|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Economic growth and added complexity sound like they would be good, but at some point, the combination gets to be too much–simplification is needed.
Too much of the world’s income starts going to non-working individuals and to high-earning workers in privileged fields. Ordinary working citizens start to say, “Wait a minute, there is not enough left for my everyday expenses. The system needs to change.” Elections lead to the selection of politicians who want war, or who want to overturn the current system. The system then changes in a way that leads to less spending on healthcare and other complexities.
In this post, I will try to explain a bit of the underlying problem and give some hints at what the simplification might look like. Part of the problem is too little energy supply. This is a problem that cannot be told to the public; it would be too distressing. In this post, I present the result of a recent academic study that has attempted to recalibrate the findings of the 1972 Limits to Growth study with updated data.
[1] Economies of all types tend to operate in cycles.
Economies need both resources and human participants. Human populations tend to increase in number if conditions are favorable. When population grows, resources per capita, such as arable land and fresh water, tends to fall. Adding complexity helps an economy work around falling resources per capita.
With added complexity, it is possible for resource extraction of many kinds to grow, at least for a time. Deeper wells can sometimes add more fresh water supply. Irrigation and fertilizer can be used to increase crop yields. International trade allows the possibility of getting resources from more distant lands. Adding debt allows factories to be built and to be paid for “after the fact,” using the sales of the goods produced by the factories. Ever-larger governments allow more roads, schools, and services of all kinds.
The use of added complexity helps keep economies growing for a long time, but at some point, things start going wrong. Oil wells and other types of resource extraction become more expensive to build because the easiest to extract resources tend to be used first. Pollution becomes more of a problem. Universities start producing more graduates with advanced degrees than there are job openings paying enough to justify studying for those degrees. Healthcare costs become hugely expensive. Increasing interest on debt becomes a huge burden, both for governments and individual citizens.
When added complexity reaches a limit, citizens sense a problem. They tend to vote the current governments out of power. Or they become rebellious in other ways. I think the world has already reached a complexity limit.
[2] At some point, the added complexity trend needs to shift toward simplification.
When added complexity no longer has sufficient payback, the system seems to sense this and starts pushing economies in the opposite direction. Often, the wages of ordinary workers become too low, relative to the cost of living. They rebel and overthrow their governments. Or central governments may collapse, as the central government of the Soviet Union did in 1991. This happened after oil prices were low for an extended period. The Soviet Union was an oil exporter, depending on oil exports for tax revenue. Revenue from collectivized agriculture was underperforming, also. Thus, getting rid of a layer of government, or too many government programs, seems to be one common theme of simplification.
Another issue today is international trade. Crude oil supplies per capita are low. Somehow, international trade (which uses crude oil) needs to be cut back.
With inadequate total oil supplies available, it becomes very desirable to do manufacturing close to home, rather than at a distance. This is a major reason for the competition in manufacturing between the US and China. If the US can manufacture locally, it will provide jobs and save some of the limited world crude oil supply.
Another issue is the oversupply of workers with advanced degrees, relative to the number of jobs requiring such degrees. A study released in early 2024 indicates that only about half of US college graduates are able to obtain a job requiring a college level degree within a year of graduation. In fact, the majority of those who cannot obtain a job requiring a college-level degree within a year after graduation remain underemployed 10 years after graduation. Pretty clearly, the number of college graduates needs to fall.
I showed in Figure 1 that US healthcare costs are very high, but they have recently been on a plateau. Perhaps these high healthcare expenses might make sense if US life expectancies were longer than elsewhere, thanks to all this spending. In fact, US life expectancy at birth is lower than in any other advanced nation. The CIA Factbook ranks the US life expectancy as 49th from the top in 2024.
Figure 3 (above) shows a chart I found several years ago, showing how US female life expectancy has been dropping, relative to other high-income countries.
Figure 4 shows that US life expectancies have continued to fall relative to other advanced economies. Something is clearly going wrong with health in the United States. It is no wonder that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. wants to “Make America Healthy Again.”
There is also the question of the level of US healthcare spending, relative to GDP. The share for the US, from Figure 1, is about 17%. The shares for the EU, the UK, and Japan are each about 11% according to the World Bank. The share for Russia is about 7%; for China it is about 5%.
Another issue mentioned in the introduction is the proportion of government spending that goes toward non-working individuals. The chart below shows how US Federal Government funds are spent. When the budget is prepared, often many of these programs are lumped together as “Mandatory Spending,” so we don’t see precisely what the spending is for.
Typically, the arguments about spending are on the parts of the budget other than mandatory spending. The problem is that all parts need to be funded, one way or another. Social Security describes its program as largely pay as you go. Mostly, the payroll taxes collected from today’s workers are used to pay benefits to today’s recipients.
Keeping the system working as it does today becomes a problem if the total amount of goods and services produced starts falling at some point. For example, if the total food supply at some point (say 2050) becomes too low, there is a question regarding which citizens should get inadequate food rations: the workers, or those receiving benefits under a pension program for the elderly. I would vote for the workers getting adequate food, if we expect them to continue to work. This issue suggests that at some point, the elderly may have to go back to work to get an adequate share of what is being produced.
[3] I see the results of the recent US presidential election to be a call for simplification: getting rid of the unneeded pieces of the system.
Donald Trump and his team clearly have a much different view of how the government should be operated than Joe Biden did. In particular, the new team would like to get rid of what they see as unneeded parts of the system.
There seem to be many other parts of the world encountering somewhat similar political and funding difficulties. Germany is dealing with a collapse of government. France is facing political and budget crises. Even China’s economy is having huge difficulties.
[4] I see the underlying problem as not enough resources, especially energy resources, for the rising world population.
It is not only oil that is in short supply (Figure 2); coal is also in short supply, relative to world’s population (Figure 6).
Uranium is in short supply, as well. The issue for uranium is that the world’s supply of nuclear warheads that could temporarily serve as a supplement to currently mined uranium is running short. These warheads belonged primarily to the US and to Russia, but Russia has sold a substantial amount of its warheads to the US, to be down-blended for use in nuclear power reactors.
Without enough energy resources per person, the world will likely need to produce fewer goods and services in total. Some uses for energy products, and for the goods and services that can be made with energy products, need to disappear.
Now, all parts of the world need to re-examine energy uses that are currently being made and look for uses that the economy can most easily get along without. For example, the step-down in oil consumption per capita that occurred in 2020 seems to be still having some effect. Some people are still working from home, saving oil that would be used for commuting. Some long-distance airline flights were eliminated, as well, particularly in Asia, reducing jet fuel consumption.
The self-organizing economy tends to push the world in the direction of contraction. How this will work is not at all clear. Most people didn’t understand the response to Covid-19 as a way to cut back oil consumption. It is possible that future changes will, to some extent, come from cutbacks directed by government organizations that are as difficult to understand as the Covid-19 restrictions.
[5] The book The Limits to Growth, published in 1972, modeled when world resources would run short, relative to growing world population. A recent analysis provides updated estimates, using the same model.
The original 1972 analysis, in its base model, suggested that resources would start to run short about now. An article called, “Recalibration of limits to growth: An update of the World3 model” by Arjuna Nebel and others was published earlier this year in the Journal of Industrial Ecology. The summary exhibit of their findings is shown here as Figure 8.
On Figure 8, Recalibration23 is the name given to the new model output. The BAU dotted line shows the indications from the base (business as usual) 1972 model. I found the coloring a little confusing, so I added the labels “Industrial Output” and “Population” to better mark what I consider the two most important model outputs. Food Production per capita is the green line, which is also important. The calculations are all made in terms of the weight of physical quantities of materials used, for the world as a whole. The financial system is not modeled.
We do not know how accurate a forecast such as this is. I know that Dennis Meadows, who was the leader of the 1972 Limits to Growth analysis, has said that once peak was reached, we could not expect the model to necessarily hold.
Even with this caveat, I find this forecast disturbing. Industrial output per capita (which would include things like automobiles, farm machinery, and computers) is shown as already steeply declining by 2025 in the updated model. This trend is much clearer than in the 1972 model. By 2050, industrial output per capita is a small fraction of the amount it was at peak.
Food output per capita is shown to start dropping about 2025. Based on my understanding of the 1972 Limits to Growth analysis, this change might reflect a shift away from meat-eating, rather than simply fewer total calories per person.
World population follows a curve similar to that of the 1972 Limits to Growth analysis with a peak in world population at perhaps about 2030.
In the updated model, pollution has been modeled as CO2 levels. This is different from the mix of pollutants used in the original model. The peak comes around 2090.
[6] Intuitively, the order of forecast changes for the world economy, shown in Figure 8, seems right to me.
Figure 8 indicates that world industrial production is expected to be the first type of output to drop. This makes sense if energy supply is quite limited or is high-priced. Without adequate inexpensive energy supply, a country is likely to cut back on manufacturing its own goods. Instead, it tries to buy from countries with less expensive sources of energy supply.
For example, US industrial production per capita has been falling since 1973. The year 1973 was the year when oil prices first spiked. US business leaders realized that changes were needed: A larger share of manufactured goods needed to be imported from countries with lower-cost fuel supply. Oil needed to be used sparingly because of its high cost. Coal, used heavily in Asia, was typically much cheaper.
China took the lead in industrial production after it joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, but now it is running into obstacles. One issue is that China’s contribution to the world’s supply of goods is taking away high-paying jobs from other countries. Other countries are left with more low-paying service jobs. A second issue is that the US has become dependent upon China for critical materials, such as those used in military armaments. A third issue is that a great deal of China’s growth was financed by debt. As long as China’s exports were growing very rapidly, this was not a problem. But as growth has slowed, China’s debt has become difficult to repay with interest.
The level of conflict between China and other countries has grown, in part because it has become clear that it is not possible for industry to grow rapidly both in China and elsewhere, indirectly because of fossil fuel and uranium limits. The US applies sanctions against some Chinese companies and China retaliates by hoarding scarce resources. These include minerals such as antimony, tungsten, gallium, germanium, graphite, and magnesium.
The world is increasingly operating in a “not enough to go around” mode for scarce resources. At the same time, countries need to somewhat get along. So we get strange narratives in the press giving rationalizations for actions by both sides, without mentioning the shortage issue.
Figure 8 shows that once industrialization drops, food production also begins to fall, but not as quickly. This makes sense because everyone recognizes that food is essential. The falling calories likely reflect people increasingly moving from meat to vegetable products.
Somehow, world population becomes poorer, but the level of population does not drop nearly as rapidly as the drop in industrialization.
[7] Simplification is likely to take place in significant steps, perhaps at the time of strange events, such as those occurring in 2020.
These are a few ways simplification might take place:
[a] High level government organizations might start disappearing. For example, the European Union might not get enough funding and would stop. Or something similar could happen to the International Monetary Fund or the World Trade Organization.
[b] Programs that we expect to be funded by the US Federal Government might be handed over completely to the states, to be funded or not, as the finances of individual states permit. Examples might include Medicare, Medicaid, and even Social Security.
[c] There could be major banking problems, perhaps simultaneously in many countries around the world. The debt bubble holding up stock markets could pop. Governments would try to compensate, but they might not be able to do enough. Or governments could inadvertently create hyperinflation if there is virtually nothing to buy with the newly printed money created to offset widespread bank failures.
[d] There could be a great deal more sharing of homes and of apartments. The current arrangement of many single people living alone, either in an apartment or a stand-alone house could be replaced by many more roommate situations. Multi-generational families living together may become more common.
[e] Healthcare may become much simpler and local. Instead of seeing an array of specialists at a distance, people may walk to a local health provider. Medications from around the world are likely to drop greatly in quantity. Government programs to care for the seriously disabled elderly seem likely to be scaled back.
[f] Universities may be slimmed down greatly. There is no point in educating a huge number of individuals who cannot get jobs requiring a university degree.
[g] The huge amount of effort that goes into taking care of lawns in the US may disappear. Instead, people will put more effort into growing crops locally. Some people may choose to raise chickens, as well.
[h] International travel for pleasure will likely disappear, except perhaps for the very rich. Even business trips will become very uncommon. The amount of goods and services transported internationally seems likely to shrink.
[i] Many types of optional activities that now take place by car may be replaced by more local versions, which will be reached by walking, or perhaps by bicycle. For example, visits to restaurants may largely disappear, but eating with nearby friends or relatives in homes may increase. Visits to churches may drop greatly, as they did during Covid-19 restrictions, but they may be replaced by groups meeting in homes. Gyms for recreation may disappear, but people may obtain more exercise from their gardens and their need to walk to appointments.
[j] Very strange political leaders may take office. One person rule takes much less energy than transporting many representatives to a central location. Some of these leaders may take over as dictators.
We will see if this prediction really comes to pass.
https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/key-figures-thank-you-dr-fauci-and-quest-covid-19-accountability
Key Figures From “Thank You Dr. Fauci” Lead The Quest For COVID-19 Accountability
Paul-Frederik Bach from Denmark is a retired electrical engineer. He says that until his retirement, his main responsibility was the integration of wind power into the power grid in Denmark.
His latest post is
Dunkelflaute
Week 50 in 2024 was an example of the weather conditions that Germans call “Dunkelflaute”. Spot prices showed that Germany and Denmark in particular were in a capacity shortage and had to import up to 17 GW. The situation is an opportunity to analyze the electricity markets and the primary transmission grids to assess the limits for installing wind and solar power without coordinated consumption types such as Power-to-X plants.
http://pfbach.dk/firma_pfb/references/pfb_dunkelflaute_2024_12_15.pdf
One of the things he says is
“It is a frequent argument in debates about wind power that it is always windy somewhere in Europe. This is possible, but the main problem is whether there is grid capacity for the necessary large-scale relocations.”
He also says:
“New high-voltage lines have never been popular. Building a new transmission line can take one or two decades. The increasing need for transport must have refuted the argument of the past that wind power saves on the transport of electricity. Lack of transmission capacity seems to become a decisive obstacle to the Danish plans to expand new wind power for export and for conversion to hydrogen.”
This seems to be related to the article we saw recently about attempts to bid more wind production in Denmark failing.
Another thing he says:
“Both Norway and Sweden have decided to hold back on the expansion of interconnections. The Swedish parliament has not approved an application for the establishment of a new interconnection to Germany, the Hansa Power Bridge.
Norway has similarly put a new link to Scotland on hold. Most recently, Norwegian politicians have announced that they do not want to maintain the first almost 50-year-old sections of the interconnection to Denmark, the Skagerrak 1 and 2.”
This represent more failing interconnections than we heard about recently.
In money terms, the sunk capital has a negative return and must be subsidized by something else.
I believe that they broke the record in Germany with a new high of €936 KWH.
Not too be outdone, the British upped the ante somewhat
https://x.com/7Kiwi/status/1868237793937510692
I would be amazed if Europe and Britain don’t soon join the Ukrainian experiment of life with intermittent electricity.
We can soon proclaim our planet saving righteousness and green credentials to the whole world, each and every day(apart from Dunkelflaute days).
You are right. Europe is quickly moving into a world of intermittent electricity. This makes smelting of metals very difficult. It even makes it harder to cook food. Homes need to plan to get along without heat for days on end in winter. Businesses may need to shut down when power is not available.
I wonder if electric vehicles become a problem with very intermittent electric power.
High rise buildings with elevators become a problem. Pumping water up to the top of high rise buildings becomes a problem, too.
Traffic lights don’t work without power. Electric trains don’t work without power.
Moving very quickly I’d say. Doesn’t the last pipeline from Russia shutdown on the 31st of this month. Germany will not be making a single car soon.
In an attempt to bring some cheer to the disillusioned people of Europe AnsarAllah have announced that they are holding a seminar and webinar on “security of navigation in the Red Sea”, which is very thoughtful of them, as Europe is going to need everything it get it’s hands on as fast as possible. They’ve even reached out for “topics for the agenda” and “insights to enrich discussion”.
Steve de Angelo . Some of us know him on shale oil and stuff .
” Yes, it is certainly true that U.S. Shale Oil & Gas not only put the United States back on the top again, it also allowed the Chinese Economy to become the world’s largest manufacturer of goods. The U.S. Shale Oil Industry accounted for 85 % of Global Liquids production growth since the 2008 GFC – Global Financial Crisis.
However, the contributing factors that allowed the U.S. Shale Oil & Gas Bonanza, seem to be overlooked, are zero interest rates and massive U.S. Govt Debt.
Since the 2008 GFC, U.S. Public debt increased from $9 trillion to the current $36 trillion. During this same period, U.S. Shale Oil & NGLs production increased 13.5 Mb/d. A tremendous feat, indeed.
Why did U.S. Govt Deficits and Debt increase significantly since the 2008 GFC? We didn’t see the same thing after WW2 until the early 1970s. The deficits began to increase significantly after U.S. peaked in conventional oil production in 1970, and especially after Global Conventional peaked in 2006.
Going forward, while U.S. Shale Oil & NGLs production will likely increase a bit going forward, most of the new production will be used to offset the massive annual natural decline rate. Thus, there will no longer be another 13.5 Mb/d of growth coming from the United States Shale Industry.
So, the BIG QUESTION that seems to be ignored by the market, is how much debt will be needed to just maintain the U.S. Standard of Living with very little Shale Oil Growth?? And, if Trump & Musk do start Deficit Spending Cuts, as they claim they will do, then that means… it GUTS the U.S. Economy and GDP that has been propped up by the massive Govt Deficits and Debt.
Thus, if Govt Deficits are cut, U.S. Economic activity declines and with it, Stock and Asset values. Why? Debts are propping up the Asset values on the other side… something seemingly ignored by the market.
The next four years are going to be quite interesting.
I think the next four years will be interesting, but I am not 100% certain about Steve’s reasoning.
Growing US debt did indeed help keep US demand for oil high, but I am not sure that it was very instrumental in helping keep world demand for oil high. Growing debt papered over financial problems that the US economy had. Similar growing debt elsewhere papered over other problems. But there are still problems around the world, in Europe and China, among other places.
I imagine the hope is that AI will raise US oil output, at the same time the deficit is cut. We will see if this actually happens.
I imagine this futuristic movie: As humans have become the slaves of the useless pet animals and AI, the AI will find a way how to subordinate the humans in a deeper and deeper slavery and finally use them as food for pet animals, as the AI will learn to control animals, it will organize an army of the pet animals that will destroy the rest of the degenerated humans.
From 1% to 39% in 20 years . China’s share of the car production in the world .
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/car%20production%20share_0.jpg?itok=h5-9v4dG
The saga continues .
This sounds crazy: “China’s BYD and Great Wall pour billions into Brazil after Ford, Mercedes abandon the market.”
China will build EVs instead of ICE cars.
Is this a sign of a world economy headed in strange ways? The printing press for China works well, perhaps? There is at least a market in South America, but it is not clear to me that there are energy resources. According to the video, Brazil has inexpensive to produce lithium, keeping the cost of lithium down. Gasoline is high priced, and there are tax advantages of using electricity.
It is not clear to me that Brazil really has the electricity supply to ramp up EV use, however. Perhaps a few can be used, for the upper class, to go short distances.
Having lived in Rio 8 months I can tell you that people tend to be city bound. In Rio there is little reason to, there are beaches and the jungle literally starts as soon as you are above 100m. But Brazil has also a lot of hydroelectric power.
Hydroelectric can help even out wind and solar electricity. The major problem is droughts.
From China’s viewpoint all that is relevant is Brazil’s ability to absorb production of EVs. Driving them is not China’s problem.
Dennis L.
It is true that China will get some indirect benefit from building EVs in Brazil, for example more sales of steel and other materials used in building the vehicle, and resulting wages for workers.
But to truly get a good return on its investment, won’t China need to have citizens of Brazil (or some other South American country) buy the vehicles at a high enough price that the investment can make a reasonable profit?
Any gain would seem to be very temporary otherwise. The debt for these investments isn’t like US government debt that can be directly toward creating income for US citizens, without a huge hit to where the US dollar floats relative to other currencies.
That is quite the chart. The US now produces 3% of the world’s cars. This is far below China’s 39%. It is also below Japan’s 12% of world cars, and Europe’s 13% of world cars. Without imported cars, the US has essentially no cars.
Heavy overpriced US built trucks and SUV’s are piling up at dealerships because nobody can afford them any more. The US car makers are going down hard and fast.
Doesn’t sound good!
and missing the fundamental point of the car—-which is to use it as a tool to produce more that its running costs
That is a good point. The point of a car is to allow workers to get to work, efficiently, and delivery workers to deliver goods cheaply.
No! The fundamental point of the car is to get 99c burgers with fries any time you like, visit the mall or the Walmart for shopping, see the ball game live, enjoy the freedom of the road, get your kicks on Route 66, ‘n’ stuff.
I went back to Ohio
But my city was gone
There was no train station
There was no downtown
South Howard had disappeared
All my favorite places
My city had been pulled down
Reduced to parking spaces
Is it me or does bitcoin seem like a ponzi scheme?
It is a Ponzi . Remember the guy Sam something whose company lost $ 30 billion in crypto . Everyday new currencies with fancy names appear and then a week/ month later they disappear . Norman had a good comment but I am not going to search for it . Time to hit the sleep button for me .
when the value of something is onlywhat somebody else says it is, that defines a ponzi scheme
Bitcoin was originally viewed as a way to evade the authorities. Sale of bitcoin is a way to help fund stranded fossil fuels, by providing a way of selling the stranded fossil fuels (made into electricity), without making high cost electricity transmission.
Bitcoin needs the rest of the system to operate.
I am not sure whether there is really a ponzi aspect to the system. If a country cannot get imports because of a collapse in international trade, bitcoin won’t buy much, whether or not more of it is sold.
Not only does bitcoin require the rest of the system, but it requires obscene amounts of electricity and computational hardware. See https://www.statista.com/statistics/881472/worldwide-bitcoin-energy-consumption/ for a graph showing the growth in electricity usage over the past 7 years. As of December 8, 2024 the electrify usage is estimated at 175 TWh/year.
According to this link https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption , a single bitcoin transaction now uses 985.55 kWh of electricity.
It’s truly hard to picture a bigger waste of limited fossil fuel resources than cryptocurrencies.
Unless this fossil fuel is stranded (too far away from worthwhile uses to be profitably shipped). Then it helps natural gas and coal that cannot be used otherwise to be utilized. It is a subsidy to the natural gas and coal owners. It is a way of raising world CO2 emissions, with little benefit.
For those who want more clarity
* bitcoin miners mine “blocks”
* the successful miner who discovers a valid block receives currently ~$300,000 of bitcoin at current prices
* there are an average of 3000 transactions per block recently
This means processing your transaction (eg. buying a pizza with bitcoin) rewarded the miner with $100 for your one-three-thousandth portion of the block. This is not sustainable. It is much less efficient than the banking system.
The system would collapse, simply based on the fact that it is an inefficient way of transacting business.
An intelligence agency creation that (1) allows them to turn their massive computing power into money without providing any direct services to the public and (2) by being the first ones in, they can unload for high prices to black-budget/no-budget activities.
At 7m15..on he explains the ponzi quite well..it’s to do with how the stable coins (tether etc) feed back into US treasuries
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WUoIBc_KJAI&t=474s&pp=2AHaA5ACAQ%3D%3D
“All PENSIONS Will Be Converted Into UBI After Collapse” is the name of this video.
All government pensions are (almost entirely) pay as you go. The reason is that in a given year, retirees need commodities (like food), and goods and services (like vehicles, and heat for homes) that require the use of commodities.
If the amount of commodities per capita is falling, there is a major problem. It becomes more and more difficult to fund a system that pays money to retirees, because an increasing share of the available commodity supply must go for goods and services of workers (or they won’t work). This is the issue, regardless of what system is used to pay the citizens, (bitcoin or other) including workers and non-workers.
problem is……. that retirees are supposed to die, not live another 30 years beyond their threescore and ten
Norman: I don’t think that’s a big problem. Countries can regularly raise the pension age like the UK (& some others in N. Europe) did in the past. A system in which people aged 20-67 pay out about 12% of their income and people over 67 receive a pension of ~30% of average income works OK and the two payments are in balance. Anyway, the chances in the UK of living to 100 are barely 1:10,000 and mean lifespan has been falling slightly.
It’s a different matter in Japan though. As of September 1, 2024, there were just over 95,000 people aged 100 or older in Japan out of a total population of about 124 million—so that’s about one person in 1,300 no in their second century, or about 76.5 centenarians per 100,000 people in Japan.
This high rate of centenarians is in large part an effect of the low birthrate. If there were more kids being born and more younger people in the country, the ratio of oldsters would decline.
In 2023, there were an estimated 14,850 centenarians in England and Wales. This is a 0.5% decrease from 2022. There were 24 centenarians per 100,000 population in England, and 26 per 100,000 in Wales.
https://www.youtube.com/live/s9uCNj6Sqoo
AI hearing in congress.
One issue is preserving privacy.
AI may be helpful in healthcare.
Need to better understand risks of AI. Enemies may use AI to infiltrate our systems.
Misuse example -deep fakes of people.
AI perhaps helpful in the battlefield.
well
if i am reborn as an amalgam of AI circuitry
will it be smarter than me?
Yes. It is a ponzi. Bitcoin reminds me of the triumph of unreality in the modern world.
“Yes. It is a ponzi”
While you have a point, it is not a classic ponzi scheme. No particular person profits. It is more like tulip mania.
people do profit
the smart ones who got in and out early made their profit from the suckers coming in later
that is pure ponzi
I like your explanation: Like tulip mania.
I guess it is more like a mania than Ponzi scheme. At least tulips had some value, bitcoin is just 1’s and 0’s
=
Trump Advisor Collapses on Stage During ‘Young Republican Club’ Gala
Completely drunk and a bit more
Bibi allocated $ 11 million to double the population in Golan Heights . Crazy.🤣🤣
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-sees-increased-threat-syria-despite-moderate-tone-rebel-leaders-2024-12-15/
Golan heights is the main water resource for Israel, although it is not Israel.
He places some people there so if someone attacks them it will be antisemitism.
What is some people ? Total population of Israel is 7.5 million . He can move the Arabs from Gaza there , maybe . ?Demographics is destiny .
Democracy works well for the majority
Also, population in Israel and Palestine have both been growing, partly to outcompete each other. But there is not enough water for so many people. Also, not enough fossil fuels.
“As the declining population continues to impact Japan’s society and economy, the number of vacant houses has topped nine million – enough to accommodate the entire population of Australia at three people per dwelling.
Government figures released on Tuesday show the number of empty houses, known as akiya, as of October 2023 was up by more than half a million since the previous survey in 2018.
At the root of the issue is rural depopulation combined with many of those who inherit such properties being unable or unwilling to live in them, refurbish or even demolish them. Cities are not immune though, and there are hundreds of thousands of long-term empty houses in urban areas.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/may/01/akyia-houses-why-japan-has-nine-million-empty-homes
We have seen stories earlier that people in Japan do not keep upgrading/fixing up their homes over time. Instead, the expectation seems to be that the value of the home drops to close to zero over a period of time (30 Years?).
Part of the issue is increasing standards for earthquake resistance. There may be other issues too, such as different insulation standards. Old homes do not meet current standards, so that they tend to be abandoned.
The linked article doesn’t mention these issues. It mentions another issue: Fewer people living outside of cities. There is a huge surplus of housing there, especially with falling population.
The article mentions possible investment in some of these homes for vacation travelers. This interest is primarily by people outside of Japan. Without enough fossil fuels, I don’t see growth in tourism. The tourists would need to be from China and other nearby countries, I expect.
It’s as Norman has told us—a thing’s value depends on the existence of people who value the thing enough to want to pay x amount for it and to take care of it. Even a really nice house in a place that nobody wants to move to unlikely to be very valuable in the housing market, unless the seller is fortunate enough to find an eccentric buyer.
The three most important things in determining real estate value in Japan are location, location, and location.
the ability to travel economically and quickly is the critical thing with housing—
when the average person had to walk between home/work/school and shops, the time/distance reflected negatively in the value of the home
when 30 mile commutes became practical, competition for houses in the country ramped up because no one wanted to live next door to a factory.—so the distance reflected positively.
Good point!
Decline in numbers of births since peak year – as of 2023:
China 70% since 1963
Taiwan 68% since 1963
Japan 73% since 1949
South Korea 79% since 1960
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Taiwan
…and analogue entries.
The preliminary figures for 2024 show this continuing.
One has to wonder:
For whom is China building all that infrastructure?
The archaeologists?
Just more corruption.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/falling-cliff-chart-proves-we-are-major-economic-downturn-right-now
“Falling Off A Cliff”: This Chart Proves That We Are In A Major Economic Downturn Right Now
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/Snip20241212_53-560×596.jpg
This chart does look suspicious.
Suspicious? What do you mean? As in not accurate? It seems about right to me. The problems we face in the immediate future are a failing economy which will rapidly increase the debt to GDP ratio
If you go looking for trouble, you’ll find it!
2025 is the year the oil is all gone according to a bilderberg meeting from 2005 so the crash is predicted for the coming year the possibilities of what the elders have prepared for us range to bail ins cryptocurrency replacing the us dollar negative interest rates maybe even World peace if nearly everyone is broke.get your popcorn ready for 2025 this i believe is the big one FInite Worlders.
The step by step deterioration is not a fun. Suddenly you realize that it has gone too far, although you might not experience it coming like some other people did.
next step is a douse.
Bail in crypto? Everyone equally poor? Peaceful? I don’t think Klum would like that!
We live in the times of complete uncertainty: on one hand, there are prophets who promise a heaven with AI like spreading the human species all over the space, on the other hand, the economies are collapsing, as the businesses and the jobs disappear.
AI seems to be a new god. But I am not sure that this god has got any mercy with the human species that has simply consumed the cheap resources and lost its survival skills.
As the Christmas, i.e. the winter solstice, approaches, we realize that we need a god that truly loves the humans. At least the Sun with its free energy is reborn.
The sun comes up every day. We have a day of the week named after Sunday.
It does help to have a god that truly loves humans. The self-organizing economy is truly miraculous in the way it behaves. The idea of road with vehicles is very similar to the idea of arteries and veins, with blood cells.
In our human body, all of the necessary pieces are made, without any intervention by humans. In fact, the human body is pretty much self-healing, without our doing much to help it along, other than eating the proper foods, and getting plenty of sleep.
that a god loves us all takes some believing.
virtually everyone is consumed by greed and love of self and tribe.
all our troubles are caused ”by the other tribe”—so we must attack and kill /eject the other tribe.
millions of people have just elected a potus who advocates exactly this philosophy—as do similar people across the world…..so it is not an isolated trait.
it seems common to most of us.
Human population has kept growing for a long time.
thats because humans carry on with their favourite pastime, even under extreme conditions.
A friend of mine was conceived and born in a wartime (WW2) civilian internment camp.
As long as sustenance is available, procreation will continue.
Only starvation and mass epidemics will stop it.
Hmm, has someone misplaced something?
https://www.zerohedge.com/military/latest-theory-drone-sightings-could-be-nuclear-sniffers-amid-elevated-radiation-readings
It does make sense, but hopefully it is nonsense.
Now, back to life. Have a nice day all.
Dennis L.
Perhaps detecting radiation levels, but we don’t know.
If OIW blog was possible in the 40s nuclear power would be deemed impossible (well you can’t turn bombs into sustainable non Intermittent power).
Arthur Clark wrote story about cave men freezing over a coal seam. He wrote about us.
Buck monster (buckminster-auto spell) Fuller showed doing more with less using tech ; so far it’s panned out.
That cubic mile of plat. Maybe.
https://www.bosch-presse.de/pressportal/de/en/bosch-closes-the-circle-almost-all-the-platinum-in-fuel-cell-stacks-can-be-recovered-258048.html
https://engineering.wisc.edu/news/not-so-precious-new-discovery-could-replace-expensive-platinum-in-hydrogen-fuel-cells/
Fusion should be deferred. Only a fraction of energy is pulled from uranium and it’s impossible for more bc well bc that’s how it is.
EVs we’re impossible until PCs became so important that the impossible batteries were allowed to develop.
There’s no energy crisis , the crisis is limited intelligence and over population.
The latter will be dealt with shortly in this grand solar minimum that will make everything harder to keep functioning like that ny state gas infrastructure someone posted.
It sounds like nickel, in the right configuration, might be used instead of platinum in fuel cells:
It is my understanding that the primary supplier of nickel today is Russia, so this may not entirely solve the problem, unless we can get along with Russia.
This is minimal amounts. Sudbury in Canada should provide all that is needed. The question is if you can engineer these catalysts properly. You can not just do graphene sheets. There has to be nitrogen and nickel in a proper matrix. Also the temepratures are not beneficial to long lasting graphene, since it burns.
At MREA there was an Israeli company which used Ni I believe. There is an issue with it being subject to vibration, etc. such as a car.
The other side is turning water into H, don’t think that can be done with NI, pretty easy with Pt.
So if use Ni for storage and Pt for generation, only need half a cubic mile.
Dennis L.
“Only need half a mile”..now that was funny, thank you Dennis
So, that a big hole in the ground to get that “only half”
How many people could be buried in it? Just for fun
Secondly, I assuming the hole you are digging is 1 mile x 1 mile x 1 mile. Can a hole be square?
Assuming that you are going to have a mass burial, like the holocaust, and the average height of each person is 6′, average width is 18″, average thickness is 12″ and you are stacking one on top of another. So, in one mile, you can put 3520 corpses side by side. In one mile you can put 880 corpses head to foot. Therefore, the first layer of corpses (all dressed and covered) would be 3,097,600 (plus/minus a few). So, with no spacing, you could fit 16,355,328,000 (again plus/minus a few) – about 2.5 x the world population. Being nice, if you put a 12″ layer of dirt between each layer of corpses, the amount you could bury would still be around 8.5 billion.
After the burial, you have to put all that dirt on top. If you don’t, after decomposing a few years, there will be a hole about 1/2 mile deep. And since you buried the world’s population, save yourself, you will be pretty busy with that bull dozer, moving all the dirt.
https://www.quora.com/How-many-people-can-you-bury-in-one-cubic-mile
See Dennis, we could possibly solve two in one, bravo
only half a cubic mile now
getting easier by the day
Dennis L. would say that the story of David and Bathesheba would be biology.
David, the King of Judea, decided to take the wife of Uriah, a Hittite mercenary, named Bathesheba and got Uriah killed. From such union Solomon and every single king of Judea came from.
No one said anything about them since it was standard practice for the Kings to take whoever they felt and the subjects had to comply.
The Prophet Jeremiah invented the story of prophet Nathan criticizing David for such behavior but that was because Jeremiah came from a family who lost its power after it opposed Solomon’s ascension, and given the apparent privileges ascribed to Solomon no one back then gave a damn.
In truth it is very likely that whoever alive now is descended from a monarch or a ruling family, including lower classes. What happens is often the first child of a lower class family is not the child of the father but that of a higher class male who impregnated her, and the first child, coming from a superior stock, is likely to disinherit all of his/her siblings, leaving them to the streets to die, and continue the real father’s superior lines.
What is the real population of China?
Faking demographic data?
https://youtu.be/ftcLM3502_8?si=SbFMLU4V1eXLmtwY
I am not sure that AI is the way to answer the question. But it is clear that Chin’s population is lower than stated.
This lady observes near the end of the video that declining population doesn’t really start hitting the economy until the population cohorts that are very small due to low birth rates start turning 18. Her view is that there low birth rate cohorts are only now becoming old enough to work and buy very much. This is why what appears to be a fairly big drop in population is only now having an impact on the economy.
Biden ching, ching, Money Talks Biden…here pops sign this for me
MIAMI — Nevin Shapiro, a former University of Miami booster who was convicted of swindling investigators in a $930 million Ponzi scheme, was among the nearly 1,500 people whose prison sentences were commuted by President Joe Biden this week, CBS News Miami has learned.
On Thursday, Mr. Biden granted clemency consisting of 39 pardons and 1,499 commutations, including Shapiro. The former UM booster was convicted on federal security fraud and money laundering charges over a decade ago and ordered to pay nearly $83 million in restitution.
.Shapiro’s Ponzi scheme was based on an organization he found called Capitol Investments USA, which he claimed would purchase wholesale groceries and then sell them upmarket. During that time, he became an influential booster at UM.
His rogue behavior sparked an NCAA investigation in 2010 when he told the organization that he plied high-profile UM athletes with $170,000 in gifts and other benefits. He also tried to get football players to sign up with a startup sports agency he was involved with.
Throughout the probe, the NCAA found that the university had lacked institutional control and that Shapiro’s shady dealings led to sanctions against the school. Following the investigation, Shapiro was convicted on the federal charges and sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2011.
In 2013, the NCAA put UM on probation for three years and took away dozens of athletic scholarships as a result of its probe.
In 2020, Shapiro was transferred out of prison while then-U.S. Attorney General William Barr ordered prisons to move some at-risk inmates into home confinements at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Shapiro met the guidelines for release because he had served more than half of his sentence and had high blood pressure and a heart condition.
According to CBS News Miami’s partners at The Miami Herald, Shapiro sought compassionate release from the remainder of his sentence, which he had been serving in home confinement since his 2020 transfer.
Wonder how many drug dealers, human traffickers, hookers and corn tards were pardon by Uncle Joey…not to worry Trumpster will clean up the rest Joey forgotten
.
Hookers and blow forever for Biden Jr!
drb753, that would be a hit Country Western Song for him to earn honest money for a change….oh, on the other hand, it’s too late to teach an old pup new ways
This is a holiday season and I will tell a stupid story. I think I might have talked about it before, but I don’t remember so I will tell it again.
O.Henry, a ne’er do well who wrote stories around 1900 to make a living, basically telling that it is futile for small fishes to make their lives better, and everything is owned by the ‘robber barons’ and resistance is futile.
He did write a holiday story called “Gift of the Magi”.
A poor guy, and a wife who is probably too pretty for him, struggle to buy gifts for holidays. It is not explained why someone as pretty as her married a poor guy.
Tl,dr, the husband sells his family heirloom watch, the only thing he has which is worth anything, to buy his wife a hair pin because he liked her longish hair while she sells the hair to buy a watchband for him.
In other words, he sold the only remaining thing in his possession to make his wife happy but she sold her body parts to buy him something.
Reading between the lines, it can safely be said that she sold her body to someone to raise the cash to buy her husband’s watchband, which will never be used since it is now gone forever unlike her hair which will grow back.
It is likely that she was the ‘kept woman’ of someone much richer, and her patron would call her sometimes if he felt like it, and she knocked on her patron this time.
Although the story ends celebrating the couple’s love, it is very unlikely that such union would last since she knows how to use her body to make money and will continue to do that whenever cash is low, and eventually she would get rid of the husband, who would probably shoot himself or throw his body to the rail, and she lives a more or less comfortable life, and when she dies in a retirement home in the 1960s, the caretaker would find a watchband which would be too old for the styles of the day and throw that away.
The Lady and the Tramp is another story set in a similar period. Lady is a cocker spaniel loved by Jim, the owner, but he marries someone simply named Darling.
Jim and Darling travel to China for business, leaving the Lady in the huge mansion, and the Lady goes to mate a mutt named the Tramp and makes him her mate.
It is a story of a maid, probably with some black ancestry, who had been sleeping with the owner but is dumped when he marries someone of his own class – she is left to her own devices where she finds a black man, more suited to her own social level, and they both get to serve her former owner and his upper class wife.
Moral: Those who are not part of the upper crust have no chances. From the beginning. The years 1914-2016 were anomaly but that has ended and back to toils for the 99%.
I have a similar Henry for ya, Klumster,
Henry Miller
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Qf4Vma9O9Xk&t=72s&pp=2AFIkAIB
Now that’s a man with a story for ya. Right up you alley, bud.
Ya, he grew up in a real shoot hole, New York City, the same place as Trump,
Nothing has changed, except the welfare, and food stamps and section 8
Henry didn’t have the luxuries
I have one for you Klum it’s called Dr. Zhivago!! How did the upper crust do😁…. Good luck sounds like you are trying to convince yourself 🙀that you will be insulated!!!
Zhivago’s line survived thru the family who abandoned him for the west
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qf4Vma9O9Xk
Henry Miller revisits New York as an old man.
Thank you, click; now I know where the Trumpster learned how to talk and the words to go with it.
Also on YouTube are part of his interviews known as the”Bathroom tapes”, well worth listening to..
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=k3HaTJWd2iY&t=6s
Henry Miller, “Bathroom Monologue” : 1/4
Incredible reflection and musings of this brilliant individual
Came across this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrocytwdeEY&t=137s
I don’t like herbicides; next on the list if I can get RTK to work on a mower for my crp land, kind of cool. Zap and the weed is gone.
Trouble is the fellow doing much of the work is a MIT EE grad student; only thing I envy is intelligence. So much to learn, so little time.
Dennis L.
Another zapping technique. This one hopefully would use less energy per weed.
Keith and I argued about the dysgenic effect of the Great War before.
I said the deaths of a large portion of the British upper class who were bred for leadership were irreplaceable.
Keith said the female line survived.
Well, I had the chance to watch “Testament of Youth”, written by Vera Brittain, daughter of a paper manufacturer.
Her brother (her only sibling), her fiance (from the same class) and his friend were all killed in the Great War.
She later married a chap named George Catlin, but refused to use his surname since it was NOT something used in her class.
George Catlin, a vicar’s son from Liverpool, did attend Oxford (no record of graduation), but was not in a class to marry someone like Brittain if he had been more fit and was sent to the trenches, spending most of the war in alcohol traffic board. He was declared unfit to serve (read: his family was not that rich enough keep him well fed), and he was born in 1896 when his father was born in 1858 with no mention of siblings (i.e. his father was not rich enough to afford a wife until relatively late in his life). So he was like a son of a low grade official or teacher or something like that.
Although the union of such dysgenic couple did produce two children, Catlin preferred to stay in USA, returning to England only sporadically until Vera died. The daughter, Shirley Williams, did become a Baroness but that was because she was a Labour politician not thru marriage (British politicians are sometimes awarded Baroncy but it is not inherited by their progeny).
Vera Brittain’s book Testament of Youth was about her dead brother, her dead lover and her dead friend, a book which would have NEVER been written if George Catlin had been someone of her class, since that would have become an embarrassment. However, since George Catlin was basically a nobody(he was later awarded a knighthood by his daughter’s efforts), there was no honor to protect and she wrote the book basically saying that her current husband was nothing more than a sperm donor. Not surprisingly they hardly ever saw each other again.
I could dig thru archives to find women from upper and upper middle class marrying those who would have been extremely unlikely to marry such kind of men, or preferred to die unmarried rather than marrying low, if Chucky did not ‘do his duty’, but that would have been unnecessary given how much Britain has declined after those who were born after 1918 took power.
Such dysgenic effect goes precisely opposite the effect Gregory Clark had described in his books – after the World Wars, males who had no chance of marrying people above their own class often had their chances, which led to more lower-class males who would not have been able to reproduce in the older days now being able to reproduce, and we now know what has happened next.
Chucky’s crime against Civilization is incalculable. Those Brits who think him, and other f’kups as ‘national heroes’, often come from classes who would never have had a chance to advance if Chucky didn’t ‘do his duty’, such as the late Dr. Robert Firth, from a line descended from forest rangers and would never have seen Oxford without Chucky.
“Keith and I argued about the dysgenic effect of the Great War before.
I said the deaths of a large portion of the British upper class who were bred for leadership were irreplaceable.
Keith said the female line survived.”
I don’t disagree with you all that much, I certainly think genes are important. The selection for genes for the psychological traits that led to wealth stopped about 1800 when income at the national level reduced the number of poor dying from famines or the side effects of famines, disease.
Clark also makes a point that the nobility did not do well in spreading their genes because so many of them got killed fighting wars,
I would like to see a math analysis of what effect on IQ culling the number who died in WW I had on the population as a whole.
Clark has a later analysis that is so politically incorrect the chances of it being published is low. In fact, he was dis-invited from talking about it in Glasgow. It looked at the life history of over 400,000 people in the UK and concluded that a persons prospects were largely fixed at birth. If you want to read it, and can’t find it on the net, I think I saved a copy. It had an obvious typo in the last paragraph or two.
The population effects of the WW I deaths is something he might be interested in working on, try asking him.
Thank you. I printed it when the file was available.
Given that the Great War is thought to be somehow a good thing by a lot of Brits here, i don’t thimk Clark will bite though.
“Clark will bite though.”
He might.
In reference to genes, in WW I the French drafted the tall men first. Since almost all of them died, the following generation was 2 inches shorter. Not sure where I read that. I wonder what you would look for in the UK? Perhaps depression in the number graduating from Oxford?
Average Height of the Japanese
During the Edo period in the 17th to mid-19th century, the average height for Japanese men was around 155-160 cm (approximately 5’1″ to 5’3″), while for women, it was about 145-150 cm (approximately 4’9″ to 4’11”).
By the 1950s, average heights for men had increased to about 166 cm (5’5″) and for women to about 153 cm (5’0″).
As of recent data, the average height for Japanese men is around 171 cm (5’7″) and for women about 158 cm (5’2″).
This represents an increase of roughly 10-15 cm (about 4-6 inches) for both genders since the Edo period. No genetic sorting or modification needed for that. Just better nutrition.
Oh, perhaps the fact that Samurai no longer chop off the heads of peasants who have the impertinence to be taller than them has helped the trend.
But you are talking about the French and WW1, so let’s look at French heights.
Since the beginning of the 20th century, the average height of the French population has increased significantly. Here are key points regarding this change:
Around 1900, the average height for French men was approximately 165 cm (5’5″) and for women about 152 cm (5’0″).
By the 1950s, average heights had risen to about 170 cm (5’7″) for men and 158 cm (5’2″) for women.
As of recent data (early 21st century), the average height for French men is around 178 cm (5’10”) and for women about 165 cm (5’5″).
This represents an increase of about 13 cm (5 inches) for men and about 13 cm (5 inches) for women since the early 20th century.
A five inch increase in French heights over the past 120 years. Where does that leave your genetic explanation for the two inch drop after WW1?
Of course, if a government sends the tallest members of the population off to fight in a war that has a high death toll, the average height of the population is bound to decline during and immediately after the war. And that has nothing whatsoever to do with genetics. Kill off a disproportionately large number the of any population group, and that group’s share of the overall population is likely to decline.
The following generation in France had to grow up facing food shortages due to poor harvests, inflation, high levels of debt, and the worldwide depression of the 1930s. Times were hard and a lot of bellies went hungry.
But ya tell that to young people these days and they don’t believe ya!
France had a migration wave from North Africa which had taller population.
As an imaginative exercise, your hypothesis about taller North Africans has merit. But the AI genius I consult about these statistics informs me that, in the case of Algeria (the largest North African nation that has donated diversity to la belle France:
Around the early 1900s, the average height for Algerian men was approximately 160 cm (5’3″) and for women about 150 cm (4’11”).
After World War II and during the period of independence in the 1960s, improvements in public health and nutrition began to have a noticeable By the 1970s, average heights had increased, with men averaging around 165-170 cm (5’5″ to 5’7″) and women around 155-160 cm (5’1″ to 5’3″).
As of recent data, the average height for Algerian men is approximately 173 cm (5’8″) and for women around 160 cm (5’3″). This indicates an increase of about 13-18 cm (5-7 inches) for both genders over the past century.
In summary, Algerians are a bit shorter than the French. So if you are on the right track, it would mean mostly taller Algerians emigrated to France.
There was also a big migration to France from central and Eastern Europe following WW2.
I would imagine that much like the data the AI gave you about the Algerians, the height of the French probably increased due to improved nutrition.
“History is the cemetery of aristocracies” Wilfredo Pareto.
In 1914, to be an officer in France, one had to have the baccalaureate, which reduced, in fact, active officers to come either from the aristocracy, who had kept their ancestral habits, or from the bourgeoisie, which which implied a gap with the troop. it was a society of order, not of class. The reserve officers were very often teachers, also high school graduates.
The non-commissioned officers had the study certificate, passed at 14 years old. All of the officers had therefore started an active life late, after the age of 18, and belonged to high social levels.
So, the difference in size was explained by a better diet and by the absence of young workers.
After the start of the conflict, the French aristocracy largely disappeared in the fighting of August and September (General de Castelnau lost 3 of his sons in one month), killed by the enemy or often by their own men, a little-known phenomenon. The peasantry/aristocracy divide is still very strong, and the aristocracy almost disappeared in the fighting of 1914 and not under the revolution.
After September, officers killed or wounded are replaced by men from the ranks or non-commissioned officers who survived.
Admiral De Gaulle, son of the general, spoke of the disappearance of the aristocracy during this period.
Afterwards, the masses in combat diminished sharply, and at Verdun, it was the fight of the corporal and the section or more often the half section.
The English aristocracy, it had another destiny. The English army was largely an improvised army, led by gentlemen, chosen because of their social position and not very competent in matters of combat. The English army, in 1914 was very reduced 110,000 men. The Battle of the Somme was a butchery for the English army, fought in a very stupid way. While the French troops advanced by having the artillery clear the ground meter by meter, with great precision, the British attacks in line with the barda were suicide, led by officers who glorified courage, but who were most often incompetent. Liddell Hart often speaks of “balaklava charges” The ransom of an improvised army.
Interesting! The officers were disproportionately from families of the aristocracy. They especially got killed off. In fact, they sometimes got killed off by their own men. Perhaps their own men were not greatly fond of them.
I have watched le grande illusion several times. Jean Renoir, son of a potter (no middle class impressionist painter would be caught dead with Pierre August Renoir)celebrating death of the superiors.
There are new ideas about a limited role of genetics and perhaps a bigger role of epigenetics, but I am not the one to line that out properly. The point is, that the number of genes is apparently too small to hold the variety of features properly. There are simply too little genes. Besides we share 90% of our genes with very low animals. That means, very complex steering would occur in the residual 10%.
Looking to the current leading class, they are lacking discipline and responsibility unthinkable 100 years ago. The leading families of the past have not only provided wealth but also knowledge, contacts and social skills. This is still visible in some but not all offspring of better families.
Unlike the old elites who perished wantonly 1914-18, and 1939-45 to a lesser degree (it mostly hurt Soviets, Chinese and Japanese), today’s elites often do not come from ruling classes so their positions are usually not inherited by their progeny.
So they act like warlords who took over a town – they know it is a temporary thing so they extract as much as they can, knowing they won’t have the town in a few years.
” “History is the cemetery of aristocracies” Wilfredo Pareto. ”
I will remember this . Tks .
This is silly. The “leadership class” (in fact the semi-parasitic in the first generation and parasitic ever after) grows back quickly. There is plenty of other websites where you can harp about ideology as the cause of this all. Here we prefer physics.
They have stakes in civilization while the parvenus do not.
Without sufficient hookers and blow? It was Chucky’s superiors who did not give him that stake. They are the real scoundrels. All he needed to be happy was 3 or 4 every night, free of charge.
No. It was the fault of the 200/400 Worchestershires, former chimney boys and factory workers and bar boys.
not enough hookers and blow for them either. it is all the management’s fault.
“Here we prefer physics.”
Given the point of this blog, we should, but count up the last 1000 posting and let me know how many are on physics.
” parasitic ever after”
I don’t know enough of this class, particularly in the UK, to say much about them statistically. I know (through email) a fifth generation Viscount who has written half a dozen really good science books in an area I appreciate. I also knew (through email) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_J._C._MacKay Not long before MacKay died he said good things about power satellites.
The Viscount married within his class and has two kids. MacKay married Ramesh Ghiassi who seems to be a biological researcher and they had 2 children. My bet would be that all 4 kids will accomplish things useful to society.
In the US, I know of the descendants of one of the biggest names in the history of the hyper rich. At least one of them (out of hundreds) was definitely a parasite. Another that I know personally used to joke that his branch of the family was into fast women and slow horses. He accomplished quite a bit. He does not have a Wikipedia page, but the conference he ran does.
Personally from my genetic background you would not expect a lot. Parents and ancestors were a little better than average, but not the sort that becomes major figures. Still, I know upwards of 60 people who have Wikipedia pages, so I am a little connected with movers and shakers.
Genetics is important, a determining factor in life trajectory. Gregory Clark’s work makes that clear. Politically incorrect, but true.
Drone sighting temporarily shuts down runways at New York airport
https://abcnews.go.com/US/drone-sighting-temporarily-shuts-runways-new-york-airport/story?id=116792168
Whoop there it is. And think about all the Christmas travel coming up.
There are video’s and articles regarding what happened in Syria and how 13 years of resistance vanished in 11 days surprising even the experts . Here is one of the few that outlines future scenario’s in Syria . Mike Mihajolvic at Black Mountain Analysis .
” The enemy of my enemy is my friend ”
https://bmanalysis.substack.com/p/israel-and-the-fall-of-syria-and
I think a basic issue is that, now more than ever, every country needs to be able to have an adequate supply of jobs that pay well. It is helpful if much of the needs of the population are locally produced–citizens are not dependent on food and other essentials from elsewhere. Syria probably has a problem in this regard.
Explanation, simple concise. Work gives life meaning, this is totally lost on nihilists at our “elite” universities.
Dennis l.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaEPvrq5VFM
Canadian Prepper proposes the drones are nuclear bomb sniffers. Makes sense to me.
“Canadian Prepper proposes the drones are nuclear bomb sniffers. ”
That seems unlikely since I don’t think a bomb gives off enough radiation to be detected further than a few tens of feet.
It is a strange story. When my college buddies and I were making UFO in Tucson in the early 60s, we spent a few dollars per UFO. If the reported size and numbers are correct, the budget for this episode is in the tens of thousands of dollars. That’s a bit much for a joke, but who knows.
It’s unlikely the US has many functioning nuclear bombs left. No need for a sniffer to work that out.
“It’s unlikely the US has many functioning nuclear bombs left.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon#Disarmament
It is way down from the peak, but if that graph is right, the US and Russia each have around 5000 nukes.
Do they function? Hope we don’t find out.
Yes I already know Wikipedia says there are lots and lots. I would be surprised if the US has more than 100 fully functioning warheads.
Huh? 🤔 What a weird statement? Are you privy to secret intelligence? There are enough nuclear weapons on submarines all over the world. I don’t think that gun is loaded woods it was😂
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gyohwea-JM
The missiles that they *know* they are going to use in a test, those fail … you think the ones sitting in some silo from the 1970’s that no one is doing live tests with will be better?
Guest2 hypothesis has merit. Just last month Gail discussed how warheads are burnt for energy. I don’t see the US becoming less energy hungry. It might not be 100 but surely it is not 5000. A 500/1000 hypothesis is not unreasonable.
Plus they had to make most of their warheads using Pu and/or tritium. Those go bad relatively fast and very fast respectively. This is another strategic problem for the USA. You want long lasting warheads? Use 235U. No prizes for guessing which country has centrifuge centers as big as 20 football fields.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGM-30_Minuteman#Operational_units
According to this, there are 450 in service and most of them have 3 warheads.
That does not count the bombers or those in the Trident subs.
But the only way to be sure is a full scale nuclear exchange. Regardless of how many work, that would be awful.
Ivan, I don’t think I have to remind you of this but here goes…..NOT EVERYTHING YOU READ ON THE INTERNET IS TRUE! I know people who have worked in missile defense and they are constantly updating Equipment. A lot of the propaganda stories going around are done by the manufactures of said missiles; its called scare tactics to get more money. The medical community does the same thing. I know for a fact that Russia has equipment that you and I have no idea of its capabilities meaning can kill a lot of people. The Americans do to. If there is a nuclear exchange there will be no more humans on this planet……
“no more humans on this planet……”
I doubt that, but you could be right. There are things that would, but nobody wants to consider them.
Just for kicks… I looked up how many tons of gold does the US hold. It says 8134 tons. do you believe that too?
In my view this clown episodes of drones in US have been staged by what you call deep State to prepare US citizens for something they have to comply with.
Maybe specifically new restrictive rules on drones or, more probably, new rules on citizenly behavior.
This time I’ve not understood yet if Trump is aware of this project, or not (like it was for Covid)
He is known to fire from the hip. Doesn’t care – all he cares is to create more unrest so he can sell his overpriced survival kits
The drone will be used for killing look at ukey war major testing ground for drone tech the elders are obsessed with depop so this means wwthree is coming and drones will be the weapon of choice unfortunately if the world had half its population in a short period of time then bau could continue for even longer.
“He is known to fire from the hip.” Maybe that is what is needed now in a leader. Think Winston Churchill at the beginning of WW2 they needed someone to take charge. The Americans are lucky to have him.
Maybe it is a prep for something drastic . Remember Covid — they spent years prepping the populace and then voila it is here . The TPTB then say ” we warned you it is coming ” . not our fault if you are unprepared .
Once again the graph.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/mit-forecasts-civilization-will-fall-by-2040/vi-AA1vqBJK?ocid=msedgntp&pc=U531&cvid=7168a1b58184472cab3307dc1d9b044b&ei=4
I think Dennis Meadows is about two minutes in. At 4:00minutes in KPMG seems to agree. The survival condo seems like a horrible place to live.
There is only one way, space and that was not known by Meadows et al -Starship.
Gail’s graph also includes pollution. The US is sicker than ever.
AT 8:47 there is mention of stopping growth; this seems consistent with many political efforts being made. It would explain the incredible resistance to Trump.
So, a cubic mile of PT, H economy, mine the solar system, use fusion energy in situ so to speak, well at least in space.
At 10:19 loss of sovereignty is discussed.
Mention is made of dinosaurs going extinct, doesn’t seem like much of a loss to me.
It is going to be bumpy, the sooner we get our cubic mile of Pt the better.
The solutions of the past will not work, but, hopefully we can move production to space.
At 15 or so, mention is made that life expectancies are going up, not so in the US if I understand it.
Musk at 15:50 or so mentions the decline of population and demographic problems.
I don’t think eating popcorn and watching this progress is going to be a option – no popcorn.
Interesting, 17 years before Club of Rome predicts civilization falls apart, a man appears and starts making Starship work. He even gets into politics and mostly talks about humanity, when he attends a government meeting, his son is on his shoulders.
World works in strange ways.
Dennis L.
“Gail’s graph also includes pollution. The US is sicker than ever. ”
I live in LA. There is no day in the last 4 years when it hurt to breathe the air. I visited LA in the early 60s, and there was no day I recall when it did not hurt to breathe.
“So, a cubic mile of PT, H economy, mine the solar system, use fusion energy in situ so to speak, well at least in space. ”
Psyche is over a million cubic km. If you processed the whole thing and it ran 1 ppm of platinum, you could have a cubic km of Pt. Not a cubic mile, but close enough.
“At 15 or so, mention is made that life expectancies are going up, not so in the US if I understand it. ”
When you run into this,, it is worth remembering that the US is not homogeneous. Some groups are doing much better and some are doing worse.
From Wikipedia:
African American life expectancy at birth is persistently five to seven years lower than European Americans. By 2018 that difference had shrunk to 3.6 years.
As of 2020, Hispanics had a life expectancy at birth of 78.8 years, followed by non-Hispanic Whites at 77.6 years and non-Hispanic blacks at 71.8 Years. In 2021, life expectancy for Native Americans was 65 years. For black Americans, 71; for white Americans, 76; for Hispanic Americans, 78; and 84 for Asian Americans.
According to the statistics provided at Statistica, life expectancy at birth all round in the US dropped by almost two years since the beginning of the pandemonium in 2020 and has not recovered. Kids born in 2022 can expect to live 77.43 years, against 78.84 years in 2014. And that’s assuming BAU continues and without factoring in the chance of being nuked in WW3.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/263724/life-expectancy-in-the-united-states/
The reason for the cleaner air in Los Angeles is deindustrialisation. In the 60s there was still a lot of manufacturing there.
I think it was mostly the cars, but you might be right. Not going to look it up.
Still under the illusion that Musk will go to the space when he prefers wielding power on earth.
Fantastic video on the issues. Minus the ending. For the love of god just turn it off @ 13 min mark. I could care less what the “Host” thinks about it. And he even references Jordan Peterson and goes off the rails into Malthus. And notice how many times he says “predictions”.
Dennis Meadows has talked about that a million times. He even said searching news articles for limits to growth “Predicts” shows thousands of hits.
These are NOT PREDICTIONS (sorry, to yell). These are simulations (forecast) based on computer models. Its basically like what the weather man uses to “FORECAST” the weather. That’s why they don’t call it “weather prediction”.
A huge straw man these journalist or pundits fail to realize.
And the thing is about the 1960-70s people saying collapse by the turn of the century. I mean look, by 2020 we have locked down the entire world. HELLO?
I could understand if the year was 2075 and world GDP is 500 trillion and there’s 50 billion people alive on this earth. The fact that we haven’t even made it half way and they are claiming victory already, shows a real error in judgement.
I wonder to what extent LtG or the population bomb affected people’s behavior?
It could have some, though how much it contributes to the low birth rates is hard to say.
It did affect people like Eric Drexler and me to work on projects to improve the situation.
From what I have read the population bomb book predicted prices for ALL commodities would skyrocket in the 90’s proving his claims. And the author even made a famous bet against someone for that. And he lost in the 90’s since prices didn’t skyrocket. And pretty much ever since that, the critics have declared victory forever. Case closed.
Even though it happened in 2005-2009 obviously, and we got a little relief from the fracking boom in 2014-2019. But here we are again with prices skyrocketing from 20th century averages. For context the post WW2 boom from 1950ish to 2000 the average price of barrel of oil was $19 dollars (2005 inflation adjusted) . And according to Art Berman the average price of barrel of oil in 21st century is around 60ish (i think without checking). So even that, the price has TRIPPLED from the price that built globalization.
so triples the price for the oil that built globalisation so if we triple the price again to 180 and inflation rises to the new level the world will greatly slow down
” So even that, the price has TRIPPLED from the price that built globalization. ”
That is in NOMINAL terms not REAL terms .
One barrel of oil = 4.5 years of human labor . It is a real bargain energy slave .
Dennis,
We can’t live in space or other planets because they have no magnetic field and solar radiation would fry our brains, or they are too cold, and we would freeze. The only option on other planets would be to live underground, which would defeat the whole purpose you are suggesting.
NASA wants to land a person on Mars someday. Not live on Mars. That’s hollywood and grifters like Musk.
Sorry, I am not making myself clear. There is no way man can live/work in space for the reasons you gave. Spaceship earth is incredible , engineering which appears to be self organizing.
A rough guess on my part is probes exploring for needed metals, etc. space “factories” run by robots, finished products returned to earth made in such a way as to be recyclable and long lasting. What makes this possible is fusion and Starship.
I don’t see any other way; we have exhausted all known methods and found them returning less energy than used. We need energy, we need to avoid overheating earth. Earth based fusion is not likely the answer, always 30 years away. Also, with only a superficial understanding of the sun, it is a very violent place with flares extending well past earth. I know, fusion will not run away on earth, still, to make it work would be an incredible concentration of energy on earth. Conclusion: we go up.
It is not going to be easy but earth’s history suggests it will happen.
Dennis L.
“We can’t live in space or other planets because they have no magnetic field ”
Humans don’t need magnetic fields, planetary atmospheres do on a scale of a billion years.
“and solar radiation would fry our brains, ”
It takes very little shielding to cope with solar radiation, the mechanical envelope is plenty. The problem is galactic cosmic radiation. That takes several meters of dirt or a few meters of water or polyethylene. In a large habitat, there is enough atmosphere to stop cosmic rays that come through the windows.
“or they are too cold, and we would freeze. ”
That’s not the problem, getting rid of the waste heat is a far bigger problem. I have worked on this for decades. The radiation surface gets rid of ~1/4 kW/m^2, the sunlight comes in (near Earth orbit) at around a kW/m^2. So the radiator area need to be 4 times the window area. Since they radiate from both sides, twice the area.
“The only option on other planets would be to live underground,
which would defeat the whole purpose you are suggesting.”
Or add enough atmosphere to Mars to cut the surface level radiation. Or, more likely, make people resistant to the effects of radiation. I think that’s more likely if people ever do live on Mars.
“NASA wants to land a person on Mars someday. Not live on Mars. That’s hollywood and grifters like Musk.”
What NASA wants runs up against technology that just isn’t there yet. And resources, they can’t even afford a sample return. I suspect humanity (assuming we survive) will take a different path in space, but I don’t know for certain.
If you want to know more about this subject, look up the Sept. 1974 issue of Physics Today, it’s not hard to find on the net. You can trust the information in it because among others, the U of Arizona physics department shut down for a day while they checked the detail and found no errors.
“only one way, space ”
In _Doomsday has been cancelled_ by J Peter Vajk he added the effects of low pollution to the model. Made quite a difference. He also found an unexplained factor of 3 in the world dynamics model.
Low pollution with high industrial output of affordable goods, food and energy is impossible.
I’m afraid you are right. The US has figured out how to push the pollution to poorer countries.
God Bless America, Gail
We are the best figurers and connivers ever,
Well almost..
Saw this yesterday on Columbus meeting the first natives in the Bahamas and enjoying some feasting and partying with them.
Afterwards, back on the ship there was a discussion on how this would be easy picking to take over, enslave the population and steal and exploit their lands. They next morning they celebrated Mass.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ub6JekpFtpk&t=607s
What REALLY Happened When Columbus Landed in 1492
Columbus, though deeply moved by the Taíno’s generosity and the Caribs’ strength, began to frame their world through the lens of conquest. In his journals, he wrote of their potential as laborers and the wealth their land might yield. The beauty of the women, the allure of their dances, and the flavor of their feasts would soon be overshadowed by the ambitions of empire.
I know, Norman, nature wants us us to..
Because I wanted to…more like it
That one is easy. Space, mine in space, manufacture in space, pollute in space, ie. Jupiter, the solar system’s garbage dump.
Food is an interesting problem; there is something wrong with modern foods. obesity in extremis.
Dennis L.
Read the book and tell us what he got wrong.
Okay, that book is from 1978 which was shortly after ltg was originally published, 1973 I think.
https://reason.com/1979/04/01/no-more-doomsday/
This too seems to be from the late seventies.
From the looks of Gails graph and industrial production, 2025 will be interesting.
Dennis L.
Starship will arrive after wwthree unfortunately massive loss of life will occur as foretold in the book of revelation man against man brother against brother and then I saw a new earth yep it ain’t gonna be pretty no pain no gain as the saying goes
Maybe, currently it seems to be the only game in town and somehow incredible sums of money are going into it.
Dennis L.
The cost of slander can seriously damage your wallet.
ABC News and anchor George Stephanopoulos agreed to settle a defamation lawsuit that President-elect Donald Trump had filed and will pay Trump $15 million, attorneys fees, and issue a public apology.
The Hill reported that the news outlet and Stephanopoulos agreed to issue a “public apology” and to provide $15 million that would go towards Trump’s “future presidential library.”
Under the settlement agreement, the network will put the $15 million in escrow to ultimately be used toward Trump’s future presidential library and foundation. ABC also agreed to pay $1 million in attorney’s fees and add an editors’ note to the bottom of the relevant article, court documents show.
“ABC News and George Stephanopoulos regret statements regarding President Donald J. Trump made during an interview by George Stephanopoulos with Rep. Nancy Mace on ABC’s This Week on March 10, 2024,” the note reads.
BC must also issue a statement of regret for their slander of the incoming president, which occurred during the election cycle.
As Breitbart News’s Wendell Husebo previously reported, in March, Trump filed a defamation lawsuit against ABC News and Stephanopoulos. Trump claimed that his “reputation was besmirched” by Stephanopoulos claiming during an interview with Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) that two juries had found Trump “liable for rape” in the case against E. Jean Carroll.
The incident occurred during Stephanopoulos’s interview with Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) on March 10. Stephanpoulos said during the interview, “Judges and two separate juries have found him liable for rape and for defaming the victim of that rape. How do you square your endorsement of Donald Trump with the testimony we just saw?”
https://www.breitbart.com/the-media/2024/12/14/abc-news-stephanopoulos-settle-defamation-lawsuit-with-trump-pay-15-million-apologize/
Imagine how much the Don could earn by suing all the media talking heads and stenographers who have spread lies and falsehoods about him over the past few years. He and his lawyers could rake in billions if this case is anything to go by.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KL47xLD-yg
Data is the fossil fuel of AI. We have used it all up.
AI also has the issue of poisoning its own well since now AI finds sources compiled by other AI in its data set.
GIGO in action . 😁
Perhaps, it is incredible at finding syntax errors in code and Copilot does a passable job on mundane tasks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftcLM3502_8
AI says the population of China is 0.9 billion, not 1.4 billion.
or maybe as low as 0.7 billion!!!
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/government-spending-shock-us-budget-deficit-worst-start-year-record
Linked here previously.
I noticed that Medicare outlays absolutely exploded from 79 bil to 129 bil comparing November 24 with November 23. That’s over 60 pc.
Dies anyone know of a boring and bureaucratic explanation?
The Biden team is getting in its last fu before they leaving office.
Unfortunately for America, that seems about right.
Dennis L.
My guess or back of the envelop calculations….. is that Biden is going to leave with 40 trillion in debt not 37 trillion but the new Administration will have to keep it quiet as they will want to add another 20 trillion too! So by the end of Trump term its going to be 60 trillion for the U.S best case scenario!
Good news: the real problem is overpopulation and pollution, not resource availability!
Jeremy Grantham talks to Nate Hagens about reduced fertility and related problems, because of toxicity of chemicals we are using today.
excuse me, typo, mean to say he believes the real problem (near-term) is *population decline*
Elon Musk apparently believes the same thing based on various statements he’s made.
With the changes in Syria it will be interesting to see if plans for a Qatari gas pipeline to Europe gain any momentum.
I wouldn’t count on it. Nothing is stable enough to ensure that pipelines will stay in place, as planned.
Don’t eat the snow: Brown snow falls over Maine town
“According to the post, a paper mill malfunction led to the brown snow after spent black liquor, a by-product of the paper-making process, was released from Rumford’s paper mill.
https://fox8.com/news/dont-eat-the-snow-brown-snow-falls-over-maine-town/
We are diving deeper and deeper into a cannibalistic economy, where everybody requires a lower and lower price.
Despite a still growing economy at 5 % according to the (fake) official data,
40 % of businesses in China are generating loss.
https://youtu.be/VTbS-jEpvng?si=WFJH5bOykSQaQAD0
Cannibalistic baby! We are going to reconnect with our ancestral meager times gastronomy.
That is consistent with the graph showing industrial production.
Dennis L.
And falling prices in China.
Notice deflation… not inflation that everyone keeps saying is going to happen
First deflation, then hyperinflation…can’t wait for the bounce..
Deflation causes Central Banks to panic causes them to print money to save debt in nominal terms causes hyperinflation.
I noted above, that is probably secondary to need to cover interest costs with income. A business will always pay interest before salaries as interest is a constant cost, salaries are variable.
Dennis L.
No china has been doing multiple stimulus campaigns to no avail they are still failing into deflation Inflation will ruin a country faster
MG, we certainly are diving deeper my friend..you ain’t seen nothing yet, this tops Keith
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/inside-the-20trillion-transatlantic-tunnel-that-would-link-the-us-to-the-uk-in-under-an-hour/ar-AA1vG6bX
imagine a world where crossing the Atlantic Ocean was as simple as taking a train to work. This futuristic dream forms the foundation of a proposed transatlantic tunnel-a colossal engineering project that would connect the United States and the United Kingdom, slashing travel time to under an hour. With an estimated cost of £15.6 trillion (approximately $20 trillion), this venture symbolizes the audacious human spirit to transcend geographical limits and strengthen international ties.
Engineers and visionaries have brainstormed various ways to make this ambitious tunnel a reality. Proposed designs include constructing a pathway beneath the ocean floor, suspending a conduit above it, or employing a hybrid model. Another innovative idea involves a floating tunnel submerged 49 meters underwater. This structure would consist of prefabricated segments held in place by tension cables, balancing both the immense pressure of the ocean depths and the hazards of surface maritime activity.
..The Transatlantic Tunnel’s primary function would be to facilitate high-speed train travel. Traditional car travel would be impractical, as the journey would take days and require complex infrastructure to support drivers. Instead, the proposed trains, known as vactrains, could travel at astonishing speeds of up to 5,000 mph
Yee Haw, 5000mph…now, that’s just what can be done with one cubic mile of Pt and some imagination…
Thanks for the laugh.
sounds like one of Keiths more logical ideas
See Norman, Keith is not alone in this world.
Put together as one via Artificial Intelligence Matrix,
Everything is possible….
Everything is possible’: a worrying new book explores the danger of disinformation
This article is more than 8 months old
In Attack from Within, ex-national security prosecutor Barbara McQuade looks at the history of how lies are widely spread
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/mar/16/attack-from-within-book-dangers-of-disinformation
The former US attorney for the eastern district of Michigan urges politicians to get ahead of the curve of artificial intelligence. “I hope that our Congress can do something which we failed to do with social media, which is get ahead of it, because if it can put things in place before they create havoc, it’s much easier than trying to react after the fact.”
Individual citizens, she says, can gain skills be critical consumers of social media. “We can educate ourselves and take responsibility by doing things like, when we read an article, don’t rely just on the headline; we should actually read the article before we forward it to someone else.
That’s why I’m here among you…to educate..as Pink Floyd sung
“ahead of the curve of artificial intelligence”
I have thought about this for over 40 years. I don’t think it is possible, humans are not smart enough to regulate AI. It is going to happen sooner or later. About all we can do is hope it works out.
AI cannot have ”thoughts” about anything other than things ”put in” by human beings
AI cannot physically ”do” anything.—nor ever will.
AI cannot create spontaneous emotion
AI cannot independently switch itself on and create an original thought
i keep laying that down, but Keith skims over that basic level of reality.
Insisting that AI will actually ”do” something—I await the day
You don’t talk to or use AIs.
I find them to be an incredibly useful engineering tool. They can hold on to more parts of a problem than I can. Regardless of your opinions, they will speed up technical progress.
Even among the technical people I know, very few of them understand the idea of using coal (or the carbon out of trash) and excess intermittent power to make diesel fuel. The AI I work with was able to fill in details on the first request.
What current AIs know comes from humans, but they know *all* of it and can find what you need almost instantly. I admit is was a disconcerting experience to be discussing a fiction AI with a real one.
if what ai knows comes from humans
it knows nothing ‘of itself”
nuff said
“one of Keiths”
Known about the idea for maybe 50 years, but did not think it up
ive known about it for years too Keith
whoever thought it up missed the point that Europe and the USA are getting farther apart at the rate your fingernails grow—and theres the small matter of the Atlantic rift to deal with
The idea is so old it might predate plate tectonics. But if someone actually did it, the rift would just be another engineering detail.
just like the magma coming through the rift
lolololol
$20 trillion transatlantic tunnel– not going to happen. Not with less and less oil, certainly.
That’s a clickbait story if I ever saw one!!!
And it was very successful !!
“The Transatlantic Tunnel’”
In the era of nanotechnology boring a tunnel under the Atlantic would be easy.
But why? In such an era, you could go at nearly the speed of light over an optical fiber and rent a body from Hertz rent-a-bod.
Which lead to a Python sort of sketch where someone got the Woody Allan body when they had reserved the Arnold Schwarzenegger model.
“Which lead to a Python sort of sketch where someone got the Woody Allan body when they had reserved the Arnold Schwarzenegger model.”
Bummer.
Dennis L.
“Bummer.”
Yeah. I remember some dude going berserk at a rental counter because they didn’t have the car he had reserved.
Heh, been a long time since I rented a car, but I remember a time when I had three rented from Avis at the same time.
“Yee Haw, 5000mph…now, that’s just what can be done with one cubic mile of Pt and some imagination…” You GOT IT!
Dennis L.
That reminds me of the Talking Heads song
You Got It..Nothing but Flowers
..Are smiling upon them
From the age of the dinosaurs
Cars have run on gasoline
Where? Where have they gone?
Now it’s nothing but flowers
….
There was a shopping mall
Now it’s all covered with flowers
You’ve got it, you’ve got it
If this is paradise
I wish I had a lawn mower
You’ve got it, you’ve got it
….
With the beautiful highway
This used to be real estate
Now it’s only fields and trees
Where? Where is the town?
Now it’s nothing but flowers
…This was a Pizza Hut
Now it’s all covered with daisies
You’ve got it, you’ve got it
I miss the honky tonks
Dairy Queens, and 7-Elevens
You’ve got it, you’ve got
…
Candy bars and chocolate chip cookies
You’ve got it, you’ve got it
We used to microwave
Now we just eat nuts and berries
You’ve got it, you’ve got it
This was a discount store
Now it’s turned into a cornfield
You’ve got it, you’ve got it
Don’t leave me stranded here
I can’t get used to this lifestyle
This would allow the Muslim of England to come to America this is unacceptable.
“this is unacceptable.”
Don’t worry about it. Talking post singularity if at all.
By that point, an AI based religion will replace Islam and all the others. Or people will upload and thus withdraw from the world as we know it.
Maybe think of it this way. We have a given amount of capital invested which is a long term investment, greater than one year. We are not able to consume as much of the output of that capital as previously due to decreased ability to pay for this output which is the oil affordability problem. Hence, we over produce to gain sufficient revenue to cover the investment. All capital is a sunk cost, the rate of depreciation is increasing secondary to the salvage value of the assets, hence price for cashflow to cover interest. When the graphs of cashflow and interest cover croww, that is bankruptcy.
Dennis L.
CNPC: China Reaches Refined Oil Demand Peak
China, the world’s heavyweight oil consumer, has officially hit its peak. According to CNPC’s Economics & Technology Research Institute, the country’s refined oil consumption maxed out in 2023 at 399 million metric tons (roughly 8 million barrels per day) and is set to decline by 1.3% in 2024.
For an economy that’s been a relentless driver of global oil demand for decades, this news is striking.
As for the reasons behind the shift, they can be chalked up in part to electric vehicles, which are taking over Chinese roads. By 2035, half of the country’s car fleet is expected to be EVs, so some are predicting.
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/CNPC-China-Reaches-Refined-Oil-Demand-Peak.html
Peak oil demand in China may also be an indication that China is in recession. The WSJ is now reporting that China is in the second year of falling prices within the country.
https://www.wsj.com/world/china/china-currency-deflation-risk-impact-aa877aef
Prices Won’t Stop Falling in China, and Beijing Is Grasping for Solutions
Companies are pumping out goods amid falling prices, creating vicious cycle that is eroding confidence
This is consistent with your graph on industrial production. If it slows, there is less need for oil.
If oil is going down, if production is slowing this implies less need for transactional currency across China and if they are selling less across the world, that means less need for transactional currency as well as lower ways of making it as there are fewer transactions.
This is Warren’s idea of the market being a function of GDP, transactions.
Dennis L.
Plus falling population.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_China
That is the oil tanker that is turning.
Right! Falling population means less of everything is needed: schools, roads, restaurants.
Nonce verification error check.
America just is too expensive for most people
https://youtu.be/jRs84wUuGxM?si=BRNjoO9kg258mQiu
I wonder if there is a major global power where life is more reasonably priced.
Da!
should give you all an update re: inflation (100 rubles one dollar). It is definitely there. Gasoline at 56, used to be 51 (dipped for a few months to 48 and 49). Top eggs at the supermarket are at 130/10, used to be 110 (low end are still around 70). I bought two magnificent soup bones today ( I am tired of eating a cow that we slaughtered in the field because she was too lame. we hacked it with an ax and the pieces are too big), about 500 gr each, was 499 rubles for the two, could have been 400 last year. Good ground beef is at 600, used to be 500. Kefir is creeping into the 90 rubles range per liter, used to be mid 70, though we have a few milk cows now, so I get 3 liters at a time of luxurious clabbered milk. I also received about 8kg of fermented veggies (cucumbers, tomatoes, wild armenian greens, and mixed veggies) as a gift.
domestic electricity prices unchanged. company el. prices about 3 times it, 10 rubles/kWh. diesel at 65, was 56 16 months ago. Fruits also increased, difficult to find good fruits below 300/kg in good stores, but I did buy good oranges and grapes for 190 and 230 yesterday at the supermarket. IMHO entirely driven by diesel and lower salaries which have exploded.
thx for update
In Belgium food price inflation is about 30% since 2023 . My grocery list is very boring as I keep away from carbs and sugars , so makes my job easier to observe the change .
Suggest use bushels of wheat or some such as an independent variable for inflation. Plot the prices of a given good in bushels over time, better estimate I think. Currencies are too damn difficult and tax considerations distort them greatly.
E.g a farmer purchases a $1M combine which he doesn’t need because the immediate aftertax cost is $500K. The problem is the next year with a note the principal is due for that year.
Many very large farmers no lease, cheaper than fixing machines owned. Fully deductible.
Dennis L.
Dennis, the price of wheat is politically controlled here. Many people do not grow it for this reason. Where I live oats are king (well hay is king, for dairy, but those who grow, grow oats).
Added US government debt goes toward giving more money to people and businesses within the US.
The huge amount of debt added by the US government during the Biden administration has gone to trying to keep the cost of living down for US citizens. Harris ran on a platform of providing more subsidies to people, presumably through ever more debt. Other countries have not been able to pile on the debt in the same way.
But even with all of the debt, the resources for more goods and services per capita are not really there. Prices for cars are too high. Average age of cars on the road keeps rising.
Market is US is >150% of GDP, financial tx are part of GDP; it is a rabbit hole. Strip out financial tx from GDP and have non financial tx, then Market is >>150% of real economy.
Warren is selling, look out below.
Dennis L.
New York State’s Coming Energy Crisis
By Jon Pepper
https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/12/new-york-states-coming-energy-crisis/amp/
The state only narrowly avoided a major catastrophe two winters ago. Its subpar grid makes a real one all but inevitable.
….Conditions were especially dangerous in New York, which depends on natural gas to generate the largest share of its electricity and to provide home heating and cooking to more than a million customers. Frozen wellheads on pipelines that provide natural gas to the city suffered a rapid drop in pressure that threatened to collapse the system.
Had pipeline pressure fallen further, New York City would have lost its gas distribution for the winter. Workers would have needed to be brought in from other states to help go door-to-door to clear pipelines, make repairs, and relight pilot lights. It’s not difficult to imagine the chaos that would have ensued: massive evacuations and relocations, shuttered businesses, and threats to the health and survival of thousands of people. ConEd, the local utility, estimated it would have taken months to fully restore service.
…..It noted, “Ongoing capacity expansion efforts by pipeline companies aimed at . . . cold weather demand for natural gas are facing regulatory and legal complications that have slowed the development of multiple critical capacity additions.”
…..The nation’s climate press routinely reports on environmental catastrophes that it imagines decades away, but a potential disaster in its immediate future has eluded its notice.
….Solar resources, which are overwhelmingly the largest share of new resources connecting to the grid, do not provide output during many hours when winter electricity demand is at its highest,” NERC reported last month. “New battery resources can extend the output from solar PV [photovoltaics] for short durations, but winter’s longer hours of darkness, cloud cover, and precipitation will push the limits of today’s battery storage capabilities and installed energy capacity.
If I was living in those places I would invest in some wool blankets and some furry pets and some water bottles …to keep from freezing.
Tic Tok.
….
I am afraid this article may be right.
New York seems to have natural gas resources that can be reached by fracking. But it has banned fracking.
The last data I saw from EIA shows that natural gas production from Pennsylvania is down. In fact, the chart looks a lot like “Peak Natural Gas from Pennsylvania.” I would expect that this would be the biggest source of pipeline natural gas coming to New York.
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/ngm_epg0_fgw_spa_mmcfdm.htm
With natural gas, nearby resources are especially important. The whole Northeast has had a problem with natural gas for a long time. In fact, a natural gas LNG import facility was built in Boston years ago. When I look up information, I find this article from December 2023:
https://rbnenergy.com/cold-as-ice-peding-closure-of-everett-lng-terminal-poses-challenge-for-new-england-gas-supply
Cold As Ice – Pending Closure Of Everett LNG Terminal Poses Challenge For New England Gas Supply
Wednesday, 12/06/2023
A somewhat earlier article says that the LNG terminal is being closed because forecasts say that US natural gas supply will be sufficient; the US doesn’t really need the imported natural gas.
https://www.powermag.com/everett-lng-terminal-at-the-crossroads/
We also know that US shale gas production (in total) is down in 2024. The stories about huge abundance of US natural gas do not seem to really be true.
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=63506
If the US’s natural gas production really is at a peak, the US will not be able to export nearly as much as hoped. And the US Northeast, including New York, Boston, and nearby areas, will be the ones most affected. Without the balancing power of natural gas in New York, there may be a problem with keeping the lights and heat on.
Will the real economy really miss them? Not sarcastic, real question.
Dennis L.
Sad day today . Mr Shellman announced that he will discontinue with his blog OSB . Learned so much from the ” Real Oilman ” . 😢
His message will last. Maybe this is another sign that the shit is about to hit the fan.
Yes this will be greatly missed
Bummer he had such a negative experience with the feedback
“In the early morning hours of Wednesday, December 11, Joe Biden tried to start a nuclear war with Russia.
And on Thursday, December 12, Donald Trump did his best to stop it.
If he succeeds, Donald Trump will have saved Christmas.”?
https://scottritter.substack.com/p/how-trump-saved-christmas
Trump explained that his view was not the same as Biden’s, with respect to sending US missiles into Russia. But there is more to be done.
Somewhere the monies withheld in some sort of bank, about $350B I think will need to be repaid to establish trust and full faith and credit.
That may be a challenge.
Dennis L.
Interesting point!
Great piece by James Corbett. I wasn’t aware Drone technology was this advanced and it’s being done by AI. The first video about 20 secs long shows a colorful flying dragon and it was done via a swarm of miniature drones.
The last video 7 minutes long, shows how these miniature drones can gun you down via a single kill-shot, powered by AI.
https://corbettreport.substack.com/p/the-drone-wars-you-are-not-prepared
And future warfare may include enemies on the battlefield unleashing tens of thousands of these mini drones.
I am sure anti-drones drones are being developed with high priority as we speak. My guess: hunting in teams, multi-band communication, AI-driven (not FPV), and I assume the weapon of choice for the minidrones is shotgun with bird pellets.
Watch the video. Nothing can move fast enough to prevent a hit by these things. They are incredibly fast, incredibly nimble, and with AI controlling the flight path … they are pure death machines.
They don’t even need explosives or bullets. Just an impacting spike is enough to kill by.
This is AI, Lithium, Four Electric Motors, and a few plastic parts… and a Black Mirror episode… except its real…. now.
I watched it. the anti-drone drones also have AI, and bullets still fly at more than 500 meters per second. Obviously a bullet is not effective, but a shotgun still has a spray covering a fairly wide area. More to it, it is probably cheap to make chicken wire curtains at the entrance of each trench or dugout and across each opening. These things can not penetrate chicken wire and I doubt they can kill at even 60 cm air distance. They can fly through forests I guess, getting cover while hunting small groups, but I really want to see them negotiating the underbrush. also what happens when GPS does not work? I was at an event in Moscow and it took me 150 minutes to find the venue. GPS no longer works in vast tracts of Russia-Ukraine.
Already now, snipers have ceased to exist (they are found by triangulating acoustics in drone groups), no one shoots anyone (in Ukraine), it is 100% FABs, artillery shells and drones for all types of vehicles. Hypersonics are just for infrastructure.
>> they are found by triangulating acoustics in drone groups
I’m surprised drones can hear much over the whir of the blades, assuming the snipers have silencers. I would assume that, if snipers have reduced roles, it is because of the much shorter duration of infantry engagements and increased role of standoff weapons and ISR-driven fires.
surely they use bandpass filters, and take only certain fourier frequencies.
Swinging the barrel of anything could not keep up with the movement of smaller drones. There is a moment issue there. The AI would be an essential response otherwise.
GPS can be replaced by general triangulation and geographical coordinates. But, then if the target is something 150 – 220cm high, and about a quarter as wide… it probably doesnt matter.
The underbrush is where things like lidar and AI generated 3d visualization will be essential. Navigating the physical world is a key aspect of AI.
The chicken wire caging seems like a good idea. It would be like a suit of armour. I could imagine tree branch graphics covering it for travel safety.
If you start adding lidar that little thing is going to use quite a bit of power. It is still something that can be fooled with paper cutouts stapled to a tree.
and I also disagree that a barrel can not keep up with the stochastic movement. These things already produce a large spray, and were invented in the field. once a proper gun is developed…
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/D4DU3Woe7ew
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/trump-team-weighing-options-preemptive-airstrikes-irans-nuclear-program
Here is the next war… it’s probably why he was elected. Agreed to play ball. Welcome to the new boss same as the old boss!
Can BAU continue a while longer if Iranian and Russian oil can be controlled by the Western coalition or does it not matter because it’s a world commodity and will be available on the world market either way? Did Operation Iraq Liberation (OIL) help with world oil supply for a time or was it a waste of resources?
It makes no difference to the global energy predicament for the reasoning you give.
It would simply help to sustain the West’s monetary dominance, and therefore the living standards of its population, a little longer, allowing them a greater share than would otherwise be the case.
It helps BAU in the West continue for longer if the oil continues to flow, but the domestic population of the oil exporter is denied those resources. Like what happened in Syria or, to a lesser extent, what happened in Russia in the 90’s.
I listened to A good Nate Hagins podcast today about how someone came up to him and told him “ you ruined my life “ and how this person came to realize what is happening. I think it’s picking up speed- the knowledge that there is not enough to go around
that response is hilarious
All human societies are driven, in essence, by lies.
Extremely interesting PDF regarding the energy requirements for the mining sector in Australia. 10% of the total energy use!
https://arena.gov.au/assets/2017/11/renewable-energy-in-the-australian-mining-sector.pdf
The Australian mining sector consumes roughly 500 petajoules per year, 10% of Australia’s total energy use, and consumption has risen at 6.0% per annum over the last decade, driven primarily by increased mining volumes. The mining sector derives most of its energy from diesel (41%), natural gas (33%), and grid electricity (22%), with the remainder supplied by a mixture of other refined fuels, coal, LPG, renewables, and biofuels. The percentage contribution from diesel has fallen from 49% to 41% over the last decade and been largely replaced by natural gas and grid electricity, as infrastructure develops and oil prices continue to show volatility. Mining energy intensity – the energy required per tonne of product – is a function of definitions, location, mining type, and processing type.
Average energy intensity is estimated at 50.5kWh/tonne for coal, 10.7kWh/ tonne for minerals, and 54.5kWh/tonne for metals, with the majority consumed in diesel equipment and comminution operations. The energy intensity in metals, however, ranges from 13kWh/tonne for bauxite to 210kWh/tonne for gold, due largely to differences in on-site beneficiation operations. Energy for metals with low on-site beneficiation, such as bauxite and iron ore, is predominately consumed as diesel for plant involved in extraction and transport. Energy for metals with high on-site site beneficiation, such as copper and gold, is predominantly consumed as electricity.
Thanks for pointing this out. The one problem with it is that it is from 2017.
I looked at Australian Energy site, and discovered more recent charts (for at least some things) can be found at this site:
https://www.energy.gov.au/energy-data/australian-energy-statistics/data-charts/australian-energy-production-fuel-type
Not surprising, after what we saw yesterday:
Robert Bryce on Substack
https://robertbryce.substack.com/p/germany-gets-dunkelfked-again-norway
Germany Gets Dunkelf**ked Again, Norway To Dismantle Power Cables To Europe
Another wind drought has led to soaring electricity prices across Europe. Norway, which exports power to its European neighbors, has seen enough.
Germany is starting to pay the consequences of its failed green policies and Norway is rightly starting to get tired of having some of the negative effects of other nations’ bad choices.
In the meantime, I think Norway will be the only country on the European continent that will be “spared” from collapse.
It has abundant hydroelectric power that satisfies all consumption, both electrical and for the heating, since 80% of buildings are full-electric with heat pumps, 15% are heated with wood, 3% by centralized municipal systems, the remaining and negligible 2% with gas/diesel.
Low number of inhabitants and with a good demographic pyramid unlike other European countries.
Self-sufficient in terms of meat and dairy products but largely dependent on imported fruit and some vegetables.
Oil and gas in more than sufficient quantities.
A sovereign fund of more than a trillion dollars.
Geography and climate favorable to resist the invasions of beggars that will materialize in the coming decades in the european continent.
No country anywhere will be spared from collapse because what appears as self sufficiency in a globalized world is wholly parasitic on what will be lacking during its death throes. You never know what you have until you lose it.
Indeed. If it only 6M why not invade it. On grounds that their children are not sexualized enough, or whatever the West is using as excuse these days.
Germany is killing their economy because of Climate Change. So Germany’s auto exports are way down and to offset it, they are going deep into EV’s and they want to sell those EV’s to China. Big problem because brand new Chinese EV’s cost roughly $9400 in US money while German EV’s are 4-5 times as expensive.
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/germany/volkswagen-protests-heat-up/
You have to keep your feet on the ground, look at geography and demographics.
That Norway, 6 million inhabitants and its hydraulic energy can marry Denmark, 6 million inhabitants and its wind energy, is realistic. But not connect the 2 networks with a Germany of 85 million inhabitants. Basic needs are not the same, and Germany alone can swallow the production of both countries. What is at issue is the market, which is too big to function coherently.
“Existing EV batteries may last up to 40% longer than expected
“Consumers’ real-world stop-and-go driving of electric vehicles benefits batteries more than the steady use simulated in almost all laboratory tests of new battery designs, Stanford-SLAC study finds.”
https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2024/12/existing-ev-batteries-may-last-up-to-40-longer-than-expected
But, without fossil fuels, would there be batteries, vehicles, or grid power from which to charge them?
Exactly! Also, the fossil fuel system is needed to maintain the roads that these vehicles drive on.
Nothing is long lasting about the overall system.
lais
Tar shortage, the Puy en Velay bypass delayed by 3 months, due to lack of tar, due to the drop in oil consumption. it was in 2018.
I talked with two companies involved with road construction / maintaince in Belgium about 2022 . Stadsbader and Afcon . They said they were loosing money because the prices of asphalt had skyrocketed . In the Covid crisis oil production declined and there was a shortage of bitumen . We here have discussed that the refineries must sell their entire product mix that comes from refining crude . Liebig’s law of the minimum in action .
“must sell their entire product mix that comes from refining crude”
If they did not, the tanks would fill up to where they had no place to put it.
“ . . . the Shen Zing battery is designed
2:12 to push electric vehicles to new heights
2:15 offering an insane 1,000 km or 620 Mi of
2:20 range with ultra fast charging imagine
2:23 being able to drive from New York to
2:25 Chicago on a single charge . . . “?
http://lachute.over-blog.com/2024/12/inquietude.html
For illustrations go to the original site.
2,181 / 5,000
1915: One soldier, to another:
– “Let’s hope they hold on!”
– “Who?”
– “The civilians.”
That’s a bit of a problem today.
The current French system is based on the myth of the “free and undistorted” market, something that is difficult to do when production is concentrated on a few historical operators, namely in France, EDF (Electricité de France), Enedis, formerly GDF (Gaz de France) and CNR (Compagnie Nationale du Rhône). The largest is EDF, Enedis has thermal power plants and nuclear power plants in Belgium, and CNR has dams on the Rhône.
But “to lower prices”, we are told, “we need competition”.
So, we created RTE (technical electricity network), responsible for the transport infrastructure, to avoid, as in some countries, having Christmas trees in the streets, there are so many power lines, and, historically, the merger of 1000 electricity companies after 1945, into one, allowed enormous savings and networks, and standards (they all had their own). RTE receives a fee to transport the electricity that others sell.
Since competition, holy, sacred and deified, cannot exist when one produces practically everything and the others nothing, we created ARENH. (I can already see some who are lost, there!). ARENH is “regulated access to historic nuclear electricity”. Who forces EDF to sell 100 TWh/year to “alternative suppliers”, who are easy to recognize: They are all located in La Défense, and their knowledge of the sector is often profound: they know how to turn on the lights and the air conditioning. They buy, when they feel like it, at 42 euros per MWh, generally when the price is at its highest, and they sometimes resell it, much more expensive… to EDF, which, at that time, is obliged to sell them and which no longer has electricity to supply to its own customers.
We also created the CRE (Energy Regulation Commission) responsible for the proper application of the texts.
It will have escaped no one that the creation of all these bodies secretes a bureaucracy of well-paid friends and cronies. A Nomenklatura, a state nobility…
2,790 / 5,000
The only impact is to empty EDF of its profit margins for the benefit of speculators who rake in big profits, without covering the costs. Which doesn’t stop some, all the same, from going bankrupt or for some, from giving up. In general, these were big companies looking for diversification before realizing that they had their fingers in a mess. “Shithole” in “godon” (English).
Because they are still obliged to find troublemakers, finally, individual customers. To find them, you have to offer lower prices than EDF, and during periods of price increases, some have stopped everything and fired their customers.
So, with this system sold as “lowering prices”, we have arrived at a “system that increases prices”… To “save competition”, and in passing, prevent the surge in prices in Germany, or at least limit it… In 12 years, prices have doubled…
Results: there are several.
In terms of consumption, the “historical customers”, plumbers, heating engineers and electricians, namely, individuals who owned electric heaters with a Joule effect, make these so-called trades happy. Indeed, for home ownership, it is more economical to have electric heating, but we are cold and we ruin ourselves. As soon as households have a little cash, they change systems, heat pump, wood stoves…
Then, solar panel systems to be connected directly, without resale, are sold on a large scale. This at least saves the day.
Then, electricians are overwhelmed with requests for quotes for panel systems with self-consumption and resale of the surplus, or even with storage (but this is still rare).
Then, heating temperatures are visibly dropping sharply in private homes, recalling “the darkest hours of our history” (obviously, at the time, there was almost no electricity and heating was a distant memory) from 1940 to 1948 to be pronounced in French and in a single burst (without breathing): “Laizeurlaiplusombredenotristoire” to respect the political correctness of the “left-wing progressives”.
Well, as we can guess a certain annoyance, and even a certain annoyance, politically, it gives this:
The map of the National Rally vote, by municipalities in the last European elections. It is in the lead in 32,613 municipalities out of 35,015.
Clearly, the rear is no longer holding. Basically, the only place where Macronism is established is Paris, a Paris populated by executives, where a female executive is so brainless that she is capable of going for a walk with her baby in a wolf enclosure.
To vote for the government, you simply have to be deprived of any sense of reality…
Do you think I’ve finished explaining to you? No way !
To be continued !
Electricity is different than most products. Competition doesn’t exactly work right. France has tried to solve the electricity problem differently than other countries. The country seems to have run into quite a few difficulties.
Nancy Pelosi has been admitted to a hospital in Luxembourg after “sustaining an injury” during an official engagement
https://x.com/nicksortor/status/1867609669155389642
Mitch Mconnell just fell the other day too.
The word now is that Pelosi has a fractured hip from the fall.
All is mind-blowing: https://youtu.be/KeGYI69sWvw?si=g5mtkqlwV1TLHNFh
Let us hope that we will not be a part of that mind-blowing consumerist future that Bill Gates predicts.
gatesy is a rich idiot that is part of a cabal of other rich idiots who try to control the world why is this the logical truth because on this website we have idiots that believe certain crazy ideas so it is a distinct possibility that these rich idiots will bring in their plan my advice mg is expect a hard dystopian world where ai is everywhere, middle class is virtually gone and replaced with a low class population struggling to survive in this digital world where instead of cash being king cryptocurrency will be king.
There is basically too much consumers on the Earth. We need a lot of devices to control the pollution. The people have degenerated into consuming machines that await that everything will come to their door. The AI and robots reveal this meaningless propagation of the humans that are useless. No one needs the species that turned the land of plenty into dead and toxic wasteland. That amassed ugly heaps of concrete and other construction materials creating so called homes where everything must be delivered from distant places. If not the collapse comes immediately.
Bill Gates has all kinds of ideas of changes that could be made that might help the future, but he clearly has not through the what might go wrong along the way. Changing any one part of a complex interconnected economic system is fraught with peril. Maybe it is overall better, but maybe it requires more fossil fuels, or maybe it runs into water shortages, or maybe some other part of the system doesn’t work.
Maintaining the change may be a problem as well.
Or put more simply, “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.” from a Chiffon margarine commercial and if I am correct, margarine is now thought to be bad for your health.
In my youth in Wisconsin yellow margarine could not be sold, WI is a dairy state. Hence there was a part of a plastic bag which when kneaded would turn the stuff yellow.
Dennis L.
“when kneaded would turn the stuff yellow”
It was not local to that state, I remember it from Virginia and my wife remembers it from California.
I think mothers rapidly figured out this was something to occupy the kids.
Gail,
Followed your link to the source of the data for this month’s post, thanks.
Bit of trivia. Apparently to become a rabbi one had to study intensely and be the best rabbinical student. If one made rabbi, the wealthy families desired their daughter to become the bride. Picked this up on some podcast on why Jews are generally more intelligent than those of us who are not, think Jordan Peterson mentioned this. Additionally, even in Israel the families are such that the birth rate is greater than the replacement rate. So, biology again, living room.
Life is simple, I suspect this bugs the heck out of intellectuals/elites who want the world to be their way.
We have a finite world, it appears very unique in the universe; spaceship earth is a pretty special place. Those who screw it up will not be looked on favorably; many of the intellectuals eschew children, too busy with career. Sort of a biological dead end, always biology.
For those interested in the grand scheme of things, perhaps listen to
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0FQeGjPSc0&t=1222s
I have not finished it, but it paints a very broad picture of history,
Dennis L.
Which was true in the old days, not any more.
It is always about oil . Tim Watkins .
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2024/12/04/it-was-always-about-the-oil/
Yes, indeed,
Being and Oil by Chad A Haag, written a whole book about it…
And a YouTube discussion too.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ft4CMirinAY&t=1511s&pp=ygUZQmVpbmcgYW5kIG9pbCBjaGFkIGEgaGFhZw%3D%3D
Recommended to shake one off their comfort zone
In the first ever book-length manifesto of Peak Oil Philosophy, Chad Haag argues that the transition to Fossil Fuel Modernity replaced the herds of megafauna of the Hunter Gatherer Worldview and the cyclically-harvested grain of the Agrarian Worldview with a single immensely powerful but quickly vanishing substance: oil. Everything we do is a euphemism for burning vast amounts of fossil fuels. Haag provides an original hierarchy of transcendental standards of meaning to reveal the extent to which our mythologies, systems, counter sense objects, and deep memes are just so many incomplete revelations of our Phenomenological awareness of petroleum. But as the globe already hit Peak Oil in 2005 and has been on the downward slope of depletion ever since, these higher order meanings have begun to collapse into falsity. Oil’s peculiar role in sustaining systems of meaning precisely through imposing a hard physical limit to existence therefore requires a novel Ontology of Limitation. Haag reawakens the Heideggerian quest for Being by suggesting that even the subject itself must be understood as a limitation sustained through the limitation of, in our era, fossil fuels. Haag introduces a new table of 15 modes of truth to explicate how Peak Oil defies a simple binary of truth and falsity, given that even truth under Fossil Fuels is just a euphemism for oil’s presence. Combining the Peak Oil insights of John Michael Greer and the anti-technological theories of Ted Kaczynski with the philosophical rigor of Heidegger, Aristotle, Zizek, Plato, Husserl, Descartes, and Jordan Peterson, Haag crafts a truly unique response to the challenge of joining Peak Oil and Philosophy.
Can be obtain in written form on Amazon for $5.50 or 2.00 Kindle
Why the house of cards is headed to fall down for the UK. Basically, too much debt and no way to repay it, now without UK oil to export. Buyers cannot afford to take on more debt because they are already up to their ears in debt.
With all means of production now owned by the superrich, who will not need those who are trying to start from the bottom, those who have no capital, etc,
The coming technofeudalistic society will see billions of people, having no way of making a living, simply collapsing to death on the streets or in hovels people who do matter won’t see or notice.
With everything owned by the top 1%, there will be nothing for trest as it will be a winner take all world, no quarters, no slacks, nothing whatsoever. If they are useful they will be kept alive, although probably not allowed to reproduce since reproduction will be exclusively the rights of the winners.
Unimaginable horrors will wait the bottom 90% of the population, with not one single line written about them. I believe the first work in history talking about the common people was Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor or something, and Sir John Falstaff, modeled after Sir John Oldcastle who was later burnt at stake for following Protestantism, met a bad end. The poor common folks simply had no voice, as civilization has no place for them.P
People whose background do not warranty their current social positions will be put into their places by genetic testing.
The Adjustment will be violent and there will be many resistances, but the Owners are very very, very upset about the plebs polluting their playgrounds and there will be no mercy or quarters given whatsoever, enforced by those who will be paid by the kills they claim.
I am glad that at least one person is talking about social structure.
Syria and peak oil . Pat Reymond . French use translator.
http://lachute.over-blog.com/2024/12/pic-petrolier-syrien.html
Syria’s oil production peaked back in 1997. Its oil exports started to decline not long afterward, reaching 0 by 2012. Its current balance came close to hitting zero in 2003, and fell below 2003 in 2004.
Syria’s finances have been in disarray for a long time. Its population had grown greatly, during the time oil supply was available. These problems made the country vulnerable to attacks by others, which they cannot fend off. Also, citizens themselves are unhappy with the situation.
According to the translation, “if Assad did not want the refugees to return, he thought that he would not have the means to support them.”
A poor country cannot afford to feed a large population. Pat Reymond thinks France may be headed in a similar direction.