 cargoes of gold, silver, precious stones and pearls; fine linen, purple, silk and scarlet cloth; every sort of citron wood, and articles of every kind made of ivory, costly wood, bronze, iron and marble; 13 cargoes of cinnamon and spice, of incense, myrrh and frankincense, of wine and olive oil, of fine flour and wheat; cattle and sheep; horses and carriages; and human beings sold as slaves.
—–
In both cases, the problem is practically no demand. The whole system has fallen apart. We cannot count on gold (or silver or printed money of any kind) to hold its value.
Money of all kinds is losing its value. This is sometimes called inflation. Or we can have the reverse, with failing banks, and great debt defaults. The money you thought was in the bank cannot be retrieved.
Even if gold is used to buy a declining quantity of available goods, it seems like it will take more and more gold to buy the same amount of goods and services.
I think the best we can do is:
1. Spend what we need to now, without trying to save up a whole lot for the future, because the natural world doesn’t really allow “savings.” Spending on family and close friends is especially important.
2. To the extent that we do have money left over, diversify investments. Perhaps some in gold or silver. But if you are older, some in an annuity. Some in “paper investments.”
Is is a challenging time. Thanks for the comment.
Dennis L.
I won’t be possible to trade a kg of gold for a can of tuna when BAU collapses.
There quickly won’t even be any cans of tuna…
It’s a good thing the Elders are in charge of this — they have provided a relatively painless exit for 8B.
Think how back in the Great Depression the deer population was decimated in just a few years, as people hunted them for food.
Not only would they disappear this time around, but every grocery store would be stripped bare, every grocery truck that was still running would be looted on the roadside.
Gold will lie dormant, just like the mammals did for millions of years while the dinosaurs reigned supreme.
Only until a meteor strike which wiped out the dinosaurs could mammals emerge from their burrows and evolve.
Gold and silver’s re emergence will take time, only after the new reset and local markets get established.
Maybe your grand children or great grand children will thank you.
I get they want to start a civil war, de-stabilize society, make a global world police, gather bio-informatics data and behavioral information while assigning utility scores to humans and killing the useless off while breeding only humans to have specific functions and becoming gods themselves by trying to make artificial minds, but is this really do-able in the timeframe? They have 2050 Canada 3X Nuclear Energy program and 2100 Rockefeller PDF documents — are they self-deluding themselves or do they really have the means to extract more resources, or are they really going to genocide 7.5B humans in time?
I know a few of them and 1) they are not that smart 2) they have extraordinary hubris. Which will be their downfall. I would be willing to bet a modest amount of money that the new feudal lords will be more “warlords” than “globalists”.
They only have to be smarter those they are getting rid of
The 7.5B will pretty much genocide themselves. It is the only tractable way of disposing a whole lotta protoplasm. It just ain’t enough ammo to get the job done.
Any plan with a serious misunderstanding in and of life, and human nature itself will ultimately wimpier into oblivion in the best case, or merely end up repeating itself as perpetual nausea in the worst.
I reckon an AI could be used for creating a white list of utilitarians. But who’s setting the metrics? I reckon it will be defined by the Usual Hyper and lead to massive internal self contradiction, misalignment, of the AI.
It is by very hooman nature to project oneself as the crème de la crème. Unfortunately, hoomans are nothing more than a cloner herd of these narcissistic traits originating from previous collapses and cataclysms.
Which is to say that a primate gonna Monkey Business now and forever irregardless of incarnation and severity of personality disorder.
Bleak perhaps, but true nonetheless. Expect nothing will ever move outside of this local maxima as the psychosocial attractor in this perpetual pit of sub optimality is overwhelming.
But I understand the immediate survival instinct which causes such “plans” to form. Problem is that they’re not concerned with the traits of a species as such, rather narcissistically want to project themselves and their possible offspring into the eternal return of the Hyper.
And yes, there is no denying that both you and I share the traits which leads to the eternal return of the Hyper.
You see, if it takes any effort at all to bring the self image, ego, under control, it is a sure sign that it would be infeasible for yourself and others given a different set of life circumstances and situations.
Just blatantly assume you’re mostly a useless piece of bovine excrement burning through copious amounts of finite resources like there’s no tomorrow (how true isn’t that?) as you try to project yourself onto the world and expect it to reflect your self delusions of goodness, certainty, and perpetuity back. Garbage in, garbage out. Forever.
Reality and life is inherently dynamic, uncertain, mostly maladapted, and with all species tending toward extinction at any given moment. Some might call it a process.
And it certainly seems so.
Let it sink in while washing your hands free from the filth of hope and cope 🚰
🤣👍👍
8B … https://www.headsupster.com/forumthread?shortId=220
”they” are not going to genocide 7.5 bn humans
”we” are going to genocide 7.5 bn humans.
there is no ”they”—despite what the fantasists and delusionists tell you…..or you tell yourself.
humankind is about to run itself off wile e coyotes cliff, under the delusion that the cliff does not exist.
it is a situation entirely of our own creation, no outside influences, no matrix, no elders, no aliens…..no superior elite trying to keep the planet for themselves.
just us, humankind.
irrelevant whether you can accept that or not—just telling you what is.
Yes, we can take care of 7.5 billion without no outside help.
“The natural world does not allow savings”……most profound statement ever written on here.
The simulacrum design is full of evidence of “teachings”……we players struggle to learn the lessons.
I will remain resolute that Marten pelts and pemmican are the only stores of value this reality holds acceptable in the colder regions of the realm.
Thinking it’d keep me warm if the heat went out, I bought a beaver coat on eBay. After two years in the closet, it’s been eaten by moths. I haven’t checked the pemmican yet.
We have given away almost all the life boat supplies including food, bags of antibiotics etc…. the garage is nearly empty as is the container … in anticipation of the exit from sad NZ. Notice how the Donkey Faced Pig D.unce has also left.
Please remind us where you are headed. Somewhere with no lifeboat supplies? Choosing Bolivian Fun and Superfent in case of doom?
If it was not for M Fast + Hoolio … I’d be headed for Bolivia … that’s for sure
Helen f789ed with The Jesus…. opposing UEP is futile… they don’t realize who they are messing with … the DOD — you know – the War Machine that murders folks around the world then loots their countries… ya… those folks… UEP is a DOD opp.. Pfizer is just the front … Booorla even admitted it (he did what he was told)…
This goes all the way to the top — the owners of the DOD>.. The Elders…
https://www.dossier.today/p/trudeau-regime-puts-canadian-detective
It’s certainly starting to look that way. Eight billion+ humans and diminishing resources. Bill Gates and Co., are trying to find a way to lower the global pop.
JHK wrote this in his latest article: “My natural inclination, you know, is a kind of allergy to paranoid schemes, but one does survey the scene with wonder at how superbly coordinated the fuckery has been — much of the world locking down simultaneously for the Covid-19 op. . . the global mass vaxx campaign. . . the fiscal lunacy and accompanying central bank shenanigans. . . the broad-based censorship operations. . . the capture of the news media. . . and the war-mongering.”
New FOIA’ed Data Reveal NY Vaccine Clinics Called Ambulances To Be “On Standby”
Furthermore, there was an increase of more than 25% in the number of ambulance calls in response to cardiac arrests for young people in the 16–39 age group.
https://vigilantnews.com/post/new-foiaed-data-reveal-ny-vaccine-clinics-called-ambulances-to-be-on-standby/
The Eiffel Tower is rusty and tries to impregnate the Mona Lisa.
Act now before its too late.