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World crude oil extraction reached an all-time high of 84.6 million barrels per day in late 2018, and production hasn’t been able to regain that level since then.
Oil prices have bounced up and down over the ten-year period 2014 to 2024 (Figure2).
In this post, I show that changing oil prices have had varying impacts on production. Recently, lower prices seem to be associated with lower production because extraction has become less profitable for producers. A temporary spike in oil prices does little to raise production. The view of economists that crude oil extraction can continue to rise indefinitely because lower production leads to higher prices, which in turn leads to greater production, is not true. (Economists also believe that substitutes can be helpful, but this is not a subject I will try to cover in this post.)
[1] World crude oil production has not regained its level prior to the Covid restrictions.
According to EIA data in Figure 1, the highest single month of crude oil production was November 2018, at 84.6 million barrels per day (mb/d). The highest single year of crude oil production was 2018, when world crude oil production averaged 82.9 mb/d. The last 24 months of oil production have averaged only 81.7 mb/d of production. Compared to the year with the highest average production, world oil production is down by 1.2 mb/d.
Furthermore, in Figure 1, there is nothing about the world production path in the last 24 months that gives the impression that oil production will be surging upward anytime soon. It merely increases and decreases slightly.
World population continues to grow. If economists are to be believed, oil prices should be shooting upward in response to rising demand. However, oil prices have not generally been increasing. In fact, as of this writing, the Brent crude oil price stands at $69, which is lower than the recent average monthly price shown in Figure 2. There is concern that the US economy is going into recession, and that this recession will cause oil prices to fall further.
[2] OPEC oil production seems as likely as other source of production to be influenced by price, since OPEC sells oil for export and can theoretically cut back easily.
One thing that is somewhat confusing about OPEC’s oil production is the fact that the membership of OPEC keeps changing. The data the EIA displays is the historical production for the current list of OPEC members. If former members left OPEC because of declining production, this would be hidden from view.
Based on the EIA’s method of displaying historical OPEC oil production, the peak in OPEC production occurred in November 2016, at 32.9 mb/d. The highest year of oil production was 2016 at 32.0 mb/d, with 2017 and 2018 almost as high. Average production during the last 24 months has been 29.2 mb/d, or 2.8 mb/d lower than the 32.0 mb/d production in its highest year. Thus, recent OPEC production has fallen further than world production, relative to their respective highest years. (World production is down only 1.2 mb/d relative to its highest year.)
[3] An analysis of OPEC’s production relative to price indicates that patterns change over time.
Prices have changed dramatically between 2014 and 2024. I chose to look at prices versus production during three different time periods, since these periods seem to have very different production growth patterns:
- January 2016 to November 2016 (rising OPEC production)
- December 2016 to April 2020 (falling OPEC production)
- May 2020 to May 2024 (rising and then falling OPEC production)
These are the three charts I created:
During this initial period ending November 2016, the lower the price of oil, the more OPEC’s Oil production increased. This approach would make sense if OPEC was trying to keep its total revenue high enough to “keep the lights on.” If some other country (such as the United States in Figure 7) was flooding the world with oil, and through its oversupply depressing prices, OPEC didn’t choose to respond by cutting its own production. Instead, it seems to have pumped even more. In this way, OPEC could make certain that US producers weren’t really making money from their newly expanded supply of crude oil. Perhaps the US would quickly cut back–something it, in fact, did between April 2015 and Nov. 2016, shown in Figure 7 below.
During this second period ending April 2020, prices plunged to a very low level, but production didn’t change significantly. It is difficult to change production levels in response to a specific shock because the whole system has been set up to provide a certain level of oil extraction, and it takes time to make changes. Other than that, prices didn’t seem to have much of an impact on production.
In this third period ending May 2024, OPEC producers seem to have been saying, “If the price isn’t high enough, we will reduce production.” Figure 6 shows that with higher prices, the amount of oil extracted tends to rise, but only up to a limit. When prices temporarily hit high levels (in March to August of 2022–the dots over to the right in Figure 6), production couldn’t really rise. The necessary infrastructure wasn’t in place for a big ramp up in production.
Perhaps if prices had stayed very high, for very long, maybe production might have increased, but this is simply speculation. Oil companies won’t build a lot of extraction infrastructure that they don’t need, regardless of what they may announce publicly. I have been told by someone who worked for Saudi Aramco (in Saudi Arabia) that the company has (or at one time had) a lot of extra space for oil storage, so that the company could temporarily ramp up deliveries, as if they had extra productive capacity readily available, but that the company didn’t really have the significant excess capacity that it claimed.
[4] US oil production since January 2014 has followed an up and down pattern, to a significant extent in response to price.
Figure 7 shows three distinct humps, with the first peak in April 2015, the second peak in November 2019, and the third peak in December 2023.
In the first “hump,” there was an oversupply of oil when the US was trying to ramp up its domestic oil supply of oil (through tight oil from shale) at the same time that OPEC also increasing production. The thing that strikes me is that it was OPEC’s oil supply in Iraq that was ramping up and increasing OPEC’s oil supply.
The rest of OPEC had no intention of cutting back if the US was arrogant enough to assume that it could raise production of both US shale and of Iraq with no adverse consequences.
Looking at the detail underlying the first US hump, oil production rose between January 2014 and April 2015 when production was “stopped” by low prices, averaging $54 per barrel in January through March 2015. The US reduced production, particularly of shale, since that was easy to cut back, hitting a low point in September 2016. The combination of growing oil supplies from both the US and OPEC led to average oil prices of only $46 per barrel during the three months preceding September 2016.
Eventually OPEC oil production peaked in November 2016 (Figure 3), leaving more “space” available for US oil production. Also, oil prices were able to rise, reaching a peak of $81 per barrel in October 2018. World crude oil production hit a peak in November 2018 (Figure 1). But even these higher prices were too low for OPEC producers. They announced they were cutting back production, effective January 2019, to try to further raise prices.
During the second hump, US oil production rose to 12.9 mb/d in November 2019. The oil price for the three months preceding November 2019 was only $61 per barrel. Evidently, this was not sufficient to maintain oil production at the same level. The number of “drilled but uncompleted wells” began to rise rapidly.
Drillers chose not to complete the wells because the initial indications were that the wells would not be sufficiently productive. They were set aside, presumably until prices rise to a high enough level to justify the investment.
Figure 7 shows that the US oil production had already started to fall before the Covid-related drop in oil production, which began around April and May of 2020.
[5] The rise in US oil production since May 2020 has been a bumpy one. The peak in US oil production in December 2023 may be its final peak.
The rise in oil production since May 2020 has included the completion of many previously drilled but uncompleted (DUC) wells. There has been a trend toward fewer wells, but “longer laterals,” so the earlier wells drilled were probably not of the type most desired more recently. But these previously drilled wells had some advantages. In particular, the cost of drilling them had already been “expensed,” so that, if this earlier cost were ignored, these wells would provide a better return to shareholders. If production was becoming more difficult, and shareholders wanted a better return on their (most recent) investment, perhaps using these earlier drilled wells would work.
There remain several issues, however. Currently, the number of DUCs is down to its 2014 level. The benefit of already expensed DUCs seems to have disappeared, since the number of DUSs is no longer falling. Also, even with the addition of oil from the DUCs, the annual rise in US oil production has been smaller in this current hump (0.8 mb/d) than in the previous hump (1.4 mb/d).
Furthermore, there are numerous articles claiming that the best shale areas are depleting, or are providing production profiles which focus more on natural gas and natural gas liquids. Such production profiles tend to be much less profitable for producers.
I think it is quite possible that US crude oil production will start a gradual downward decline in the coming year. It is even possible that the December 2023 monthly peak will never be surpassed.
[6] Oil prices are to a significant extent determined by debt levels and interest rates, rather than what we think of as simple “supply and demand.”
Debt bubbles seem to hold up commodity prices of all kinds, including oil. I have discussed this issue before.
It seems to me that all the manipulations of debt levels and interest rates by central banks are ultimately aimed at maneuvering oil prices into a range that is acceptable to both producers of crude oil and purchasers of crude oil, including the various end products made possible through the use of crude oil.
Food production is a heavy user of crude oil. If the price of oil is too high, one possible outcome is that food prices rise. If this happens, consumers become unhappy because their budgets are squeezed. Alternatively, if food prices don’t rise sufficiently, farmers find their finances squeezed because they cannot get a high enough return on all of the required farming inputs.
[7] The current debt bubble is becoming overstretched.
Today’s debt bubble is driving up stock prices as well as commodity prices. We can see various pressures around the world associated with this debt bubble. For example, in China many homes have been built in recent years primarily for investment purposes, rather than residential use. This property investment bubble is now collapsing, bringing down property prices and causing banks to fail.
As another example, Japan is known for its “carry trade,” which is made possible by the combination of its low interest rates and higher rates in other countries. The Japanese government has a very high debt level; it cannot withstand more than a very low interest rate. There is significant concern that this carry trade will unwind, an issue that has already been worrying world markets.
A third example relates to the US, and its role of holder of the US dollar as reserve currency, which means that the US dollar is used heavily in international trade. Historically, the holder of the reserve currency has changed about every 100 years, in part because the high demand for the reserve currency allows the government holding the reserve currency to borrow at lower interest rates than other countries. With these lower interest rates, and the need to pull the world economy along, there is a tendency to “spur asset bubbles.” But an asset bubble is likely to have a debt bubble propping it up.
My previous post raised the issue of the economy today being exposed to a debt bubble. There has been excessive borrowing in many sectors of the economy that have been doing poorly. Commercial real estate is an example, as witnessed by many nearly empty office buildings and shopping malls. People with student loan debt often delay starting a family because they are struggling with repayment of those loans.
If any or all these bubbles should burst, there could be a swift downward fall in oil prices and commodity prices, in general. This could be a major problem because producers would tend to leave the market, and world GDP, which depends on energy supplies of the right kinds, would fall.
[8] Oil is an international commodity. Disruption of demand by any major user could pull prices down for everyone.
China is the single largest importer of oil in today’s world. Its economy seems to be struggling now. This, by itself, could pull world oil prices down.
[9] We don’t often think about the fact that oil prices need to be both high enough for producers and low enough for consumers.
Economists would like to think that oil prices can rise endlessly, allowing more oil to be extracted, but history shows that this is not what happens. If there are too many people for the available resources, wage and wealth disparity tends to increase, leading to many more very poor people. Lots of adverse things seem to happen: the holder of the reserve currency tends to change, wars tend to start, and governments tend to collapse or be overthrown.
[10] Simply because crude oil is in the ground and the technology seems to be available to extract the crude oil doesn’t mean that we can necessarily ramp up crude oil production.
One of the major issues is getting the price up high enough, and long enough, for producers to believe that there is a reasonable chance of making money through a major new investment. The only time that oil prices were above $100 for a sustained period was in the 2011 to 2013 period. On an inflation-adjusted basis, prices also exceeded $100 per barrel in the 1979 to 1982 period based on Energy Institute data. But we have never had a period in which oil prices exceeded $200 or $300 per barrel, even after accounting for inflation.
The experience of 2014 and 2015 shows that even if oil prices rise to high levels, they do not necessarily remain high for very long. If several parts of the world respond with higher oil production simultaneously, prices could crash, as they did in 2014.
There is also a need for the overall economic system to be available to support both the extraction of and the continuing demand for the oil. For example, much of the steel pipe used by the US for drilling oil comes from China. Computers used by engineers very often come from China. If China and the US are at odds, there is likely to be a problem with broken supply lines. And, as I said in Section 8, disruption of demand affecting even one major importer, such as China, could bring demand (and prices) down significantly.
[11] Conclusion.
The crude oil situation is far more complex than the models of economists make it seem. World crude oil supply seems to be past peak now; it may be headed down significantly in the next few years. Central banks have been working hard to keep oil prices within an acceptable range for both producers and consumers, but this is becoming increasingly impossible.
We live in interesting times!
https://modernity.news/2024/09/21/why-is-jill-biden-chairing-a-cabinet-meeting/
Why Is Jill Biden Chairing A Cabinet Meeting?
Who is running the country?
Strange!
Seems the guy at Zerohedge is not conversant in US history
Edith Bolling Galt Wilson, Woodrow Wilson’s second wife and best known for being a descendant of Pocahontas , organized a coup on Oct 3, 1919 after Woodrow Wilson was incapacitated.
The Vice President was ineffectual, so Edith Wilson ran the country for 17 months. The most notable thing occurring during her term was the 19th amendment, giving vote to women, on August 1920.
So USA did have a ‘Native American’ President 1919-1921.
It seems that Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. had checked out quite some time ago and Jill Jacopo was running the country for quite a while, making her the first Italian American President. She kicked out Kamala Gopalan, a weak Vice President, out to deal with Trump, with the help of Nancy Pelosi, another Italian.
So this is our first Italian American President.
It is correct, but to go into details, in US you have a connection in particular with Sicily, not with Italy in general.
Also Fauci is from Sicily.
Italy too has a problem with Sicily, while Sicily has no problem with Italy of course … it runs the country 😀
https://www.vanityfair.it/people/mondo/2020/11/09/jill-biden-nuova-first-lady-origini-italiane-nonno-messina-foto
https://www.lasicilia.it/agrigento/sciacca-da-la-cittadinanza-onoraria-al-celebre-immunologo-anthony-fauci-1131926/
“According to the supermajor, global oil production is facing a natural decline at a rate of some 15% annually over the next 25 years. For context, the IEA sees the rate of natural decline at 8% annually. Exxon points out, however, that the faster decline rate is a result of the shift towards shale and other unconventional oil production, where depletion happens faster than it does in conventional formations.
“To put it in concrete terms: With no new investment, global oil supplies would fall by more than 15 million barrels per day in the first year alone.” This is a scary prospect because “At that rate, by 2030, oil supplies would fall from 100 million barrels per day to less than 30 million – that’s 70 million barrels short of what’s needed to meet demand every day.””
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Exxon-Joins-OPEC-in-Warning-of-Looming-Oil-Supply-Crisis.amp.html
This article points to this Exxon forecast, which was published in August, 2024.
https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/-/media/global/files/global-outlook/2024/global-outlook-executive-summary.pdf
Whet the Oil price article quotes Exxon as saying is, ““To put it in concrete terms: With no new investment, global oil supplies would fall by more than 15 million barrels per day in the first year alone.””
This is a bizarre assumption to make. There always has been some new investment–infill drilling, if nothing else. Oil from shale is a small piece of the world’s total production.
The Exxon report says:
Exxon is arguing for more investment to keep oil and gas production up. New technology is particularly needed.
“This is a bizarre assumption to make.?
If a more ‘realistic’ assumption was made, how would this change Exxon’s ‘analysis’?
“In 2022 and 2023 notably, oil companies have discovered 5 billion barrels only, replacing a mere one sixth of what has been consumed that year.”?
https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/has-peak-oil-become-self-evident
We have lots of heavy oil, that is long since discovered, but we cannot get the price up high enough for.
There also seems to also be a lot of tight oil from shale theoretically available around the world, but too much infrastructure needs to be built, and often in too inconvenient locations for extraction to really work. If oil prices were a whole lot higher, we could probably make it work.
The other way to make it work would be to reduce the cost of the infrastructure. Self assembling pipes for example.
lol again
self assembling pipes
lets take that in stages
do the pipes transport themselves to the site?—if so, how close to the point of use?—do the pipes wriggle themselves into trenches?
if they do, then there has to be a built in mechanism actually in the pipe, or some kind of (human made) mechanism outside the pipe.
one or the other.
at what point do the pipes no longer need human intervention??—(that point has to be there somewhere Keith).
And are they self checking after fitting?
AI cant move a pipe btw.
fascinating stuff.
“self assembling pipes”
Natural self assembling pipes are called tree root. Trees take carbon out of the air to make them.
not even worth an eyeroll Keith
I give up
still—the first pipes were hollowed out tree trunks.
Russia has plenty of oil and gas, as does Venezuela, Iran and bunch of other countries soon to be in BRICS.
Still reckon the world is going to bifurcate, assuming the deranged, combined West doesn’t start WWIII for real.
It’ll soon be the West’s turn to be poor. Everything goes in cycles.
China’s GDP is back to the same proportion of world GDP as it was in the early 1800s.
Andrei Martyanov does a good regular spiel on the imminent downfall of the West.
“Russia and Venezuela have plenty of oil and gas “ It’s my understanding that they have a lot of difficulty bringing it to the surface and and then to market….its not 1940 oil
The problem is sometimes referred to as low EROEI. It takes a lot of energy to get the oil out. Heavy oil does not move easily. If heating is needed to get the oil out, the amount of energy required goes up greatly. The energy doesn’t need to be from oil; it sometimes is from other sources. The price of oil does not rise high enough to accommodate the high cost of extraction.
We are running into the same problem with electricity that has a large share of intermittent renewables included. Its cost seems to go very high, when all costs are included. Offshore wind is especially ridiculous in price. Look at California’s electricity prices. The transmission lines and the fires they cause are a big part of the problem.
“Offshore wind is especially ridiculous in price. Look at California’s electricity prices. ”
Granted on the cost issue, but California has little or no offshore wind.
There is practically no offshore wind in the US because it is high-cost. US rules make offshore wind extra high cost.
https://www.rt.com/news/603975-eu-mario-draghi-report/
Europe says it needs growth. Just shaking my head in sad disbelief.
A quote from this:
Draghi’s 400 page document doesn’t explain what is really wrong: lack of abundant cheap energy supply.
The paper can probably be written by Denise L using his Chat gpt or whatsoever . The EU reminds me of a saying in India ” When the master has too many servants then instead of serving the master they serve each other . ” 😁
One overlooked explanation for low birth rates in developed countries is the nature of the formal work in the private sector. Many employers do not have flexible hours and punish employees who have to leave early or be absent from work because of family commitments. This is a probably a huge deterrent to family formation–not to mention to politics of many high status people in the workplace- to summerize
roughly–the politics of high status people in the workplace which views humans reproduction as something harmful to the ecosystem or something old-fashioned that technology will render obsolete.
I agree that financial considerations are an important factor in deciding how many children a family wants. But the part you talk about is only a small part. High status people have decided that they don’t want many children, because they want to lavish time and expense on the few children they have. They also want time for their careers.
It is the poorer people who are disproportionately providing the children. Often, their funding comes from government programs. Whether or not employers penalize employees is only a small consideration.
The terrible state of relations between men and women is probably another psyop to mess up the world and more of a factor than economic issues. Look at the people 150 years ago who brought up 8-12 kids on nothing.
To generalise, ‘modern women’ are massively deluded by social media and modern men are feminised by the culture and single mother upbringing.
The primary objective of the Elites is despair and chaos for the masses. The evil bastards get off on that, when they’re taking a break from pedophilia.
A rotary phone that isn’t connected to anything — yet helps connect to lost loved ones
A phone booth in Japan
“The idea can be traced to Japan in 2010, and garden designer Itaru Sasaki mourning the loss of a cousin. He bought an old phone booth — white with glass panes — put it in his garden on a windy hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean, and “installed” a rotary phone, with no wires connecting it to anything.
Sasaki would go into the booth and talk to his cousin. He said he took comfort in these conversations. In an interview, he said: “Because my thoughts couldn’t be relayed over a regular phone line, I wanted them to be carried by the wind.”
He gave his phone booth a name, kaze no denwa, translated to The Telephone of the Wind.
After a tsunami killed more than 15,000 people in 2011, Sasaki opened the wind telephone to the public. It has been visited by 30,000 people, sparking a book, two films and hundreds of other wind phones.”
https://www.jacksonville.com/story/news/columns/mark-woods/2024/09/19/cemetery-wind-phone-allows-people-to-have-one-more-call-with-loved-one/75250034007/
I have run into people who believe they can talk to departed loved ones. For these people, such a phone booth might be helpful.
Long distance call I would expect.
Dennis L.
Official list of countries whose citizens can apply for political asylum based on traditional values. All of Europe minus Hungary and Slovakia, Five Eyes including Canada and NZ, Japan Korea and Taiwan, assorted midgets (Singapore, Malta,bahamas, Micronesia) and also Ukraine.
http://publication.pravo.gov.ru/document/0001202409200036?index=1
Again, the account of someone foolish enough to emigrate to USSR
https://youtu.be/Wkw21YfvpBk?si=qbDJI69BJYCe3Tfk
people driven by ideology are generally fools. but can you imagine what he would have said had he emigrated 25 years prior? there is no substitute for energy consumption.
This is a story from long ago. It doesn’t necessarily say anything about immigrating to Russia today.
They did that to the farmers from Flanders and the Mennonites before too.
That is Russian nature.
Somehow Germans especially have been emigrating to Russia for centuries starting in the 1600s. Why did they never stop?
The movement of people has been going both ways. According to the latest UN population estimates for Russia, the population of the country reached a high point in 1990, and was falling until 2008. Since 2008, the population of Russia has been on an upswing.
“Natural change” has been negative most years. The only years in which births minus deaths were positive (added to population) were 2012 to 2016. This would suggest to me that if oil prices are high enough, population can grow a little from natural population growth. There is a small lag in timing, because people have to first benefit from the higher prices, and then decide to start a family.
Life expectancy was at one point quite short, especially for men, but it has been trending upward. It looks like migration has been a net positive for Russia since 1993.
My impression was that the migrants tended to come from the republics that were previously part of the USSR, rather than from, say, Germany, but I really don’t know. The net number of migrants for 2023 is given as 766,000, which is more than double that of some recent years.
All of the pictures I see of the Kursk area show good paved roads, tidy places that look well kept and maintained.
I think the West is running on borrowed time….infrastructure decaying….yada yada yada.
$1T is debt interest in a year for the first time.
Energy and productivity is everything.
Cheers pal
“No one would be happier to see a ban on US shale production than Vladimir Putin. I have
1:04:13
firsthand sense of that. In 2013, before he annexed Crimea, I was at this conference,
1:04:22
which was his version of a global economic conference. They said I could ask the first question. It was going to be something we were talking about before, overdependence on oil and
1:04:32
gas revenues. I mentioned the word “shale” and he erupted and said, “It’s barbaric, it’s terrible.”
1:04:39
He got really angry in front of 3000 people. It’s rather uncomfortable in that position.
1:04:47
I realized there were two reasons. One, he was worried about shale gas competing with Russian
1:04:52
gas. Two, he saw that the shale revolution would augment the position and influence
1:04:58
of the US because the US would no longer be energy dependent. He was very prescient. He
1:05:03
was right about both of them. When he invaded Crimea, I don’t think he never imagined that
1:05:09
if he cut off the gas to Europe, that Europe could survive. Europe survived. “?
Yergin is an oil industry shill . He is not a real oilman like Mike Shellman but an oil historian . Advisor/ Member of CFR and Brookings institution both neocon establishments . He has never asked Putin any questions ever and telling fairy tales about Modi /Japan and stuff . Energy independent USA ? A lie that has been constantly exposed so I am not going to go there . His most famous quote was about 15-20 years ago ” Oil will never go above $ 38 per barrel ” . On TOD was coined a term 1 Yergin = $ 38 . 90 minutes of propaganda . Don’t waste your time .
I expect that there will be nuggets of truth in what Daniel Yergin says. While, in some sense, he is an oil industry shill, he is also very knowledgeable about what has been happening. He will “spin” things to sound better for the industry than they really are. But I don’t like cutting off looking what anyone says, simply because he comes from a different position than most of us.
Key Benefit of EVs
It recently dawned that a major benefit of EVs is that they may well push down the price of the marginal barrel of oil, which is what sets the price by knocking the top off the demand.
Thus if my neighbours want to buy an $A80,000 Tesla, ‘cos they think it will save the planet, you go you little beauty.
I’ve just bought a secondhand, old school, Aussie-made V6 for 1/10th the price of a Tesla. Much nicer noise too.
If the lower oil price stuffs the oil producers, then the Gov, or whoever has their hands on the printing press, can churn out more fake $$. That’s worked for the shale oil guys for 15+ years. Another 15 years max and I’ll be out the exit . . . SO NOT MY PROBLEM.
In the meantime it’s still BAU party time, so cheer up Doomers, unless you’re a Hezbollah dude with an iPhone and most recently no balls – ouch!
>> Another 15 years max and I’ll be out the exit . . . SO NOT MY PROBLEM.
You epitomize the zeitgeist of your era.
>> In the meantime it’s still BAU party time, so cheer up Doomers, unless you’re a Hezbollah dude with an iPhone and most recently no balls – ouch!
“I don’t always joke, but when I do, I like to do so about state-sponsored genocide and terrorism.” A man of culture, I see.
Jeez ivanislav, you must be feeling serious about things today?
What do you recommend I should do to “solve the problem”? Ride a bicycle – check, grow veggies – check, solar panels – check, post in doomer blogs – check, go to protests – check.
“state-sponsored genocide and terrorism” is the current modus operandi of the West. It has been for 150+ years at least. If say Hezbollah, or the Houthis, bless their little cotton socks and their missiles, come out on top, what do you think they’ll do?
I know, it’s hard to imagine they’d be worse than the Zionists, but who can tell?
I’m a Russia supporter, as I (used to) believe they represent the ‘good guys’, but now I’m starting to wonder if even they aren’t part of the grand deception.
As far as I can tell, what we are told about our history, moon landings, 9/11, the function of money, politics etc etc, even the nature of Earth itself, are all bunkum.
That is the joke.
I had heard that the iPhones were not affected in Lebanon. But there are a lot of unconfirmed rumors, such as solar panels exploding on the roofs in Beirut, so I won’t claim any of it is true.
I was wondering whether the Israelis used a small EMP device detonated above southern Lebanon to make so many things explode simultaneously over there.
Regarding the exit, I used to know a Japanese executive at DaimlerChrysler in Tokyo and had also done some rally driving. He was a self-described “car guy” who knew everything about the history of Mercedes-Benz racing cars, and he was also a genuinely nice guy. He used to drink shochu every evening, and I drank with him a few times as we worked on several projects together.
Some time around 2005, I asked him what he thought of the limits to oil issue and how long he thought we had before the stuff ran out. He told me that he had no idea except that he was sure it wouldn’t be a problem in his lifetime.
And he was quite right, because he passed away about five years after that conversation.
>> He told me that he had no idea except that he was sure it wouldn’t be a problem in his lifetime.
This topic has narrow distribution. A relative who works with NGOs and the US State Department says the topic of oil and resource depletion is never ever discussed or considered. So even in the places you would expect it, there is a knowledge gap, even at the higher levels.
I conclude that issues of scarcity drive policy, but without most of the people in the structure being aware. The simplest explanation is that Western leaders and bureaucrats simply absorb the top-down policy prescriptions of their benefactors, but are not particularly insightful themselves.
IF we have15 years that would have been a huge accomplishment
Hollywood Can’t Ditch Its Teslas Fast Enough: “They’re Destroying Their Leases and Walking Away”
Tesla is reportedly planning a reveal of its self-driving robotaxi on the Warner Bros. lot amid widespread anger in the industry over the brand’s controversial CEO, Elon Musk, resulting in a rejection of its cars. By Brett Berk
September 20, 2024 12:49pm
Overstatements, obfuscations and broken promises regarding the unveiling and production of future Tesla products — a “semi” tractor-trailer, a new sporty roadster, an entry-level vehicle, this robotaxi — are so frequent as to be standard operating procedure. Since Tesla entirely eliminated its public relations department four years ago, The Hollywood Reporter can’t confirm that this event (already postponed once this year) will occur at all.
But, if it does move forward, the global launch of a new Tesla at Warners is certain to raise eyebrows in Hollywood and draw scrutiny toward the chummy relationship between the carmaker’s increasingly controversial CEO, Elon Musk, and Warners’ embattled chief executive, David Zaslav. (Warner Bros. declined to comment on the rumored robotaxi reveal.) As Musk has continued his trajectory into the MAGA-verse — pledging allegiance to right-wing conspiracies, amplifying racist and antisemitic messages, disparaging trans people, including his own daughter, and endorsing Donald Trump — his stock in Hollywood, and that of his brand, has plummeted.
“Elon is very outspoken, and his political views are not as popular in the entertainment industry,” says Debbie Levin, CEO of the Environmental Media Association (EMA), which promotes messages, actions and products to create positive environmental change in Hollywood.
The brand’s current diminished status in Hollywood is particularly notable when compared to a decade ago, when Tesla products began penetrating the industry. “
“None of this coming end times is because of Jews. They’re just the fall guys for a uniquely European evil, being forced into an antisemitic caricature colony of themselves. While it is true that Jews are disproportionately represented in imperial institutions (finance, media, and government) it’s important to remember that they’re still a minority therein. All the Germans, Scots, and intermixed ‘white’ people blend into the white background and the Jews (conveniently for everyone else) stick out. Jews are definitely shareholders in the imperial project but they’re minority shareholders, and—historically speaking—the first to be thrown under the bus.”?
https://indi.ca/the-jewish-problem-problem/#ghost-comments
Look, look, over here, it’s the ‘wicked’ Jews, Russians/Chinese or the W.E.F..
Don’t look over there at the plutocrats and the M.I.C., there’s nothing to see?
It’s more like the elite Jews, elite Chinese and elite Russians together….to fulfil Jewish end-time prophecies…and the fact that there is no real political opposition to this.
As some of you know, I am a groupie, I think we die alone. This lecture is 43 minutes long and is excellent on individualism/groups and how we work. Woke is individualism to the extreme; I do not think it works and if it doesn’t work, it is not right.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEltbLo8NuQ
Mearsheimer with whom I often do not agree with, but here he has a nice summary.
Dennis L.
Yet you support a woke candidate
It is like someone with a donkey decal in his car saying he is a republican
Maybe he doesn’t want to be punched in the face or shot at.
Don’t think anyone has posted this yet. Wondered what Tether was about
https://youtu.be/jy29vJXPX7s
It seems like I heard Kevin Walmsley talk about tether and stable coin before, but this time he added some more to the story.
I always wonder what can go wrong. Losing electricity to produce the stable coin and operate Tether would clearly be a problem. But I wonder about other things as well. The US dollar underneath stable coin becomes a problem, for example. Or the owners of Tether end up in jail.
When Agatha Christie went to Syria or some Middle Eastern Country, the person who invited her, who must have been quite high in their pecking order, threw a huge banquet.
A lot of animals were slaughtered and a mountain of rice was cooked.
The person who invited her, plus a few local notables, ate the choicest cut. Christie and her white guests were given the second round of cut. The chewer cuts were given to lesser guests.
After that the host’s servants went thru the batch of rice, made sure no piece of meat was there, and the rice only to the people outside.
Norman Mainler, who served in the mess hall during the War in the Pacific, wrote in his novel that the Commanding General ordered all the better cuts of meat and other luxury food only to be fed to the officers, and any leftovers thrown away. An Ivy educated officer, probably modeled after Mailer himself, questions the general and the latter said that is how order is kept or something like that. And the General sends the officer to the front to get killed by his own soldiers who did not understand him.
Such is how things were done before 1960s, and as someone who remembers the old days, directly and indirectly , I have to say that such measures kept resource consumption to those at the top, and not to those who are much less able to utilize the resources ,
Keeping the consumption to the top 0.1% – 1% is the key, something which is much easier than pie-in-the-sky schemes which may or may not be successful. And ironically, that is quite feasible by today’s tech quite easily. It is quite easy to set up no go zones for those who don’t deserve the consumption – just deny purchases to those under a certain credit score , like China , and problem solved.
Parts of my family took over responsibily for some economical tasks in Germany in the 19th century. While they benefited from that moderately, they increased the wealth of Germany immensely. This was achieved by investing superiour intelligence, self-discipline and by taking the right people on the bus.
You cannot milk the poors, there is nothing to milk for. You first have to make them rich. Those who cannot understand that have to face severe consequences, because they destroy the social contract.
This is not understood anymore today.
It is not so much a question of class, while class helps to get the right mindset, education and investment capital. But some of the most capable where poor self-made men, who had made their way up by superiour achievements and then married into the family.
It looks like Kulm never heard of Henry Ford. And you do not even have to treat them very very well, just a bit better than the regional Kulms. In fact, if you have ambitions and want to expand, you need to expand into Kulm’s followers kingdoms. It will take you very little to convince their subjects to switch.
And where is Ford Motor Company now?
Ownership
Ford is mainly owned by institutional investors, who own around 60% of shares. The largest shareholders in December 2023 were:[97]
The Vanguard Group (8.71%)
BlackRock (7.20%)
State Street Corporation (4.46%)
Newport Trust (3.98%)
Charles Schwab Corporation (2.25%)
Geode Capital Management (1.94%)
Fisher Investments (1.52%)
Morgan Stanley (1.31%)
Norges Bank (1.00%)
Northern Trust (0.94%)
All the usual suspects. The Ford family lost countrol long ago
And all of the above only care about the dividends to them
Henry Ford was a product of his days, an anomaly, which will never return.
with the end of oil their empire is unfolding. But i assure you the Ford Foundation controls billions.
On the contrary.
There was a famous French tax collector, during the days of one of the Louises, who said he can extract water from turnip.
Social contract is so 18th century-ish. There is no more social contract when the technology level of the elites are so lopsided against the rest. The latter cannot strike back.
Poorer men who marry into more elite families often had no children or if they did their lines died after one generation or two since no sensible higher class ladies would have anything to do with them and they could not take poorer spouses since that means regression to the mean.
Exploiting the lower class to the extreme is the way to go.
Why today’s winners will be more cruel, more efficient and more likely to leave nothing for the rest?
Simple.
Gail talks about complexities all the time. Concentrating everything to the top significantly reduces complexities and makes things infinitely more efficient.
In a utilitarian sense, it is OK for the richer, the smarter, the more able to take away everything from those who are less rich, less smart and less able, without impunity, since that means resources are allocated from less efficient hands to more efficient hands.
As resources contract, restrictions by the rich, the smart and the more connected to take away the resources of the lesser able will be significantly reduced to the point of nothing, since it is nature that a group will save those who are the most likely to survive.
The scribes of the old days, all coming from educated classes, had no words to spare on the plight of the poor and the unfortunate. It was natural for the lower class to perish for the Greater Good since resources were scarce.
The lives of the lower class were, I have to say , very disposable and that will be the case later.
They will leave nothing for the rest, and whether we have starships, power satellites, etc won’t really matter since it won’t really help the people. It will only help those who own it, who will leave nothing for the rest. Nothing.
“As resources contract, restrictions by the rich, the smart and the more connected to take away the resources of the lesser able will be significantly reduced to the point of nothing, since it is nature that a group will save those who are the most likely to survive.”
Oil depletion will most likely cause a social revolution in the western world. I think the state will try and confiscate what remains of the wealth of post-capitalist societies. Look at what happened in the Soviet Union, being a landowner (kulak) could have got you deported to a labor camp or shot. Paper wealth and land “ownership” may not save you; it might get you killed.
” Paper wealth and land “ownership” may not save you; it might get you killed.”
This has occurred to me, as well. Conspicuous consumption is not necessarily something that is helpful.
Kulm loves rulers like the noble in Heidelberg castle who built a vomitorium right there near where he ate….so he could eat continuously.
Honestly, people back then were sheep just like we are today.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/purging-the-myth-of-the-vomitorium/
>> But the real story behind vomitoriums is much less disgusting. Actual ancient Romans did love food and drink. But even the wealthiest did not have special rooms for purging. To Romans, vomitoriums were the entrances/exits in stadiums or theaters, so dubbed by a fifth-century writer because of the way they’d spew crowds out into the streets.
>> “It’s just kind of a trope,” that ancient Romans were luxurious and vapid enough to engage in rituals of binging and purging, said Sarah Bond, an assistant professor of classics at the University of Iowa.
(Times of Israel)
Israeli soldiers throw Palestinians down from the roof of a building, in West Bank territory.
Don’t worry they were dead or maybe almost dead…
Don’t watch the video if you think you may be distrubed.
https://twitter.com/Talalibrahim81/status/1836877914362761340
https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-deeply-disturbed-by-video-of-idf-troops-pushing-bodies-of-gunmen-off-a-rooftop/
I am not a person who wants to watch the video.
Somehow, my sympathies tend to be with the Palestinians. They were in the land of Israel before resettlement of Jews there was begun. It is simply part of a story of the rich West trying to get more of the world’s resources than it rightfully had access to.
Or, its just another book. Like the Quran, that tells you what to do. And when. And how. Somehow, my sympathies tend to be not with the palestinians. There’s just too many of us, powered by fossil fuels, extended by fiat currencies and debt.
A palestinian is just a Germanic super race, born in the wrong place, at the wrong time. For now.
They should be glad not to be born as a pig in a mega meat factory in China. At least palestinians can bow down on a carpet instead of concrete. If palestinians got the chance, they would nuke Atlanta. So, there we are.
My sympathies are with factory-farmed Chinese pigs too. Although, if they got the chance, they would nibble your fingers, toes and other appendages off.
When he visited Jerusalem in 2009, Haruki Murakami made the following speech:
I chose to come here rather than stay away. I chose to see for myself rather than not to see. I chose to speak to you rather than to say nothing.
Please do allow me to deliver one very personal
message. It is something that I always keep in mind while I am writing fiction. I have never gone so far as to write it on a piece of paper and paste it to the wall: rather, it is carved into the wall of my mind, and it goes something like this:
“Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg.”
Yes, no matter how right the wall may be and how wrong the egg, I will stand with the egg. Someone else will have to decide what is right and what is wrong; perhaps time or history will decide. If there were a novelist who, for whatever reason, wrote works standing with the wall, of what value would such works be?
What is the meaning of this metaphor?
In some cases, it is all too simple and clear. Bombers and tanks and rockets and white phosphorus shells are that high, solid wall. The eggs are the unarmed civilians who are crushed and burned and shot by them.
This is not all, though. It carries a deeper meaning.
Think of it this way. Each of us is, more or less, an egg. Each of us is a unique, irreplaceable soul enclosed in a fragile shell. This is true of me, and
it is true of each of you. And each of us, to a greater or lesser degree, is confronting a high, solid wall. The wall has a name: it is “the System.” The System is supposed to protect us, but sometimes it takes on a life of its own, and then it begins to kill us and cause us to kill others — coldly, efficiently, systematically.
Thank you Tim. I always bring bugs, spiders etc. out in a glass. Instead of screaming or vaccuming. They are my brothers and sisters. Just in the wrong place, at the wrong time.
“A palestinian is just a Germanic super race, born in the wrong place, at the wrong time. For now.”
The Palestinians are a semitic people native to the levant going back to the bronze age. The Palestinians are not a Germanic people. There is no such thing as a “super race” we are all equally apes that walk on our hind legs. Why would the Palestine want to nuke Atlanta?
Read my comment again Wit. You heard, but you didn’t listen.
Were you speaking sarcastically?
The cold reality is all remaining tech, resources, money, etc will be seized by the top 0.1%/1% of the world, leaving nothing for the rest, and the former will survive and transform into transhumans and beyond while the rest just get ground to dust.
Otherwise, it is back to the middle ages.
I don’t care either way. I have no children. My cousins, whom I have not seen for years, will pend for themselves.
It is a winner take all world. Whether you like it. Leaving nothing for the rest.
You may be right, on the other hand, consider cell phones. Very expensive then they became so common that most of the world has them.
Transhuman upgrades might follow the same path, expensive at first and rapidly falling to such a low level that they get included in breakfast cereals.
I can’t predict the future, but it does seem likely to be very strange indeed.
Those up the ladder first will likely pull it up behind them, if for no other reason than that they’ve won/survived and having others become powerful too could result in their death.
Indeed, they will do it. So the separation will be forever.
They are very inimical and selfish, leaving no slacks whatsoever for anyone.
” pull it up behind them”
Maybe, but the nature of the technology is such that a few do good people can replicate and widely distribute to everyone.
Here is a chunk of fiction I never finished.
Infectious health
To this day no one has taken credit. Why is unknown, They would be perhaps the most lauded person in the whole history of medicine or possibly the most reviled. Or maybe they don’t want the hassle. Infectious health is is not the only mystery of this kind. In the surveillance age, the inventor of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto communicated only through this name or pseudonym. Whoever was behind the pseudonym vanished from the net in Dec. 2010 after passing on the software and encryption keys. He (or she) is estimated to have around a million bitcoins which would rank them as a substantial billionaire if they showed up and started spending
The AIs claim they don’t know who or what was behind either bitcoin or the great infectious health event, but we know they are entirely capable of lying. Or possible, they just don’t know. They are not omnicipiant, and the true identity of the person or persons behind Bitcoin has never been confirmed.https://www.britannica.com/money/topic/cryptocurrency Some people have claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto, but none of them have provided convincing evidence.https://money.usnews.com/investing/articles/the-history-of-bitcoin Satoshi Nakamoto was active in the development of Bitcoin until December 2010, when he handed over the source code and network alert key to other developers and stopped communicating with the Bitcoin community. He is estimated to own between 750,000 and 1,100,000 bitcoins, worth billions of dollars as of 2021.
The first sign of infectious health we see in the records was an increase in the appetite of people living in nursing homes. This happened in so many places at the same time that it was impossible to find the origin. Over the next 3 months, there was a slow drop in the number of nursing home residents who died. Bed ulcers cleared up and the worst dementia cases became more aware of their surroundings.
This attracted the attention of researchers who discovered that old people were shedding a very large virus that evaded the immune system. It didn’t seem to be doing any harm, in fact; it seemed to be behind the improvements and frank de-aging of the patients.
Nursing homes were not the only signs, emergency room visits declined and
the number of heart attacks and cancer diagnoses slowly disappeared. The economic effects on the medical profession were devastating. Medical services were nearly 15% of the US economy.
The other and somewhat unnerving effect was that the number of unwanted pregnancies fell to near zero. Third births became uncommon and a fourth child was practically unknown. The population was still growing slightly because the death rate had fallen so much.
Within a few months, the nursing home patients were taking walks, even the ones who had been confined to wheelchairs. Most of the nursing homes closed, and the ones left became boarding houses for former patients. Hospitals emptied, and the collapse of the medical profession was threatening the economy. Profits for medical insurance companies went through the roof with claims declining to near zero.
Times were rough all over. The old folks (looking younger every day) wanted nothing more than to sit around and reminisce. The governments, desperate for workers, dosed them with neural plasticity drugs and sent them off to high school.
(unfinished)
When railroad was introduced Russia, they did not build third class carriage. It was only to be used by the upper class and the government employees (2nd class).
Nikolai Nekrasov, the Bob Dylan of Russia back then, even wrote a poem about that shows workers were not paid.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Railway_(poem)
That is civilization.
All the good things were NEVER intended to be enjoyed by the general public, only the top 1% or so.
Alex II , in a touch of generosity, liberated the serfs and he got blasted off for his troubles. Alex III, who succeeded the woke Czar, became very, very, very repressive, a trait unfortunately not inherited by his son.
The trans siberian railroad was built by the prisoners, without pay.
We are simply going back to the basic human rule, the rules which ruled the Civilized World before Gabby Princip thought her shitty country deserved more land, and Chucky and his 200/400 Worcestershires did ‘their duty’ so all the Britain’s human capitals got destroyed at Flanders and Somme and a forest ranger’s descendant, Robert Firth, could call himself as an Oxford Ph.D.
You may have something there, Mister Klummie.
During the onslaught of the German blitz into the Soviet Union during WW2, Stalin was urged to transfer slave labor prisoners working the gulags as replacement soldiers to the front. Stalin, himself, admitted he could not, because to do so would collapse the economy. Even in a facade of non class society of no division of equals, there seems to be manufactured exploitaion
Plus these ex-prisoners were high risk. They would have joined the Germans.
Yes, some did help the Germans. Even Hitter was urged to arm them and fight against Stalin like the Ukrainians.
Hitter would hear none of it…too racist
Those freed Soviet prisoners after the war ended were considered traitors by Stalin for being captured and also ended up in the slave work camps
“I have no children. ”
For me you fade into nothingness; getting a good woman and having children is a very high standard for a man. Or, many are called, but few are chosen. It is biology.
Dennis L.
Says someone who condones an incestrous cult and praise its genetic defects.
And, I am not dead yet, so who knows what will happen?
Even if I die without offspring my cousins will carry my grandparents’ line.
The offspring of lower classes didn’t last long. It didn’t matter they had children or not. Charles Ingalls had 5 daughters, only 1 of them, Laura, reproduced. She had only one daughter, Rose Ingalls Lane, who had a son who died shortly after birth and didn’t have another child. She adopted a southeastern orphan later in her life, which does NOT count. Meanwhile Charles’ siblings who stayed in the city have descendants who are still around.
you really are the bitterest, most unhappy man i’ve ever seen commenting anywhere on the internet. which is really quite something, given the mental state of vast swathes of people these days.
Actually I am quite content. I do not consider happiness as a valid emotion, and being a very unemotional person, I am quite comfortable to be bitter and unhappy.
I am just realistic, no-holds-barred person who is not timid from saying what has to be said. That does not make me the most popular person at a party but I do not mind.
If the world goes back to hunter-gathering, the rich cannot get any particular benefit.
If cities play a much smaller role, there have to be many fewer rich people, and their relative wealth much fall. We know that cities regularly collapsed in the past, and that the men with wealth tended to fight each other. This doesn’t bode well for the rich, either.
In the past, poor farmers could simply move somewhere else, and continue their livelihood, in the time of overshoot and collapse. It was the rich who were definitely badly off, unless they got carried off to Babylon by an invading army and learned new skills, such as writing.
Google responds to “What countries does Russia export oil to?”
“Crude oil: China has bought 48% of Russia’s crude exports, followed by India (35%), the EU (7%), and Turkey (6%).”
How much oil-trading goes on outside of the western petro-dollar markets?
This might be termed “BRICS oil” — is BRICS involved in it?
Ask the LLM what its information cutoff date is. They are expensive to train and, to the best of my knowledge, don’t do online learning, so they are nearly always out of date regarding historical events.
The updates are done by green employees who do that as entry level job.
As the old computing adage says, GIGO. Garbage in, garbage out.
AI has no ability to detect whether something is garbage or not, yet some people think copilot is the reincarnation of the Oracles of Delphi.
The fact that AIs can hold a sensible conversation at all is amazing. Given the progress of the last few years, can you extrapolate how good they will be in 5 years or even 2 years?
Sensible for those with an IQ of 8th grade
No match for a truly smart person who can see through its patterns
IN 5 years not much progress. I have heard about Crispr for years. I don’t hear too much about it except more bullshit from those want to profit from it.
Presuming you are “a truly smart person who can see through its patterns ” how about an example?
OpenAI is up to an IQ of 120.
Ed, it will get the rest of us soon enough.
one day ai will be able to initiate a sensible converastion
lololol
On day . .
Norm, I suspect you have never chatted with an AI. Give it a try.
lol keith
when a lady AI rings me (as opposed to me ringing ”it”) and whispers obscene suggestions, THEN i’ll carry on a conversation.
anyway, I the other day i thought you intimated youve never talked to an AI.
“never talked to an AI.”
Never used the voice interface. Well, never did it on purpose, many phone calls today are with AIs. First typing conversation I had with an AI was about the clinic seed story The AI went out on the net, found the story, read it and made intelligent conversation about a story featuring Suskulan a fictional AI. It was a surreal experience.
Suskulan is a made up name for the AI. Lot of pointers in search engines.
for the time being Keith, I will wait for a lady AI to call me, and tell me what she wants to do with my body….(assuming shes not a lady undertaker that is)
If she follows through with a firm date, I will know Ive not been talking to a power station
AI is a question of processing power. It can answer questions but cannot lead a standard discussion or narrative as its computational memory is limited and it forgets aspects a human won’t.
AI depends on semi-conductors and energy. You can run it at home, no internet needed.
If you assume energy and semi-conductors become cheaper the next five years, the AI becomes better.
nope
to Keith AI is a physical entity
Ive set out my criteria above.
Am still waiting
It’s not “amazing”. It’s identical to ELIZA of sixty (60) years ago, just with broader and more ample inputs. Its basic ‘retardedness’ remains.
Well it is now beating average to above-average humans in many tasks and being widely deployed and taking jobs (eg. call centers), so whatever adjectives one uses to describe it, it’s impactful.
Are you communicating with the same chat bots I use? I would very much like to see an exchange which illustrates ‘retardedness’.
Somewhere around the net there should be a copy of a conversation between Eliza and Perry the Paranoid. Hilarious.
Well, ivanislav, my experience with humans in call centers keeps declining, so… yes, we may well be at or near a cross-over point in that functionality. But I think that says as much or more about the quality of the humans employed in call centers than it does about the quality of the purported AI.
Only a human will ever be able to break out of an AI do-loop to creatively solve a problem.
—
Keith, I don’t communicate with any chat bots (that I know of). What would be the point, exactly? Why would anyone choose to “chat” with a computer? I just don’t get this, at all. If I were alone on a desert island, maybe…
You say you use them in writing.. why would you do so? What do you gain?
Once upon a time, back in Kulm’s day, the most learned men had access to maybe a few dozen or (if vastly wealthy) a few hundred books. Now, there aren’t enough hours in the day to read the output of just a few of one’s favorite authors (between X, Substack, books, blogs, etc.).
What is the point of all of this content generation, especially when—in the case of ‘AI’—it is deeply suspect at base (GIGO)?
The more crap there is on the Interwebz, the crappier the AI regurgitation and re-regurgitation of all this crap will be. You may get some ok stuff next to crap squared or crap cubed.
AI can’t tell shit from refried beans, can it? People will “argue” with it, try to “catch it out”, and it will sometimes grudgingly admit that it is wrong. Where is the benefit here? I simply don’t see it. It seems like just another planned psy-op/time-suck/energy-suck/distraction/human mental crippling.
“What do you gain? ”
Knowledge of where AI development is at this point in time. I find it to be impressive, even at this early stage. In a few years it will be far advance over the present.
@lidia
>> Only a human will ever be able to break out of an AI do-loop to creatively solve a problem.
Sure, but there are help-desk/call-center escalation tiers. Maybe bots do level 1/2 and if it can’t be solved after some time, a human takes over. In fact, that’s what already happens with existing tech – they try to get you to go through an automated system and then ultimately if your needs aren’t covered, you finally end up with an operator. Perhaps this will be similar, with humans covering an ever-smaller share or giving final approval for remedies.
ivanislav, yes I see that this is already happening and I think I acknowledged it.
I still don’t see the overall “societal” benefit in eliminating basic customer-interfacing jobs. Like with physical automation/robotics doing away with factory jobs, what is going to be left for “average” or slightly/somewhat-below-average people to do? They are going to increasingly weigh on the rest of us and divert themselves in ill behavior and mayhem.
Keith says, “In a few years it will be far advance over the present.”
That’s what they said 60 years ago (maybe with a different participle).
Sigh.
I get that forms of machine pattern recognition may alleviate human drudgery (but then I wonder the extent to which this capacity is desired or necessary).
For example, machine pattern-recognition helps municipalities read license plates of those who run red lights. But then, the municipalities keep edging down the duration of yellow lights to maximize the amount of fines they can collect…
Did Iran receive nuclear tech from Russia in exchange for delivering missiles to Russia? Go home yankee.
“nuclear tech from Russia”
I think they got it from NK. However, the technology Iran is working on is relatively simple. I investigated this for a story, same as Tom Clancy did for _Sum of all Fears_.
https://archive.ph/20130415065858/http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2007/10/30/18253/301
I can post the details if anyone wants to know how to build a nuke on a budget.
Its not about the tech, its about the narrative. Oprah without titties.
more important than the nuke tech is the delivery system
Everywhere I see talk of China’s collapsing economy. Well, they’re the workshop of the world and product supply chains haven’t moved appreciably, so what does that say about the state of the world? An obvious conclusion to draw is that constituents of “advanced” economies have reduced purchasing power coming into line with their actual production and competitiveness.
Other countries can no longer count on importing goods from China that they did in the past. This seems like a major problem to me. Supply lines seem to very often go through China, even if the entire product is not made in China.
What China’s collapsing economy says about the state of the world is that there will be less manufactured goods available in the future.
Gail said that you ‘can’t turn off the economy’, you can’t break supply chains then, ‘turn the economy on again’ and expect the supply chains you broke to res-assemble themselves.
Our leaders are perfectly fine with less stuff being available–they say we have too much anyway.
That is the state of the world.
More High-end cars on the Roads.
In recent years, in my neck of the woods, I’ve been seeing a lot more Telsas…in fact I see more Telsas than Mercedes these days and this has been over a 8-year period.
Heck, I’ve even seen a few Cybertrucks. Cybertrucks look just as ridiculous in real life as they appear in pictures.
Since the pandemic, I’ve been seeing more people in convertibles….from 0% to like maybe 3%. I’ve seen enough people in convertibles to be able to profile them: white, and at about retirement age. I don’t live in an are with a warm climate so this is strange. This may be a case of “the rich getting richer”….”the college premium” or whatever they call it these days.
I’m not sure. It depends upon the demographic. Young people who are trying to impress others will buy Teslas. Middle aged folks will buy light trucks or pickup trucks, particularly men) to impress others. Older folks will tend to drive what they drove previously. Young people have trouble buying a vehicle at all. They will drive whatever they can buy cheaply.
I checked out edmunds.com to see how many options young people have for affordable cars (under 30k) for the year 2024. It is a very short list.
From what I see, it’s not worthwhile for manufacturers to make a cheap car, even if they can get the lowest labor costs imaginable. Even if their low cost labor is able to improve their productivity, it isn’t worthwhile for them to make a cheap product.
Everyone in business wants to make an upscale product and market it to rich people or people who are envious of the rich. A manufacturer that makes combs would love to create an upscale market for combs so they could sell their product at a higher price point. That manufacturer may not mind increasing the cost of making their combs if it means they can charge much more money for their combs, enough to offset their higher manufacturing cost. The service economy is increasingly becoming an economy where every thing is trying to position itself as a luxury product or a “niche”.
All this luxury marketing is convenient because it hides the diminishing returns tha are occurring.
For example, a common pov is that something…like Water is NOT becoming more expensive, we just have higher expectations of what water should be like We’re just paying for proper regulations so we can enjoy safe water or better tasting water. That’s the ticket.
The great thing about luxury marketing is that it works. People want to believe bad things happen for good reasons.
A strange story about Kamala Harris’ brother-in-law, Tony West who faces allegations of embezzling billions of dollars in taxpayer funds and who may be involved in her administration if she is elected.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/who-kamala-harris-brother-law-tony-west
What would we expect? It will be just like Tamil Nadu
Corruption in india
https://youtu.be/QIdQAJXgddM?si=Dk6FIlymW0qS8976
India legalized corruption. I am sure Ravi should know more about this than me.
It is corruption for the poor and extortion for the rich . A police constable on the beat is not interested in being promoted to a an officer on the desk job because he will loose his income from extortion . All are victims of the bureaucracy and politician nexus . I will stop , I know just too much . I got lucky as I got my hands on ” Overshoot ” and ” Limits to Growth ” in 1990 and 2 years later I left .
I remember someone saying that the only way to make “good money” as a mechanic was to “rip people off”.
I don’t think that’s true but unethical behavior is a problem that extends far beyond politics. Religion used address ethics but has surrendered moral authority to politicians who have no incentive to address unethical behavior of people who are their direct constituents. Politicians are only interested in punishing the unethical behavior of political enemies.
Canada is not making much money on oil from the oil sands, with oil prices as low as they are. If companies are having trouble making profits, and tax levels are not high enough, Canada could cut off production. The excuse would likely be climate issues, but the real underlying issue would be lack of profitability. I don’t know whether low oil prices (and other low fuel prices) are already an issue. This article indicates that Canada is already looking at legislation which would indirectly cap production.
https://realclearwire.com/articles/2024/09/18/the_us-canada_energy_relationship_is_underappreciated__and_may_be_under_threat_1059311.html
That would force a major change in our foreign policy. Not as much foreign intervention and would cut back our attempts to control the world. That end soon at any rate. Trump is pushing in that direction. As opposed to Harris and the neocons.
I have never understood this part of the definition of reserves, “that can be extracted profitably under the current conditions”.
Bloomberg reports:
Sanctions on Russia’s Oil Tankers Lack Bite
Moscow has called the bluff of US and European authorities, and shown their hands to be empty.
” “The shadow fleet is a collection of aging and often poorly maintained vessels with unclear ownership structures and lack of insurance.”
So???????? Bye bye Lloyd’s of London. Everyone was fine with you even so, but you had to go all “Swift Settlement” on everyone and now, no more insurance! Tell me sir: does “Insurance” somehow keep ships from sinking? Then WTF do you care if they have it? And is the ship SAILING? Then WTF business is it of yours who owns it? Oh you’re my and everybody’s MOMMY now? You’re the mommy off all ships, needs to know where every one is at 10 o’clock at night? GFY. None of your business. Nor mine. These nitwits were not shoved into enough lockers growing up. Snitches get stitches. Ferme la bouche.
Copy/paste TAE .
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/nuclear-names-surge-after-three-mile-island-planned-restart-power-microsoft-data-centers
Electric utility stocks have been on a tear. This site knew this, Kulm, you all in?
Dennis L.
This chart of the Dow Jones Utility Index makes it look like that past year has been a particular run-up in prices, presumably related to the growing demands of AI for electricity. (Adjust chart to “All years.”)
https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/index/dju
John Deere announces mass layoffs in Midwest amid production shift to Mexico
“John Deere, the world’s largest seller of tractors and crop harvesters, has announced another wave of layoffs Friday, telling around 610 production staff at plants in Illinois and Iowa that they will be out of a job by the end of the summer, according to reports.”
“Earlier this month, Deere announced it is moving the manufacturing of skid steer loaders and compact track loaders from its Dubuque facility to Mexico by the end of 2026.”
https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/john-deere-announces-mass-layoffs-midwest-amid-production-shift-mexico
as luck may have it, summer ends tomorrow.
I remember very well when Billie Hook Up Clinton the as selling NAFATA free trade agreement to us here in the USA, it would help stop them Mexicans from sneaking illegally into our country by providing jobs in their country.
It would grow their economy and help our own exports.
We were warned by Ross Perot about the great sucking sound.
Yep we’re exporting alright jobs and growing their economy alright, but Slick Willie got it intentionally wrong about them sneaking…
Fast forward today..nothing has changed regarding the political talk..still arguing about the same issues… abortion, taxes…need more tax cuts, health care, inflation, military ect ..feel like I’m still living in the 60s 70s
“stop them Mexicans”
As far as I know, this worked. Most of the people coming over the border are from further south.
Ok, all we do now is expand NAFTA and send our jobs, what’s left of them, over there in Central South America
Just googled it…
In 2022, 37% of undocumented immigrants in the United States were from Mexico, which was the lowest percentage on record. The next four largest countries of origin were El Salvador, India, Guatemala, and Honduras.
Nope, seems it hasn’t …so sorry…next..
Demographics and the feminist movement. Women want power positions, those require incredible sacrifice of one’s life. Being a mother is considered a low class job, Anglos are only having 1.7 children per couple, not replacement rate. Thus we are being replaced, literally. It is biology.
Dennis L.
People are also being told that the world has too much population. There is no longer the family pressure to have children to carry on the family name/heritage. With birth control pills, preventing births because easy.
We read earlier that farmers around the world are not getting high enough prices for the food they grow, so they have less cash flow for buying new machinery. Also, higher interest rates make the machines less affordable. There is also a problem with farm equipment made in China being much more affordable for customers. Often, this Chinese equipment is smaller scaled, and better for customers around the world with smaller plots to till.
Moving production to Mexico will reduce labor costs on the machinery that John Deere makes.
This saddens me, JD is a good company, Dubuque is a wonderful city on the Mississippi. Davenport is also a nice place to live, good people.
Much of the problem as I see it is due to excessive regulations on equipment, it can’t be maintained and when is maintained is very expensive to do so.
We have people writing policy who have no real-world experience; they are destroying our nation. We need our Pt, Starship sitting on the ground is not advancing toward that. We will get one shot at moving beyond fossil fuels; time is important.
Dennis L.
“We have people writing policy who have no real-world experience; they are destroying our nation.”
I think that this is a real issue.
Part of the problem, perhaps the major part is demographics and social class system of various jobs.
Kids will pay $100K to get an office job with a salary similar to that of a factory worker with good benefits. Downside is the UAW once reported the average number of years a JD employee collected his pension was two years – death. The work is hard.
Dennis L.
“The work is hard. ”
No kidding.
In the early 70s I installed computer equipment in JD plants in Dubuque and Moline. Got a look at the start of the tractor production line. There was this young woman bolting the engine section to the transmission with a long torque wrench. I suspect that they put her there expecting the hard work would drive her out. But it did not, she had been there long enough to develop huge upper arms, big as I have seen on any body builder.
The reason they die just after retirement is because they work as long as they can move around since the pay is good for their educational attainment
However if your mythic ton of PT materalize they will be made superfluous.
“We are one of the few animals that will kill another organism for no other reason than we can. There are people driving around every day in rural areas shooting badgers, porcupines, coyotes, wolves, birds, and rabbits for no other reason than they can. People cut down trees and kill insects because they can. There are even people killing other people for the same reason.
The most likely scenario is we are neither more nor less intelligent than other species and rather unremarkable except in our own minds. Ultimately, we survive and reproduce to the best of our ability, the same as all other species. While our self-absorption and ego have us believing we are superior and more intelligent, it is no more than another creation of our active imaginations.
Our narcissism prevents us from even considering another organism might know more than us. In fact, this belief transcends other organisms and includes an earlier version of ourselves.
A popular insurance television commercial made a sales pitch that using their website is “so easy even a caveman can do it.”. It’s an amusing and effective sales campaign because people need no convincing that they are much more intelligent than our ancestor hunter-gathers.
For all those people who believe they are superior to pre-agriculture humans, try living without modern clothing, equipment, or weaponry in the backcountry for a week- anywhere, anytime. It will give you an appreciation for how incredibly tough, aware, talented, clever, agile, and dexterous they were.”
-Racing to Extinction: Why Humanity Will Soon Vanish, (Lewis 2024)
For all those people who believe they are superior to pre-agriculture humans, try living without modern clothing, equipment, or weaponry in the backcountry for a week- anywhere, anytime. It will give you an appreciation for how incredibly tough, aware, talented, clever, agile, and dexterous they were.”
The FE Challenge
I tried growing a few crops with only natural inputs. It didn’t work. I needed fences and nets to keep predators out. I need sprays to make fruit trees produce fruit. These trees also need proper pruning and proper mineral supplements.
Organic only means that certain methods are excluded. A lot of modern (fossil-fuel based) methods are permitted.
Spraying scares the hell out of me; it is a quiet secret in IA that certain cancers and Parkinson’s disease are more prevalent than expected.
Fences on my farm garden need to be high otherwise the deer jump over them, like > six feet high.
Nice going on your fruit trees.
Farming is hard work, more so than most people see. Equipment does not maintain itself; a “small” batwing will take an hour to grease according to the JD manual lubrication points. Skip greasing, purchase the JD parts along with shop time.
Dennis L.
It’s not good when your crops are consumed by other organisms and you face starvation, defaulting on your debts, etc.
Plenty of microbes that are more prevalent in organic environments that can bypass the blood/brain barrier .
You can be killed by industrial chemicals or other life forms. Take your pick.
I’ve had great success with Swiss Chard, Okra, Brussel Sprouts, Cherry Tomatoes, and of course, Zucchini..
Haven’t attempted bean crops, but bee keeping was relatively easy. Fruit tree crops of mangoes, avocados are not too difficult.
Realize can’t feed myself but it helps
I grew okra when I had a garden. Not much bothered it. Cherry tomatoes worked pretty well until this year. Figs seem to work, until you prune them back too much. Then they have a low year of production. I tried planting beans, but I never got many of them.
China is working on commercializing electricity from a nuclear reactor powered by thorium. (A video I saw, but misplaced the link to, said that a small amount of uranium is added to the thorium, to get the reaction started. Once the reaction is started, it maintains itself. The waste products are much less of a problem than those from today’s nuclear reactors.)
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-06/china-building-thorium-nuclear-power-station-gobi/104304468
China to build first-ever thorium molten salt nuclear power station in Gobi Desert
If this really would work, it might be a way of producing electricity with a fuel that is quite abundant. This would not solve our fossil fuel problem, but it might be a better solution than intermittent electricity.
Simon Michaux has mentioned this reactor. He said that Oak Ridge fully developed it by about 1972. Their report has been sitting on a shelf since then, i.e. only China is doing anything about it.
I was hoping that the current approach would be a little different, and perhaps work a bit better. But I don’t know enough about the whole process to know that this is the case.
bit better
The engineering problem at the same they have always been. The main problem is neutron economy since you breed the fuel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-salt_reactor#1950s
I’m thinking that this was what M. King Hubbert was assuming would happen after the world passed peak oil. I remember seeing a chart of his that showed nuclear filling in for hydrocarbons as their contribution inevitable fell.
I’ve googled it, and I see you covered this back in 2011.
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2011/05/02/the-context-of-hubbert’s-peak-in-world-oil-forecast/
the new facility will produce 60MW of heat that will be used to generate 10MW of electricity and hydrogen as part of a larger renewable and low-carbon energy research hub.
The means for every watt of electricity and hydrogen, the thing will leak five watts of heat into the environment. It would be nice if they could find something useful to do with all that heat. Free piped hot water and heating for communities within a few km of the plants. Heated greenhouses. It’s not very easy and it may be impractical to store heat for long periods or to transport it over long distances.
Perhaps Keith has some ideas?
I have a favorite way to turn waste heat into energy. google michaud vortex engine. I note that conventional NPP are 33^ efficient, so this is not a more efficient plant despite the higher temperature.
Here are some interesting background references on the Th-232/U-233 fuel cycle which had a working reactor from 1965-1969:
energyfromthorium.com
flibe.com
energyfromthorium.com/pdf/ (for massive detail)
Why are the Replicon “vaccines” due to be released in Japan as early as next month (October 2024) worse than nuclear weapons?
https://danielnagase.substack.com/p/japans-plan-to-destroy-the-world
Tim, are you into this? Did you translate the manual for the vaccine?
I think we saw this earlier and decided that Daniel Nagase is just plain wrong.
“just plain wrong.”
Right. Human cells just don’t have the molecular machines to replicate RNA.
But if you don’t know anything about molecular biology, it sounds like a good conspiracy story. It might just be someone who thrives on the attention, but I would not be surprised if someone is making money off this meme, in youtube views if nothing else.
In such cases it is worth remembering what happened to that guy from NC who was convinced the QAnon story was factual and decided to be a hero by rescuing kids. He shot up a pizza place and spent years in jail.
And yet … something is causing great concern. Could this just be a classic redirect?
https://www.aussie17.com/p/japans-emergency-press-conference?triedRedirect=true
“And yet …”
It’s a plausible meme for people who don’t have much knowledge about biology. It’s in the same class as QAnon and like QAnon, my bet would be that someone is making money off it.
Not that these memes are harmless, some people take them seriously as I mentioned about the guy in the pizza place. He spent years in jail for being so gullible.
Ask Susan Blackmore what she thinks about memes. Memes are the vehicle. Today, memes are the mechanism of information injection.
It doesn’t matter what the truth is. In fact, that’s irrelevant. What matters, is how perception manifests.
What one thinks they know is inconsequential.
I have no idea of what’s in the Replicon shots or how they work, or if they work, or if they are entirely hype. I can guess and I can do my research, but at the end of the day I still have no idea.
But that said, Governments, Pharma companies and Assorted Experts along with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dolly Parton, Whoppi Goldberg, Tom Cruise, Elton John and a star-studded list of celebrities told everyone that the COVID shots were safe and effective.
THEY cancelled anyone who tried to warn people that this was not true. Dr. Nagase was one of the people who got cancelled and lost his job in Canada, in part for his statements and in part for curing people using forbidden protocols.
THEY said the active ingredient would stay in your arm. It didn’t. Millions of people have died and a great many more people have had their lives made a misery because they took COVID shots.
Now THEY are pushing out a brand new vaccine technology called Replicon. THEY have a proven track record of poisoning the population and then gaslighting their victims. I would take Dr. Nagase’s warning very seriously. And it goes without saying, even if he’s wrong about this, that isn’t the point.
The point is that THEY (the folks that have a proven record of seeking depopulation and a proven record of already killing a lot of folks with their last round of countermeasures, which THEY label mRNA—although I am not convinced there is any mRNA element to those shots), are now gearing up to launch a new round of countermeasures for use against another novel pathogenic disease that may well be a lot less dangerous than THEY will insist it is.
In my opinion, based on what happened during COVID-19 and the lessons we haven’t learned from that op, we’re in danger of moving into a global Jonestown situation in which almost everyone is going to be forced to drink or inject the Kool-Aid.
I know, I know! I worry too much. But on the up side, it is quite possible that World War 3 will intervene to save us from that fate.
Sasha is on the case. She agrees with Gail that Dr. Nagase is probably wrong about this.
https://sashalatypova.substack.com/p/addressing-hysteria-around-self-amplifying
Tim
“we’re in danger of moving into a global Jonestown situation”
Too late.
A good scholarly effort by Dr John on his substack post.
Basically, the energy cost of energy (ECoE) will result in people being unable to afford discretionary items, as an increasing amount of money will be devoted to necessities of food , shelter, water, heat etc.
He points out the paradox of lower oil prices due to lack of consumer affordability, and this demand destruction will put a drag on future oil exploration and production, sustaining a negative feedback loop.
After going through some financial unmasking, he gets down to the nitty gritty:
“The factors that determine the performance of the real (material) economy are: the supply of energy; its proportionate cost; the quality of the non-energy natural resource base; and the numbers of people between whom economic prosperity is shared…”
” ECoEs from all sources of energy, having risen from 2% in 1980 to 10.6% now, are likely to reach 13% by 2030, 18% by 2040 and 25% by 2050.”
https://drjohnsblog.substack.com/p/decision-trees?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=769245&post_id=149123934&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=16win7&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
:
A simple story for those who cannot understand…
There is a little village in the forest. A big and abundant forest. Wood to provide fuel, food for foraging, etc.
The people ventured out to cut the wood for fuel and forage for food. Due to abundance of fuel and food, the population grew. The need for fuel and food means that the people has to walk farther and farther from the village to get more wood and fuel as the nearest ones are already cut.
There will be a day when the nearest forest will be too far away to be worthwhile for the people to walk there and haul the wood/food back.
The village withers.
This is what limited stone age human groups.
I think Dr. John is in this instance quoting from the most recent ‘Surplus Energy Economics ‘ article of Tim Morgan.
This sounds likely to me. Tim Morgan has put together his own model that is somewhat pattered after the EROEI model (but upside down). He doesn’t give out the details of what is inside of it.
Over 60 Years Later, This Twilight Zone Episode Remains an Uncomfortable Indictment of Human Nature
Airing a year before the Cuban Missile Crisis, “The Shelter” brutally exposed humanity’s primal urges.
By Josh Weiss Sep 18, 2024, 4:22 PM ET
https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/the-twilight-zone-episode-the-shelter-raw-exploration-of-human-nature?amp
We’ll do anything to keep breathing, even if it means dragging others down with us, as is the case in the episode’s feverish climax when the frightened characters irrationally knock down the door of the very shelter they’ve been seeking access to. It makes no sense because it isn’t meant to. That’s Serling’s entire point: the rational part of the brain shuts off once panic takes hold of the nervous system.
To quote The Mist’s David Drayton (Thomas Jane), people can be counted on to remain calm and level-headed, “as long as the machines are working and you can dial 9-1-1. But you take those things away, you throw people in the dark, you scare the s–t out of them… No more rules. You’ll see how primitive they get.”
Love these photo’s .
https://www.businessinsider.in/slideshows/miscellaneous/14-surprising-and-bizarre-photos-from-oilfield-workers-reveal-what-crude-oil-actually-looks-like-when-it-comes-out-of-the-ground/slidelist/75053620.cms#slideid=75053621
These photos don’t even include oil from the Oil Sands in Canada, or the very heavy oil in Venezuela.
Somehow, the refiners mix together different types, get rid of impurities, and use heat to separate the different lengths of hydrocarbon molecules. Some types require cracking to shorten some of the molecules, so that they are more usable (diesel instead of asphalt, for example).
To rain on Dennis L’s Amish parade
https://youtu.be/t11ix1B3DtI?si=ZzjWE5PUkXWlZo0Y
https://youtu.be/ORUFnYrV7h4?si=UF_Jhh0uPmViXknM
https://youtu.be/2iUpGoXEBAw?si=QrKKE0_MfxV1kd30
Genetic Issues of the Amish
https://youtu.be/pA0XanhOrbY?si=2FUnOgg8aPawICgk
Dennis L. claims to be a dentist. I am amazed by his lack of knowledge on inbreeding. Perhaps they don’t require molecular biology in dentist programs?
I’ve never looked into this, but I imagine that temporary inbreeding weeds out recessive deleterious traits and thus results in a fitter overall *genepool* than it started with. Subsequent breeding outside the restricted genepool will then result in fitter individuals than would have been the case.
I want to highlight that I differentiate between a genepool’s fitness vs fitness of the individual in that the former (in the inbred case) will contain more homozygous non-lethal detrimental alleles than would be likely without inbreeding, even while at the same time the overall detrimental allele frequency is reduced with each generation.
You are correct, but none of this will mean much when designer babies become common. On the other hand, humans might leave flesh behind instead.
Hard to make designer babies with intermittent energy
Hard to make
The amount of energy needed to make designer babies is trivial compared to the energy humans need over a lifetime.
When you include the sunlight that comes down on crop land, the energy flow through humans (from food) is about 1000 times larger than the 15 TW or so that conventional measurements give.
To make such babies you need a functioning lab, a functioning genetic facility, and something to monitor the whole process
Hard to do in a civ run by intermittent energy
“run by intermittent energy”
There are any number of ways to make intermittent energy into steady. Batteries, pumped storage, synthetic fuel, etc.
Whatever, I see them having very nice homes without electricity, I see them going down the road with children in arms, I see the men driving teams of horses, plowing fields, I recently saw them building a large building, the younger carpenters walking a 2×6 twenty feet off the ground.
At many places in Rochester I see people morbidly obese. I have great concern and no condescension of their plight. It is what it is.
For me, you hate too much; it clouds judgment.
Dennis L.
Yes, the same ‘whatever’ attitude the Habsburgs had, which ended with this monstrosity
https://youtu.be/NuKPzbA9bWs?si=I6UoHl2Bhkj8kRHG
The Austrian male lines died off not long after, and Maria Theresia opened the Habsburg princes to marry other Germanic princesses, although that leniency did not extend to Sophie Chotek, a Czech.
I do not hate things. I just see things as they are , not with preconception or conviction.
You see children in arms. I see genetic defects which will burden the community. But then there is a reason dentists were considered to be in the same league as barbers in the old days.
I never go to north african barber shops. They’re way way better than Dutch, but i don’t like islamists with razor sharp stuff behind me. Being tied up and looking in the mirror.
I worked for the Amish when I was 13. My first job. (You can legally work during the summer underage in farming states)
On Sunday morning they would all go to church in a huge caravan of horse and buggies!
They still do, it is my understanding services are held in homes, not a church.
Dennis L.
A 44 % collapse in the sales of EV ‘s .
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/eu-car-sales-3-year-low-august-ev-sales-down-439-acea-says-2024-09-19/
Not many fully EVs sold, especially in Germany.
I will keep my 1990’s diesels on the road for as long as I can.
NZ is struggling to supply electricity to industry, let alone these EV-ills.
The later diesels (post 2005-ish) will not last the distance due to them being designed to swallow their own emissions (Euro 5 etc).
I have vehicles that will easily do 1,000,000 km with just the most basic care and intelligent driving.
Yep. Hybrids are making a comeback in China.
The best application for an EV is a cheap and cheerful city commuter for short-ish distances.
In the strange stories department:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/fbi-reveals-iran-hacked-trump-campaign-materials-and-gave-them-bidenharris
But, hasn’t it been the Democrats complaining about interference by foreign governments?
In my view the interference of foreign countries in US election – if real – is minimal and Iran is surely not in the position to be dangerous at all for US on this front.
US people are normally already oriented and anyway take decision watching US media.
It seems to me a new ridicolous card to blame someone else for not reaching what each party wants.
Russia, China, Iran, etc all want a weaker, ineffective President who is less likely to be able to unify the national opinion.
No different than what USA did to Mosaddegh.
On that I can agree, the point for me is that Russian, Chinese or Iranian propaganda is not effective on US people, as Americans are mainly already oriented and – if in doubt – they take decisions watching directly what happen to themselves through US media.
In my view Russian, Chinese or Iranian influence, if active on US people, it has a percentage of success near to zero or to zero point something.
The main interference will be per 2020 i.e. dumping fakes ballots into the mix and changing results in the Dominion voting machines.
Has Donald Trump been reading Gail’s work? He “gets” it about energy.
=======
“A Michigan mom just asked Trump how he plans to decrease the cost of food & groceries, and his answer was perfectly detailed
Mom: “People just can’t survive. How are you going to bring down the cost of food and groceries?”
Trump: “So we always have to start with energy. It covers everything. If you make donuts, if you make cars, whatever you make, energy is a big deal.”
The Kamala supporting mind can’t comprehend the fact that everything gets more expensive as the price of energy rises.”
https://x.com/BehizyTweets/status/1836194959755460961
Easy Karen,
Go ask that kid next to Trump to share.
Fortunately, there are a few people who understand the importance of energy, including Donald Trump.
A major problem is that even those who understand the importance of energy generally don’t understand that the price of oil and other fossil fuels needs to be high enough for producers. Leaders are much more aware of the issue that the price of oil and other fossil fuels must be low enough for consumers. Donald Trump has talked about lowering the cost of energy, I believe. Of course, this is what is needed for the economy to grow. But energy supplies are not great enough for the world economy to grow. We are now in a contest with the rest of the world for fossil fuel supplies.
Perhaps Donald Trump thinks that the US economy can continue to grow, even as the rest of the world economy collapses, by producing more of its own fossil fuels.
The Biden administration has used the theory that sufficiently high interest rates will perhaps attract investment to the US, even as the rest of the world has problems.
Hubbert stated that the world would only provide 2 trillion barrels of oil but their was a chance he was overestimating by 10 % therefore that would amount to 1.8 trillion barrels after more data on the proven reserves became available in later years he realised he could be over by 15% that makes it total reserves available for the world of 1.7 trillion. If Hubbert was correct then it will be red rover all over for proven oil reserves sometime in the 2020s.Therefore I think solar might come in handy during the fast eddy challenge years.
“We are now in a contest with the rest of the world for fossil fuel supplies.”
Dear Gail, we think we are. I think we are in a contest between growth and de-growth. With a major struggle in between. Watch the game.
Hat tip to FE, what we did to animals will soon be done to the human species. Because we ain’t more. We just wanted more.
Remember the population is collapsing of its own accord, even without poison vaxxes and bioweapons.
That’s going to radically change demand models in 10-20 years.
I reckon we can muddle through until then.
I heard this too! At first I was like he gets it! But then if you hear his entire talk you are left with ok boomer your brain is going too! He is all over the place 🙄
stealing my best lines
as usual
A lot of “dark enlightenment” aka pseudo-Marxian edginess in the recent comments. Everyone’s bandying around words like “class” and “material interest” nowadays. Probably out of a desire to retrofit half-baked populist versions of those concepts into the post-Soviet “end of history” narrative so that it makes sense again and thereby attempt to resurrect the old familiar distinctions.
Anywee, time to rain on this parade. Kulm has clearly lost his muse and needs to come up with some new material asap… no point replying. However, commenter ni67’s pearls of wisdom are worthy of consideration.
“kindness? what are you smoking about. civilizations entail killing and plundering human land for resources to give to useful people to dissipate energy to enjoy life… that is a rational calculation.”
You’re just establishing a causal relationship here. To argue that killing and plundering for resources is rational you need to explain *why* it is rational. For example, what justifies the goal/s and why the means would successfully attain them.
Then you say some stuff about “kindness is for losers” without defining “kindness”, instead resorting to post-fact declarations about what is/isn’t kindness. Apparently, there is no kindness in the animal kingdom… should there be? Kindness is just mutual interest… should it be anything else? “We” cannot make “everyone” happy… says who – we you me them or everyone? Kindness supposedly undermined by 65 iq “bajingas” living in mud huts… as opposed to what, 100 iq bajingas living in concrete cubes? You seem to be criticizing believers in kindness yet all of these criticisms seem to assume they already agree with your premises. That doesn’t sound very rational.
“To argue that killing and plundering for resources is rational you need to explain *why* it is rational. ”
Worse yet, you need to explain what benefits.
My background in electrical engineering, but concern about attempts by a cult to censor the internet let me into evolutionary psychology in an attempt to understand what is wrong with these people. Eventually i wrote a paper, Sex, Drugs and Cults. That work led me into wondering about war.
War is a widespread human behavior. Evolutionary psychology claims that all behavior was selected or a side effect of something that was selected. Eventually I worked out a model for how war is selected. The model is weird because it shows that war is not rational for individuals, but is for their genes.
The model is not easy to understand. It depends on another human behavior, taking the young women of the defeated as wives saving “war genes” of the defeated warriors. I have not found a place to publish yet, but if you want a copy of the 7 page paper, ask.
Evolutionary adaptation is working overtly and covertly both for and against an individual and his local community, which for humans and chimpanzees, means communities of 50-100 individuals. Once they get larger in size, you no longer know the members of your community or whom to take on patrol to protect your border because he is a good fighter and is loyal vs one who is a coward and will flee at the first site of conflict, or whom to leave behind to watch over your women and children if he is prone to child molestation or infidelity.
Communities/populations fight over resources. It has been the way for all living things, even for the corals on the reef. They have stinger tentacles that they extend to ward off competing corals so as to defend the best position to capture sunlight; invertebrates, plants, then amphibians, reptiles and finally primates. Acquire and protect resources need to ensure survival and reproduction.
But a small community is also at risk of inbreeding, so there has to be a way to disseminate genes. Male lions will be expelled from the pride at puberty.
Women are considered spoils of war, but in the end, it is about quietly preserving/ensuring genetic diversity even when it is clear that at the conscious local community level “diversity is NOT strength”. Except for these secret escape valves, animals are hard wired to repel others who are not members of the tribe, whether ants or humans. Diversity, Equity, Inclusion is absolute nonsense and is part of the strategy to destabilize an economy or society.
Distinguish this from commensalism, whereby the crocodile opens it jaw wide for plover birds to clean its teeth, or on the reef where cleaner wrasses stand by for fish to stop in and get parasites removed. If an outsider, even of a completely different species, provides a service, he is tolerated. If he is a competitor for resources, he is not. Lions vs hyenas. Eternal enemies.
We are witnessing this as Western European civilization is having to puke up this sub Saharan African “pig in a python.” You can not bring in a race with IQs of 80, which is perfectly adaptable for a hunter gather existence, into a complex structured western European society.
Even if you make the argument, well, if western European Society is so great, why are they having these massive wars, far larger than the tribal conflicts in Africa or Native Americans? You can respond that despite their larger scale wars with greater destruction, western societies by virtue of their ability to extract resources form less developed people/countries, still go on to build back more complex societies. Or give the Western Europeans some bricks and they will build a city. Give sub Saharan Africans a city and they will reduce it to bricks.
You have much of the model right.
“fight over resources”
True, but not all the time, only when resources are short. It is not good for your genes to fight when the future looks bright.
“adaptable for a hunter gather existence”
There are few Africans who are hunter gatherers. Most are farming or herding groups.
” Western Europeans”
The difference is that Western Europeans (and Chinese) were subject to vicious selection for the traits that lead to wealth.
“despite their larger scale wars with greater destruction” I’ll posit: everyone releases an amount of potential energy commensurate with their abilities… with their ‘indoles’… their ‘ways and means’.
It’s not enough to merely cease maintenance (though that’s bad enough), windows must be broken, artwork defaced, cars lit on fire, etc.
I was thinking about the situation where thieves strip railways or electrical stations or houses of wiring and plumbing. They can cause tens of thousands of dollars in damage in order to gain a few pennies. A smarter organized crime group could make a lot more by threatening to yank out the copper, rather than actually yanking it out. That option simply mightn’t be accessible to hunter-gatherer-level thinkers (or to those whose brains are addled by drugs).
Killing means end of a threat on yourself and ending the need to share resources with others.
I used to reference to this guy’s writings a lot
https://greyenlightenment.com/sample-page/
He calls for a modified form of Dark Enlightenment, namely Grey Enlightenment, some kind of syncretism between the thoughts of Herbert Spencer and his peers and people like Nick Land.
He does not believe in shortages, which is why I do not follow all of his teachings, but other than my philosophy is similar to what he is advocating, hence the name Kulm the Status Qup.
“You’re just establishing a causal relationship here. To argue that killing and plundering for resources is rational you need to explain *why* it is rational.”
Rational thought is a product of the Greeks and Descartes.
If you had any experience with women and that is not said in a judgmental manner, you will have some idea of the influence of passion and emotion in the human existence. Raising a child is not rational, it is an exercise in love, giving and patience among many things. Historically men could not afford that emotion, the man supports the family and failure is not an option.
An interesting experiment is to take a mousetrap apart, into its component pieces, place them in a bag, shake until the mousetrap self assembles. It does not, creationism is a lot like that. It is not rational, it is spontaneous self organization within a relatively limited number of parameters.
Biology is irrational, we are biology, we have evolved many belief systems to explain this and also adjust in a manner to reduce cruelty as much as possible. Joseph Campbell noted the many similarities of different religions around the earth. Perhaps all dealing with the same problems, a way to life with biology in the least stressful manner.
A cubic mile of Pt may well reduce much of the cruelty. At least it would be one less thing to fight over.
Dennis L.
“Biology is irrational”.
No, it isn’t.
It can’t be.
Propagating one’s genes is a normal biological function (*pace* the gender-bending crowd). Women are only viewed as “irrational” when one doesn’t apply the correct framing. (Probably if women weren’t passionate and emotional, men wouldn’t pay any attention to them, or much less, anyway.)
—
How can a cubic mile of anything be “one less thing to fight over”. It’d be one MORE thing to fight over!
“It can’t be.”
Overall, you are correct.
But when you have multiple actors, like humans and their genes, what is rational for one may not be for the other.
The surprise in my war/genes model is that war is not rational for the warriors (same number die from a starvation event as they do in a war) but *is* rational from the viewpoint of the genes (more gene copies come through a war than come though a starvation event. Thus war is not rational for the humans but is for their genes.
Which is downright weird.
It’s only a model, Keith, so it’s OK if it produces some weird outputs.
but if it effectually captures what happens in the real world, then reality not what we thought it was.
When I get up in the morning, I seek breakfast, either because I feel hungry, or because I reason from past experience that if I don’t feel breakfast I will feel hungry later in the morning, or out of habit because I always eat breakfast as a rule.
It doesn’t follow that I have any specific genes for eating breakfast. Indeed, I could change my habits today and never eat before lunchtime ever again, and my genes would be totally unchanged.
Whether or not we eat breakfast, or what we eat for breakfast, are things that are much much more the product of memes than of genes. For instance, if I get infected by the fibre is good but cholesterol is bad meme, I may stick to oatmeal, but if I get infected by the cholesterol and protein is good and grains will cause obesity meme, I will go heavy on the eggs.
Going to war is a bit more complicated than choosing one’s breakfast, but commonly people go to war because someone else motivates them to do so. So it seems to me to be a question of memes more than genes and of culture rather than nature, that is at work here.
“reality not what we thought it was. ”
That seems to be the case. The idea that people and their genes could be in conflict was new to me. The idea may soak into general accepted knowledge though it is likely to take a while. Ideas that are in conflict with what we “know” take a long time to be accepted.
One of them that I know about is the food shortage in the US prior to the Civil War. It took something close to 40 years for the stunting known from historical records to be accepted as the consequence of food shortage because “everyone knew” that the US had never had a food shortage.
“go to war because someone else motivates them to do so.”
That does not help. What motivates the someones to motivate others? The model I have worked on makes mathematical sense or did back when war behavior evolved. In short, people (in the stone age) went to war when war was better for genes than starving in a resource crisis.
The critical part of the model is gene flow from the daughters of the defeated warriors of the losing tribe into the winning tribe. From the genes viewpoint, this is better than starving so it becomes common over time.
It seems like overpopulation relative to arable farm land could have been a problem as well.
Louis Pasteur and others started talking about the need for better hygiene, especially when babies were delivered. At the same time, there were still immigrants from abroad, and the fertility of farmland was declining, as more tobacco and more cotton were grown on the land, and few of the nutrients removed from the soil were replaced.
Another issue was that with the declining fertility of the farmland, it was becoming more and more impossible for slave owners to pay off the debt they had incurred when they purchased these slaves. Often, the holders of this debt were in the UK. This was an older version of debt defaults, because the cost to repay was too high relative to the benefit the slave owners were actually getting.
“better hygiene, especially when babies”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis
The speculation on this topic is that the cost of shelter was eating up so much income that people could not afford enough food for their kids, particularly meat and fish.
An interesting fact is that the slaves were not stunted, so the owners were supplying enough food to keep the slave kids from being stunted.
It was only after around 1900 that high yield “scientific” farming lowered the cost of food.
Interesting!
The slave kids were important to the owners, it would seem. In some ways, more important than their own kids.
It makes economic sense to feed slave kids well.
The slave owners were mostly upper crust and the well off were not stunted.
The ones who were stunted were mostly kids of working class parents in the North. I have posted about this before but if someone asks I can look it up again.
It was fascinating from two angles, the actual facts which I had never heard about before and the 40 years it took for the factual information to be accepted by historians. It is an example of how long it can take facts to overturn dogma.
Keith, I think we have to distinguish between how people lived in the Stone Age and how most people live nowadays.
In the Stone Age, there were no nation states or larger collectives or alliances such as NATO, supranational pseudo-states such as the EU, etc., in which a ruling elite could order millions of people to go and fight in a war and tens or hundreds of millions to cooperate in the venture.
Obviously, in such a case, the individual warriors genes have next to no bearing on whether the individual is going to go to war or not. Unless they have “I’d rather go to prison or be hung as a traitor than fight for my side” genes.
Back in the Stone Age, things would have been much more local and personal. So, your model may be more applicable to that environment.
I would also like to take issue with your terminology. (Because I am a stickler for that sort of thing.) As far as I am concerned, conflict in the Stone Age was not “war”. War is a more modern invention. One of my favorite quotations is on this subject.
“Of course it’s tempting to close one’s eyes to history, and instead speculate about the roots of war in some possible animal instinct: as if, like the tiger, we still had to kill to live, or, like the robin redbreast, to defend a nesting territory. But war, organized war, is not a human instinct. It is a highly planned and cooperative form of theft. And that form of theft began ten-thousand years ago when the harvesters of wheat accumulated a surplus and the nomads rose out of the desert to rob them of what they themselves could not provide.”
― Jacob Bronowski
Bronowski referred to the conflicts between tribes in the Stone Age, prior to the era of agriculture, as “raids” rather than war. He suggested that these raids were different from organized warfare, as they were more spontaneous and less structured than the conflicts that arose with agricultural societies and the accumulation of surplus resources. Bronowski’s distinction highlights the shift from small-scale, opportunistic conflicts to more organized and systematic forms of violence associated with settled communities.
I consider that your model may be applicable to Stone Age raids or even to Viking raids, or crow or monkey raids on my veggie patch, but not to what we today would consider as “war.”
“your model may be ”
I have always said that the genetic selection for war occurred in the stone age. Those people are our ancestors though and we still have theer traits in our genes.
Another where the evolution of traits is easier to grasp is grasp is the psychological traits behind Stockholm Syndrome. https://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Capture-bonding
The traits are very seldom displayed in full form, less than one in a million per year, far less than people engaged in wars.
Back to wars, where do you draw the line between raids and wars? Written accounts of war mostly postdate the stone age, (except for the account in Numbers reference here https://www.academia.edu/777381/Evolutionary_psychology_memes_and_the_origin_of_war )
“archeology teams recovered the skeletal remains of at least 486 Crow Creek villagers. These estimates were based on the number of right temporal bones present at the scene.[8] The characteristics of the remains at the site show they were killed in an overwhelming attack, which has been called the Crow Creek Massacre. ”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crow_Creek_massacre
This stone age event contains all the model elements, a resource shortage, i.e., land for crops, bad weather, an overwhelming attack by an organized group, and the capture of young women. Do you doubt such events were common over our evolutionary history?
It doesn’t matter if we call this a large raid or a small war, the genetic selection is not sensitive to our terminology. The genes of the winners certainly did better then the ones in the ditch, but because of the captured women, the genes of the losers were not entirely lost.
Stunted kids of poor working class people in the North is just what one would expect, without digging into the data.
The same was true of old Japan, where in the northern Tohoku Region (Hokkaido was not part of feudal Japan by the way), the peasants were often on the brink of starvation and had to sell their children into some kind of slavery.
Have you done/seen any research comparing communities in fishing areas to inland areas? I would predict that the fishing folk would have been much better off protein- and vitamin-wise.
Where do you draw the line between “raiding and “war”?
Keith, do you really want to argue that there is no distinction between the two things?
Why do we use two different words to describe these activities?
OK, I’ll bite.
Drawing the line between “raiding” and “war” involves considering several factors:
Scale and Organization:
Raiding: Typically involves small, spontaneous groups engaging in quick, opportunistic attacks. It often lacks formal planning and organization.
War: Involves larger, organized groups with strategic planning, resources, and defined goals. It often includes sustained campaigns and formal declarations.
Duration:
Raiding: Usually short-term and episodic. Raids can happen quickly and may not lead to prolonged conflict.
War: Characterized by prolonged engagements over time, with battles occurring over an extended period.
Objectives:
Raiding: Often motivated by immediate gain, such as acquiring resources (food, goods) or revenge.
War: Generally aims for broader objectives, such as territorial expansion, control of resources, or political power.
Societal Impact:
Raiding: May have limited impact on the broader social structure, often contained within specific tribes or groups.
War: Can lead to significant societal changes, including shifts in power, governance, and long-term demographic effects.
Cultural Recognition:
Raiding: May not be formally recognized by societies as a conflict, often seen as part of survival or defense.
War: Typically recognized as a significant event, often with rituals, protocols, and historical documentation.
Now you can bicker over each of the above points to your heart’s content.
It is obvious that being drafted into an army to fight a war, as has happened throughout written history, has little or nothing to do with genes. What percentage of soldiers on the front lines in Ukraine are there because their genes told them it was a good idea to do it?
If there is no significant difference between modern war and Stone Age raiding, then I would consider your model totally inapplicable to reality.
I have always said that the genetic selection for war occurred in the stone age. Those people are our ancestors though and we still have theer traits in our genes.
You make the assumption that just because we do something, that we have “traits in our genes for that something”. But is this true?
The argument that humans have “traits in their genes for war” raises several important considerations about the relationship between genetics, behavior, and culture.
While genetic factors may contribute to certain tendencies, attributing war directly to genetic traits grossly oversimplifies the issue. To achieve a more accurate and less cartoonish view of human behavior and conflict, it is essential to have nuanced understanding that considers both biological (nature)and cultural (nurture) influences.
“Genes for war” doesn’t cut the mustard. It looks to me like genetic determinism on steroids.
Next are you going be telling us that the East Asians have “genes for using chopsticks” while Europeans lack these genes and so they have to resort to knives and forks, the archeological evidence proves it, and that’s Science, laddie?
“Why do we use two different words to describe these activities?
OK, I’ll bite.”
What would you classify https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crow_Creek_massacre
Or the event describe in Numbers?
The Lindy effect.
The cost of these new cars is so outrageous and the fact that they are incredibly expensive to not only buy but to matian with all their complexity means people will cling to their old ICE vehicles as long as possible.
My three brothers who are mechanical engineers and work(ed) for Stellantis and Ford bemoan the govt “feel good” mandates forcimng manufacturers to wring out the last 1/10th of 1% efficiency out of an engine to acheive mpg goals and exhaust standards.
To do this they have resorted to needless, useless, and outright costly BS like “Continuous Variable Transmission” and Turbocharging, both of which are prone to early failure and costly replacement.
I too will keep my 2010 and 1998 vehicles as long as I can.
Maybe I should go visit Cuba and see how they keep their cars running for 50 years.
https://robertbryce.substack.com/p/gasoline-does-the-lindy-effect?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=630873&post_id=149077262&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=16win7&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
I thought this was a good article, too. One point:
“of the 286 million vehicles on US roads, about 283 million are internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs). By comparison, there are only about 3.2 million EVs. Thus, EVs now account for slightly more than 1% of all US vehicles in operation.”
Also, he points out that getting rid of gasoline usage, which is only one part of the mixture of hydrocarbons extracted, gets us nowhere. We still need diesel and jet fuel, as well as many other parts such as lubricants and chemicals used for pharmaceuticals and pesticides.
Isn’t getting rid of gasoline even counterproductive? The oil from fracking and the natural gas liquids are mostly refined into gasoline, right? So keeping up demand for gasoline should help make extraction more viable for heavier products by maintaining scale.
Electric Cars and Happy Motoring
2:42-4:17 Dmitry Orlov talks about this point, we need to sell gasoline to have the rest of the barrel to remain profitable.
I agree with Dmitry Orlov. It is necessary to seek gasoline at a reasonable price, if you are going to get access to the rest of the barrel of oil for other purposes.
We have a similar problem with lots of things. Internet is close to a fixed-cost system. Part of it is paid for by gamers, and part of it is paid for by viewers of pornography. If it were not for these users, the cost of the internet would be a lot higher for researchers, schools, and businesses.
Airplane service needs tourists to fill up a lot of seats so that the cost is not exorbitant for the few business people who really need to travel.
Best case EVs will ease pressure on the marginal barrel that sets oil price.
They’re still early in their price lifecycle. In theory the Chinese should be able to make them cheaper than ICE cars.
If regulators get smart, they’ll ease up on all the safety bollox for lower speed, city EVs. Short distance commuting is an ideal application for small EVs.
I think we’ll end up with a mix of car types.
Yep. Best cars were built in the early 2000s. The problem is they’re getting harder to maintain – parts etc.
Current models are chock full of unnecessary bollox. Get rid of them at the end of their 7 year warranty, if you don’t want endless problems.
“stronger authority and steeper social hierarchies can reduce the overall levels of violence in a society by centralizing the use of force under official control”
The modern Western popular perception seems to be that ‘authoritarian’ or clearly ‘stratified’ societies are more violent.
The historical picture seems to be that if you give humans scope to contend for status through violence then they will fight – Hobbes rather than Rousseau.
We are primates with dominance hierarchies at the end of the day and power vacuums will suck in contenders.
Remove stable authority and it is a free-for-all.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/08/240828155028.htm
> Among Viking societies, Norway was much more violent than Denmark
Rates of violence in Viking Age Norway and Denmark were long believed to be comparable. A team of researchers including University of South Florida sociologist David Jacobson challenges that assumption.
…. Norway: A More Violent Society?
Researchers analyzed skeletal remains from Viking Age Norway and Denmark and found that 33% of the Norwegian skeletons showed healed injuries, indicating that violent encounters weren’t uncommon. By comparison, 37% of the skeletons showed signs of lethal trauma, highlighting the frequent and often fatal use of weapons in Norway.
A notable feature in Norway was the presence of weapons, particularly swords, alongside skeletons in graves. The study identified more than 3,000 swords from the Late Iron Age and Viking periods in Norway, with just a few dozen in Denmark. These findings suggest weapons played a significant role in Norwegian Viking identity and social status — further emphasizing the culture’s connection to violence.
Denmark: Steeper Social Hierarchies and Controlled Violence
In Denmark, the findings show a different pattern. Danish society was more centralized, with clearer social hierarchies and stronger central authority. Violence was more organized and controlled, often linked to official executions rather than acts of personal violence.
For example, skeletal remains in Denmark showed fewer signs of weapon-related injuries but included evidence of executions such as decapitations. Skeletal evidence suggests about 6% of Viking Danes died violently, almost all from executions.
Denmark’s more structured society also had a smaller percentage of graves containing weapons than Norway’s. Instead, social order was maintained through political control, reflected in the construction of large earthworks and fortifications. These monumental structures, particularly during the reign of King Harald Bluetooth in the 10th century, demonstrated Denmark’s greater capacity for coordinated labor and more organized social hierarchies.
Why the Differences?
The study suggests that Denmark’s more rigid social structure meant that violence was less frequent but more systematically enforced through official channels, such as executions. Meanwhile, Norway’s more decentralized society experienced more peer-to-peer violence, as indicated by the higher levels of trauma found in skeletons.
The findings also support the broader theory that stronger authority and steeper social hierarchies can reduce the overall levels of violence in a society by centralizing the use of force under official control.
“The findings of these patterns suggest that we are talking of distinct societies in the regions of Norway and Denmark,” Jacobson said. “This is quite striking, as the assumption has been that socially Viking Scandanavia was largely a singular space.”
Broader Implications
The research contributes to a growing body of work that explores how social structures influenced violence in historical societies. Similar patterns have been observed in other parts of the world, such as the Andes region of South America and in areas of North America, where less centralized societies also experienced higher levels of violence.
and of course the centralization was due to geography. In Norway every little group lived in its own valley and fjord, and mountains had to be scaled to reach the next valley and fjord. Denmark is a pancake and people were forced to live together.
I understand that there historically have been huge differences in the languages spoken, from valley to valley and fjord to fjord. It was a major job to try to put together a common Norwegian language.
Even now there’s still both Bokmål and Nynorsk.
Don’t discount the importance of the fact that all of Denmark has access to bodies of water for easy transit. In those days traveling by boat was the easiest way to transport goods and maintain communication and control networks.
Interesting article and study. Thanks!
The Rousseau view is particularly fantastical in light of the fact that we see even chimpanzees have war bands and go to battle against rival “tribes”.
“even chimpanzees”
Chimpanzees and bonobos
We have a possibly related example of war parties: chimpanzees make war on neighboring groups. When they do, all the males enter a group and attack at once. They also perform territorial boundary patrols where they go in groups and kill any lone members they encounter from neighboring groups. Accounting for this behavior evolution is not difficult. Territorial defense against resources is common. The “War mode” in chimpanzees seems to be on all the time. It seems to never be on in bonobos. Bonobo groups who meet party rather than fight.
If something such as the genetic selection model (above) for humans applies, then chimpanzees have experienced recurring resource limits, where it was worth fighting neighboring groups for territory and bonobos have not. That is, they are under different selection pressures, which results in different psychological traits. This means that something has kept the bonobo population below the ability of the environment to feed them. Ebola or some other diseases are candidates for maintaining population stability. Ebola potentially works because a high population density tends to spread it well. However, evidence such has made this unlikely. Ebola epidemics have swept chimpanzee areas and killed both them and the western lowland gorilla but are not known (thus far) in bonobo areas. However, a strong hint comes from this article: “Effects of Epidemic Diseases on the Distribution of Bonobos” (5).
since behavior evolves similar to that of physical traits. Logically,
something, besides intergroup wars, keeps the bonobo population within its ecological limits. It seems likely that with population growth, bonobos spread to unsuited areas and die from trypanosomiasis.
(if I already posted this, sorry.)
Interesting!
This one is especially for all you non conspiracy realists who don’t believe in crisis actors. If you have a shred or intellectual integrity, this should settle the matter, but knowing you lot, it will be another edition of “eye-rolling” time.
Training for Disaster
The heavily-stylized company CrisisCast, appears to be a revamped version of the Visionbox Crisis Actors project (a crisis actor production emerging after Sandy Hook), with a professional team of actors, elaborate film crews, expert producers and theatrical effects makeup squads mimicking real-life injuries (additional prosthetics) – all focused to deliver a simulated crisis-like reality to the public, later to be managed accordingly through their public relations division via various forms of social media.
Below is a road traffic collusion demo created by lead CrisisCast producer/founder Brian Mitchell (has worked on Hollywood studios and holds National security clearance) featured on Vimeo. The scenario is filmed from multiple angles, with quick cut editing that disorients, as we see an individual (crisis actor) in the aftermath of a crash – struck by the emotional weight of the scene – screaming out to a gaggle of onlookers after witnessing the staged carnage. The strange episode leaves one with a feeling of phantom trauma that continues to lurk.
When recreating large scale mass casualty incidents, Cast may also make use of “pyrotechnics, wardrobe, special effects, covert and aerial footage,” depending on the clients needs.
In a passage from their ‘solutions’ section, an outline to basic formatting for a simulated crisis is revealed:
“Our producers work with your trainers to create a ‘script’ that enables the role play actors to know when to trigger key developments in an evolving crisis management scenario. We brief and rehearse the team – where possible on location – but at least with video surveillance footage.
Heads of department manage each discipline and report to the lead producer who is your direct contact at all times.”
https://21stcenturywire.com/2016/06/18/casting-crisis-orlandos-actors-agents-and-casualty-role-players/
There is much more in there that makes it totally clear that crisis acting isn’t just a job, it’s a profession. Also featured on Cast‘s website, Francesca Hunt (a British actress who among her other roles played a parent in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and lead producer and co-founder of Crisis Cast), explains why ‘authentic’ stress behaviors are so important when recreating a crisis.
Eye-roll that, Norman!
You can lead a muppet to water, but then it will drown as the magpies come home roost whilst leading the blind up a road to nowhere.
The narrative is set. There is no waking the en-tranced.
Here is Francesca Hunt’s Linkedin page:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/francesca-hunt-2659bb10/?originalSubdomain=uk
“About
Experienced founder and owner of CrisisCast Limited (2013) which acquired and expanded MaST Digital in 2019.
Two decades’ experience in the UK and US broadcasting (including 7 years at the BBC) and one in the security sector has yielded a firm belief that experience changes behaviour. Over those years have gathered and developed a solid team of committed professionals, including psychologists, film makers and actors who wish to use their significant range of tools, virtual and live, to ensure the behaviour changes are the intended one.
Proven history of working well with both commercial and Government organisations in open, ensemble, collaborative and merry working partnerships. ”
And here’s her IMBD page:
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0402448/
“Mini Bio
Francesca Hunt is known for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), Filth: The Mary Whitehouse Story (2008) and The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne (2000). She is married to Brian. They have two children.”
Macbeth and Zappa mash-up: it is a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury to the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain the scenery will be removed and the curtain will be pulled back revealing the brick wall of the theater.
Various crisis actors and other shills feature regularly in videos on X.
This one is real though, even if it’s not, isn’t it?
https://x.com/abierkhatib/status/1836986916291408003
It’s very well made, but just far too honest.
‘Deep State Knows It Cannot Cheat Kamala In’ – Martin Armstrong Fears Washington’s Plan To “Trap Trump Into War”
Martin Armstrong predicted less than a month ago that there would be another assassination attempt on Donald Trump’s life, and the Deep State was going to do everything possible to start a war with Russia… All the chaos, debate fraud and push for World War III comes down to the Deep State knows it cannot cheat enough to put Kamala Harris into the White House in November.
Forget the phony polls where they all say Kamala is running neck and neck with Trump.
Armstrong says his “Socrates” computer program shows Kamala’s real approval rating is around 10%, and all his computer models say Kamala is going to lose big in November no matter how much they cheat. Armstrong says, “Just about everybody in politics looks at Socrates now because its track record on politics has been phenomenal for 30 years. They know what is going on.”
So, is the Biden Administration panicking with this second clumsy attempt to assassinate Trump while playing golf? Is our own government trying to kill Trump because they know they cannot win? Armstrong says, “I believe so. . . . Look, these people have been warmongers. . . . This is their power.” “They have gotten so close to destroying Russia, which is their end goal here. Handing long-range missiles to Ukraine, this is like hiring somebody to kill your spouse and then saying, well, he shot, I didn’t” … “Trump and RFK Jr. are against war… My concern here is they need to create war before January, if not even before the election. I think this is what all this stuff is about with the long-range missiles to shoot into Russia. If Trump does get in, they have to trap him into war. The whole nonsense about Russia Gate and all the rest was because Trump is against war… The neocons called Trump Putin’s puppet because Trump will not engage in war against Russia. This is what this is all about.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/deep-state-knows-it-cannot-cheat-kamala-martin-armstrong-fears-washingtons-plan-trap
“Shocking New Details Emerge Surrounding the 2nd Trump Assassination Attempt”?
https://vigilantfox.news/p/shocking-new-details-emerge-surrounding?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=975571&post_id=149082293&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=nm2q&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
This does sound strange. This is a golf course that the Secret Service has guarded many times for Trump. The standard protocol called for stationing guards at known vulnerable spots. This time, it is not even known that the perimeter was swept.
“Trump is against war”?
“It would be understandable if you were unaware that Trump has been escalating tensions with Moscow more than any other president since the fall of the Berlin Wall; it’s a fact that neither of America’s two mainstream political factions care about, so it tends to get lost in the shuffle. Trump’s opposition is interested in painting him as a sycophantic Kremlin crony, and his supporters are interested in painting him as an antiwar hero of the people, but he is neither. “?
https://caityjohnstone.medium.com/25-times-trump-has-been-dangerously-hawkish-on-russia-ada915b07f97
‘”Trump hasn’t started any new wars!”: yes, but he’s maintained or expanded every existing one (Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Yemen), launched a coup/economic war on Venezuela (on top of the ones on Cuba & Nicaragua), and done every thing he can to start a war with Iran.’?
https://twitter.com/aaronjmate/status/1299173430101770240?s=20
“Message to all the dumb cucks who think because I am critical of Trump Middle East policy & #Zionist support, I must be a Biden supporter 🤡
1. I am not from the US. I loathe your entire political system circus & what it has destroyed globally, the millions of innocents it has slaughtered in the name of “national security” and “democracy “. You keep looking for saviours among the billionaire predator class like lemmings, not my problem.
“America first” my *ss. How about justice first? Rebuild everything the US has destroyed. Pay reparations to the survivors of families the US has tortured or eviscerated. Take back the terrorists the US has flooded the world with. And while you are at it, set aside some territory for the State of Israel.
2. I live in the Middle East and I have experienced first hand the catastrophic policies of Trump and Biden. They are two heads of the same racist, supremacist, neocon snake. Cut one off, another grows back.
3. If you think Trump will end wars and stop the genocide in #Palestine you are way dumber than should be allowed. Reading your arguments is like a bad LSD trip and I never had one.
Reminder. Trump
1. Assassinated Soleimani and Mohandes. 2 icons of the Resistance who defeated US #ISIS proxies in Iraq and Syria
2. Scorched earth policy in Syria. Dropped thermal balloons on essential agricultural crops and forestry
3. Introduced Caesar sanctions. Unprecedented coercive measures designed to starve Syrian people
4. Stole Syrian oil depriving Syrian people of fuel, electricity, health care, water.
5. Supports Zionist genocide
6. Increased military footprint in Syria despite claiming he would withdraw
7. Recognised Zionist occupied Golan territory as Zionist not Syrian
8. Introduced Abraham Accords to normalise relations between Gulf states and the genocidal entity. This is Greater Israel in part.
9. He may not have “started” a war but he sure as hell didn’t end any. Assassination of Soleimani wasn’t escalated into war because of Iran’s cool heads only.
Biden and Trump are on the same path. Different methods, same destination. A unipolar world with US cartel controlling all resources.”?
https://x.com/VanessaBeeley/status/1812738131726135645
At 66 this is the first year I will not vote. There is no lesser evil offered.
Same here, Ed, the first time I voted was in the 1976 election and it’s been downhill ever since… ashamed on our present state today….total failure of action versus political intentions.
Most are unaware of the basic disconnect.
In the US, we are doomed.
No pity, deserve what we get
It’s similar here. I’m 71 and live in the UK. Until July 2024, when I spoiled my ballot paper, I’d voted in all the general elections since Feb. 1974.
The only hope of taming Starmer seems to be to elect Trump. Starmer would then receive different orders from Washington DC although he’d still get the same ones from a well-known Middle Eastern country.
To clarify, the words of the above post are Martin Armstrong’s, not mine.
I’m not in the US, have never voted, and don’t have the right to vote anywhere.
This doesn’t bother me as I think the franchise is vastly over-rated.
Further, the guy in this video (one of the smartest in Nima’s channel if not the smartest) says there has been a silent coup in the USA, as far as foreign policy. Possible, and mildly optimistic. He thinks there will be no new wars with Trump elected, and the opposite with the tamil patent snatcher.
Interesting video:
Explosions of pagers and walkie talkies in Lebanon reflect a certain amount of exasperation in Israel. Israel went to a lot of trouble to do this. Before doing this, Israel could listen in on these devices. Once they were blown up, Israel lost this ability. Very strange! Nothing much to gain from this. Cannot gain information out of it.
Seems to be disarray in the military hierarchy in Israel. Less experienced people seem to be making decisions.
Israel seems to want to trigger a wider war. Their only hope is to get the US and other NATO countries to join in, to help them win. The economic situation is getting worse and worse in Israel. Country was heavily into high tech. Israel shooting themselves in the face. Perhaps want US and NATO to bail them out, if they can trigger a war from Lebanon.
In a way, this is an impressive move. The move mostly shown that they are desperate. Hezbollah is a very large organization. Won’t have much effect, except increase number of recruits to Hezbollah.
The West has been stringing along Ukraine for over 25 years, telling the Ukraine it can join NATO, and then be part of the EU. But NATO just gives more promises, but only if Ukraine wins the war against Russia.
There is section round 23 to 27 minutes in which Alex Krainer describes what seems to be going on, in terms of US involvement in Ukraine and Israel. At one point, Biden was very much on board with providing all the support needed, but now there seems to be a palace coup, with support for continued fighting in Israel and more support for Ukraine, disappearing.
Pentagon may have the cooler heads. If nuclear war happens, military would be the ones dying. British want to escalate the war, but people in the US are not interested in going along with escalation.
US military seems to have told Israel that if you provoke a war with Lebanon and Iran, you are on your own. Military understand that the US could be hurt very, very badly, if the conflict escalates.
At one point, US wanted to put missiles in Ukraine that could carry nuclear war heads into Europe. Did this to provoke Russia to escalate the war in Ukraine. Russia doesn’t need nuclear bomb to do tremendous damage. US military now saying stop.
Ukraine will provide even more refugees to the Europe this winter, because much of electricity capacity is gone. Europe will use the printing press to try to fund paying for the new refugees. There will be more inflation.
Europe is now preparing its people for more military adventurism. Conscripting young people into the army to fight Russia. At some point, the US will have to cut the European loose. This will particularly happen if Donald Trump gains power. He and Vance will want to do business with China. If Kamala Harris gets in, we will be in trouble.
“Once they were blown up, Israel lost this ability.”
You can’t listen to a pager, no microphone, no transmitter.
You could listen to the walkie talkies, but they tend to be low power and don’t go far.
surely there was a backdoor of some sort to broadcast at least coordinates.
“backdoor”
Possible in the walkie talkies, but not in a pager. At least anyone with technological knowledge would immediately ask “what is this?” when they opened one up.
They have no firmware, no BIOS? Isn’t some server involved in a pager system?
Roll over iPhone and Samsung, let Huawei and Xiaomi take over:
Chinese factories are overwhelmed with orders from the Middle East!
Posts from Chinese social media, stating factories are running overnight shifts to accommodate huge orders of communication devices from the Middle East.
A requirement from clients, is that the whole manufacturing process must be done inside China.
Refer Martyanov. The West is unable to fight a conventional war against Russia. When did the US last win a war against anybody?
Not that winning is the point, making money is.
The US set out to weaken Russia per the Rand report etc, but like the brain dead sanctions that backfired, Russia’s army is now the most lethal in the world by some distance and about 3x the size it was at the start of the Ukraine thang.
Scott Ritter talks regularly about how any conventional war started against Russia will quickly go nuclear
The ending of the Tree of Wooden Clogs
https://youtu.be/NQ1NpR_Cumg?si=3vKdud7aXXdS2o1a
at the end of the movie the family has to leave the land, since the father had cut down a tree owned by the landowner to make wooden clogs for his son who wanted to go to school
The landowner was much more merciful than my grandparents. They said the child’s two feet would have been cut with an axe , so the child would be lame (and probably would be ‘allowed’ to starve to death since he is useless as a laborer), since maintaining the power of the landowner was more important than the child’s life.
They told me of burning down tenants’ houses at night, with none of other tenants having the courage to help the family dying in there. The local officials good friends of the landowner’s family, nothing was done and it was buried.
Those who have ruling genes in their DNA would understand my story much better than those who do not.
The days before Chucky and his 200/400 Worcestershires did ‘their duty’ were good days for those who drove civilization, although not much for the consumers.
No wonder they were conquered, and dispossessed. For them, too, no one came to help. and it is not because they did not dare but because they did not want to help. Possibly they helped the dispossession and perhaps the thinning of the land-owning herd.
On the contrary
Old arrangement dies hard and there were a couple of people who were willing to help.
However, since the seats were limited, my grandparents abandoned them to their fate. They didn’t even remember the names of the two idiots who probably died for them.
The ruling class are very, very good making others die for them, something people with no ownership genes do not understand.
You have no ownership genes, just like every other living organism on this planet. If they existed you would have been driven to procreate, which you didn’t. You’re just another bitter genetic dead end, looking for some kind of validation for a wasted existence. Your singularity delusion is just your fear of the ever closer void of nothingness you are heading towards on public display.
I have cousins so my grandparents’ line is secure. Thank you.
Singularity is eternal.
Two? that is all you got? Just 3 years ago 17M suckers died to please their masters by getting jabbed. That is the probable end for all suckers everywhere every time. But two made no difference, of course, and your grandpa got dispossessed, and here you are looking to convince others to behave in a way that will get you dispossessed.
My grandparents lived to tell the tale and they produced me, who have done some things I prefer not to disclose here but did have some difference on those around me.
While those who died for my grandparents are ground to dust.
Does 17 million make sense? The worldwide total is around 7 million from covid Do you think 3 times that many could die from the vaccines and not be noticed?
there is a peer reviewed paper out which states 17M. If I have time tonight I will try to find it. Keep in mind the vaxxes were for depop purposes only.
I think this could be it. I notice that they used the same method I used on my own (a peak in mortality in summer, which was never there before. peaks in mortality are in winter due to the flu) to ascertain that they were indeed seeing a signal.
The link is too long and I had to delete it. Google D. Rancourt et al. 2023 (of course if you google it directly you will never get the paper, just “fact checking” sites). there are two papers on covid. the 17M is extrapolated from the fraction of the world population.
This line of arguing about what kind of genes we possess is a vanity of vanities. Genes for ownership? Genes for slavery? Genes for doing one’s duty? Where did they get Unlucky Chucky? Genes for honesty or shiftiness?
Royal genes, aristocratic genes, ruling dynasty genes, blue-blooded genes? Nobody was more carefully bred than the Habsburgs, and they ended up with some very dodgy jaws and a lot of deformed and mentally retarded offspring. In the end only way the dynasty was able to survive was by diluting their ownership genes.
“Ah,” I hear you respond. “But they married other aristocrats who possessed ownership genes.”
And why do you think that? There would have to be a specific set of ownership genes that all owners share. And how do we know this to be the case? Because they are all owners, so they must possess ownership genes.
Not so. The owners preserve their position not by virtue of their specific ownership genes but by virtue of their being born, raised and cultivated within an ownership culture. This culture perpetuates itself over time and has all the bells and whistles necessary to maintain insiders in positions of ownership most of the time, regardless of how excellent or mediocre genes the insiders may have.
And then, occasionally, some force from outside topples the culture and slaughters or enslaves the entire ownership class, genes be damned. Persians did this to Greeks and then Greeks did this to Persians. Then Romans did it. Arabs did it. Mongols and Turks did it to every people they managed to conquer. Chinese did it to other Chinese, with several butcherings of the entire ruling class as one dynasty was replaced by another.
Ownership genes, if they exist, which is very doubtful, seem to be a lot more trouble than they are worth for their owners. I can only regard them as an evolutionary dead end. Whereas the common people with their plebeian or peasant genes will go on forever.
The Habsburgs in Spain married among themselves to not breed with the Spanish. The Habsburgs in Austria did breed more openly, and after the male line died out, Maria Theresia did open doors for all German-speaking countries to marry into the family, though not the Czech speaking Sophie Chotek.
There are more successful genes. Families with their first sons not being the material to maintain the family had the later often die in riding accident, die in a fever after the family physician/chemist administered to them, etc so the more capable child could inherit the property. Families who failed to do that died.
Selective breeding was done by the gentry, experts for breeding animals. They built a bunch of networks , tied by marriage, all over the land. Something which is still done in South America or Philippines with its Spanish culture.
Using people and building enough loyal staff to protect them are bred in their cultures. It is a nature for them. Even outside cultures who might penetrate often married into the local notables like Alexander the Great marrying the daughter of a local satrap, in order to be more friendly to the locals, and the structure was preserved.
Chucky’s f’kup open doors to a bunch of people who did not have the ownership genes, who did not have the ability to subdue and use other people effectively. They tried to mimic the owners, but mimicking can only go so far, and today’s UK shows the result of a century of rule by those who lack ownership genes.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13859093/Moroccan-bag-thief-killed-socialite-criminal-Italian-police-deport.html?utm_source=amerika.org
In an Italian town, a ‘socialite’ runs over some Moroccan thief trying to steal her bag several times to kill him, and returned to the restaurant to finish her dinner.
She must have been someone quite important in that town for quite a while since she was not put into jail but into a house arrest.
In the old days, this kind of thing would not even have become a news. The upper class could kill any number of lower class people at will, and it was customary for the police or the legal enforcement to not punish them. The novels of George Simenon before WW2 usually ends with the suspect’s arrest, with the chief detective, Maigret, knowing the suspect won’t really be punished or inconvenienced if the suspect is rich or famous.
In the old days, landowners had the power to kill their tenants, and property owners had the rights to kill their renters at will.
That kept order and kept things stable.
As resource shortage becomes more serious, those who control resources will resources will reserve to distribute them as they see fit, and they will have no mercy over those who threaten their rights to do so.
“In the old days, landowners had the power to kill their tenants,..”
Yes – examples would include Vlad the Impaler (Count Dracula) and Countesss Elizabeth Bathory.
One mustn’t be squeamish if one wishes to keep alive the hope of a Type 1 civilisation.
Vlad Tepes – a hero in his region, someone who kept out Transylvania out of Turks during his lifetime.
Liz Bathory –
https://www.quora.com/Are-there-any-descendants-of-Countess-Elizabeth-Erzsebet-Bathory-living-today
Her illustrious descendants were in many important positions of Hungary, and eventually rest of Europe
Including Meintzhagen
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Meinertzhagen
There is no karma for the dead Slovak peasant girls
==
The news is not exactly like that.
The Algerian thief stole in a violent way her bag, then the woman run after him and hit the man with the car (obviously something not to do).
She was under house arrest, as it is the law in Italy to be under house arrest before a trial, for a reason like a car incident even if like that, about a person who has no previous criminal records, also if one is poor.
I can tell you that it was something very bad, but I think that if in US you had the same level of criminality by immigrants just arrived in your Country in a illegal way, I’m sure that you will have US people mounting bazooka on their cars.
Ed says:
September 15, 2024 at 7:41 pm
Spring festival 2034 is an extra happy event this year the first 15TW of solar power satellites are on line powering all tier one cities.
The remnants of US and EU continue to fight Russia. The ROW continue the blockade of North America and Europe.
The new settlers in America have control of 60% of the land area.
-I answer
Where did the resources to build the first solar power satellite come from?
There is not even a prototype.
That aside, if they were able to drag it till 2034, they have done an enormous job . I don’t think it will last till the end of the decade.
Most of the will be lunar material. Easier to lift from the moon.
diminishing returns can only be arrested with a ramp up in increased efficiencies. We are going to lose a lot of work that is being performed in the office sector. It will be replaced by artificial intelligence that will be powered by electricity provided by anything other than oil. Look around you mindless morons everywhere they don’t understand what is happening we do they are easily being led to the next dystopian world where everyone will be replaced with a computer program. Micromanaged they will be living in this new world no more traveling to jobs that no longer exist for them.
Most of office paper pushing can go away but they are like overheads, not adding anything to anywhere anyways.
Efficiencies are not increasing. Just more boondogles, which cannot be overturend by AI since it cannot create energy.
I am one of the few remaining people who still have old views.
For people like me, the life of an individual does not really amount to much.
We have no sympathy whatsoever for the miserable. Frankly speaking, if 90% of the world pop perishes tomorrow but the highest 10% remains, for people like me it is just a non-event.
We see the world as some kind of big machine. All we care about is running the world with as little trouble as possible, and anything which interferes with it is just a nuisance which needs to be dealt with, quickly, before the bosses find out and hold us responsible.
The winner of today’s nihilism gold medal!
Well done Sir! A black pill-a-day keeps optimism away.
The world is run by rationality. It is not run by optimism.
Mmmm, not really. Who would show up to work if they didn’t have at least the degree of optimism that they’d get paid at the end of the week? Who would ever invest or lend money? Who would even start knitting a sweater if they didn’t think they could finish it? The world can’t move forward without optimism.
(Whether it is founded or not isn’t the point.)
To feed their family is one reason. Obligation is another reason. The desire to live is another reason.
A lot of people are just automata. But they don’t kill themselves. And those who understand how the world works exploit them to their last drop of blood.
With the complexity we have today, I think that if 90% of the population perishes, there will be a problem. We will still have 100% of the roads to maintain and 100% of the electricity transmission lines to maintain. There will be just as many miles of oil, gas, water, and sewer pipes as before, and they will need upkeep. Bridges are already in need of fixing if they are not to fall down. So will old hydroelectric dams. We will need a high percentage of people and resources for maintaining infrastructure.
What will happen is most of them will be abandoned and just the areas where the haves live will be maintained.
“A microchip requires about 60 elements from the periodic table. How many of these 60 would be available within a radius of even 1000km? Without accessing six continents of resources, dense energy deposits, and thousands of global feedback loops in manufacturing, we never would have gone from Shockley’s transistor to a microprocessor. This applies to everything from a bicycle to an airplane engine. “?
https://un-denial.com/#:~:text=un-Denial%20%E2%80%93%20unmasking%20denial:%20creator%20and%20destroyer.%20By%20paqnation%20(aka
A Mr Thwaites tried to build a toaster from scratch (going as far as mining and smelting the required ores himself). Needless to say, the experiment failed, but that was exactly the point — prompting Mr Thwaites to note wittingly:
“It takes a civilization to build a toaster”.— Mr B . The honest sorcerer
Shades of “I, Pencil”.
https://fee.org/articles/i-pencil/
Interesting!
That shows the true desperation. Committing this act of terrorism for no real gain will help drag the economies of all that back the genocidal encampment down with them. People in the west have no understanding of how this is viewed in the majority of the world, but maybe as their market share starts to evaporate, some might begin to understand and for those that don’t, just ask that corporation that sells sewage water dressed up as coffee how it’s been going for them.
As I said at the start, death by a thousand self inflicted cuts. Hezbollah will not deviate from the plan and so the genocide encampment will be forced by their own stupidity to escalate, without ever understanding that ideas are bulletproof and slaughtering children will only make that idea grow stronger, more focused and deadly. The so called masters of propaganda have had their own tools turned against them and they can’t even see it, or the fact that Trump birthed that idea at their bequest. So sad.
If they were a real country they could have this as their anthem.
https://youtu.be/zfdLV5bqLA4?feature=shared
“We have no sympathy whatsoever for the miserable. Frankly speaking, if 90% of the world pop perishes tomorrow but the highest 10% remains, for people like me it is just a non-event”
Someday, you might be the miserable. Do you think others should have sympathy on you if that happens? That say you get in some automobile accident and are paralyzed from the neck down, should we just let you die. I would still have mercy for you, even if you didn’t deserve it. We should always have kindness and mercy to our fellow humans, because it is the right thing to do.
“the right thing to do.”
Speaking of that, if you live in a place where the pavement gets hot enough to burn, carry a blanket in your car.
Some years ago when my wife and I were in Tucson we came upon a person who had been knocked down on a major street. She was rolling back and forth in pain because her back was being burned by the pavement. We grabbed a blanket out of the car and worked it under her.
When the EMTs got there they put her on a gurney, loaded her into their vehicle, folded up our blanket, and handed it back. We might still have that blanket, but in any case, we always keep one in the car.
Thank you for being kind to someone in need.
“being kind ”
I am just wired up that way., genes probably. Most of the time it works out, but I have done some things for good reasons which hurt me and the people around me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Henson#Scientology
The ability of the government to protect citizens from organized criminals claiming to be a religion is just not there.
at least we agree on religious criminals keith
The amount of kindness and mercy “required”, though, is infinite, while the supply is not.
kindness? what are you smoking about. civilizations entail killing and plundering human land for resources to give to useful people to dissipate energy to enjoy life… that is a rational calculation.
kindness does not win you anything. every ruler or political leader without fail lost power without an external threat. its built into genes to go to war. kindness is not going to get you a woman. she wants resources and an easy life. have you ever seen kindness in the animal kingdom? kindness is just another way of saying reciprocated interests. and reciprocated interests only exist in the class of equals. you have to realize you cannot make everyone happy and that spewing out ten billion bajingas is not going to change kindness any way, even more so if 99% of them have iqs of 65 and live in mud huts and eat up all the resources you would want to sit in an air conditioned office and pathologize, evangelize, moralize, pontificate about your virtuous character while your existence demands dumping of e-waste and chemicals into chinaland
Indeed
We are the descendants of those who got ahead by any means.
Our ancestors simply outcompeted those who felt they were more virtuous. That’s all.
The Amish seem to be going ahead with no/little competition as I understand it. What they do have are children, it is not uncommon to see three children of close ages in a buggy with their parents or mother.
Dennis L.
Your obsession of Amish, a hopelessly inbred clan not well known for producing a great talent who made a difference in human civilization, puzzles me.
I have said it a few times, knowing you will ignore that, that all Amish are genetically siblings, all of them descended from a few hundred people from Alsace.
So unless they outbreed, which requires leaving the group, they are all marrying their siblings and reproducing incestrous offspring.
I wonder why you think it is a good practice. They are dying breeds.
“So unless they outbreed, which requires leaving the group, they are all marrying their siblings and reproducing incestrous offspring.”
Reminds me of those you waffle on about with their centuries of inbreeding.
I wonder why you think it is a good practice.
@Fitz
The Amish were, and are, peasants with no ownership genes
While the royal family of Europe was the pinnacle of ownership genes
Kulm, the Amish have no ownership genes, for the same reason that no biological organisms have them.They don’t exist, except in the minds of followers of a weird belief system.
Whatever next, a war gene, a peace gene, a giving gene or a selfish gene?
None of these things have ever, or will ever exist, but certain belief systems will lead people to look for only that which fits their beliefs and so misinterpret what they see. How about a BS gene? If there’s one imaginary gene our modern belief system should feel comfortable with, that’s the one.
I have absolutely no training in the field, so feel free to ignore all of the above.
Have you read any Denis Noble?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3060581/
who got ahead by any means.
Not exactly. What worked depended on the environment, including the social environment. In many places violence was effective, but in the long run up to the industrial revolution in the UK it was more effective (for your genes) to become wealthy. (The Clark paper I have cited.)
I would rather die a kind and moral man than live a ruthless brute. “Kindness does not win you anything”
I don’t want to win anything; I wish to maintain my soul.
In case that happens I have a way to off myself. I do not consider such existence as living.
Those who get ahead are quite good exploiting those who still believe the quaint notion of ‘doing the right thing’.
one assassination attempt a day keeps the doctor away.
I noticed this report:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/explosives-reported-near-trump-rally-long-island-police-hunt-suspect
It seems some people really want to keep Kamala Gopalan from turning Washington DC into Madras (Chennai in Tamil).
That makes no sense in this context.
You would turn America into a sick caricature of Nazi Germany.
this comment also makes no sense. the full name was National Socialist. And Germany under the mustache guy was a mixed economy with social protection. I see no socialism in him, quite the contrary.
’15:58 And as Reimann, a Marxist in hiding in Germany, wrote in 1939 –
16:04 “The decree of February 28, 1933, nullified article 153 of the Weimar Constitution which
16:14 guaranteed private property and restricted interference with private property in accordance
16:20 with certain legally defined conditions … The conception of property has experienced a fundamental
16:27 change. The individualistic conception of the State – a result of the liberal spirit
16:33 – must give way to the concept that communal welfare precedes individual welfare.”
16:41 In 1933, the Nazi Party walked into the businesses, took them over, and if any of the businessmen
16:49 complained, they lost their factories and businesses. And do you want to know what the
16:55 Nazis called this process? “Privatization”. Well, it wasn’t. It was nationalization.
17:05 “…in practice the Reichsbank and the Reich Ministry of Economic Affairs had no intention
17:11 of allowing the radical activists of the SA, the shopfloor militants of the Nazi party
17:18 or Gauleiter commissioners to dictate the course of events. Under the slogan of the
17:26 ‘strong state’, the ministerial bureaucracy fashioned a new national structure of economic
17:34 regulation.” ‘?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2biEiuTzsgw
‘The Nazis Were Socialists!’: Debunked Once And For All
It was called National Socialist German Workers’ Party. The Nazi’s were not socialist in the Marxist sense of the word. Marxists believe the means of production should be controlled by the State which in turn is controlled by the Proletariat class, or by the Workers directly. This is Socialism in the Marxist sense.
The Nazi’s believed in private ownership of the means of production; so long as it served the interest of the Nazi State; they believed in the private owners should make profit. The Nazi’s also believed in social hierarchy which Marx was against.
The National Socialist German Workers Party is thought of Socialism as a sort of Racial Unity, or the Aryan Race working to a common goal. It is completely different from the Marxist Idea of the word.
the mindless morons are trying their hardest to change the future they think that if they get rid of Donald Trump they will have a better future they do not understand that the world from the past cannot get any better they think a better leader can give them fantastic jobs with fantastic pay unfortunately this is not going to be the case. What we are seeing now is only the tip of the iceberg in people trying to change the future by committing crimes against politicians and anyone or anything they think are their enemy.
Oil depletion doesn’t care who is president.
Do you think these attempts are organic? Why haven’t there been attempts on Biden or Kamala or Trudeau or whomever? Their enemies are likely better-trained, and yet…
there is definitely a major possibility we are also seeing planned attacks for the purpose to cause Trump to quit the presidential race.
…or to bolster his own ‘cred’, one of his famous quotes being that “they’re after” us, and he’s “standing in the way”.
This is about as real as reality tv, talk shows, and all those documentaries you see on tv.
they’re definitely is some shadow group operating behind the scenes trying to influence events. A good show to watch on Netflix is called American conspiracy.
The official statement from people in the media is that there are no shadow groups operating behind the scenes and what they show you is what exists.
NOBODY IS IN CHARGE
Who’s in charge of the world? No one
By Reuters
“One very unpopular “theory” that a lot of conspiracy theorists don’t like to consider is that nobody is in charge. The chaos of the every day world is way too scary to fathom and it almost gives people some kind of peace to “know” that things are under control by someone or group in one way or another.
Sure maybe a particular state, company or authority has more power and influence over a population than another but really it’s all one big collaboration into the unknown.
Having someone to blame for the way things are is an easy way for the ego to scapegoat things that can be influenced on an individual level. Be the change you want to see in the world.”
(from Reddit)
The official statement from the Intelligentsia is that there are no secretive groups operating behind the scenes and what they show you is what exists.
I’m not sure why liberals in particular buy into this world view but tell us systemic prejudice against marginalized groups is in all institutions because that is a conspiracy in of itself.
Places where no one is in charge are very dangerous because you see competing groups of people constantly fighting for control of territory.
So, if you live in a very safe area, someone is in charge and it isn’t necessarily the people you see every day. Managing a complex society is not something that is left up to the plebs.
“NOBODY IS IN CHARGE”
We have been biased by evolution to think of causes for effects.
But the actual situation is as above.
you will persuade very few people to accept that Keith
it’s always they—the elders—or the elite
News in Europe .
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/solar-panel-maker-meyer-burgers-ceo-cfo-leave-company-2024-09-18/
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/french-auto-supplier-association-warns-sector-risks-losing-half-its-jobs-2024-09-18/
I have heard that China is having problems, too. Many of its solar-panel makers are going out of business, as are many EV makers. China seems to be dumping products of all kinds, world wide, at prices no one can match. In fact, China cannot keep up.
But Europe was doing poorly to begin with. This makes the situation worse.
I just purchased some panels online from same supplier I have used before; great price … but…Got sent some low quality ones, not the ones advertised.
Scams getting more prevalent.
Will see if they or the trading website they use (trademe in NZ) make good on the deal.
The price is about half what is was 2 years ago and for mono crystalline panels; have we passed peak panel?
There is a major shakeout in the solar panel industry. China is making far more solar panels than there are buyers for. As a result, Chinese manufacturers are offering them at very reduced prices. Many solar companies, in China and elsewhere, are expected to go bankrupt. Perhaps we are past peak solar panels, but we don’t know that for sure. I am sure that Keith would not like the world to be past peak solar panels.
“peak solar panels”
There are places in the world selling power for 1.35 cent per kWh. By the 80,000 ratio, the install cost is a bit over $1000/kW. But that number was for full time power. Since these only generate about 1/3rd of the day, the installed cost per kW needs to be around $330.per kW. kW takes 3-4 square meters so the cost of the panels must be down around $100/square meter. Have not looked it up, anyone have a price?
What about installation costs, are those going down as well?
How long do they last?
What can you actually power with them during the day?
What can you power with solar panels on cloudy days?
Second wave in Beirut .
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/new-wave-blasts-rock-beirut-2nd-day-hand-held-radios-personal-devices-explode
I guess more detail will come out over time. Info on the supplier of the pagers .
” BAC consulting in Hungary? There is no manufacturing facility Hungary. Only consultants. BAC do not list any electronic equipment in their products. Only refrigeration/cooling products.
The CEO and founder of BAC is Cristiana Arcidiacono-Barsony, who describes herself as a strategic adviser in internal affairs with international experience in the Middle East.
According to her academic profile she studied at SOAS and LSE universities in London.
The above points to an MI-6 involvement in the affair.”
Moon Of Alabama
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2024/09/israels-pager-attack-a-sophisticated-one-times-shot-with-little-effect.html#more
I would raise the issue of whether the pager attacks would start driving American’s away from supporting Israel. How do we know what these folks will be up to next?
https://energyskeptic.com/2024/net-energy-cliff-collapse-by-2030/
“Before peaking in 2006, the world production of conventional petroleum grew exponentially at 6.6% per year between 1880 and 1970. Although Hubbert drew symmetric rising and falling production curves, the declining side may be steeper than a bell curve, because the heroic measures we’re taking now to keep production high (i.e. infill drilling, horizontal wells, enhanced oil recovery methods, etc.), may arrest decline for a while, but once decline begins, it will be more precipitous (Patzek 2007).”
Also, as everyone points out, we keep using more energy to try to assure future energy. It takes a huge amount of materials to make and install wind turbines and solar panels. We try to ship natural gas much farther as LNG, in a very energy-intensive process. The easy to extract coal is mostly depleted, as is the easy to extract oil.
The fact that so much energy must be used in the energy cycle after peak leaves less energy for agriculture, transportation, cooking and refrigerating food, and optional activities of all sorts (medicine, education, government, organized religions, wars, etc.)
Oil prices are not high enough to keep the party going .
https://www.oilystuff.com//forumstuff/forum-stuff/update-on-breakevens-from-the-dallas-fed?utm_campaign=cbd2f687-dda4-4a66-8012-859c08274e03&utm_source=so&utm_medium=mail&utm_content=97746913-3f58-4b61-804c-3d60ca62f371&configurationId=d1bb5b3a-0cae-4e51-8c4f-0f449a4bb929&actionId=4aa33078-4985-36e2-45a6-78290eb56e1f&cid=fa335351-37bb-44a6-9899-f8c34b4a0f81
Good article!
The article gives a “breakeven chart” created by the Dallas Federal Reserve. It shows the range of prices, by “play,” that are needed for breakeven. To make a profit, and enough for investment in new wells, prices would need to be higher.
https://static.wixstatic.com/media/b98b5a_ce6b4125e6f0419c85a58e227c167a5b~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_1408,h_794,al_c,q_85,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_auto/b98b5a_ce6b4125e6f0419c85a58e227c167a5b~mv2.jpg
One point:
“oil sales have to bear the burden of most of the costs now since natural gas is basically worthless out there.”
Natural gas is just a residual product, with a lot of costs involved, and prices that are too low. The only hope is the oil prices can be high enough to cover all costs.
” And Delaware gas has higher H2S and CO2 which means more money to get it to that low price market.”
Need more processing to get the sulfur and CO2 out of the natural gas. Raises costs of natural gas, and the whole process.
>> As Mike has said many times, why would someone drill just to break even? Apparently they are.
Makes sense. If debt is relatively cheap (and it still is by historical standards), well it’s OPM – “fuggit, get paid today” is the prevailing attitude.
Sounds similar to the ETP model by BH Hill of years ago on the Peak Oil News website. I remember the fireworks there regarding the details. Im also recall you yourself, Gail, not being a fan of it.
I remember the crux of issue was because the extraction industry would use more of its product the price of oil would decrease for affordability or something to that a affect.
Ugo Bardi: The Hill’s Group report
January 13,-.2017
https://energyskeptic.com/2017/ugo-bardi-the-hills-group-report/
Things are a lot worse than oil producers are admitting. The Etp Model indicates that in the present price environment that only about 35% of the world’s producers are making money over their full life cycle costs. Their desperation for cash ensures that production will not decline until many of them start to fail. The energy dynamics of the situation point to falling prices until at least 2020. By then much of the world’s petroleum production capacity will be gone forever!
Damage is being inflicted on the industry that will never be repaired. CapEx is being cut everywhere in the industry, and future development is likely to never fully recover. The Etp Model indicates that only about an additional 320 Gb will now ever be extracted. In 2012 petroleum contributed $6.22 trillion to the $16.16 trillion GDP of the US. That contribution will fall by more than half during the next decade.
Very low priced oil is a catastrophe for the petroleum industry, and the world. Whereas the oil age might have staggered forward for another 14 to 15 years, it might all come unglued over the next 5 or 6.
The Etp Model indicates that only about an additional 320 Gb will now ever be extracted.
The industry’s net worth is now declining by 24% per year. If the price decline continues, as expected, trillions of dollars will be lost to bond and equity holders over the next few years. Pension funds, and Sovereign wealth fund will be hit particularly hard.
That can doesn’t seem to want to stop going down the road, does it, now?
Please, keep extending , I’ve got just a few more good years left anyway
The Hill Report . Mike I remember ” short on oil ” on peak oil . com arguing on this .
https://www.feasta.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Systemic-Change-Rev-7.pdf
Raviuppal4,
Excellent PowerPoint presentation, colorful and easy to thumb through and direct.
Seems circa 2022 was the RIP target date of the Oil Age…and pretty much within range of a good portion of the planet…scraping and squeezing the bottom back the barrel
Hard for me to believe it’s been a decade since those days with Short on Oil (R.I.P) arguing his points. It was heated but entertaining, to say the least.
Imagine the BRICS see the handwriting on the wall with the camel pee (as Short on Oil called it) fracking in the US will be ending soon enough and with it…
The powerpoint has a lot of good charts, including some I made.
I was disappointed at the end. It talks about moving to electricity, powered by renewables. Somewhere, the author missed some important points.
Makes for a good read and a reminder to stay humble in our predictions:
“By 2022, Average net energy available from oil will have depleted to Zero. (BW Hill, Louis Arnoux) “
Not many are aware of the work done by Berndt Warn who forecasts a dead state by 2027 . His analysis is based on the flow of oil based on thermodynamics and difference of temperature between the earth core and earth crust . Enjoy .
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340166220_Why_is_the_Average_Crude_Oil_Price_decreasing_since_2008_or_Thermodynamics_of_Oil_Production
Ravi, I will review that again, but already on Figure 1 we have nonsense: he draws the price cap trend since 2008 and we’ve already in 2024 exceeded his trend line by a significant factor. According to his figure, WTI should be no more than ~$40 in 2024. Furthermore, he provides no justification for arbitrarily choosing 2008 as a starting point for trend fitting.
I think the Hill report was a reasonable/ good guess ( we are all estimating/guessing ) . The report was written in 2016 , then I presume they were working on data of 2013-15 . Did 10 years ago anyone know the impact of throwing billions on the shale play ? I don’t think so . Shale oil is the only area of growth in the oil industry since the last 10 years and has shifted the depletion/ decline curve . As to moving to electrification , renewables , they are incorrect but then Hubbert thought that nuclear would provide the relief from ” peak oil” but it did not .
I found this video of Louis Arnoux . Posted just 6 hrs ago . 2030 .
I also don’t buy his main argument. He seems to connect reservoir temperature to net energy and argues that if the reservoir temperature is falling, that means we are providing immense energy input that subtracts substantially from the net energy of each barrel.
While I don’t really understand the argument, it seems that if it were true, the non-shale oil sector (most of it worldwide) would still have followed his projections; shale is only ~10% of global production, but we have already exceeded his estimate by 33% (8 years vs his projected 6) and even the hairiest predictions on this forum foresee us continuing a few more years. In the interview you show, now he is saying things will be getting worse after 2030 … moving the goalposts …
Art Berman latest .
https://www.artberman.com/blog/the-end-of-growth-why-oil-prices-are-falling/
Lots of interesting charts in this.
Art’s last paragraph is
In other words, our problem is “Peak world economy.” With peak world economy, we don’t need as much oil. While China is encountering problems, there are a lot of other countries in the same boat.
Today is the day the long awaited US rate cut will be announced. One Zerohedge article, written by a Bloomberg analyst, says:
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/stocks-price-big-rate-cuts-no-recession-completely-contradictory
Stocks Price Big Rate Cuts, But No Recession: “This Is Completely Contradictory”
I have also heard the point that share buybacks are not allowed at this point in the cycle. This, by itself, will tend to depress stock prices in the near term.
Report on what the Federal Reserve did:
Wow! The economy is so great, it needs an crisis-level rate cut 2 months before the election:
Federal Open Market Committee votes 11 to 1 to lower benchmark rate by 50 basis points to target range of 4.75%-5.0%, the first rate cut in more than four years
Fed governor Miki Bowman dissented in favor of a smaller 25 bps cut. It’s the first dissent by a governor since 2005.
Statement adds language to say the committee is “strongly committed to supporting maximum employment” in addition to returning inflation to its 2% goal
Statement says that “in considering additional adjustments” to rates, officials will assess incoming data, evolving outlook and balance of risks
Fed tweaks language to note job gains “have slowed;” says inflation “has made further progress toward the committee’s 2% objective but remains somewhat elevated”
The Fed Dots tumbled to meet market expectations, with 2024’s median dot slashed from 5.125% to 4.375%, 2025 cut from 4.125% to 3.375%, and 2026 from 3.125% to 2.875%…
Nine of 19 officials penciled in 75 basis points of cuts or less…
The economy is great so we must cut rates by 0.50% when inflation rate is 4-5% . Baloney .
The devaluation of your quality of life will proceed as scheduled. Asset prices to the moon, purchasing power of savings and wages to zero!
Powell is under pressure to lower rates from several sides and the blackmail that must be being used to get rates lowered is colossal.
The debt levels in general, with close to insolvency in the UK and Europe due to the Ukraine default, the situation of the American oil companies, which are under increasing pressure to produce in poorer areas at higher costs, the need to finance the eco-military lobby, etc., all of that within the electoral dynamics, which in this case is a bitter struggle between three factions in the USA, is putting pressure on rates to be lowered.
I think there was no alternative, it was that or war, murder, sovereign bankruptcy or something like that.
Copy/paste .
WordPress now deleting comments about the immune system and how it produces antibodies? Desperate times! 🙂
I don’t think so. I don’t see such a comment.
Try refreshing the screen afterwards. That seems to work for me.
That’s WordPress telling you it’s time for your next booster Sir!
More evidence that the crazy pricing scheme used to encourage the addition of renewables to the grid isn’t working.
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Frances-Electricity-Prices-Turn-Negative-Amid-Poor-Demand.html
France’s Electricity Prices Turn Negative Amid Poor Demand
Nuclear power is especially a problem in such an environment. It has huge sunk costs. The system needs to give an adequate return. Favoring intermittent renewables with the current structure leads to a major mess.
Also, electricity is like oil. Price does not rise to a high enough level to encourage sufficient investment in batteries and other systems that might help a grid with a huge amount of renewables actually work.
Nuclear, wind and solar electric energy share same problem: Production can’t adapt to consume. If energy storage was not solved for “nuclerar too cheap to meter” it will not be solved for solar and eolic.
Nuclear is at least stable in output. I understand that some reactors have been made in a way that allows them to ramp up and down, perhaps once in a 24 hour period, but this does not solve the need to pay back the high cost of the reactor, especially if interest rates are high.
“Production can’t adapt to consume”
That is correct. What is needed is loads that don’t cost much and make something useful (like liquid fuels) on intermittent power.
Storage problem is not new.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludington_Pumped_Storage_Power_Plant
It is hard to get people to come to work only when the wind is blowing, for example. Elevators will only work when the wind blows. It is the people part of the problem as much as anything.
We’d also have to engineer machines that cannot be damaged with frequent power supply outages. The main problem with pumped storage is geology. Unless we can create many very large artificial dams, the number of sites that can use pumped storage to meet the energy demands of medium to large cities is probably very small.
If the cost of making (and maintaining) very large infrastructure projects was low, a lot of alternatives to fossil fuels could work.
The quantities of matter and energy available are limited. Transporting energy and matter over long distances to bring them together to be useful is a cost, Keith consistently ignores. A huge amount of natural gas on Neptune is useless to us here on Earth because we have no means of bringing that gas with a reasonable amount of effort to Earth.
“Keith consistently ignores.
No. I have cited the numbers, though they may be out of date. It is around a cent per kWh per 1000 km to move bulk electrical power.
In the Mideast PV power can be purchased for 1.35 cents per kWh (while the sun is up). Transmission cost are a killer, which is why I have suggested making liquid fuels from the power.
A huge strike in Russia:
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/drone-strike-arsenal-triggers-biggest-explosion-russian-soil-war
NATO wants a world war😬. It’s only a matter of time now.. there or the Middle East or Asia… ugh… idiots
Simplicus on the strike .
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/ukraine-strikes-russias-107th-arsenal?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1351274&post_id=149018509&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=26quge&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Maybe Gail has seen them herself?
https://www.kait8.com/2024/09/16/rural-residents-say-they-are-fed-up-with-crop-farms-turning-into-solar-farms-bringing-noise/?outputType=amp
Brooks County community members say miles of panels changed their rural landscape in the name of energy. Residents said the solar farms are an eyesore, they make an irritating noise, and they take over usable farmland.
“Some of the best farmland [in the state] is here is in Brooks County,” concerned citizen Gwyn Boutwell said Thursday. “And if we use this up for panels, solar panels, if all this farmland is taken in, what are we going to have? What are we going to have to show what we are going to be known for?”
The residents asked the county lawmakers to tighten the ordinance around the solar farms. They want the county to require the farms to be set further back from homes, to require noise mitigation plans, and to require the solar companies to plant trees so residents don’t have to see solar panels next to their front yards.
Sapp said that currently, his backyard faces a peanut farm, but his neighbor has a signed lease option for the solar company to build if the moratorium ends.
NextEra Energy Resources, the company behind that project, said, “Our solar facilities are designed with safety in mind, and we adhere to all applicable local, state and federal regulations when we develop and operate our solar energy projects. We are continuing to work with the county to address the noise concerns that have been raised on our project.”
Some residents argued that it’s a conflict of interest for one commissioner to have a lease option with a solar company while her fellow commissioners are in charge of setting the rules for that company.
While Commissioner Myra Exum’s lease is not with NextEra, she signed it after the company, which is currently operating in Brooks County, was cited for noise violations.
Residents like Howard said they want commissioners to keep an open mind as they bring their concerns forward.
Howard said she hears solar panels in her home from across the street.
Yep, we don’t need the best farmland to grow crops, we need imagination and creativity….let’s have greenhouses in orbit and not be concerned about troublesome petty things.
Covering farm land with solar panels is utter insanity. It’s almost dumber than anyone in Idiocracy.
Anything*
Maybe first building subdivision housing and then place panels on top of the roof would be smarter…
Solar panels on houses are very much more expensive to install and maintain compared to those in commercial installations. I forget what the comparison is. More than double, as I recall.
One thing the solar panels do is get rid of farming jobs. All income comes to the owner of the land renting out space to the solar panels.
Well the solar panels (and battery) haven’t got rid of my jobs on the farm.
Endless list of things to do.
Solar panels grow well even in very poor soils – of which there is lots in Australia.
When they’re dome, grind ’em up and use for road surfacing.
BAU baby!
I have little occasion to travel to Brooks County, GA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks_County,_Georgia
It seems to be a very poor county, with a low population. It is located on the border with Florida, so it gets as much sun as anyplace in Georgia.
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/brookscountygeorgia,US/PST045221
The median household income is $42,263 compared with a US overall median household income of $75,149. The total population in 2023 was only 16,245. I expect that this is the kind of low income, lightly populated place that solar panel installers would look for.
One article says
https://www.wctv.tv/2024/09/11/brooks-county-residents-fed-up-with-expanding-solar-farms/
‘We need to get to the bottom of this’: Brooks County residents raise alarm over solar farms
In the last several years, thousands of acres worth of solar farms have taken over peanut and cotton farms in the county
One of the concerns raised is this:
https://www.wvlt.tv/2024/09/16/rural-residents-say-they-are-fed-up-with-crop-farms-turning-into-solar-farms-bringing-noise/
This is must be how “climate change” is reducing the amount of arable land.
Reporting from the core. All is well. Where is Fast Eddie?
Writing posts on Substack.