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The world economy is an amazingly complex, physics-based, self-organizing system. The three major elements are extracted resources including energy resources, human population, and demand coming through the financial system.
All three of these elements tend to increase over time, but both population and extracted resources tend to hit limits because the world is finite. Financial demand is emphasized by politicians because it seems to increase without limit. The extraction limit is not obvious: It is the amount that consumers can afford to pay for resources and the products they create. This limit cuts off resource extraction at amounts that are far below the amounts that geologists calculate are available for extraction.
In this post, I will offer some insights into how the world economy actually operates.
[1] There is a close relationship between world energy consumption and economic growth.
The fitted years are 1965 to 2023. The R2 =.98 tells us that there is a close relationship between energy consumption and GDP.
[2] There is a physics reason why energy consumption and economic growth are related. The economy requires energy for a similar reason to the reason why humans require food.
Physics tells us that every action, even the movement of molecules, requires energy dissipation. Within the economy, this energy can be human energy, energy from the sun, or energy from sources such as burned biomass or fossil fuels.
In physics terms, the world economy and many structures within the world economy are dissipative structures. These structures are self-organizing, and they often grow over time. Examples are plants and animals, hurricanes, and businesses.
Dissipative structures require energy of the right kinds for their continued “life” and for growth. Animals require food for their continued life and growth. Hurricanes get their energy from warm sea water. The fact that the economy is a dissipative structure has been known since 1996 and is written about today.
[3] Starting long ago, humans became adapted to eating some cooked food. This change led to humans being able to outcompete all other animals. Eventually, this change led to populations outgrowing available resources and collapsing.
According to Discover Magazine, pre-humans first began to build fires to cook food at least 800,000 years ago. The consumption of cooked food allowed early humans to have bigger brains, smaller teeth and jaws, and more time for activities other than chewing, such as making crafts.
Humans are now adapted to having some cooked food in their diets to get adequate nutrition. (A few people today try to consume a raw food diet, but they often use a food processor or juicer to break down cell walls.) As a result of the adaptation to eating some cooked food, two major changes took place:
(a) Humans were able to achieve dominance over other plants and animals. They could use fire directly to scare away other animals, and they could use fire to help make better tools for hunting and agriculture.
(b) Because of this dominance, the population of humans has tended to grow until some kind of limiting condition is hit. The resulting pattern is often called overshoot and collapse.
History shows a repeated pattern of overshoot and collapse. A population would grow until the carrying capacity of the local area was reached. Food surpluses would become lower and lower, so less food could be saved up for fluctuations in rainfall and temperature. Eventually, civilizations would succumb to one or another problem: disease, attack by a neighboring group, climate fluctuations, or governments overthrown by unhappy citizens.
We tell ourselves that overshoot and collapse cannot happen now, but human population is high relative to fossil fuel resources, and intermittent wind and solar are not working out well as substitutes.
[4] The financial system provides growing demand through debt and many other financial promises. An important aspect of this financial demand is its time-shifting ability.
Figure 3 shows my view of how the economy works. Debt is indeed important because it helps pull the economy forward. For example, it helps an entrepreneur afford to build a factory and hire workers. As long as the investment pays back well enough to repay the debt with interest, the system seems to work. GDP tends to grow. (Figure 3 also shows five other parts of the system, but I am leaving these to the reader to review.)
Debt is not unique in pulling the economy forward. Shares of stock issued with the promise of dividends act similarly to debt because they allow investment before a new product is made. Pension plans, even if not funded, stimulate the economy because citizens decide that they don’t need to save for the future (or have children), if they can depend on the government pension plan to take care of them. Even inflation in the price of a home or shares of stock can have the effect of adding to demand. For example, a person owning shares of stock can sell some appreciated shares of stock and use the proceeds to build a new factory.
It is the time-shifting aspect of debt and related promises that is important. With the help of debt and its equivalents, people can spend today to build a road or factory that will provide a long-lasting benefit. The hope is that the total return will be high enough that the debt can be repaid with interest, or that dividends can be paid on the shares of stock.
If the economy is growing quickly, interest rates can be quite high without slowing the economy. If energy costs are very high, or if all industries are stagnant, it may be difficult to get any payback at all from a debt-related investment. Instead, interest rates may need to be very low, or debt defaults become likely. Economic growth is likely to be low, or even negative.
In one their analyses of borrowing by governments over eight centuries, Reinhart and Rogoff unexpectedly discovered the phenomenon of low defaults among rapidly growing countries. They reported, “It is notable that the non-defaulters, by and large, are all hugely successful growth stories.”
[5] Models become very important in today’s economy. They often are misleading, even if they are supposedly scientific.
The easiest models to build are ones that assume the future will be very similar to the past, or that the trend from the past will continue. These models tend to be popular with citizens because they suggest that good times will continue indefinitely. Such outcomes are what everyone would like to see, so these models tend to be accepted as “scientifically valid.”
In a finite world, many kinds of patterns are constantly changing. Depletion of resources and rising population are particular stressors. Figure 4 shows the base scenario of a 1972 computer model of resource depletion, population growth, and pollution growth.
The model used was an engineering-type analysis of the physical quantities involved. This approach did not show growth continuing indefinitely. Instead, it showed a major downturn about now.
I have looked at the model myself, and I have talked with Dennis Meadows, who oversaw the analysis. The model looks at resources used in each six-month calendar period. The share of these resources needed for getting these resources out and transformed into usable work cannot be too high, or the economy tends to collapse. (Nature doesn’t use accrual accounting!)
In such a calculation, quick payback of an energy investment becomes very important. Also, the amount of supplementary equipment, such as electricity transmission lines and batteries required, becomes important. I would expect that wind, solar, nuclear, and liquefied natural gas (LNG) would do relatively poorly in such a calculation. Oil, coal, and burned biomass would do much better because their energy payback is immediate–when they are burned. Furthermore, oil, coal and biomass require relatively little specialized equipment for transportation and storage.
[6] Narratives are created to accompany the questionable models that have been developed.
One popular narrative is that Financial Demand is all that really matters. Politicians have significant control over the Financial Demand shown in Figure 1. They can see that if they can create more debt, they can perhaps get some of the money that the debt makes available down to ordinary citizens. With more money, citizens can perhaps buy more goods and services from the world economy.
Historically, raising financial demand has worked well because the extraction of fossil fuels and many other resources were well within physical extraction limits. Higher demand would lead to higher prices, which in turn would lead to more extraction. But as we get closer to the physical extraction limits, this approach works less well. The problem is that at some point, finished goods (such as automobiles and groceries) become too expensive for consumers if prices rise high enough to satisfy producers.
Because we are now reaching extraction limits, the added debt approach works much less well, as the short tenure of Liz Truss as Prime Minister of the UK in 2022 shows. The problem for countries other than the US is that with added debt, their currencies tend to drop relative to the US dollar. Thus, while perhaps their citizens can individually buy more, the cost of imported goods and services, especially energy, tends to rise. Overall inflation tends to be higher. This causes citizens to become very unhappy.
The US is in a unique position because it is currently the holder of the “reserve currency.” Its currency can’t drop relative to the US dollar. However, since 2020, the US has added huge amounts of debt, as have other countries around the world. Asset prices have also risen because of temporarily low interest rates. Newly made goods and services don’t increase in proportion to the rapidly growing debt and other financial stimulus. What tends to happen instead is inflation, as we have recently witnessed.
[7] One popular narrative is that if enough demand can be added to the economy through financial manipulations, energy prices will rise sufficiently to allow the needed amount of energy to be extracted.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t work. Affordability is important to the consumer, so oil prices can’t rise too high. At the same time, prices cannot fall too low, for too long, or producers will stop extracting oil. Instead, oil prices tend to spike and then fall back. They are to some extent not very acceptable to either buyer or seller. Whether the buyers or sellers are more disadvantaged varies over time. A similar pattern holds for other resources, as well.
[8] A third narrative is that climate change caused by excess CO2 is the world’s worst problem, and that the world can voluntarily move away from fossil fuels and fix this problem.
Unfortunately, the world economy can no more move away from fossil fuels than humans can move away from eating food. In fact, moving away from fossil fuels would likely lead to starvation for a large share of the world’s population. In 1798, Thomas Malthus wrote about his concern that population was growing too fast relative to food supply. The timing was shortly before fossil fuels began being used very widely. World population at that time as only about 1 billion. World population today is over 8 billion.
In part, the climate change narrative seems to be an excuse to move manufacturing from Advanced Economies to economies that make extensive use of coal, as it tends to be a cheap fuel. The latter economies also tend to have lower wage and benefit levels, so there is a definite cost advantage. China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001. The result is easy to see in Figure 8 below. The US now exports coal to India and China, among other countries.
As a person might expect, world CO2 emissions from fossil fuel use have soared.
[9] The truth is that there aren’t enough resources to go around to support a growing world population. We are reaching a turning point where the total amount of goods and services that the world economy can produce will soon turn down. (This is not unlike the situation modeled in Figure 4, above.)
While the narrative we hear endlessly is “We are moving away from fossil fuels to prevent climate change,” I believe the real issue is that fossil fuels are leaving the world because we are hitting extraction limits. No one wants to hear such an awful story, however. The climate change narrative is a “sour grapes” version of the story that is more palatable to listeners.
Figure 8 below shows that the year 2020 should have been a wake-up call that the world needs to cut back on diesel and jet fuels. Diesel fuel is heavily used by agricultural machinery, large trucks, trains and boats. Of course, jet fuel powers jets. With rising world population and a growing economy, it would be expected that their consumption would continue to grow. Diesel and jet fuel are both “middle distillates,” which are most abundantly supplied by heavy oils such as Urals oil from Russia and oil from the Oil Sands in Canada .
Between 1990 and 2018, consumption of diesel and jet fuels increased by an average of 1.7% per year. Between 2018 and 2023, there has been no increase at all–in fact, world consumption for 2023 is slightly lower than in 2018. If the 1.7% per year growth pattern had continued, consumption of this combination of fuels would have grown by 8.8% during the five-year period from 2018 and 2023.
In a sense, there is a shortfall of approximately 8.8% of the diesel and jet fuel combination. Some airline schedules (especially in Asia) have been cut back. Farmers in Europe are protesting because the selling prices for the crops they grow are not high enough to cover today’s diesel and fertilizer costs plus other costs of production. Diesel is a problem fuel and fertilizer is very energy dependent. If the price of groceries rises high enough to cover the costs of diesel and fertilizer for farmers, grocery costs become unaffordable to many citizens.
[10] Added complexity looks like it would be a solution to inadequate energy and other resource supplies. Instead, added complexity leads to wage and wealth disparities and frequent system breakdowns.
Complexity can take many forms, including greater specialization; more education for some of the workers; larger, more hierarchical businesses; greater globalization; and ever more complex devices. Such devices can often use energy products more sparingly. Because of these potential energy savings, many people assume that such devices can allow the energy supply that is available to be stretched to cover all the economy’s needs.
In practice, it doesn’t work this way. Instead, added complexity often adds to energy demand instead of reducing it. For example, moving significant manufacturing to China starting in late 2001 was a type of added complexity. This change added to world coal demand and increased CO2 emission because the goods produced in China and shipped elsewhere were cheaper and therefore more affordable than goods made in the US or Europe.
Another issue with complexity is the susceptibility to breakdowns it produces. Just this past week, there was an example of this with the update of CrowdStrike computer software that took down computer networks around the world. Another example is the problem Kia is having with engines shutting down unexpectedly. Nature uses complexity, but it also incorporates redundancy so that unexpected breakdowns are not a frequent result.
A third problem with complexity is that it leads to supply chains for practically everything manufactured in the US or Europe needing to go through China. This makes the US and Europe dependent upon suppliers in China. Even military goods have supply chains running through countries that we are at odds with, including China. This means that China can, in many ways, “hold the US hostage,” by refusing to sell the US rare earth minerals, or by refusing to provide parts of supply chains needed for military armaments.
Perhaps the most important problem of all with added complexity is the wage and wealth disparities that it leads to. With added complexity, there is more specialization. A few workers with considerable training and advanced degrees get high paying jobs. The wages for these workers, plus the wages for managers, leave little funding left over for less trained workers. Also, competition with workers in low wage countries tends to hold down wages for less-skilled workers.
Besides the wage disparities, some people, mostly those who are already high-wage earners, become owners of these companies. If stock prices rise, this increases the wealth disparities between the rank-and-file workers and those at the top of the hierarchy. The higher-wage people also tend to purchase homes, and the price-appreciation on their homes adds to their wealth.
Physicist Francois Roddier, in his book The Thermodynamics of Evolution, explains that this growing wage and wealth disparities are to be expected when energy supplies are short, and added complexity is attempted as a substitute. Already wealthy people tend to get a disproportionate share of the goods and services produced by the economy, while poor people increasingly get squeezed out because of the physics of the situation.
[11] Ultimately, not enough goods and services to go around leads to conflicts of many types. These include conflict within political parties, within countries, and among countries.
I believe this issue is behind the conflict we are experiencing today. I will leave this issue for another post.
[12] Slowing growth is likely to lead to bankruptcies and financial collapse.
This is another issue that I will leave for another post.
[13] Conclusion
I hope these thoughts are somewhat helpful. I have only touched on a few aspects of how the economy really works. Perhaps I can offer more ideas on this subject in the future.
Ukrainian soldiers tear down Russian flag in Kursk
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/08/11/zelensky-confirms-ukraines-military-operation-russia/
So David has stuck one on Goliath. Nice. Putin has been human-miliated. Lol. But there’ll be trouble ahead.
The tenet for a post-carbon, spacefaring civilization is Winner take all.
Leave NOTHING on the table for the rest.
All the rumbs collected to be used for something else, or at least denied to the general public.
The gap between the top crust and the rest would be something like 1 million vs. 1 as they monopolize all gains from the advancement of civilization, leaving nothing to their employees who are just paid enough to live, or anyone else.
Utmost misery to the masses and the winners won’t give a crap . It would be like they have become a different species.
Such is the only way to advance to Type I Civ
////a post-carbon, spacefaring civilization////
i keep reading that
my greatest concern is doing myself a mischief with uncontrolled mirth
you are not wrong. Wiley Coyote went all in for a space faring, winner takes all civ. (he bought a bunch of stuff from ACME, and tried to eat the only other creature in the desert). Gravity punished that repeatedly.
“The tenet for a post-carbon, spacefaring civilization is Winner take all.”
It would seem that space business is a natural monopoly.
Time will tell how it organizes.
I see no reason for Starship other than mine/manufacture in space with robots.
Or, a cubic mile of pt.
Dennis L.
“Scientists at Oxford University have created a new ultra-thin, flexible new solar cell which could be installed on cars, buildings, and even backpacks or mobiles
Everyday items such as rucksacks, cars, and mobile phones could soon harness a revolutionary new way to generate solar electricity without the need for silicon-based solar panels, . . . “?
https://www.businessgreen.com/news/4344832/solar-breakthrough-oxford-university-researchers-hail-flexible-solar-cells-applied-surface
https://electrek.co/2024/08/09/oxford-scientists-are-generating-solar-power-without-panels/
>> This thin-film perovskite material has been independently certified by Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) to deliver over 27% energy efficiency. It matches the performance of traditional, single-layer silicon PV for the first time
The comments section:
>> Perovskite dissolves in water and is broken down by oxygen in the air. I don’t know of any perovskite cell that has survived a whole year. Why do people still research this material when silicon works so well, for so cheap, for many decades?
Hot damn, I am going to put a silicon panel on my backpack.
I suppose someone might consider perovskite for space solar. In theory, the panels will not be exposed to oxygen or moisture, if they are somewhere out in space. Efficiency would be important, as would be weight.
The comment of ivanislav has already shown us the limit of this technology.
Same old story, the dreams that have to face the crude reality…
When I read somewhere “solar breakthrough” I already know that at 99% is vaporware!
There are limits, that even if they will be broken they will not improve the situation significantly.
The best lab single-junction silicon solar cells have efficiencies of around 27% (single-junction cells have a Shockley–Queisser limit of a maximum theoretical efficiency of 33%) while lab multi-junction cells have demonstrated performance over 46% under concentrated sunlight.
In the real world commercial multi-junction cells have 30% efficiency under one-sun illumination (https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/press-media/press-releases/2016/30-2-percent-efficiency-new-record-for-silicon-based-multi-junction-solar-cell.html), and improve to around 40% under concentrated sunlight, shortening however the lifespan of the cell.
So what? Today cheap chinese PV panels are around 20/22% efficient. Even reaching 30% efficiency for the same cost it will not be a game changer for the energy cliff that we all face.
Agreed:
There is only one solution, space, SpaceX, Starship, robots, mine/manufacturing space with endless energy, a natural waste dump Jupiter and deliver finished products to earth, a gravity well.
Or, of course, a cubic mile of Pt.
Dennis L.
2,427,000 BOPD Has To Be Completely Replaced In the Permian Basin In 2024 Before It Can Grow 450,ooo BOPD .
https://www.oilystuff.com/forumstuff/forum-stuff/don-t-forget-legacy-decline
The first commenter points out that price is a huge issue. If price is low, production drops greatly. This effect outweighs the others.
Perhaps we might look at the overall cost of use.
If electricity is generated cheaply and cleanly, integrating wells with generation may make it profitable.
We need something in the mean time, the end game being a cubic mile of Pt.
Dennis L.
That’s too bad
Black water erupted from another West Texas oil well last week in the same area as one that flowed toxic water for weeks and inspired a controversial no-fly zone in December, worsening the recent rash of foul water blowouts affecting the area.
The most recent blowout outside Grandfalls in Pecos County also follows one on a neighboring ranch in June, which was roughly 14 miles from the “unusual” Crane County well that raised eyebrows earlier this year and about 5 miles from the so-called Lake Boehmer, the infamous ever-growing 60-acre body of poison water spewing from an old wildcat well.
A recent study from Southern Methodist University found these were not isolated incidents. Researchers linked the blowouts with the practice of injecting oilfield wastewater underground. The study suggests wastewater leaked from its containers into subsurface pathways, accumulating into an underground aquifer that is putting pressure on aging wells.
I’m
As pressure mounts, “several more such blowouts are possible in the near future,” the study, which launched in January 2023 after the first big Crane County blowout in 2022, said.
“The pressure is increasing because there is more and more water accumulating,” Vamshi Karanam, an SMU researcher who authored the study, said in an interview last month.
The need for further study of the underground pathways contributing to these blowouts is “urgent,” he said.
The recent outbreak of toxic saltwater from old wells is also near Antina Ranch, the 22,000-acre property that has become a poster child for the issue of old wells springing back to life. The crew assembled to address the issue at Antina calls them “zombie wells.”
The most recent blowout on Laura Briggs’ ranch began Aug. 1, said Hawk Dunlap, a well control specialist who works at Antina. Dunlap, who said he was called to help address the issue, estimated water was flowing from the orphaned oil well at about 20 gallons a minute.
Briggs said Thursday during an interview that the same contractor, Holman Well Service, plugged another orphaned well on her property last year that has already begun to leak. She said she fears improperly plugged wells on the property could lead to the formation of sinkholes.
“What’s unfortunate is this one’s very close to my house,” Briggs said, estimating that the new blowout is roughly 350 yards from her home.
Holman did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Sarah Stogner, an oil and gas attorney with Antina and a vocal critic of the state’s oil and gas regulators, said she requested a temporary restraining order Wednesday that would prohibit state contractors from continuing to “improperly plug” the well.
“It’s putting a band aid on a severed artery,” said Dunlap, who is also a Libertarian candidate for the seat held by Chairman Christi Craddick on the Railroad Commission of Texas, which regulates the state’s oil and gas industry.
A spokeswoman for the RRC said in a statement the agency began working at Briggs’ property last week, using vacuum trucks and lined pits to manage the uncontrolled flow of water.
“This week a rig is also being used to work on controlling the well and water flow, and we will continue to do that work because the RRC’s critical mission, which we diligently adhere to, is protecting the environment and public safety,” she said.
Houston Chronicle
In case you have not caught it, Russia is drastically slowing down all internet traffic from the west, not just youtube. I have tried a number of tricks but no cigar. it was going to happen at some point but it is slightly surprising Russia is doing the first step.
It is a very good idea. It forces businesses and people to figure out and reduce their dependence on overseas service providers of all types. So, it is a gradual / non-disruptive way of breaking dependencies ahead of time.
Brandon Smith article reflects my sentiments on AI being a Trojan Horse to further control the sheeple.
https://alt-market.us/what-is-ai-really-digital-illusions-false-promises-and-mass-reeducation/
In other energy related news, Steve St SAngelo over at SRSroccoreport (behind paywall) states that T Boone Pickens’ plan for a network of liquid natural gas trucking refueling stations along side Flying J/Pilot stations floundered and quietly died as it was not profitable, but now Clean Energy Fuels Corp., using renewable natural gas (RNG) from cow manure has (predictably) been a money loser from the get go.
I guess its like trying to get a net energy return from ethanol by growing corn.
Are these corporations really that dumb, or are these just vehicles to lure sucker money venture capitalists then take a cut of the money and run? Same for these Solar Panel and wind companies.
And AI applied to music, well, listen to what Rick Beato has to say.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bZ0OSEViyo especially @ 7:24
AI put together this statement:
“Creative AI tools can be seen as sophisticated plagiarism software, as they do not produce genuinely original content but rather emulate and modify existing works by artists, subtly enough to circumvent copyright laws.”
Someone writing a song could imagine how it would sound being sung using an AI tool.
https://longnow.org/seminars/02009/feb/13/social-collapse-best-practices/
I want to leave you all with this reminder: in 2009 Dmitry Orlov thought collapse was 5 years away 🙂 But then fracking came along and the can was kicked.
Dmitry has stoppedposting on his blog, and makes appearance in various alt-press youtube channels. so he is making very little money. Almost certainly the biggest step in his demise was his refusal to link covid to energy (he would even censor comments in his blog), which pointed out that he was a salaried pro-russian all along.
drb , Dimitry has a blog that is active ,but with a paid subscription . Link .
https://boosty.to/cluborlov/posts/b22bce7f-07e4-4330-bbd6-3b8dd040aa4c?from=email
Energy poverty and the origin of female monastic orders in the Catholic church
I asked ChatGPT:
“Question:
What is the current number of men and women in Catholic monasteries worldwide, and what is the historical proportion of men and women in monasteries? In other words, historically, have male or female monasteries predominated?
Answer:
Determining the exact current number of men and women in Catholic monasteries worldwide is challenging, as these figures frequently change and are not always publicly available. However, I can provide a general overview and trends.
Current Number of Men and Women in Catholic Monasteries
Women: There are more women than men in Catholic monasteries globally. According to recent statistics, there are approximately 600,000 to 700,000 Catholic nuns, although their numbers have been declining in recent decades. This decline is particularly noticeable in Western countries, while some parts of Africa and Asia still see growth.
Men: The number of men in Catholic monasteries is significantly lower. Estimates suggest their numbers range between 130,000 to 150,000. Similar to women, there has been a decline in the number of male religious in Western countries.
Historical Perspective: Proportion of Men and Women in Monasteries
Historically, male monasteries have predominated, which is due to the long-standing tradition and emphasis on male monastic orders, which have played a significant role in the Church since the Middle Ages. Male monasteries, such as those of the Benedictines, Cistercians, Dominicans, and Jesuits, have had a significant influence on education, culture, and politics.
On the other hand, female monasteries were equally important, particularly in education and charitable work, but their numbers and influence were historically smaller compared to male monasteries. Nevertheless, female monasteries expanded and strengthened, especially during the Middle Ages, when orders like the Poor Clares or Carmelites were founded.
In the last few centuries, however, there has been a shift, and female monasteries began to outnumber male ones, especially with the increasing number of women entering religious life. This trend became more apparent in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Conclusion
Today, there are more female monasteries than male ones, reflecting a broader trend of the growth of female monasticism. However, historically, male monasteries held more significant positions and had larger numbers.”
It seems that during the energy collapse of the Medieval Ages and the energy collapse preceding the WWI and WWII, there was a significant rise of the female monastic orders.
last half day, I think.
no WW3, no Collapse, no Singularity, no Type 1 Civ, etc.
just round and round the BAU merry-go-round.
I am afraid that this might have been another attempted use of US weapons.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/ukraine-says-it-hit-destroyed-russian-offshore-gas-platform-black-sea
Norway news . Drilling dry holes .
https://peakoilbarrel.com/us-may-oil-production-lower-than-september/#comment-779441
Drilling dry holes is what made illegal immigration possible.
What the h__ are you talking bout?
Demographic collapse, hein?
It is difficult to say for sure whether a downturn is immanent. People are always working on improved techniques. Oil price makes a huge difference. If it drops too low, producers tend to drop way down on what they will do.
I have found that site by site analyses usually tend to come up with too low a total amount because such analysis tend to omit new drilling locations.
Our real shortage at this point is of the heavy oil found in Canada, Russia, Venezuela, and a fair number of other places. The amount of reserves for this kind of oil is amazingly high. However, the problem is that the price is too low. There needs to be quite a bit of refining/cracking done. The total cost is not high enough for all of the costs involved, plus profits for the oil companies and taxes for the governments.
Also, Saudi Arabia reduces its production as oil prices drift lower. I understand it has some heavy oil also.
From the WSJ:
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/sunpower-bankruptcy-inflation-reduction-act-subsidies-green-energy-joe-biden-kamala-harris-a8bef0c6
Another Green Energy Subsidy Bust
SunPower files for bankruptcy, thanks in part to Biden’s tariffs.
Imagine being one of the people that bought one of those Toyota Mirais. As far as I know they’re the only hydrogen fuel cell cars that really have been sold. Now if you own one you have a car that was $40k+ new, had few refueling stations available before and basically none now if Shell is giving up.
There is/was a fellow, DYI who made one work, he claimed, made his own H. Obviously range limited.
Dennis L.
Have been a member of MREA for years, love the place.
I have never figured out how solar can make money, the cost of spinning reserve decommissioning costs including roof repairs where applicable are not tirivial.
Now, there is toxic waste.
MREA decommissioned its wind project. Theirs is simple, small, didn’t work. Would guess the bigger the bigger the overall cost.
So, back to Starship and a cubic mile of Pt.
Dennis L.
Many Days Go By…Same as it ever was..
Ancient Babylonian Tablets Are Finally Deciphered. They’re Full of Bad News
The tablets date back 4,000 years. Richard Whiddington
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/ancient-babylonian-tablets-lunar-eclipse-omens-deciphered-2522698?amp=1
Original tablet as translated in the recent study. Photo: courtesy the British Museum.
For the Ancient Babylonians, astrological divination was a tool of serious statecraft. The mercurial gods were believed to place coded signs in the heavens above that foretold the fate of kings, their families, and the lands they ruled over.
The futures foretold were almost uniformly bad news for the empire, though some signaled destruction for Babylon’s enemies. They range from inclement weather, with the warning “the deluge will occur everywhere”; to famine, as in “people will trade their children for silver, there will be a reduction in population”; to general chaos, cautioning “there will be evil in the land, its bounty will disappear.”
Fortunately for the kings, there were ways to counteract these omens, such as seeking out oracles—specialists would be called in to examine the entrails of animals—and performing the proscribed rituals.
Sounds familiar today, does it not…?
Today, we live in a world where many people give nonsense ways to solve our future problems. People who point out our real problems are hidden from public view. Their views are ridiculed. Certainly, the economy will grow forever and everyone can prosper.
Exactly, the same mentality and proscriptions..we have economists, lawyers and financial experts, as our High Priests todau
This is our new religion.
The perfectibility of man is a paradigm that took root after the Industrial Revolution.
It is a poor substitute for the old ones.
Dennis L.
“Today, we live in a world where many people give nonsense.”
You’ve been on Youtube again, haven’t you? There are more self-help influencers on there than ants on the Earth.
Yes, 80% of dreams fail, 20% make it. Without dreams, the success rate is 0.
Dennis L.
This is long but might be worth a listen.
Hanson discusses manual labor vs elites, Hanson is a classicist, Stanford as well as a fourth generation raison farmer. He discusses European Union’s depressing the price of raisons and its effect on CA farmers.
His personal observations on elites are informative as well as comments on the influx of immigrants and their effect on wages.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-bgX9eQ58w
Currently doing work on my farm now, it is boring and not much fun; this relates to Hanson’s observations of workers he has had over the years; he has positive comments.
Dennis L.
This is a link to the article relating to Hanson, missed it, sorry.
https://victorhanson.com/americas-lab-rats/
Dennis L.
Victor Hanson’s writing is very perceptive. I listened to only a bit of the interview, and it is very good too. This is one excerpt from the writing:
He ends this piece, “to put it another way, they were to be our few genius white-coated researchers while we were their many expendable lab rats.”
I was one of the lucky ones, benefiting from this temporary shift to the cerebral. The catch is that the top can never be very large. Shifting who is in it to a random collection of folks from the previously downtrodden groups does not solve anything at all.
Growth in fossil fuel consumption allowed the current class of well to do. But most of their wealth is just in pixels and promises of future pensions. We are losing our fossil fuel energy slaves.
All we seem likely to have in the future is the muscular energy of humans and animals. We have no way to transition to this new situation. This is a big part of our current predicament.
It looks like only a few can make it through the narrow door at the end. How do we get around this problem?
The wealth promised by pixels on bank accounts and insurance policies can’t really be there. In fact, government pension and medical plans can’t pan out. Taxing the rich doesn’t help. Their wealth is ephemeral. War is a likely outcome, I am afraid.
Perceptive, insightful as always.
Dennis L.
“But most of their wealth is just in pixels and promises of future pensions. ” It’s worse than that, Mrs. Tverberg. Look at my other post on this page. If that research paper is actually accurate, they literally didn’t create, or facilitate the creation of ANY wealth in the last 30…40… or more years. It’s like they treated the entire global economy like an IP library that can always be turned into cash because of a “built-in” audience that will always give the money in exchange for making a toothbrush with their IP on it.
“War is a likely outcome, I am afraid.”
The lives of the “uneducated” will be used as collateral is the outcome would be more accurate.
Ok but even if the elite’s relative utilization is 1,000 more than the average person, the billions of people have a larger magnitude of effect, and they are the one overbreeding. Rich, intelligent and wealthy people do not overbreed, although if they are pro-natalist eugenicists, then they do breed more than average but still nowhere the numbers due to exclusivity and assortative mating.
The fact of the matter is, in life you are always exploiting the stupider population to do something. If you can get some villagers to feed you and bathe you and clothe you in exchange for promises of pixels on a smartphone game or some pornographic images, whose to say that you are undeserving? If people are guided by their impulses, rather than their intelligence then that is their fault. The predicament that one billion Chinese face with unemployment, and tears of agony could of been seen decades ago. A simple understanding of geology and determination of resource flows with no more than a 110 IQ could come to such an understanding yet billions poop out babies for no reason.
If you rationally think about it, to enjoy life you have to have other entities do the work or expend energy. That is why humans are not intrinsically valuable and why they want transhumanist robots or controllable entities. A highly automated society with intelligent entities and a high standard of living, even if unsustainable can exist long enough to potentially discover new sources of energy whilst billions of people will just spawn more billions of people whom all want an increasing standard of living without any cerebral technical capacity. Complexity can only be afforded by the intelligent. The reverse is not true.
Right.
Sure.
“Progressives”.
“Democrats.”
Thanks for sharing!
“Elite hard-left universities are flush with multibillion-dollar endowments in a manner unimaginable just 40 years ago. And they are no longer merely liberal but overwhelmingly woke and uncompromisingly hard left”
LOL. Ignorance is bliss?
History does not always progresses. It regresses sometimes.
The ascension of Queen Mary Tudor is one of them.
King Edward VI died at the age of 16, and knowing what his catholic half sister Mary would do, he named Jane Grey the next Queen, not even trusting another half sister Elizabeth.
Grey was married off to a son of John Dudley, the Duke of Northumbland, a powerful nobleman.
Unfortunately, the privy council hated Northumbland more than Mary, and some judge, whose name is scrapped from Wikipedia, ruled that Jane’s ascension was invalid and Mary’s claim was valid.
So Mary became the Queen, and promptly dispatched Jane and John Dudley, as well as the judge who decided in favor of Mary and many of the Privy Council members who supported her claim, and replaced all of these posts with Catholics and prohibited Protestantism again , something which is very well documented in Foxe’s book of martyrs, a book widely read before the Great War.
Only Mary’s infertility and earlier death, probably by uterine cancer, prevented a complete reversion of England back to Catholicism. If she lived longer Protestantism would only have survived in Scotland, who would have taken a different fate from their southern neighbors. The Scots never forgot the humiliation Duns Scotus, Scotland’s greatest mind up to that point , received from Tom Aquinas and all the learned people of Italy because Scotus came from a backwater, more of a backwater than Jordan Peterson who came from Alberta, Canada.
I already mentioned Pyotr II, who claimed to be the grandson of Peter the Great and put into the throne by the noble Yury Dolgoruky. Pyotr II moved the capital back to Moscow, reverted all the changes Peter and his immediate successors made, and reverted Russia back to the middle ages until nobles who hated Dolgoruky poisoned the young Czar.
These countries at least got rid of the sources of the reversion of reforms, but in many Asian countries the changes were never put back and they had to face Western incursions with nothing better than medieval weapons.
One way or another, a massive reversion of all the changes in the last 100 years is imminent. I mentioned below that it is either Korea, a not-too-rich, very repressive society with some modicum of modern life, or Brazil, a free-for-all chaos.
Northumberland, not “Northumbland”.
ive always wanted to meet someone who never makes a typo
Once is a typo, twice is a mistake, so I corrected him. Get it? Got it? Good!
That judge would have been Sir Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk.
When the Privy Council met to consider the succession, Sir Thomas, as Lord High Steward, presided over the proceedings. After due deliberation, he and the majority of the council ultimately declared Lady Jane Grey’s claim invalid and that Mary Tudor was the rightful Queen of England.
Regardless of who had became monarch and who had lost their head, the same aristocracy would have probably remained in charge. For instance Lady Jane Grey was a great great-granddaughter of Henry VII, while Mary Tudor was the same dude’s great-granddaughter, both through his son Henry VIII.
The genealogy is a bit tricky because Henry VIII had a sister and a daughter both named Mary Tudor. Lady Jane Grey descended from the sister.
Henry VII (1457-1509) – First Tudor monarch
|
Henry VIII (1491-1547) – Son of Henry VII
|
Mary Tudor (1496-1533) – Sister of Henry VIII
|
Lady Frances Brandon (1517-1559) – Daughter of Mary Tudor
|
Lady Jane Grey (1537-1554) – Daughter of Lady Frances Brandon
Henry VII was the great-great-grandfather of Lady Jane Grey.
Henry VIII was the great-uncle of Lady Jane Grey, as he was the brother of Mary Tudor.
Mary Tudor (H VIII’s sister) was the grandmother of Lady Jane Grey, as she was the mother of Lady Frances Brandon.
Lady Frances Brandon was the mother of Lady Jane Grey.
If Mary had children the nobles would have had more Spanish style names.
My point is progress is not eternal, but could be easily reversed.
Without completely eradicating a faction the old order always tries to come back.
When I look at the UK from the prism of Dimitry Orlov’s ” Five stages of collapse ” I find that it has crossed the Rubicon .
1. Financial collapse ( so much has been written about this , so no repetition .)
2. Economic collapse ( again well documented )
3. Political collapse ( Cameron, Johnson , Truss , Sunak , Stramer all clowns )
4. Social collapse ( NHS gone, rail gone , Thames water gone , education gone , all social services being curtailed )
5 . Cultural collapse we are seeing that being played out .
What is left to collapse ? Grab the popcorn .
At least the Royal Family remains as a shining symbol of Britannia’s enduring Greatness……
Oh, never mind.
at least we have never regarded our monarch as a living god
chas seems an unassuming sort of bloke, does his ceremonial thing because he is required to, much like his mom and grandad did.–little more than a museum curator really.
imagine having to vote for a head of state every few years
No, Charles is said to have a nasty temper behind the scenes, and he also clings jealously to his feudal privileges.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/09/prince-charles-vetted-laws-that-stop-his-tenants-buying-their-homes
He is after all king by the grace of God – according to our UK coins, anyway. And his coronation was far from unassuming.
Every system has its disadvantages, of course. Presidents are only human, after all.
well—i have it on good authority he was never any good in the droit de seigneur caper.
The coronation thing is centuries old
the coinage thing is too.
at least it still doesnt say Ind Imp on them these days.
The OBE (Order of the British Empire) is still alive and well. The British Overseas Territories are the only remnants of ye olde Empire.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Overseas_Territories
cmon now zemi
straw clutching ultimately means drowning
overseas territories are purely elective—as the commonwealth is purely elective.—they can leave if they so decide.
An OBE is just a recognition of public service—same as a knighthood doesnt allow you to put peasants in the pillory any more
You are stunningly naive, Norman. These places are mostly run as tax havens for the ultra-rich, making the ordinary people of the UK all the poorer for the lack of those revenues.
However, Ascension Island is home to a US military base, as is “British Indian Ocean Territory” (BIOT). The UK illegally hived it off from Mauritius before the independence of that country. It is properly known as Diego Garcia.
The UN has voted that the UK should hand Diego Garcia over to Mauritius, but so far the UK has refused. It’s a big scandal that you have clearly never heard about. Once again the UK is the poodle of the USA.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cxe2v2mdg7vo
The French went after the rich. Just saying. Norm who is the master of the manor house nearest you?
dont quite get your point ed
there are several lords of the manor here
Will they be hunted by the people as the rising progresses?
1. hyperbole
2. hyperbole
3. hyperbole
4. hyperbole
5. hyperbole
0/5 for now.
but this century is young.
Richard Dawkins: “My entire @facebook account has been deleted, seemingly (no reason given) because I tweeted that genetically male boxers such as Imane Khalif (XY undisputed) should not fight women in Olympics. Of course my opinion is open to civilised argument. But outright censorship?”
https://x.com/RichardDawkins/status/1822166372819853352
Holy S***
Richard Dawkins is a crank and its really surprising that anybody listen to him and even more surprising that someone actually bother to censor him. Censorship is not what it used to be.
Ditto for Bill Maher, Joe Rogan, Howard Stern, etc.
Naah… dont know really. Dawkins is more fun. Like cute-fun. Those others are so darn serious that there is no fun left where they come from.
remember Zing
One man’s crank is another man’s handle.
(I just made that up)
Richard, where have you been all these years?
And why is a close-to-dead white patriarchal fossil like you on Facebook, when you could be on OFW?
Speaking the truth is now misinformation.
Disinformation, please.
Correct!
Former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki dies of cancer aged 56… just eight months after son, 19, was killed by drug overdose
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13730035/Susan-Wojcicki-youtube-dead-cancer-son-months.html
Whole families are dying off now.
Your son and then you … what a tough hand to accept. Anyway, apparently she had 5 kids and a husband, so not exactly “whole families”, yet.
Two very prominent pushers of the “Everybody Must Get Jabbed” crusade have
died this week of cancer. AUSSIE17 reports:
Susan Wojcicki, the former CEO of YouTube, has passed away at the age of 56 after a two-year battle with cancer.
In a 2021 interview, Wojcicki discussed her approach to combating vaccine misinformation. She detailed how YouTube implemented ten specific policies related to COVID-19, including the removal of content that violated these guidelines. Under her leadership, YouTube removed over a million videos associated with COVID “misinformation.”
Wojcicki worked collaboratively with the Biden administration and health experts, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, to address vaccine hesitancy. This initiative included leveraging creators to disseminate trusted information and sharing personal stories from individuals about their decision to get vaccinated.
Coincidentally, this week, the world also says goodbye to Jane Hansen, a well-known Australian television reporter. In her 50s, Hansen was a prominent figure at The Sunday Telegraph and previously worked as a war correspondent and for “A Current Affair.” Admired for her fearless journalism and commitment to revealing the truth, she passed away on August 6, 2024, after an 18-month battle with glioblastoma, a fast-growing and aggressive form of brain cancer.
https://www.aussie17.com/p/shocking-death-susan-wojcicki-former
Schad!!
as we used to say around here.
This doesn’t mention fossil fuels. But other minerals are a problem.
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Will-the-World-Run-Out-of-Essential-Resources-by-2050.html
Will the World Run Out of Essential Resources by 2050?
by Rystad Energy
I wonder how they expect to extract these materials, without a growing supply of fossil fuels. Also, how they expect to make steel and cement without fossil fuels. Even if we assume we can get along without fossil fuels, we seem to have a problem with supply chains.
They’ll be able to achieve all of that with fairy dust. It’s like George Carlin’s observation on the “the American Dream, because you would have to be asleep to believe it”.
between 2022 and 2050 30% demand thats about 1% per year . Is that not possible with a degrowth or declining fossil fuels? They are basing this on Hubbert’s Curve
How are they basing this on Hubbert’s Curve? If you can’t even feed your population, how do you expect to increase demand by 30%? How are they modelling this? This is like one of those financial algos that extrapolate infinite linearity and scale invariance when you are too big, you affect the system itself and the same assumptions are no longer applicable; i.e. buying option contracts in small quantities vs being a significant share of % of market size.
sorry Gail i only read part of the article yes you are right ignore my last comment.
2050? Woohoo!
Great news, that means I’ll be BAU partying right to my very end.
Got any more good news Gail?
On the surface, Starship would seem to have no economic purpose; Mars probably can’t be done and in any case would be uneconomic for a long period of time.
Mining, refining minerals from space would be very economic as essentially free, infinite energy with no earth exogenous energy pollution, and no material pollution problems, Jupiter to the rescue.
Of course, there is the cubic mile of Pt to make it all work and also give pollution free energy to earth with no exogenous heat gain.
The world is evolving and reorganizing; seek and ye shall find.
Dennis L.
Yes, we will find a vast nothingness.
no such thing as a free lunch dennis
not even in space
Starship not only has no economic purpose but it’s only barely reached LEO after 4 launches with a payload of ZERO tons.
And so it begins again the elders have woken from their slumber and are in the process of trying to save the planet from Mpox short for the now banned or politically incorrect ‘Monkeybox’. In order to protect us, airplane travel will have to stop especially international airtravel. Will masks return and the promotion of the Mpox vaccine. Stay tuned viewers this program will resume shortly.
The rapidly-growing Mpox outbreak in Africa could soon be declared a global emergency.
The United Nations is pulling together experts to determine the scale of the threat caused by the virus, which has now been reported in 10 African countries.
Compared to last year, cases have surged 160 per cent and deaths 19 per cent. Most of the infections were detected in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
The Mpox virus is much deadlier than Covid and a recently-discovered variant can kill 10 per cent of people infected.
A colorised transmission electron micrograph of monkeypox particles (green) found within an infected cell (pink and purple), cultured in the laboratory. Picture: AFP
A colorised transmission electron micrograph of monkeypox particles (green) found within an infected cell (pink and purple), cultured in the laboratory. Picture: AFP
The African Union’s health watchdog said on Thursday it was “likely” to declare a public health emergency next week over the growing Mpox outbreak on the continent.
The decision will unlock funding to combat the outbreak, including the procurement of much-needed vaccines, and trigger a coordinated continental response to the virus.
Jean Kaseya, head of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), said during an online media briefing that the declaration of the health emergency was “likely”.
At least 16 countries of the continent’s 55 nations have been affected with Mpox, according to the Africa CDC.
Some 38,465 cases and 1456 deaths have been reported in Africa since January 2022.
HORROR CRASH ‘Plane crashes in huge explosion leaving 61 dead as chilling
footage shows it dropping out of the sky’
https://www.the-sun.com/news/12157905/brazil-plane-crash-footage-spiral-ground-drop/
Charles Hugh Smith
https://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2024/08/theres-just-one-problem-ai-isnt.html
There’s Just One Problem: AI Isn’t Intelligent, and That’s a Systemic Risk
Mimicry of intelligence isn’t intelligence, and so while AI mimicry is a powerful tool, it isn’t intelligent.
I didn’t agree with CHS’s list of humanity’s most pressing problems, but the point is still the same.
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/on-demand/session/gtcspring23-s52092/
Ilya Sutskever teaching Jensen Huang how LLMs learn concepts as a means of data compression.
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/on-demand/session/gtcspring23-s52092/
Ilya explains to Jensen how LLMs learn concepts as a form of data compression.
In my opinion Ilya is one of the top 10 people on the planet in terms of understanding how trained neural networks work.
His new start-up Safe Super Intelligence located in Palo Alto and Tel Aviv will in my opinion be the most interesting AI company of the next ten years.
>> in Palo Alto and Tel Aviv
The Israelites can hook it up to their existing AI kill-chain. Safe and effective.
Think of AI as the next step in progression of central unelected control. All the rogue agencies like the CDC, FED, NSA etc have no elected legislative oversight. Repeal of Chevron Deference has blunted that quiet control and at least forced the courts into having to more publicly deal with decisions rather than burying them and passing them off to these agencies.
AI is simply another deception. It has no intelligence, just as the FED has no reserves and is not federal. AI is simply a Trojan Horse to introduce further NeoCon/Deep State control.
People think because ChatGPT can write term papers that it must be great for doing everything else and eliminating the stupidities of humans. AI is the extension of CDBC, Climate Change, Vaxx mandates/passports, ESG, etc. It’s all about extension of control beneath public perception.
This is a comment about “The Troubles” in England.
There’s no comment to be seen, and “The Troubles” occurred in Northern Ireland, not England.
I am recycling the term “The Troubles’. The Irish need to educate the English on how to free ones self from oppression.
There is a limited amount of farm land in each country, limited factories, limited water resources, etc. Who gets them and who does not get them is a matter of life and death. The lower classes are not willing to die without a struggle. This is basic law of the jungle. Why do people feel the losers will/should die without a fight?
People (especially very poor people) with nothing to lose, and a lot to gain, are likely to fight, I agree.
No sarcasm: is that what history shows?
Stalin comes to mind, Mao comes to mind.
Dennis L.
Not too many Americans bother to find out, but the lives for the general pop during the rules of Stalin and Mao did improve somewhat.
Stalin is still revered by the Russians, while Mao shows up on the Chinese currency.
Poorer people don’t have a long term time orientation, and when the commies destroyed the landowner classes and the intelligentsia class which oppressed the peasants and exploited them, the people cheered and the extortion the state did on the people was much less severe than the extortion the landowners and the intelligentsia did.
Of course that did not help civilization, but on the view of the general populace, Stalin and Mao were vast improvements over what they used to have.
The General Pop does not write books. The best writer for American proles is Charles Bukowski, born Heinrich Karl Bukowski at Andernach, Germany and a German speaker as a child. No American proles born in USA and grew up speaking what they call ‘English’ wrote books as good as Bukowski’s.
Those who wrote about the horrors of Stalin and Mao were the intellectuals, disgruntled. 20 million people were willing to die for Stalin, enough said.
The only problem with low SES is their inability of organization and inability to be useful to anyone so they get shafted. Being stupid and suggestible also works against them. Most poor are a combination of stupid, impulse control deficient, lazy, irresponsible, etc. Middle class mostly not very ambitious or rule obedient. Being rule obedient and complacent only works in a stable society. And just doing nothing means others get to order you around, since they don’t use violence or organize they also get shafted. If the lower class wins, it is game over. They are simply not capable of politics or proper resources management, you can see this with the purge of land owner class in China. Very few are intergenerationally minded enough to pursue power to change the circumstances of their environment. The reason political substructure exist is because people prefer slavery, not freedom.think of the responsibilities of having to judge, accumulate and appease people as well as having to be underhanded and be willing to kill while being intelligent enough to not get socially destroyed. Most can’t do it or dont want to do it.it involves risking your life.
Gammon decribes what’s been happening on Japanese banks:
Thanks! Interesting video about some of the loops involved. It looks like we are headed for a major downturn, without even considering the energy problems we have. Of course, with all of the leveraged debt outstanding, things could fall apart quite easily.
Who said the Restoration of Civilization is a clean matter?
I have mentioned the restoration of the old order in Vietnam on 1804, when the Prince of the Nguyens conquered the dynasty set up by peasant rebels from a region called Tay Son with French help.
The Nguyen prince killed not only the families of Tay Son dynasty, but every single resident from the entire Tay Son region, branding them as potential traitors, numbering hundreds of thousands. (There is a region called Tay Son now but it was re-established after the commie takeover).
The Chinese dynasty did the same thing with those who supported the Taiping Rebellion, led by someone who claimed he was the younger brother of Jesus, in 1864. 20 million peasants participated in that, and the Chinese government simply killed 20 million, except a few lucky souls who sold themselves for slave labor in Chile. It is possible that some coolies in late 19th centuries are from them ; they were among the luckier ones. Usually the executions did NOT spare women, children, the old, etc.
With the end of BAU and the Restoration of Old Order, there won’t be a mass execution which will claim too much energy and resources. Instead, only those who the Owners of Civ determine fit to consume resources will receive their rations.
Why the Blue Bloods are so harsh over the rest of humanity?
Because they have stakes on the world and civilization, while the rest do not.
If someone is a manager he/she tends to be a bit more lenient since civilization is not his/hers but someone else’s.
However, if you have a stake on the civilization, you don’t want to see your stake reduced or harmed. Which is why landowners tend to be very, very, very harsh against their tenants – it cuts into their profit margin.
The owners of civilization have no mercy, no quarters and do not care a bit if 99% of humanity falls back to misery.
No different than keepers of an orchard putting a nice slug into the head of a child who was hungry and wanted to pluck a fruit , which the owner does NOT tolerate.
The UKR incursion into the Russian region of Kursk seems to be aimed at capture of the nuclear power plant to increase the UKR hand in negotiations.
Russia has halted them a long way from it and its capture has failed. UKR has committed elite troops to the quest and it is suffering major losses.
It is a desperate and futile move that makes any sense only if everyone knows that Russia is going to win in UKR and so UKR has nothing to lose by such a stunt.
The conflict is approaching its end, UKR will typically reinforce its failure in Kursk, flood in more forces and kit, get it all destroyed and hasten the end.
It has all been most engaging and entertaining. States certainly know how to put on a drama when they set their minds to it.
> Zelensky & NATO gamble everything on Kursk Nuclear Power Plant
Last stand battles often become national mythology, especially in that part of world
The Serbs have not forgotten the Battle of Kosovo Pole, 600 plus ago
The Hungarians have not forgotten the Battle of Mohacs, 500 years ago
The Ukrainians will not forget the Second Battle of Kursk 500 years from now
Zelensky isn’t gambling anything.. the poor UKR grunts are.
Mr. Z just bought Sting’s Tuscan vineyard estate, I hear.
Link?
Don’t watch the puppets. Watch the game.
British singer Gordon Sumner, widely recognized as Sting, has recently parted ways with his Tuscan wine estate, Tenuta il Palagio, selling it to San Tomaso S.R.L., a firm owned by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his spouse, Olena Zelenska.
The transaction is rumoured to be valued at approximately €75 million!
https://x.com/KevorkAlmassian/status/1820913480192725080
Sting sold out years ago, like almost all of the old rockers, literally in this case.
An exception: We salute you Roger Waters.
Roger Waters? Bleeergh! With his clunky low-grade compositions, childish sounds effects to fill them out, and the 10th-rate cheap electronics. “Money” must be the dreariest track ever, both in terms of “lyrics” and “music” – a totally juvenile composition. I can’t wait to hear the news that Waters is “comfortably numb” for eternity. 😉
To embrace is easy. To let go is hard. The stock to flow ratio changes rapidly when it comes to human kind. Maybe we’re just animals after all.
😉
Alex and Alexander: This is a last desperate gamble, involving elite troops drawn from around Ukraine. So far, the Ukrainians haven’t achieved much of anything. Capturing a village doesn’t do much. Only thing that they could capture that would make a difference would be a nearby nuclear power plant. But Ukrainians have not gotten near the nuclear power plant, and the Russians will soon be coming to stop them. Would like to force an end to the war.
It seems like the US is getting awfully close to getting itself involved with the Ukraine war.
Zerohedge is now reporting:
Pentagon Refuses To Rule Out Strikes On Moscow In Shocking Exchange On Ukraine’s Incursion Into Kursk
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/nato-neoconservatism-empire
The neocons want nuclear war in Europe.
This is recent, from July 2024 by Jeffery Sachs. It is called:
The NATO Declaration and the Deadly Strategy of Neoconservatism
For the sake of America’s security and world peace, the U.S. should immediately abandon the neocon quest for hegemony in favor of diplomacy and peaceful co-existence.
Excerpt:
I am afraid that whoever is elected, we will still have thinking along these lines in Washington. No one will look at the state of our armaments and think, “We couldn’t possibly win against any reasonable enemy.”
The Ukrainians, using US missiles, US intelligence and US cluster bombs, took out a a chunk of a Russian military convoy headed that way in the night. Many Russian caualties. I say the US and its allies seem more despearate to be clearly attacking inside Russian teritory now.
“It has all been most engaging and entertaining. States certainly know how to put on a drama when they set their minds to it.”
Our resident teenage necrophile and drama queen gloats again. Some things never change. But GCHQ keeps an eye on such on-line individuals, in the lookout for potential treachery, in case the situation should worsen in the UK.
Lance Roberts shows why Universal Basic Income doesn’t work. He looks at the US stimulus added in 2020, and also in 2008, and models what effect they had. Lots of charts.
https://realinvestmentadvice.com/ubi-tried-tested-and-failed-as-expected/
UBI – Tried, Tested And Failed As Expected
https://realinvestmentadvice.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/GDP-with-out-without-UBI-annual-ROC.png
we generate income by utilising (Buying and selling) the products of surplus energy.
if surplus energy availability shrinks, then printing money (ie UBI) will not increase it.
The only thing that increases is public debt.
As an extreme, if UBI actually worked, we could hand out £$1m to everyone and expect the economic system to shift into high gear.
It wouldn’t, because if everyone had 1m to spend, there wouldnt be enough goods and services to spend it on.
so inflation would spin out of control
The bottom line is that UBI, is merely, depending on how it is financed, the redistribution of claims on surplus energy, or the creation of more claims on surplus energy.
I think we will at some point see an attempt to implement it more broadly in a desperate attempt to keep the masses onside. As usual, short term relief will exacerbate long term pain.
That’s what negative interest rate programmed spendable cdbcs do.subtract value and cause persistent subsistence
money is a claim on energy. You can print claims but you cant print oil.
What Elon and other want is for the Robots to do labor to produce goods and services which will be taxed. The taxed portioned to be given to the humans equally. Of course simply printing tokens and giving them away produces no added value and will not work to make humans wealthy.
Remember Elon and I want universal high income, not basic.
What does work? Giving money to the one percent doesn’t work either. We are inching closer towards communism every day.
WSJ article suggesting more problems associated with EVs. The issue I see (not mentioned in the article) is that putting lots of EVs together for a fire creates a huge problem for insurers, if nothing else. Such insurance problems can spill over to other lines of insurance because the reinsurers have to collect extra premiums wherever they can.
https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/huge-fire-sparked-by-a-mercedes-benz-ev-adds-to-safety-concerns-dogging-industry-8143d058
Huge Fire Sparked by a Mercedes-Benz EV Adds to Safety Concerns Dogging Industry
Blaze in South Korea prompts debate over whether electric vehicles should be allowed in the country’s ubiquitous underground parking lots
If Trump returns to power, he is probably going to name John Yoo, infamous for defending the harsh treatment for the people in Abu Ghraib, etc, as the Attorney General.
The Koreans excel on torture and suppression. The Koreans also know how to main classes – it was well known for its lack of social mobility. Those who were aristocrats in 1392 was the same in 1910, when Japan annexed it, and the slaves in 1392 were still slaves in 1910. Not too many people know that Korea kept slaves all the way to around 1950 and in North Korea it never ended.
Korea is also notorious for setting labor camps for miscreants, a practice Rwanda’s leader has learned . Yoo will probably introduce such systems to USA. Yoo says he doesn’t speak Korean but he does have plenty of English speaking Korean friends who will give him enough ideas to run such camps in USA.
Basically USA will turn either into Korea or Brazil. At least the Koreans used to have smaller carbon footprints.
Are the Blue Bloods lizard people that feed off of pain and misery? I’m trying to figure out the obsession with keeping everyone down and out …
Not enough to go around. More for those on top if those on the bottom do even more poorly than they are doing now.
Sad isn’t it. Anchored in history and folklore, Count Dracula and Countess Elisabeth Bathory literally preaying on their peasantry, but ‘advancing civilization’ :-).
They did advance civilization.
Vlad Tepes did help to retard the Turkish advance into Europe, and despite of all of his antics, because he kept Transylvania free from the Turks in his lifetime, he is remembered fondly by the Romanians (not the ‘Roma’ but real Romanians).
Liz Bathory kept the peasantry down and her numerous descendants continued to reach higher positions in Hungary.
Their contribution to Civilization was infinitely more positive than Chucky Fitzclarence and his 200/400 Worcestershires, without whom some humans would be traveling beyond Oort Cloud.
That keeps valuable resources out of the hands of those who perhaps do not deserve them
Trump does come across as very negative. He verbally attacked Brian Kemp, Republican Governor of Georgia, in his recent rally in Atlanta. This represents an approach which is totally opposite of the unity that political leaders are expected to court. It is hard to get the support of a broad share of voters if the leaders very obviously cannot get along with each other.
In many ways, voters would like an air-head with no opinions to be their leader. People seem to vote against things that are clearly problematic. It is hard to see favorable policies to vote for. So being quiet is perhaps a reasonable strategy.
Trump is now full of vengeance.
Normally an airhead with no opinions will work. However , this time the alternative is a moron, combined with a greater moron, when USA is about hit an iceberg.
He is ineffective, so whether upset or not, it won’t matter; he will be ignored by the bureaucracy as they carry out their own agenda.
He will be but not his son or the gang he will assemble. They will be effective, in a positive way or otherwise.
People more attuned to politics than I am claim that he remains surrounded by the same people who slow-rolled his agenda the first go-round.
A lot of people are still in shock that the good times for those who probably did not deserve it have ended, and only Victorian-style poverty is waiting them.
The world is now going back to what it always had been .
110 years of wasting resources by the general public now over, although too much resources have been wasted to allow advancing civilization.
All these resources wasted so every nook and cranny of the world had to drive a car, or at least a motorcycle , and use smartphones cannot be recovered.
The world would have advanced much farther without the ‘contributions’ of peoples not part of Civilization, and also people who did NOT belong to the class which built Civilization, since they all subtracted from the advancement of it.
Boy, am I grateful I was part of those that resources was wasted and held back the advancement of the worthy elite that deserve to be endowed upon by the grace of birth…
Really now, couldn’t make this stuff up myself, but suppose it has worked before in past History. Klummie, seems you have a place for yourself already at the table..Court BS Artist extraordinarie.
It worked all time in history save 1914 – around 2019.
That was an anomaly which seems to be correcting now
In an alternate reality, kulm would be right. The stupid masses if they heeded the elites vision of selective breeding would not explode the population and they could of conquered the world together as master and servant class.
Instead the elites must portend and break up families through marriage separation laws, covert CIA hedonism counterculture, mass indoctrination of women to hate men and inoculate transhumanist aspirations through posthumanism through postmodernism and subvert through psychological manipulation to sterilize the unfit population whilst making them unattractive to the opposite sexes with fat acceptance, ugly melatonin intermixing, patriarchy shaming, princess syndrome hyper materialist soap operas and puberty blocker administration with ssri inhibitors.
What exactly do 9 to 5ers sitting in a cubicle working in Excel spreadsheets or belly boisters drinking beer after finishing their coal mining shift do anyways? The masses are too emotional whilst the political class drone strikes away third worlders for resources. Deception would not be needed if they were on the same page and stop it with the slave mortality empathy that ultimately is being intentionally broken up with rapists and murderers just to shut down the economy and select the population that would of been fit to keep the grid up and running.
The masses should not have been given any kind of power or economic influence.
Yo, good prose dude.
Liked this bit especially: ” . . . whilst making them unattractive to the opposite sexes with fat acceptance, ugly melatonin intermixing, patriarchy shaming, princess syndrome hyper materialist soap operas and puberty blocker administration with ssri inhibitors.”
Sounds like you’re red pilled for sure.
The debt based monetary system requires economic growth, therefore the wasting of resources. Overconsumption of resources is a side effect of the drive for a return on capital by the bourgeoisie capitalist.
Kulm, yes the dem socialism will look exactly like Victorian-style poverty for the people, not for the rulers.
AIDS from COVID!
Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome correlation with SARS-CoV-2 N genotypes (2024)
Conclusions;
According to the results of the In-Silico, it is evidenced a natural evolution of the Betacoronavirus genera in order to balance propagation, infectivity and persistence. The main genotypes are evidenced in S/493, S/484, N/120 and N/152. Optimizing S/493 and S/484 means better airborne spread by infecting more the lungs and nasopharyngeal tissue meanwhile N/120 and N/152 genotypes reduce the Immune Response infecting lymphocytes allowing the virus to persist indefinitely, causing an Acquire Immune Deficiency Syndrome and other related syndromes to chronic viremia, especially with viruses that cause respiratory and blood diseases.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2319417023000872
But for people mRNA vaccinated for Covid.
The tree that grows taller than the forest, gets blown over by the wind.”
– Chinese Proverb
For those who are interested to go deep into the issue, it is linked to the mechanism called ADE and the consequent collapse of immune system.
It is explained in various researches, among others, one can find more information on the ones collected by independent researcher Ph Loretta Bolgan.
https://www.studiesalute.org/salute-covid-19
I am just recuperating from my first ever bout of the ‘Rona—or was it the Flu?— so this post cheered me up no end!
So what was it like for you, Timbo?
I hope you make a rapid recovery.
Thanks for the kind words, Zemi. I hope so too. I don’t like being as weak as a kitten and as shagged out as a Norwegian Blue after a long squark.
The highlights for me were a very high fever with accompanying joint and muscle aches, tiredness and lack of energy — from Day 2, I slept 18 hours a day for six days running — and a painful sore throat that started on Day 3 and continued until Day 10.
I’ve had worse sore throats in the past, but this was the worst fever ever. The immune system was doing some serious fighting there.
But on the up side, I had no headache or stomach issues or heart issues or chest issues or coughing and sneezing.
Mrs Tim came down with whatever it is two days after sitting in the GP’s waiting room for four hours. I came down with it a day after she did. She had less fever but has lost her sense of smell.
We haven’t been tested for anything, of course! But a lot of people I know locally are coming down with similar symptoms and testing positive.
I think part of the reason why people are particularly susceptible to flu-like illnesses at the moment is that we are in the middle of an unusually hot and humid summer that is tiring everybody out.
The sleeping sickness part I recognise. I didn’t get any pain but did get a couple of weird hallucinations. I lost 15 lbs in weight over the first week. After 12 days I felt well enough to go out again, but I was very tottery on my feet. After another 10 days I felt 95% recovered, and after another week, 100% recovered.
It’s the influenza(from the stars) Tim.
I’m sure it’s just yet another coincidence, in the ever increasing line of perfectly timed coincidences, but there is high sun spot cme activity at the moment, which should be topping out today and tomorrow I hear. As those waves pass over earth, it’s a lottery based on no more than your position on the planet.
“Like “anxiety disorder,” influenza is so common and so seemingly familiar that a thorough review of its history is necessary to unmask this stranger and convey the enormity of the public health disaster that occurred one hundred and thirty years ago. It’s not that we don’t know enough about the influenza virus. We know more than enough. The microscopic virus associated with this disease has been so exhaustively studied that scientists know more about its tiny life cycle than about any other single microorganism. But this has been a reason to ignore many unusual facts about this disease, including the fact that it is not contagious.”
Maybe that’s wrong. If only there was a recent event we could use to compare.
“Year 1 of SC25 (Dec 2019 to Nov 2020) averaged 101% more spots per day than year 1 of SC24.”
So, if correct there would be a spike in influenza cases that year. Sadly, as we all remember, right at that exact moment influenza disappeared for over a year(you’d have to ask a believer where), which opened the door for a newer, scarier and some say deadlier novel virus(coincidentally with exactly the same symptoms), strangely named SARS COVID 2(a novel sequel confused me some, I won’t deny) to sneak in and scare the bejesus out of everyone(with a huge amount of help from governments and media), but then influenza came back and we all pretended that we didn’t act like hysterical children that have just been told about monsters under the bed.
Still, the science is set and it’s not like we don’t understand solar cycles is it?
“Widely varying predictions regarding the strength of cycle 25 ranged from very weak with suggestions of slow slide in to a Maunder minimum like state to a weak cycle similar to previous cycle 24 and even a strong cycle. Upton and Hathaway predicted that the weakness of cycle 25 would make it part of the Modern Gleissberg Minimum.”
If you’re layed up for a time, ask Lastcall for a book recommendation. Marconi murders Monarch is a great chapter.
Thank you, Fitz!
I’m quite receptive to the idea of influenza being due to in influence from the heavens. Historically, the waves of infection often seemed to spread faster than the vectors that were supposedly spreading them could travel.
The healthcare system is trying to hold onto the idea that humans have conquered all microbes and because of that we don’t need to reproduce very much at all. There is nothing sustainable about a large elderly population, many of whom are immunocompromised because of medication.
Almost every non-covid related producte I’ve seen advertised on TV admits it reduces the patient’s ability to fight infections.
We’re setting are selves up for a situation where if a new aggressive infectious agent shows up the mortality rate will be higher than smallpox’s.
Lysine. (Works beautifully from personal experience)
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/344210822_Lysine_Therapy_for_SARS-CoV-2
Great idea, thanks!
I have a big bottle of lysine on the shelf, But I gave up taking a lot of stuff when I got sick. I’ll definitely start medicating on this today.
Have fun at the Free clinic. Maybe the bearded woman will save you a seat!
‘Flu’ – such a quaint and old-fashioned term.
It’s 2024 Tim.
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.0020124
‘Why Most Published Research Findings are False’ by John Ioannidis
Every day you read a study shows this or a study shows that. Most of it is bollocks, and I use that word deliberately, because it the word which best describes it all.
That paper even has ists own Wikipedia page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Most_Published_Research_Findings_Are_False
Related:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_effect
“The Gold effect is the phenomenon in which a scientific idea, particularly in medicine, is developed to the status of an accepted position within a professional body or association by the social process itself of scientific conferences, committees, and consensus building, despite not being supported by conclusive evidence. The Gold effect is used to analyze errors in public health policy and practice, such as the widespread use of cholesterol screening in the prevention of cardiovascular disease.[1]
Progression of a gaussian curve into a delta function as the area under the curve keeps concentrating at the center.
The effect was described by Thomas Gold in 1979.[2] The effect was reviewed by Petr Skrabanek and James McCormick in their book Follies and Fallacies in Medicine.[3] In their book, Skrabanek and McCormick describe the Gold effect as: “At the beginning a few people arrive at a state of near belief in some idea. A meeting is held to discuss the pros and cons of the idea. More people favouring the idea than those disinterested will be present. A representative committee will be nominated to prepare a collective volume to propagate and foster interest in the idea. The totality of resulting articles based on the idea will appear to show an increasing consensus. A specialized journal will be launched. Only orthodox or near orthodox articles will pass the referees and the editor.””
“Professors have theories like dogs have fleas”
H.L Mencken
This is a very frustrating issue. The researchers putting together models don’t understand why popular “scientific” views are wrong. Instead,
“claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias.”
This is very easy to do, with models with too few variables, and peer reviewers with the same wrong bias that the paper writer has. The political system contributes to this. The papers that receive funding are ones that support the narrative, “We can easily transition to a fossil fuel free society.”
Yes, absolutely.
Some ‘science-based’ narratives are so embedded, that to question the science is to question the politcs, with all the risks that come with that.
Leaders are all about image.
They need to appear as if they have a solution and that everything is under control.
This need to maintain the image of having everything under control may be behind why bad studies are funded.
Bad studies may play a large part of political legitimacy in modern secular countries. Remember when someone said the entire economy is held up by “confidence”? That may apply to the political realm as well. The scientific method is just a tool that can be used to make the government look like it is productive. I recently came across a claim that productivity has actually been falling for the last couple of decades. If that is case, there is a lot less problem-solving going on than we are being given the impression. *
*Edit: I found it.
“A look at labour productivity trends in recent decades reveals that – with the exception of a short productivity miracle in some countries in the second half of the 1990s and early 2000s – the overall trend in measured productivity growth is declining.”
from
The Global Productivity Slowdown: Diagnosis, Causes and Remedies
By Georg Erber, Ulrich Fritsche, Patrick Christian Harms
I haven’t read the whole thing but it looks like it contradicts everything the elite has been telling us about productivity.
This seems to be a link to the report you mention.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10272-017-0642-2
I am not sure what this Ember data is. They seem to be pushing a Green Agenda. Maybe it is OK. Maybe it is not. The description of the their technique I found seems to suggest a lot of estimation is involved. https://ember-climate.org/app/uploads/2022/07/Ember-Electricity-Data-Methodology.pdf
What they are talking about is “Consumed in the EU.” It is easier to get “Produced in the EU.” When I look at produced in the EU from the new Statistical Review of World Energy, with data through 2023, I get the following graphs:
EU Total Electricity Produced – Peak in 2008
https://ourfiniteworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/EU-total-electricity-generation-1985-to-2023.png
In 2023, 26.6% of EU produced electricity came from wind +solar, while 33.1% came from fossil fuels. So the EU was still quite a ways away from producing as much electricity from wind and solar, as it was producing from fossil fuels. Nuclear is another big category with 22.6% in 2023. The “Other” Category seems to be burned biomass and burned trash, used to produce electricity. It can be used for balancing, in the same way that fossil fuels can be used for balancing wind and solar.
I also put together a per capita chart for EU electricity production. It looks practically identical to the other chart. When population is considered, the peak in EU electricity production per capita was in 2007.
https://ourfiniteworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/EU-Electricity-Generation-Per-Capita.png
Ember data includes estimates of imported electricity by type of generation, added to this. Norway and Sweden will export some electricity, but it would seem to be mostly hydroelectricity.
EU’s electricity is not doing very well. Its cost is way up in recent years. Ember glosses over this problem.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=File:Figure_2_Development_of_electricity_prices_for_household_consumers,_EU,_2008-2023_(€_per_kWh)V2.png
Gail, any update on the viability of renewables as a primary electricity source for the grid?
Here a Twitter/X post about renewables uptake in the EU.
“In the first half of 2024 more solar and wind power was generated and consumed in the EU than fossil power.” https://x.com/alex_avoigt/status/1818546402626068884
The economy has been way more adaptive than expected in many aspects. Is renewables another area?
I know on the surface issues such as intermittency and energy storage make renewables look bad, but perhaps some adaptive/hybrid coping mechanism will evolve and/or nuclear will revive?
BTW it looks like population collapse will front-run resource collapse https://x.com/MoreBirths/status/1821360554293825719
MY 50 cents – all energy prices, that lead to degrowth (permanent recession) are dangerous because all credits are calculated on basis of growing prospects. Of course there are many more reasons for recession.
—–
The results revealed that all provincial S-LCOE of China’s PV is currently higher than local desulfurized coal electricity price (DCEP).
Accelerating the penetration of photovoltaics (PV) oriented renewables is a vital mainstay in climate mitigation. Along with continuous growth of PV generation in the power system, PV costs have been rapidly declining. Levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) is commonly applied to cost accounting of energy, while neglecting the specific cost compositions of PV leads to an overly optimistic scenario. By integrating grid costs and balancing costs into conventional LCOE framework, a System LCOE (S-LCOE) model was constructed to evaluate the economic feasibility of PV generation, more accurately. The results revealed that all provincial S-LCOE of China’s PV is currently higher than local desulfurized coal electricity price (DCEP). Based on the comparative analysis of provincial S-LCOE and DCEP, four regions with diverse economic competitiveness were identified. PV projects in Region I and Region II are considered to be potentially competitive comparing to thermal generation, in terms of environmental benefits and S-LCOE, especially in Guangdong, Jilin, and Hainan. Furthermore, by simulating the descent trajectory of S-LCOE, we estimate that China will achieve S-LCOE equal to DCEP in Region I as early as 2023, while it will be postponed to 2042 in Region Ⅳ at the latest, depending on different S-LCOE descent rates.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0960148124000053
models… models… models… modelling everything. I wonder if the cavemen model how they are going to catch the bison or mammoth
yup they did
hence the wonderful cave art they produced
what they were in fact painting was their energy resource—and the idea that if they painted it, it would somehow materialise when needed.
Nice One Norm!
Shows just how little we’ve changed.
You’re right there, Norman. Or to put it another way, you’re not wrong there!
Jacob Bronowski discussed this very point in The Assent of Man.
In truth, wind ‘farms’ are a sort of collective prayer, with which we plead with the gods of entropy to allow our fridges, aircon, TVs and computers to keep running.
If centuries hence, alien explorers were come upon Earth (they won’t), they will perhaps attibute – correctly – a religious purpose to them.
Oh yes, Norm remembers it well!
could you let me know what ointment you use for sore knuckles zemi
i need some
Yep, Norm’s a tough guy, you know, doing all those physical jerks. During WW2 he was known as “the spiv with a shiv” in his district. 😉
yup
physical jerks create a calm state of mind when the need arises to deal with the other kind of jerk.
Norman reminisces.
This superstition has never gone away.
In The United States, this is called “manifesting”.
yup
the same thinking still persists, after 40000 years of ‘progress’