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I predict that the world economy will shrink in the next 10 years. I think that this is bound to happen because of energy and debt limits the world economy is hitting. There are a variety of other factors involved, as well.
In this post, I will try to describe the physics-based limits that the economy is facing, related to diminishing returns of many kinds. The problem we are facing has sometimes been called “limits to growth,” or “overshoot and collapse.” Such changes tend to lead to a loss of “complexity.” They are part of the way economies evolve. I would also like to share some ideas on the changes that are likely to occur over the coming decade.
[1] The world economy is a tightly integrated physics-based system, which is experiencing diminishing returns in far more areas than just oil supply.
When extraction of a mineral takes place, usually the easiest (and cheapest) portion of the mineral deposit is extracted first. After the most productive portion is removed, the cost of extraction gradually increases. This process is described as “diminishing returns.” Generally, more energy is required to extract lower quality ores.
The economy is now reaching diminishing returns in many ways. All kinds of resources are affected, including fossil fuels, uranium, fresh water, copper, lithium, titanium, and other minerals. Even farmland is affected because with higher population, more food is required from a similar amount of arable land. Additional-cost efforts such as irrigation can increase food supply from available arable land.
The basic problem is two-fold: rising population takes place while the easiest to extract resources are depleting. The result seems to be Limits to Growth, as modeled in the 1972 book, “The Limits to Growth.” Academic research shows that problems such as those modeled (sometimes referred to as “overshoot and collapse”) have been extremely common throughout history.
Precisely how this problem unfolds varies according to the specifics of each situation. Growing debt levels and increasing wage disparity are common symptoms before collapse. Governments become vulnerable to losses in war and to being overthrown from within. Epidemics tend to spread easily because high wage disparity leads to poor nutrition for many low-wage workers. Dr. Joseph Tainter, in his book, “The Collapse of Complex Societies,” describes the situation as the loss of complexity, as a society no longer has the ability to support some of the programs it previously was able to support.
At the same time the existing economy is failing, the beginnings of new economies can be expected to start. In some sense, economies “evolve,” just as plants and animals evolve. New economies will eventually replace existing ones. These changes are a necessary part of evolution, caused by the physics of the biosphere.
In physics terms, economies are dissipative structures, just as plants, animals, and hurricanes are dissipative structures. All dissipative structures require energy supplies of some type(s) to grow and remain away from a dead state. These structures do not “live” endlessly. Instead, they come to an end and are often replaced by new, slightly different, dissipative structures.
[2] Over the next 10 years, the general direction of the economy will be toward contraction, rather than growth.
There are many indications that the world economy is hitting a turning point because of rising population and diminishing returns with respect to resource extraction. For example:
[a] Debt levels are very high in the US and other countries. A rising debt level can temporarily be used to pull an economy forward without adequate energy supplies because it indirectly gives workers and businesses more spendable income. This income can be used to work around the lack of inexpensive energy products of the preferred types in a variety of different ways:
- It can allow consumers to afford a higher price for existing energy products, if the additional funds get back to customers as higher incomes or lower taxes.
- It can allow businesses to find more efficient ways of using resources, such as ramping up international trade or building more efficient vehicles.
- It can allow the development of new energy products, such as nuclear power generation and electricity from wind and solar.
What we are finding now is that these new approaches tend to encounter bottlenecks of their own. For example, oil supply is sufficiently constrained that the current level of international trade no longer seems to be feasible. Also, wind and solar don’t directly replace oil; electricity based on wind turbines and solar panels can lead to blackouts. Furthermore, diminishing returns with respect to oil and other resources tends to get worse over time, leading to a need for ever more workarounds.
If at some point, extraction becomes more constrained and workarounds fail to provide adequate relief, added debt will lead to inflation rather than to hoped-for economic growth. Higher inflation is the issue that many advanced economies have been struggling with recently. This is an indication that the world has hit limits to growth.
[b] Because of low oil prices, companies are deciding to cut back new investments in extracting oil from shale, and likely elsewhere.
Figure 1 shows that oil prices rise and fall; they don’t rise endlessly. They rose after US oil production hit its first limits in 1970, but this was worked around by ramping up oil production elsewhere. Prices rose in the 2003 to 2008 period and then fell temporarily due to recession. They returned to a higher level in 2011 to 2013, but they have settled at a lower level since then.
One factor in the price decline since 2013 has been the production of US shale oil, adding to world oil supply. Another factor has been growing wage disparity, as workers from rich countries have indirectly begun to compete with workers from low-wage countries for many types of jobs. Low-wage workers cannot afford cars, motorcycles, or long-distance vacations, and this affordability issue is holding down oil demand.
US oil production from shale is in danger of collapsing during the next few years because prices are low, making new investment unprofitable for many producers. In fact, current prices for oil from shale are lower than shown on Figure 1, partly because US prices are a little lower than Brent, and partly because prices have fallen further in 2025. The recent price available for US WTI oil is only about $62 per barrel.
[c] World per capita coal production has fallen since 2014. A recent problem has been low prices.
Transportation costs are a major factor in the delivered price of coal. The reduced production of coal is at least partly the result of coal mines near population centers getting mined out, and the high cost of transporting coal from more distant mines. Today’s coal prices do not seem to be high enough to accommodate the higher costs relating to diminishing returns.
[d] In theory, added debt could be used to prop up oil and coal prices, but debt levels are already very high.
Besides the problem with inflation, mentioned in point [a], there are problems with debt levels becoming unmanageably high.
Figure 3 shows US government debt as a ratio to GDP. If we look at the period since 2008, there was an especially large increase in debt at the time of the 2007-2009 Financial Crisis and the 2020 Pandemic. The debt level has become so high that interest on the debt is likely to require tax revenue to rise endlessly. The underlying problem is needing to pay interest on the huge amount of outstanding debt.
Putting together [a], [b], [c], and [d], the world has a huge problem. As the world economy is currently organized, it is heavily dependent on both oil and coal. Oil is heavily used in agriculture and in transportation of all kinds (cars, trucks, trains, airplanes, and ships). Coal is especially used in steel and concrete making, and in metal refining. We don’t have direct replacements for coal and oil for these uses. Wind and solar are terribly deficient at their current state of development.
The laws of physics tell us that, given the world’s current infrastructure, a reduction in the availability of both crude oil and coal will lead to cutbacks in the production of many kinds of goods and services around the world. Thus, we should expect that GDP will contract, perhaps for a long period, until workarounds for our difficulties can be developed. Today’s wind turbines and solar panels cannot solve the problem for many reasons, one of which is that fact that production and transport of these devices is dependent upon coal and oil supplies.
Thus, without adequate oil and coal to meet the needs of the world’s growing population, the world economy is being forced to gradually contract.
[3] Overall living standards can be expected to fall rather than rise during the next decade.
A recent article in the Economist shows the following chart, based on an analysis by the United Nations:
Figure 4 shows the trend in the Human Development Index as level in 2023-24. I expect that the trend will gradually shift downward in 2024-2025 and beyond. Modern advances, such as the availability of potable water in homes and the availability of electricity 24 hours per day, will become increasingly less common.
The Economist article displaying Figure 4 notes that, so far, most of the drop in living standards has happened in the poorer countries of the world. These countries were hit harder by Covid restrictions than rich countries. For example, the drop in tourism had a greater impact on less advanced countries than on rich countries. Poor countries were also affected by a decline in export orders for luxury clothing.
Outside of poor countries, young people are already finding it difficult to find jobs that pay well. They are often burdened with debt relating to advanced education, making it difficult for them to have the same standard of living that their parents had. This trend is likely to start hitting older citizens, as well. Jobs will be available, but they won’t pay well. This problem will affect both young and old.
[4] Governments will be especially vulnerable to cutbacks.
History shows that when overshoot and collapse occur, governments are likely to experience severe difficulties, indirectly because many of their citizens are getting poorer. They require more government programs, but if wages tend to be low, the taxes they pay tend to be low, too.
Unfortunately, the kinds of cutbacks being undertaken by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are very much necessary to get payments by the US government down to a level that can be supported by taxes. Regardless of how successful the current DOGE program is, I expect a huge reduction in the number of individuals on the payroll of the US government, perhaps by 50% to 75%, in the next 10 years. I also expect major cutbacks in the funding for outside organizations, such as universities and the many organizations DOGE has targeted.
At some point, the US government will need to reduce or eliminate many types of benefit payments made now. One approach might be to try to send many kinds of programs, such as job loss protection, Medicaid, and Medicare, back to the states to handle. Of course, the states would also have difficulty paying for these benefits without huge tax increases.
[5] Ten years from now, universities and colleges will enroll far fewer students.
I expect that university enrollments will fall by as much as 75% over the next 10 years, partly because government funding for universities is expected to fall. With less funding, tuition and fees are likely to be even higher than they are today. At the same time, jobs for university graduates that pay well will become less available. These considerations will lead fewer students to enroll in four-year programs. Shorter, more targeted education teaching specific skills are likely to become more popular.
There will still be some high-paying jobs available, requiring university degrees. One such area may be in finding answers to our energy and resource problems. Such research will likely be carried out by a smaller number of researchers than are active today because some current areas of research will be discarded as having too little potential benefit relative to the cost involved. Any approach considered will need to succeed with, at most, a tiny amount of government funding.
High paying jobs may also be available to a few students who plan to be the “wheeler-dealers” of the world. Some of these wheeler-dealer types will want to be the ones founding companies. Others will want to run for public office. They may be able to succeed, as well. They may want to study specialized tracks to advance their career goals. Or they may want to choose institutions where they can make contacts with people who can help them in pursuing their career goals.
For most young people, I expect that four-year university degrees will increasingly be viewed as a waste of time and money.
[6] In a shrinking economy, debt defaults will become an increasing problem.
A growing economy is very helpful in allowing financial institutions to prosper. With growth, future earnings of businesses tend to be higher than past earnings. These higher earnings make it possible repay both the borrowed amount and the required interest. With growth, there is little need to lay off employees. Thus, the employees have a reasonable chance to repay mortgage loans and car loans according to agreed-upon terms.
If an economy is shrinking, overhead becomes an ever-larger share of total revenues. This makes profits harder to achieve and may make it necessary to lay off employees. These laid-off employees are more likely to default on their outstanding loans. As debt defaults rise, interest rates charged by lenders tend to rise to compensate for the greater default risk. The higher interest rates make debt repayment for future borrowers even more difficult.
All these issues are likely to lead to financial crises, as debt defaults become more common.
[7] As debt defaults rise, banks tend to fail. This can lead to hyperinflation or deflation.
In a shrinking economy, the big question when banks fail is, “Will governments bail out the banks?”
If governments bail out the failing banks, there is a tendency toward inflation because the bailouts increase the money supply available to citizens, but not the quantity of goods available for purchase. If enough banks fail, the tendency may be toward hyperinflation–way too much money available to purchase very few goods and services.
If no government bailouts are available, the tendency is toward deflation. Without bailouts, the problem is that fewer banks are available to lend to citizens and businesses. As a result, fewer people can afford to buy homes and vehicles using debt, and fewer businesses can take out loans to purchase needed supplies. These changes lead to less demand for finished goods. This change in demand can indirectly be expected to affect commodity prices, as well, including oil prices. With low prices, some suppliers may go out of business, making any supply problem worse.
Regardless of whether bailouts are attempted or not, on average, citizens can be expected to be getting poorer and poorer as time goes on. This occurs because with a shrinking economy, fewer goods and services will be made. Unless the population shrinks at the same rate, individual citizens will find themselves getting poorer and poorer.
[8] Expect more tariffs and more conflicts among countries.
Without enough oil for transportation, the quantity of imported goods must be cut back. A tariff is a good way of doing this. If one country starts raising tariffs, the temptation is for other countries to raise tariffs in return. Thus, the overall level of tariffs can be expected to rise in future years.
Without enough goods and services for everyone to maintain their current standard of living, there will be a definite tendency for more conflict to occur. However, I doubt that the result will be World War III. For one thing, the West seems to have inadequate ammunition to fight a full-scale conventional war. For another, the nuclear bombs that are available are valuable for providing fuel for our nuclear power plants. It makes no sense to use them in war.
[9] Expect an increasing share of empty shelves, as time goes on.
High tech goods are especially likely to disappear from shelves. Replacement parts for automobiles may also be difficult to find, especially before an aftermarket of locally manufactured parts appears.
[10] Interest rates are likely to stay at their current level or increase to a higher level.
The high level of borrowing by governments and others makes lenders reluctant to lend unless the interest rates are high. It should also be noted that current interest rates are not high relative to historical standards. The world has been spoiled in recent years with artificially low interest rates, made possible by Quantitative Easing and other manipulations.
[11] Clearly, this list is not exhaustive.
The world economy has gone through two major disruptions in recent years, one in 2008, and one in 2020. Very unusual changes such as these are quite possible again.
We don’t know how soon new economies will begin to evolve. Eric Chaisson, a physicist who has researched this issue, says that there is a tendency for ever more complex, energy-dense systems to evolve over time. This would suggest that an even more advanced economy may be possible in the future.
Note: I am also publishing this post on Substack. At this point, it is still sort of an experiment. Comments sometimes don’t post well on WordPress. This will give readers a different option for viewing posts. Using Substack, my posts may reach a new audience as well.
Some of you may receive an email about my Substack post. I put in some email addresses back in January 2024 when I put up a post on Substack earlier. Subscriptions will continue to be free both places. This is a direct link to my new post. https://gailtverberg.substack.com/p/economic-contraction-coming-right
“The discovery of the largest illegal breeding in the history of Slovakia, during which police officers found almost nine hundred dogs in the Upper Nitra region, is just the tip of the iceberg.”
https://myhornanitra.sme.sk/c/23505154/psa-z-mnoziarne-predaju-aj-za-tisicku-stat-robi-malo-nasledky-znasaju-utulky-hovori-devinska-zo-slobody-zvierat.html?ref=titbox_regiony
Lonely people need pets, they are tired of machines?
I suppose that dog breeding is a small business that can be started without too much capital.
AI si here to help us to solve the rising complexity. But it seems that its intellectual capacity is weak. We do not need its hallucinations. It needs a lot more energy…
For some people here, hallucinations have replaced energy..
you mean there is no cubic mile of Pt after all???
I am bereft….
There is a cubic mile of Pt somewhere. But not reachable.
Just like there is a Sun in the sky and everyone sees it but no one will ever land there.
Obtaining a whole lot more electricity is going to be difficult. Rising natural gas production has already been spoken for to be used as exports. More nuclear is many years away, if it can be accomplished at all. Local groups will oppose adding a whole lot more electricity capacity (transmission lines and all the other things that go with it). Someone will have to pay for all of the additional electricity–indirectly the users of AI. I have a hard time believing that it will happen.
Well everyone is talking about the war between Israel and Iran. Then just a prediction for a change…. Slippery ice though !
Iran has the key to Hormuz but cannot turn the lock.
Why the rhetoric around the Strait of Hormuz is louder than Tehran’s actual clout
Following the Israeli attacks on military and nuclear targets in Iran, calls for escalation are sounding louder and louder in Tehran. Analysts and international media warn that a direct conflict between Iran and Israel would ‘inevitably’ lead to a closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Yet that fear is probably more likely than Iran actually implementing it.
No military closure possible
Iran has an arsenal of assets – speedboats, sea mines, coastal batteries, drones – that on paper could threaten the narrow strait. But the military reality is more unruly. The US Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, along with British, French and sometimes even Indian naval vessels, maintains constant surveillance. Any attempted shutdown would be neutralised within days, although this would be accompanied by considerable tension and temporary market disruption.
Not an oil boycott, but destruction of infrastructure
A crucial distinction from previous oil boycotts – in which countries deliberately halted exports to exert political pressure – is that a closure of the Strait of Hormuz in this case would amount to physical destruction of installations and supply chains, not a diplomatic decision. Upstream facilities, export terminals, refineries in Iran, Iraq, UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia are extremely vulnerable. You can’t just “pause” those. If they are hit or shut down, it takes months or years to restart. The damage would be felt far beyond Iran.
Self-destruction on the economic front
Iran also relies heavily on the Strait of Hormuz for its own exports. The vast majority of Iran’s oil and petrochemical products have to enter the world via this route. So a blockade would amount to economic suicide. No large-scale alternative export routes are available, and Chinese oil purchases – crucial for the regime’s survival – would immediately dry up.
International isolation
Even allies such as China and Russia would show little sympathy for an escalation that would push the global oil price above $100 a barrel. While Russia could still benefit from higher prices, it does not want NATO intervention on its southern border. China has an interest in stability, not an oil shock.
Symbolism and propaganda
The actual Iranian response is taking place through other channels: Hezbollah, Houthis, cyber attacks and the deployment of drones. These forms of asymmetric warfare are designed to apply pressure without direct confrontation. They are noisy but of limited effectiveness.
Conclusion
Iran may hold the key to Hormuz, but the lock is too complex, too dangerous and ultimately too destructive for its own use. The rhetoric is harsh, but Tehran’s strategic realism leaves little room for real closure of the gateway to oil.
Forecast: In the coming days, Iran will continue to threaten but not attempt an actual blockade. Tensions will remain high, but shipping will continue to sail.
Copy/paste — Harry’s blog
Good points! Closing the Strait of Hormuz would be suicide for Iran. It won’t do it. And no one wants sky-high oil prices. It becomes hard to escalate the war.
The structural problem with this analysis is that this is already an existential moment for Iran. (And the Zionist state).That should be obvious to everyone. Further, it’s an existential moment for the global economy. Understand that the Hand has pulled the lever on the Big Nuclear Scare. (I always said that the plandemic demand destruction was good for about 5 years.) The lever pull as signaled by Gabbard’s unusual nuclear warning video from a couple days ago. Musk’s rift with Trump started the national socialist manufactured patterning, and now Tulsi and perhaps Vance are going to become discordant now that the Hand had Trump post such and obscene comment on the war the other day. Once Tulsi is fired RFK will resign. America First national socialism will get rolling. Military coup dislocation is always a possibility if the Hand sees too much time compression as cascading events take on a life of their own. The Hand looks forward to the rollercoaster ride because even being in the Zone can get old after awhile. In the meantime be on the lookout for more Hand fingerprints like with Nordstream etc, for goosing things along.
This is a strange world. This is the MSN report with the short Tulsi Gabbard video in it. She is warning that leaders have their own way to avoid the effects of nuclear war. Citizens need to push away from this idea.
[Edit – Forgot this link earlier]
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/tulsi-gabbard-warns-of-nuclear-threat-in-social-media-video/ar-AA1Gwux1
Thanks for bringing up her point about the Elites taking cover in DUMBs. That aligns her with Catherine Austin Fitts. It repeats what Fitts’ impressed upon Tucker Carlson a couple weeks ago in that interview I brought up. It also aligns with the leftist conspiracy theory that postkey shared with us a few days ago. NS is a unity politics and, were she to assume power, Gabbard would immediately ask Bernie to be in her cabinet. Below is an exceptional recent tweet from Tucker last week. (Levin…Levin…Levin…) The Hand weaves:
“Mark Levin was at the White House today, lobbying for war with Iran. To be clear, Levin has no plans to fight in this or any other war. He’s demanding that American troops do it. We need to stop Iran from building nuclear weapons, he and likeminded ideologues in Washington are now arguing. They’re just weeks away.
If this sounds familiar, it’s because the same people have been making the same claim since at least the 1990s. It’s a lie. In fact, there is zero credible intelligence that suggests Iran is anywhere near building a bomb, or has plans to. None. Anyone who claims otherwise is ignorant or dishonest. If the US government knew Iran was weeks from possessing a nuclear weapon, we’d be at war already.
Iran knows this, which is why they aren’t building one. Iran also knows it’s unwise to give up its weapons program entirely. Muammar Gaddafi tried that and wound up sodomized with a bayonet. As soon as Gaddafi disarmed, NATO killed him. Iran’s leaders saw that happen. They learned the obvious lesson.
So why is Mark Levin once again hyperventilating about weapons of mass destruction? To distract you from the real goal, which is regime change — young Americans heading back to the Middle East to topple yet another government. Virtually no one will say this out loud. America’s record of overthrowing foreign leaders is so embarrassingly counterproductive that regime change has become a synonym for disaster. Officially, no one supports it. So instead of telling the truth about their motives, they manufacture hysteria: “A country like Iran can never have the bomb! They’ll nuke Los Angeles! We have to act now!”
They don’t really mean this, and you can tell they don’t by what they omit. At least two of Iran’s neighbors — both Islamic nations — already have nuclear weapons. That fact should scare the hell out of Mark Levin. Yet for some reason he never mentions it. How come? Because it’s not the weapons he hates. It’s the ideology of the Iranian government, which is why he’s lobbying to overthrow it.
It goes without saying that there are very few Trump voters who’d support a regime change war in Iran. Donald Trump has argued loudly against reckless lunacy like this. Trump ran for president as a peace candidate. That’s what made him different from conventional Republicans. It’s why he won. A war with Iran would amount to a profound betrayal of his supporters. It would end his presidency. That may explain why so many of Trump’s enemies are advocating for it.
And then there’s the question of the war itself. Iran may not have nukes, but it has a fearsome arsenal of ballistic missiles, many of which are aimed at US military installations in the Gulf, as well as at our allies and at critical energy infrastructure. The first week of a war with Iran could easily kill thousands of Americans. It could also collapse our economy, as surging oil prices trigger unmanageable inflation. Consider the effects of $30 gasoline.
But the second week of the war could be even worse. Iran isn’t Iraq or Libya, or even North Korea. While it’s often described as a rogue state, Iran has powerful allies. It’s now part of a global bloc called BRICS, which represents the majority of the world’s landmass, population, economy and military power. Iran has extensive military ties with Russia. It sells the overwhelming majority of its oil exports to China. Iran isn’t alone. An attack on Iran could very easily become a world war. We’d lose.
None of these are far fetched predictions. Most of them comport with the Pentagon’s own estimates: many Americans would die during a war with Iran. People like Mark Levin don’t seem to care about this. It’s not relevant to them. Instead they insist that Iran give up all uranium enrichment, regardless of its purpose. They know perfectly well that Iran will never accept that demand. They’ll fight first. And of course that’s the whole point of pushing for it: to box the Trump administration into a regime change war in Iran.
The one thing that people like Mark Levin don’t want is a peaceful solution to the problem of Iran, despite the obvious benefits to the United States. They denounce anyone who advocates for a deal as a traitor and a bigot. They tell us with a straight face that Long Island native Steve Witkoff is a secret tool of Islamic monarchies. They’ll say or do whatever it takes. They have no limits. These are scary people. Pray that Donald Trump ignores them.
6:02 PM · Jun 4, 2025
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USD 60 billion worth of cars sitting in the showrooms. This is in the showrooms. How many in the factory parking lots, don’t know.
https://ackodrive.com/news/auto-dealers-stare-at-historic-inventory-crisis-worth-52-000-crore/
The report you show is a report about car inventories in India.
This was as good a report as I could find for US automobile inventories (including imported vehicles).
https://caredge.com/guides/new-car-inventory-2025
If a person scrolls down, it becomes clear that all of these inventories are expected to trend downward in the future. Dealers have more vehicles than they want because people are not buying as frequently with the new tariffs.
This is a link to a chart of new car sales in the US.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TOTALSA
They spiked in March, before the new tariffs went into place. Sales were down in both April and May. With the additional tariffs and the relatively high interest rates, fewer people can afford new cars if the impact of tariffs is passed through to buyers. We will have to wait and see what happens. Either the production of new cars needs to fall, or much of the increase caused by tariffs needs to be “eaten” by the supply chain.
Re LNG Sales agreement with Japan. Looks like political gobbledegook to me. While Tim Grove’s conversion is (broadly speaking) correct, US-exporters already delivered 335,9 bn cf to Japan in 2024. (EIA, this link: https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/ng_move_expc_s1_a.htm). According to my conversion this already amounted to 9.5 bn m3. So WTF?
I’m having trouble making sense of it too. Maybe they are mixing up annual and daily values, just being unclear in the messaging. The first two quotes suggest that USA could export ~5.5bcf/d from these facilities, while the last is the same order of magnitude (5.5bcf / ~1000 to convert to tons), but annual. I don’t know, just a guess.
>> “These facilities have a combined nominal export capacity of 5.3 Bcf/d (up to 6.3 Bcf/d peak capacity) and will expand the existing U.S. LNG export capacity by almost 50 percent once these projects become fully operational,” the agency said.
>> the United States remained the world’s largest LNG exporter in 2024, exporting 11.9 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) of LNG.
>> JERA’s recent decision to buy up to 5.5 million tons of LNG annually from the United States is a “message to the world that American LNG is back thanks to President Trump.”
I know that the US has been exporting LNG from Alaska to Japan for many years. The shipping distance is relatively short. Otherwise, there is not much of a market for natural gas in Alaska. If it were shipped to, say, California, it would be awfully expensive natural gas for the US market.
Japan is used to high prices for imported natural gas. It uses natural gas very sparingly. Japan can tolerate the high natural gas prices on LNG from Alaska.
I wonder about the economics of shipping LNG from Texas or Pennsylvania to Japan. It would have to travel much further, so the shipping cost would be higher. Thus, it would be quite a bit harder to make a profit on the sales. Presumably, it would go through the Panama Canal.
The hope of the exporters is that the US price of natural gas will rise, so that their profits will rise. But then, the price in Japan would need to be higher yet.
https://www.solzhenitsyncenter.org/his-writings/large-works-and-novels/two-hundred-years-together
The first uncensored version will be in English in 2026. The current English version remove the chapters objected to by the rulers of America.
Beginning says:
it is still limited hangout. None of the heavier hitting books will see the light.
200 Years Together by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn about Jews in Russia will be available for the first time in English in 2026.
The copies currently available in English are stolen without the legal permission of the authors estate and with payment of royalties to the authors estate. Also they delete several chapters that are objected to by those who rule the US.
Hold out for the truth.
https://www.solzhenitsyncenter.org/his-writings/large-works-and-novels/two-hundred-years-together
The US crude oil supply is peaking, but maybe the natural gas supply will keep growing for aa while longer. I sure hope the US has enough natural gas to fund this agreement:
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/interior-department-announces-200-billion-lng-supply-agreements-japan
Interior Department Announces $200 Billion LNG Supply Agreements With Japan
That’s a lot of gas! And it’s probably going to be very expensive gas.
Factoid: One ton of liquefied natural gas (LNG) is roughly equivalent to 1,333 to 1,460 cubic feet of natural gas in its gaseous state. So, 5.5 million tons of LNG is roughly equivalent to between 7 and 8 billion cubic meters of gaseous natural gas.
In 2023, Japan consumed approximately 92.4 billion cubic meters of natural gas. This represents a decrease from the peak consumption of almost 125 billion cubic meters in 2014. This decrease should continue, as the population is decreasing by close to 0.8% per year in recent years.
At a very rough guess, this means 8 billion cubic meters, to be delivered over 20 years, will be enough to cover about 1 month’s natural gas consumption for Japan, or about 0.5% of projected natural gas consumption over that the next 20 years.
This will doubtless come in very handy if the Strait of Hormuz closes for an extended period. But Japan would need to secure about 200 similar-sized deals to meet all its gas needs. I expect this deal can be justified as a small insurance policy against future supply problems, but it is mainly an indirect way for Japan to “cooperate” with the US as a reliable “junior partner.”
Interesting. Your view goes along with mine. Any natural gas shipped from the Eastern or Southern coast of the US to Japan will be very expensive natural gas.
Ed was asking a day or two ago which people or organizations are funding the “No Kings” protests. Zerohedge has an article up on this topic now. Taxpayers are funding these protests, at least to some extent, because the groups tend to be non-profits, with grants from the government.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/dark-money-network-funneled-millions-no-kings-nationwide-color-revolution-operation
The original has links and more information.
With respect to the Walmart heir funding the event tomorrow a friend told me the women of the Russian Aristocracy around 1900 supported the revolutionaries. Ironically they were later killed by the revolutionaries.
while waiting for WW3… (maybe a long wait, jaja)…
Peak Oil is just a particular kind of diminishing return.
all non-renewable resources will have a production peak and then decline.
this of course includes all the FF resources.
diminishing returns seem to be widely understood as leading to less affordability.
so Peak Oil under its correct umbrella of “diminishing returns” perhaps highlights that this so-called “Peak Oil” is all about declining affordability.
(how are those little wars going now?)
We also have way too much debt and rising interest rates. This is another aspect of the lack of affordability. There are diminishing returns with respect to added debt, too.
Videos of the Iranian missile strikes on Tel Aviv.
> Tel Aviv, Iranians look to be targeting air defence installations:
https://x.com/squatsons/status/1933590514080809086
And more:
https://x.com/Davidchorts/status/1933597128053698801
Roof top view:
https://x.com/squatsons/status/1933599712382161358
This is reportedly the hit on Israeli Defense Ministry Headquarters:
https://x.com/squatsons/status/1933602551993135263
Iran is rumoured to also be going after nuclear sites, and there are reports that airbases have also been hit with soldiers reported injured.
You’re really enjoying this , aren’t you?
The big difference between all the missiles and drones attacking Iran and those attacking Israel is that the former are Islamophobic missiles and drones, which are not halal, and the latter are Antisemitic missiles and drones, which are not kosher.
I sincerely hope the conflict stays far enough away from you that it doesn’t spoil your excitement.
It is his heart’s desire and dearest wish to sit astride a ballistic missile aimed at Ishmaelia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tgKn6ljEUk
Let’s see action!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmHEX7QI4KU
and he wants to
Do it again!
Iran has launched waves of missile strikes at Tel-Aviv.
The missile defence system – ‘iron dome’ – looks clearly inadequate.
Video here:
https://x.com/squatsons/status/1933591007104217103
Strategic targets elsewhere will likely be more important.
It looks like ‘Israel’ has started a war on itself – probably not the brightest idea.
This video is almost comical. Were it not that this increases the chances of going nuclear. Israel has no AD. I can see the incoming missiles, but the Patriot system can not.
The AD is faffing about with cheap drones, exhausting itself and distracted, and the ballistic missile sails right on through.
The western media will tend to just show the drones getting hit and say – oh look at how good the ‘iron dome’ is.
> Iranian missiles are believed to have hit the following targets:
•Tel Aviv Financial Center
•Ministry of Defense [twice for good luck]
•Ministry of Economy
•Tel Nof Air Base
•Various objects in Haifa
•A platform for the extraction of natural gas off the coast of Gaza.
https://x.com/SprinterObserve/status/1933616438369268111
More incoming tonight and if reports are correct, some landing anytime now.
There’s reports of downed planes as well(the show pony at that), so we could see some pilots hopefully tried and hung.
If Mileikowsky is still hiding in Cyprus, it would be fair to send a hypersonic gift or two his way.
The game was up anyway and Iran was fully aware of this.
https://en.mehrnews.com/news/232999/Disclosed-documents-reveal-Grossi-link-to-Israel-PHOTO
The best video of the evening so far from Tel Aviv.
> When you look at Iranian rockets, don’t forget to look back!
Monitoring Iranian missiles
https://x.com/SprinterObserve/status/1933616198354391237
Many people are speculating why Israel is so belligerant right now.
It has to do with its foundational goal, which is to conquer the middle east and establish Greater Israel, in accord to what God promised them in the Torah.
They’re trying to fulfill a profecy of domination as a chosen people.
They really believe that, and it has been a project of the jewish people, or at least its elites, since millennia, and they’re very close now to get what they want, specially since they’ve never been so strong and backed by such hegemonic and permissible world powers.
But why now, then, not earlier or later?
Because, as some realize, many of the world’s elites know about the incoming collapse of our systems, and the Israeli are no different.
They’re doing that now because they won’t be able to do it later, it’s now or never, and if they fail, it will indeed be the end for them. In a world where high technology becomes scarce or vanishes, they’ll be surrounded by hostile powers and peoples, and will be destroyed.
Recently a former launch pad/complex in Fl was demolished; it is to be replaced by a facility for Starship.
We are not alone in seeing the issues facing humanity, there is somewhere a group with very deep pockets “shooting the moon.” Recently mention was made by Musk the first “settlers” on Mars would be Optimus-3 robots.
Starship can be used to mine the asteroids(they have a lower gravity well than planets, etc.), they can be used to build factories in space and get heat directly from fusion energy, the sun.
Earth seems to have two main problems: energy and food, literally fish for food. Energy is easy, get a cubic mile of Pt(it is a metaphor) and go to a H economy with H made from photovoltaic electricity. Fish are a problem, we are fishing them faster than they can reproduce.
We can solve our problems, a huge problem will be obsolete narratives and those who are heavily invested in them as a source of money and power. We will make it through that too, biology is very robust.
Dennis L.
they understand that the earliest the better. The one superpower they have completely subjugated is declining fairly rapidly. Their tax base is eroding much faster. It is now or never. From their point of view, this i perfectly logical.
Good points and it raises the question of why they didn’t attack sooner, when the US was stronger and Iran weaker. The only reason I can think of is that perhaps they had less political control, earlier.
I hadn’t really thought about this aspect of the situation:
Also, if collapse is immanent, then many of the things we have now will not be useful in the future. Losing part of what a country has in war is not a bad choice. Our current approach isn’t working.
Somehow, we need to start over with a different approach. WWII led to a renewal in Europe. Perhaps some similar renewal will be possible later.
The Club of Rome, financed by some famous names, already turned in their analysis back in 1972
But they did nothing
People would not believe them. The model promulgated by economists said that prices would rise, there would be innovations, and there never would be real shortages. The Club of Rome later developed into an organization pushing wind turbines, solar panels, and EVs. Ugo Bardi still writes for the Club of Rome.
https://www.localfutures.org/ is one example of the emerging new approach.
Thanks for the link.
The rebuilding of Europe after WWII occurred in an era if cheap, plentiful energy and the US behind it. At that time the US boasted the majority of world manufacturing capability and was the most productive nation on earth.
It would not be possible today.
Reconstruction in Europe did not take place in an era of abundant and cheap energy (that was after, in the 1960s). That took place in France, in the “battle of production”, with the help of the Communist Party which had an overwhelming majority among the miners. Then, when the Communists left the government, coal production was punctuated by insurrectional strikes and deadly clashes and the construction of dams with reduced means and a lot of labor, also communist. By 1950, reconstruction was complete.
it isnt possible to construct or reconstruct anything of significance without cheap energy….
which the usa had in abundant surplus post ww2……
there were lots of peripheral factors at play then…
but that was the driving force…
american oilmen made colossal profits through the rebuilding of europe
Perhaps the French situation explains the wide use of nuclear power in France. Russia has made much use of nuclear.
Starship jokes aside, what they are doing is called “A day late, a dollar short” in African-American lingo.
They had plenty of time to do so but did nothing and only moving at the eleventh hour.
With what I see on the internet, it appears to me that there was no access denial whatsoever in Iran. The Russian system is around Bushehr and that was not challenged. It is possible that the AD system, being a highly integrated system, got hacked into and neutralized.
Mass generated AI messages and articles may be another possibility. But it seems that of order 20 senior officers dead is also true.
In my view what happened about all these recent ‘negotiations’ is that talking about the one with Russia for Ukraine, Russia didn’t take the bait, it welcomed Trump administration and US in general with kindness and pleasure, but it went on trusting US not so much US and it went on pursuing its own objectives.
On the contrary Iran took the bait and it was deceived.
And at this regard I wonder what is by now the sense of opening talks with AIEA, if one is attacked anyway.
Maybe Russia, Iran, China and others should open another agency.
Additionally, I see a more compact society in Russia, with civil Russians ready to risk their lifes inspecting those strange trucks with drones, while Iran seems to be easier to be seduced by western powers.
See how israeli intelligence entered and acquired a lot of information inside Iran to make this latest attacks.
The Iranian people weak point still seems to be that they think they can have a better life if they help foreign western powers to weaken their own Country and open their market to glittering bul..it , fashion clothes and amenities of various types from outside.
Maybe a problem to be treated differently in Iran is the general woman’s condition.
Looking to Russian movies I see that Russia found a way to have two sexes, differentiated, with a woman who still wants to take care of children and family, but the woman appears strong like the man and if she wants to work she can do it freely.
The man is masculine, the woman is female, but she can ruin man’s life seriously if the man wants to rule badly the family.
I hope I explained what I preceived, at least what I perceived of Russian culture from some recent movies.
I think that Iran must find a way to create a better internal coesion, giving maybe some more freedom to peolle, but making also people understand that a regime change will mean that Iranians will become slaves and that they will end like Lebanon or Siria or Libia.
I am not sure I agree re: Iran. Their political system is just about the most inclusive in the world (and the one I admire the most). People dress any way they want, listen or not to rock or traditional music, and at night everyone is out and about. But totally agree that at least some of them do not understand what regime change means. They are the opposition of course. They think that Iran has weathered many things in the past and they can change the regime and maintain sovereignty. I am appalled of course. They may have degrees in STEM but do not understand that the current hardship (which is real) is due to sanctions, asymmetrical warfare and other things.
Many thanks for your considerations.
It is exactly the opposite of what it is being told to people about Iran in Europe.
It seems also that Iranian opposition is not aware of what is happening about current economic collapse and resource scarcity.
If Iran become a Country allied to the west it would be squeezed like a lemon for a juice.
We are squeezed ourselves indeed that we are core citizens of the Empire, do they think to have a better destiny?
I know.. I tell you I am appalled. I had one postdoc who was vehemently anti-putin (russian). after two years in the US he has completely changed his tune. but it is difficult to see things from the inside.
One comment is waiting approval. Talk to you soon
Videos I saw of Tel Aviv in the last hour show a lot of missiles hitting the ground. But at least I knew that Israel has no AD to speak of, at least for hypersonics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72EVQktMS9I
Oil, smoke and mirrors. 2007 documentary.
The daddy of all peak oil documentaries.
It links 9/11 to peak oil. Politicians and analysts talk about all the holes in the US govt’s story about 9/11. This is the documentary that really opened my eyes about 9/11.
I imagine that several commenters here will already have seen it.
As more escalation of hostilities are likely, I saw this
https://youtu.be/F2Y6xDGF_wA?si=m8qaGotQ_y75F5DC
Alex Krainer talks with the Canadian Prepper. I did not bother to listen to it.
Whenever I see things like this I laugh.
The hoi polloi just blame everything to the bankers, the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers, and other usual suspects, when it is them, t-h-e-m-s-e-l-v-e-s, who are guilty.
I only used to blame Chucky for the enormous fkup he caused to the western civilization but I now also blame the 200/400(no source agree on the exact number) Worcestershires, former chimney sweeps, farmhands and railroad hands, who ‘did their duty’ to be no less guilty than Chucky himself.
The ‘working class’ of English speaking countries enjoyed a lifestyle they did not deserve simply because they spoke English and no other reason. On average, during the War in the Pacific, the Japanese soldiers were better educated than the American soldiers, a fact USA would rather not emphasize.
By shifting all the blame to the bankers et al, they try to absolve their guilt of screwing up the world but they are more guilty than they are willing to admit.
Now the Eastern Hordes are using wrecking balls to crush their lifestyles which they did not deserve, and they increasingly resort on blaming the PTB for the loss of their undeserved lifestyle.
The future will be quite harsh for everyone, but much harder for the ‘working class’ of English speaking countries, since they had lived like dukes and earls in the old days , far beyond their actual worth in society.
The top will always fare better. That is a matter of fact which I won’t argue with. But the unwashed masses won’t be able to absolve their guilt since they actively participated in acts which were detrimental for the progress of civilization.
Perhaps you are missing something, children, a culture which has a set of laws which work well within the group and a history going back before the Persians. Within that culture is a tradition of trust and violation of that trust results in shunning.
We need trust in those with whom we deal.
Dennis L.
WW3, whatever…
Liebig’s law of the minimum:
“Liebig’s law of the minimum, often simply called Liebig’s law or the law of the minimum, is a principle developed in agricultural science by Carl Sprengel (1840) and later popularized by Justus von Liebig. It states that growth is dictated not by total resources available, but by the scarcest resource (limiting factor).”
it is doubtful that the world could “run out” of any resource.
so this law is all about affordability.
affordability of all resources will be declining, or perhaps the decline has already begun.
the “scarcest” resource will have to have more energy and money thrown at it, to compensate for its increasing scarcity.
this will proceed along with all the other diminishing returns in resources.
these diminishing returns will create a growing unaffordability of resources, not a total depletion of any of the world’s resources.
“One plank is missing – and the whole show collapses. ”?
“Justus von Liebig is chuckling in his grave. His law—that the most limited factor slows down the entire system—proves timeless.
Not only for plant nutrition, but for a global economy that has optimized itself to the bone.
The apparent efficiency turns out to be a stage set. One plank is missing – and the whole show collapses. ”?
https://climateandeconomy.com/2025/05/05/5th-may-2025-todays-round-up-of-economic-news/
At least Justus von Liebig had the sense to die at Munich. If he died in the territories awarded to Poland, the Poles would have thrown his bones and smashed it to pieces
.
the “one plank” will never go entirely missing, there are no resources that will “run out” completely, but all resources face diminishing returns and thus the affordability of resources will decline.
this is a good quote:
“His law—that the most limited factor slows down the entire system—proves timeless.
Not only for plant nutrition, but for a global economy that has optimized itself to the bone.”
that’s good “the most limited factor slows down the entire system”.
so what happens is that more energy and money has to be thrown at that “most limited factor”.
the “most limited factor” becomes less affordable sooner than other factors.
the “most limited factor” probably will be leading the decline in affordability.
it’s nothing to worry about.
I agree. The most limited factor slows down the entire system. We have several very limited factors now, and that is the problem.
Will Russia, China, BRICS come to the aid of Iran after it is brutally and viciously attacked by US/Israel?
I don’t know man, it’s sort of an all-or-nothing thing in the nuclear age. I’m guessing they don’t do squat. Russia’s nuclear forces were attacked by essentially the USA, and they did nothing immediate.
I agree with you.
US attack to continue for days.
The shortest distance between Iran and Israel is about 1,000km (620 miles).
Israel: 21,937 km²
Population: 9.757 million (2023)
Iran: 1,648,195 square kilometres (636,372 sq mi).
Iran ranks seventeenth in size among the countries of the world.
As of Tuesday, June 10, 2025, the estimated population of Iran is around 92.37 million.
Why is Israel so foolhardy?
It’s just carrying out the Hand’s orders per the non-public Degrowth Agenda. Political cover for peak oil and it facilitates the necessary end of Israel, or Zionism at the very least. Can’t have a Zionist state in the ME during Collapse. Obviously. The Hand is bigger than Zionism and Judaism.
“Why is Israel so foolhardy?”
It is certainly playing with a two-edged sword.
> Might was Right when Gideon led The “chosen” tribes of old,
And it was Right when Titus burnt, Their Temple roofed with gold.
It is probably too late to give any counsel after the events of last night.
It is only a matter of time before USA retrenches and ‘Israel’ finds itself on its own.
All things are time-dated in this world, including empires as all of history shows.
States like ‘Israel’ make their own decisions with their own outcomes.
Like Aristotle says, it is all about foresight.
Iran has been around for a lot longer and my guess is that it will still be there when ‘Israel’ is long gone.
Tick, tock….
But for now, there are many Zigh oh-nists who have infiltrated themselves into places of high power in the USA. They and their influence won’t so easily be dislodged.
Look at 9/11. Who did it? Well, cui bono? In 2006 Netanyahu said, “9/11 has been very good for Israel”. Fact. You can google that. You will have read about “the dancing Israelis”who were caught filming 9/11 from across the river. They claimed innocence. “Oh, we’re just here to record it”, they said. So how did they know it was going to happen?
9/11 was not done by MOSSAD alone, of course.
lolololol
not the israelis doing 9/11 too
was there anybody NOT involved???
I heard the the guy on the ”grassy knoll” was wearing a funny shawl too.
Russia and Iran are in existential predicaments. The main difference is that Iran’s best “chance” of survival is to hit Israel with everything it has – NOW , because if they let themselves get pummeled by Israel out of concern for not appearing too aggressive out of “political correctness,” they play into Israel’s strategy. Israel wants to destroy Iran ASAP and will lie and deceive to do so. The Js’ MO is and has always been deception, even since the biblical times of Jacob and Esau.
In contrast, Russia with its military capabilities, realized 3 years ago when it launched its SMO that it faced an eventuality that the West and NATO would stop at nothing to prevail over Russia and cause its collapse— again lying and cheating all the way. Minsk I & 2 , Istanbul accord, Maidan 2014 etc. Putin even admits he made a mistake by not attacking UKR after the US puppet regime had been installed in the Maidan Coup. Instead giving US NATO and Nuland time to arm UKR even as she tried to appear charitable as she was handing out cookies to the people in Kiev./Maidan.
So no matter what, Iran faces an immediate existential crisis, whereas Russia faces a longer-term situation. In my opinion, Russia’s best chance is to keep a low level of ongoing conflict so as not to be lulled ever again into a promise of peace. It ain’t gonna happen. A steady state of sustainable arms production, troop recruitment and rotation will be the best form of relative peace through strength.
But as Donald Rumsfeld , former Defense Secretary, said: “You go to war with the army you have, not with the army you like to have.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jPgljRvzQw
Iran may be in this situation and have to go with what it has. Waiting may work against it.
I’m not war monger, but I just see the realities of US’s, NATO’s and Israel’s treachery. I wouldn’t be so certain that Russia’s long term interests lie in a “alliance ” with China either.
Per Copilot:
“The Jewish civilization predates the Persian civilization. Jewish history traces back to the early biblical era, with figures like Abraham traditionally dated to around 2000 BCE. The Israelites formed a distinct civilization by the time of the Kingdom of Israel and Judah (circa 1000 BCE).
Persian civilization, on the other hand, emerged with the Elamites (circa 2700 BCE), but the Persian Empire itself became prominent with the Achaemenid dynasty under Cyrus the Great in 550 BCE. Interestingly, Cyrus played a key role in Jewish history by allowing the Jews to return from Babylonian exile and rebuild their temple in Jerusalem.”
Guess: Civilizations are a narrative which holds together biology. It is not a painless path, recent history has an obvious example of that.
Dennis L.
“ . . . out of the 4000 Israelis believed to have worked in and around the WTC and the Pentagon only FIVE died. 5/4000 Israelis. Statistically, with no forewarning about 10% (ie 400 of 4000) would have died; a toll as low as 200-300/4000 would not convincingly indicate foreknowledge. But only FIVE Israelis died and two of the five were aboard the allegedly hijacked flights; thus only three Israelis died in the WTC itself on 9/11. NB – this applies to Israeli nationals, NOT American Jews. Many Jews died in the WTC on 9/11.”
https://wikispooks.com/wiki/9-11/Israel_did_it
Thanks for this link, postkey:
https://wikispooks.com/wiki/9-11/Israel_did_it
MOSSAD has also been implicated in London’s 7/7 bombings:
https://www.brighteon.com/3b28d2f9-bf49-48f9-83a7-c437bcc1aff4
‘Well the answer is because the United States will end up nuking Iran which I believe we’re going to end up doing anyways by the time
33:47 either the regime collapses and voluntarily gives up this capacity or we will use the weapons necessary to
33: 54 eliminate this capacity But either way this capacity will no longer exist
“ . . . Iran is its own worst enemy . . .
The president came out and said “No we’ve
34:18 been literally planning with Israel for years giving them the weapons to assassinate people kill people destroy
34:25 infrastructure you know and we’re and you know we did this.” He brags about it “?
Scott says, “This is not about Iran’s nuclear infrastructure – that’s just the excuse. This is a regime change operation. The only way Iran survives is to destroy Israel. That’s the level of war that we’re facing right now.”
Scott Ritter says “The president’s stupid tweet will go down in history as the nail in the coffin of American credibility”.
Trump tweeted that he knew about Israel’s planned attack in advance. Which country will now trust the USA in any negotiations, asks Scott.
Zerohedge says
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/us-israeli-deception-gave-iran-false-security-washington-gave-green-light
Asked what kind of heads-up the U.S. got ahead of the attack, Trump said in a brief phone interview, “Heads-up? It wasn’t a heads-up. It was, we know what’s going on.”
Later it says,
“Trump has further indicated that US-supplied weapons were used against Iran.”
https://halturnerradioshow.com/index.php/news-selections/world-news/flash-bulletin-urgent-multiple-reports-hundreds-of-fighter-jets-over-iraq-heading-into-iran
I’m just going to say “I told you so “!!!!👌🏾
oh no it’s WW3!!!
and you are so young!
All good things must come to an end.
Marcus Aurelius “Meditations”
As for myself
Boarded, set sail, coasted some both calm and stormy seas, coming back to see the home port and ready to disembark..
Now get off!!
Marcus Aurelius “Meditations
How did they get clearance to fly over Iraq? What is Iraq’s stance on Iran these days?
If a new King Kong attacked the Empire State building today, I suspect Iran would get the blame. Elon Musk could probably create a new King Kong if he got the right DNA and applied AI to it.
My impression is that Israel has decided to escape from the terrible latrine in which it decided to put itself, creating such a big mess in the area to force US and possibly UK, France and some others, to create a military coalition to come to help them.
If US decides to decline the invitation and China and Russia support Iran, we can avoid a terrible and prolonged war with repercussions all over the world.
We hope
“ Iran’s accumulation of uranium enriched to 60%, no legitimate purpose . . . was a deliberate act by Iran to position itself to be within one enrichment cycle of possessing uranium enriched to around 92%, which would be usable in a fission weapon.” ?
https://scottritter.substack.com/p/lions-courage-versus-true-promise/comments?utm_source=substack%2Csubstack&publication_id=6892&post_id=165839429&utm_medium=email%2Cemail&isFreemail=true&comments=true&utm_campaign=email-half-magic-comments&action=post-comment
…And these two articles explain well and directly by them how the mechanism of deception was concieved and put in place.
From Jpost:
1) “The United States and Israel took part in a joint deception of Iran ahead of the IDF’s strikes on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program, a senior Israeli official told The Jerusalem Post on Friday morning.
According to the official, the nuclear negotiations scheduled for Sunday were part of the deception tactic used against Iran.”
https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/article-857608
2) “Israel deliberately labeled Thursday night’s security-cabinet meeting as a discussion on hostage negotiations in order to lull Tehran and green-light the pre-dawn strike inside Iran, a senior Israeli source told The Jerusalem Post on Friday.
According to the official, ministers were briefed in advance that the agenda would focus on the stalled talks for the release of Israelis held in Gaza. “The aim was to put Iran to sleep,” the source said.
Once inside the secure forum, the cabinet unanimously approved the military operation and every minister signed a strict non-disclosure agreement, known as a Shomer Sod (“guardian of the secret”) document.
Only a handful of officials—including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, Mossad director David (Dedi) Barnea and senior defense chiefs—were read into the full plan.
False signals from PMO
In the days leading up to the strike, the Prime Minister’s Office orchestrated a series of false signals:
Vacation ruse: Netanyahu’s aides briefed reporters that he was planning a family holiday in the Galilee and would be attending his son Avner’s wedding next Tuesday, reinforcing the impression that no major military action was imminent.
Washington decoy: The PMO issued a statement claiming that Dermer and Barnea would fly to Washington on Friday to meet US envoy Steve Witkoff for a “sixth round” of Iran-US nuclear talks in Oman— talks that do not exist. Both men remained in Israel.
Leak strategy: For the first time, Netanyahu’s office declined to deny fabricated quotes describing a dispute between the prime minister and former US president Donald Trump over a potential strike, creating the sense of a diplomatic rift and further lowering Iranian alert levels.
The deception campaign unfolded against a backdrop of domestic political drama over the IDF draft law and speculation that the coalition might collapse. “It was the perfect smoke screen,” the source said, adding that US officials were fully briefed despite the public theatrics.
Channel 12 journalist Amit Segal noted on X that Trump had publicly given Iran “60 days to reach a deal” on April 12. “Today is day 61,” he wrote, hinting that the deadline factored into Jerusalem’s timing.”
https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/article-857594
At this point, in my view, it is also possible that this scheme was the same one put in place for the attack to the Russian nuclear triad last week.
If that is true, in my view it is necessary that Iran, Russia will mantain cold blood and act with China carefully although they are all facing opponents that deliberately cheat at cards.
after what happened to Syria, it would be idiotic for Iran not to have the bomb. AFAIK, the Russian systems are deployed only around Bushehr. So far israel has attacked Natanz and Tehran.
I said a big fat NO last night on another forum and that seems to be holding correct. Iran is on its own with no help from its BRICS members. The toughest response came from Russia which strongly condemns the attack on Iran. It’s the same Russia who turned the other cheek to Ukraine attacking Russia’s nuclear triad.
I also learned this morning in an interview with Judge Nopolitano and Prof Jeffrey Sachs that apparently Israel used a “wink..wink” similar drone method that “wink..wink” Ukraine used within Russia to strike within Iran.
It’s written by prophecy that the stage of the end times will be ground zero in the land of Israel…nothing can be done to change the Oracle of word of God.
Something to akin to other prophecies…
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Da6cbuAfnbA
CLAUDIUS – ‘Lost your stutter, too, I see’ (𝘿𝙚𝙧𝙚𝙠 𝙅𝙖𝙘𝙤𝙗𝙞 + 𝙎𝙞𝙖̂𝙣 𝙋𝙝𝙞𝙡𝙡𝙞𝙥𝙨)
Ed,
Russia is losing, they have had a demographic problem since the 80’s. It is a horrible mess, but each of their young men are precious to them now and in the future. It is a senseless war, but it may well make sense demographically.
Ukrainians are very clever people, they have made some very interesting autonomous farm equipment. Made with essentially off the shelf parts so easily sourced. Huge breadbasket, autonomous farm equipment, good shipping out of Black Sea, close to large population centers. You might think on that one for a bit.
Jews from this outsider’s viewpoint love their children and they tend to have large families. They have a common set of well tested rules, perhaps the most important is not to covet your neighbor’s wife; avoids many fights. It is an old civilization,
I don’t think feminism works, after one conquers the material world, how long does it last? If one has children there is a chance of being part of the fabric of human life. Not an easy choice, either way has high costs.
Summary: the world is what it is, narratives are designed often times to make it palatable; biology rules and we are biology. To our credit as humans we have tried to find ways to live with biology and dull its many sharp edges. Here is hoping we can continue to do so.
Dennis L.
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Israel is trying to kill all the leadership of Iran. Israel missiles are landing in Tehran.
We will see the first use of EMP strike over Iran.
Israel/US are flattening apartment to kill single government officials.
17 million in Tehran versus 2 million in Gaza.
If these figures, who know they can be targeted anytime, are lax enough to stay in apartments whose coordinates are stored, then they are probably not too useful to begin with.
Here in NYC the Latin Kings and Queens change site nightly so as to avoid being kidnapped by the federal government.
The Marines deployed to LA are not allowed to carry bullets. They are not allowed to arrest anyone. Basically they are sitting ducks waiting to be killed, to play their role in the passion play.
What do I think of a commander and chief who uses US military personnel as sacrificial lambs to advance a political agenda? It is treason.
I personally do not value the lives of the US military personnel.
If they are killed that justifies a greater reprisal.
Perhaps now this domestic issue is small potatoes – Israel is attacking Iran, supposedly including nuclear sites. I also see they collapsed an apartment tower and hit some other condo/apartment residences.
On, dear!
Oh F**k
They don’t sound very useful.
My money will be on the Marines.
Dennis L.
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Yesterday, AI couldn’t solve a slightly tricky but definitely not hard problem with C++ macros. This makes me wonder about how much it relies on general logic vs rote memory. There is still hope for humans, at least for the time being!
Smiling.
Dennis L.
The world does not care whether an ex dentist smiles or not.
That aside, AI fails at the highest level.
I think CHS is right about this situation:
https://charleshughsmith.substack.com/p/now-that-the-parasites-have-consumed
Now That the Parasites Have Consumed the Host….
The parasites have been feasting for so many decades that they’ve lost the ability to discern reality: their survival now depends on feeding on other parasites.
Somehow, the system must change!
Margins are collapsing in every kind of business, so the multilayered chain of profit, full of middlemen, subcontractors, managers, departments, etc will crumble and simplify to less.
Vertical business will keep going better than fragmented ones, but they are rarities and oddities. The tendency is also to reduce the number of things, steps, people or business between producers and consumers.
But thing is, the economy until now has been working on the opposite incentives: atomization, specialization, complex chains, etc
Complexity has been growing. Now you are saying that the system is turning toward less complexity. I would agree with you. Complexity has mostly gone too far.
Agree, the narrative can only go so long before reality begins.
Dennis L.
my comment on his site:
CHS: “… look at our culture not as a monetary-economic machine but as an ecosystem of parasites and hosts. From this perspective consider this statement:
Now that the parasites have consumed the host, they only have each other to feed on.”
yes so much of what you have written will become very severe in the 2040s, perhaps the 2030s.
we live in an energy-monetary-economic machine, which is powered by the large daily flow of surplus energy.
this surplus energy is powering the hosts and the parasites.
with the irreversible but gradual decline of surplus energy upon us now, the hosts and parasites both will be having increasing economic difficulties for the next few decades.
most companies will go bankrupt, and the average person must get poorer though gradually for the next few decades.
the primary surplus energy economy dictates the state of the secondary financial economy for both the hosts and the parasites.
Gradual?
“So the thesis of this book stands or falls with the correctness of the decline rate that Brown gives us. Therefore I have calculated with several different parameters as regards the decline rate, and all point in the same direction. The difference between them is a few years at most. Therefore I assume that my thesis is solid, which is that the end of global net oil exports in 2030-2032 (Brown’s scenario) is a best-case scenario.
Collapse can, I think, begin in earnest already in 2026, only because of too little diesel exports. Observe that oil exports vanish successively, more and more, not all at once.” ?
https://un-denial.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/lars-larsen-the-end-of-global-net-oil-exports-13th-edition-2024.pdf
https://un-denial.com/2024/07/29/book-review-the-end-of-global-net-oil-exports-by-lars-larsen-2024/
Well-off people going into debt for little gain or access to sinecure jobs was a bad situation for many years.
I’d replace the original poster ‘s terms, Big Fast Food and Big Processed Food, with Big Agricultural producers. Big American agriculture has benefitted immensely from domestic protectionism going back at least to Reagan. Trump is, to no one’s surprise, trying to duplicate Reagan’s success with corn syrup. Banning foreign competition while flooding foreign states with products made with American corn syrup.
The system will change when the conditions that allowed sectors to have severe distortions disappear. In simple terms, when the money dries up, industries will adapt or die.
This post sounds worrying for Tesla. A SubStack post by Kevin Walmsley:
Car Wars: the battle between Tesla and China’s BYD is already over
https://kdwalmsley.substack.com/p/car-wars-the-battle-between-tesla
He says BYD is outselling BYD by more than 2:1. He says,
Not sure anyone can actually produce cars cheaper than Tesla, the Robotaxi idea will be interesting to see.
Tesla is a very large AI company, it is a battery company.
With an auto, aside from pride of ownership, what is one purchasing? A sufficient number of robotaxis would seem to meet most needs.
Dennis L.
Some say most of those sales declines were due to Musk’s political activism turning off buyers. Sales for ev cars do not seem to be going down, overall.
Old guy continuing to make a bet, Cu. From the movie MoonStruck, “Cu it costs money because it saves money.” Quote more or less, from a plumber in the movie.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2025-06-12/ai-going-generate-massive-boom-hard-assets
A copper mine takes more capital than drilling a hole, my guess, not an expert.
Rough conclusion from this link, the world is going to value “stuff” more than human labor. This is a huge social problem, “stuff” inflates relative to human’s ability to add value to that “stuff.”
So inflation on “stuff”, deflation on value of labor added.
Economics only exists secondary to biology. Is AI displacing biology? What comes next?
Still hoping for Starship, ideal “stuff” would be a cubic mile of Pt.
Any guesses? I don’t have a clue.
Dennis L.
Maybe AI will generate a massive boom in hard assets, but won’t it take wages out of the pockets of today’s wage earners. We will end up with a system than cannot work for very long. All the wealth flows to the top. Those at the bottom find themselves increasingly out of work. The government must somehow provide for the workers. But how??
Who grows all of the food and distributes it to workers? How do would-be workers refrigerate and then cook it? How does this whole system work?
I don’t know. Economics does not exist without biology. AI is not biology, even if it self replicates, why?
Seems like there was something to the effect, “Be fruitful and multiply.”
Dennis L.
It seems like we are close to a new larger war centered on Iran. Shale must be declining I guess.
Shale is certainly very close to beginning to decline:
I downloaded the EIA’s “Monthly U. S. Tight Oil Production by Formation” report. It shows flat production of oil from shale formations from October 2024 through May 2025. Production was
October 2024 9.18 million barrels a day of oil.
May 2025 9.15 million barrels of day of oil.
The Short Term Energy Outlook now projects that the highest quarter of US oil production will be the current quarter (April – June 2025). US oil production will begin to decline later this year.
https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/tables/pdf/4atab.pdf
The Permian basin extends into Mexico. Perhaps they need some American-style liberation, freedom, and democracy.
So Musk vs Trump — Trump wins . Trump against Powell — who ? My bets are on Powell .
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/trump-says-he-wont-fire-numbskull-powell-demands-rate-cuts
With as much borrowing as the US is doing, the US needs fairly high interest rates.
We can just monetize the debt, i.e. direct government dollar issuance. There is no need for providing finance bros with an unearned return on investment.
Secondly, the Fed can buy Treasurys secretly and indirectly to keep rates down.
At some point, these arrangements won’t work well. We will want goods from other countries, and they won’t take the money we have to offer them. That was the problem the UK ran into in 1940, according to Tim Watkins.
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2025/02/24/that-time-a-sovereign-state-went-bankrupt/
Saudi Arabia is already discovering that too much oil supply can hurt government revenue.
From the WSJ:
Saudi Arabia Is Grabbing Oil-Market Share, but It Can Open the Tap Only So Far
Riyadh wants to squeeze U.S. frackers, although an all-out price war would be costly
This gal may have had some suspicious motives in her past on her business promotions/social media
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6Or1gjrSik
But, it is interesting to hear her take on dealing with the solar farm industry. I tend to agree with her opinion that small family farms will be vulnerable to takeovers/buyouts and why the subsidized solar industry preys upon small farmers to avoid having to deal with costly legal battles with larger jurisdictions.
https://houseofgreen.substack.com/p/i-was-very-disturbed-by-this-at-my?img=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F540ce4eb-521b-4c04-84d5-ee3457abaf7d_1536x2048.jpeg&open=false
Let’s hope that the cutback on funding for solar slows this practice down.
Also, we have heard comments (from Dennis and others) that the price of farmland is already too high, relative to the return farmers can earn from growing and selling crops. Adding the demand from solar panels, and the relatively high prices these organizations are willing to pay, certainly makes the problem worse.
If food prices are not sky high, farmers without solar panels will increasingly find it difficult to pay the mortgages on their farms, plus all of the other costs. Today’s higher interest rates are already squeezing farmers.
If you drive north on the interstate in Utah from south of Provo you will be in a valley of “desirable land” that is being populated by homes and population growth. in one of the towns there is a lake and on the other side of the lake a large solar farm. It is ugly.
Now there are millions of acres of desert just on the other side of the mountains on the western side of the valley that they could have built that ugly solar farm on.
It does make you question on who got the money for that abomination to happen right there.
US Layoffs rise:
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/here-come-layoffs-jobless-claims-rise-8-month-high-continuing-claims-unexpectedly-soar
The number of Americans filing for jobless benefits for the first time jumped to 247k last week (above the 239k expected) – the highest since October 2024…
Commenting on the result, Southbay Research writes, “here come the layoffs” and notes that “if you expected white collar layoffs in IT, Healthcare/Pharma, and DEI, these States would probably show it”, to wit:
California: +9K Initial Claims, +31K Continuing Claims
Massachusetts: +2K, +8K
New York: +2K, +4K
Washington: +0.5, +4K
Continuing claims not only remained above the 1.9 million Americans level for the third week in a row, but unexpectedly spiked to the highest level since November 2021, at 1.956 million, well above the 1.190 million expected…
This may partly be behind the protests planned for Saturday. Many IT workers are not collecting unemployment insurance because they were only “contract” workers, before they were laid off.
frightened workers are compliant workers
and thats what trump wants, a scared people—from generals, judges..congressmen, down to the lowest refuse collector
everyone scared of losing their job….especially now federal support programs are being cut. (that’s part of the plan btw)…..
This is where homelessness hunger and ill health become real for people.
And to to repeat myself another boring time—soldiers obey whoever pays their wages—irrespective of the ”constitution”…..been saying that for years now too….
and They are falling in behind your dictator—just as they always have—-to do his dirty work,……
Trump has to establish his absolute rule before the 26 mid terms….or he’s finished….. he knows that.
This is why he’s moving so fast to establish martial law to combat ”insurrection”, if he can create enough civil unrest, he can declare the mid terms null and void… just who will say he can’t???
Then carry on to 28 and beyond. …the usa will be stuck with him till he dies… I wish i was the only one saying this…..
Like I keep banging on…..”mid 2020s anyone” ????
Yes we have two mob families fighting over territory.
All that talk of English common law I got feed at King’s College is long gone.
Norm which of the two should I go with? The one that wants to kill straight white anglos or the one that wants to protect straight white anglos? All politics is local!
the prime function of all politicians is to hang onto their jobs
everything is secondary to that
Nellie the Elephant packed her
trunk and said goodbye to the
circus, off she went with a
trumpety-trump, trump trump,
trump.
Nellie the Elephant packed her
trunk and trundled back to the
jungle, off she went with a
trumpety-trump, trump trump,
trump
and your point is????
thank goodness we have you warning about this. we were all asleep at the wheel, knowing that prior presidents did nothing of the sort. or politicians like the current and recent past EU leaders. take starmer, macron and merz for example.
not at this level
and not in the usa
but what do i know??
Lol Norm nevermind the lockdowns.im starting to think that TDS is largely just the Hand at the pottery wheel raising repressed lockdowns trauma from the deep, under political cover. remolding the mass formation. Of course, the reactionary new establishment is also mass formation-bound, but on the right side of Hand history, for the moment anyway.
“Like I keep banging on…..”mid 2020s anyone” ????”
perhaps mid 2020s for the UK which is in recession now and looks like it’s swirling the toilet bowl.
minimal energy resources for UK, massive energy resources remain in the USA.
but keep obsessing about the USA, since it is a good distraction from the toilet bowl you are living in.
oh look 2025 is just about half done, onwards to 2026, then a few more years until the 2030s, tempus fugit.
through an accident of geology, the usa became prime economic power for 150 years….
now that has gone, but you have the maganuts demanding infinite growth….
that’s over, so things are going to get very unpleasant untill that message sinks in….
be a maganut if you must—it isnt going to change anything….
people far better qualified than me are saying exactly the same thing….and repeating it more than i do….
no actually only you are rannting about “mid 2020s” nonnsense.
“now that has gone, but you have the maganuts demanding infinite growth….”
no, and you should know better, USA+Canada still has vast energy resources in the present. (Canada is world #4 in oil production, are you even paying attention?)
you should also know by now that I am no “maganut” as I have said so repeatedly.
you should also know that it’s the full political spectrum of people who expect “infinite growth” especially faux “green” leffftists.
but your psychological projection keeps being repeated.
you obviously fear the collapse of the UK “mid 2020s” but your feeeble psyche has to project your fears into the USA.
the USevilEmpire will end when it ends.
“mid century” anyone?????
as ive pointed out—people far better qualified than me are saying exactly the same thing
i dont pretend to be right in every detail
mid 2020s will be seen as the time when collapse started
“mid 2020s will be seen as the time when collapse started”
or not, it’s all uncertain.
perhaps you are now hedging yourself, mid 2020s will be “when collapse started”.
sure many of us like to be correct (me included).
some say “collapse” is a process, well that might be oxymoronic.
Dr. Tim Morgan has tentatively calculated that “growth” may have ended in 2023.
2005, 2018, there might be lots of future opinions on “when collapse started”.
I think a gradual prolonged slow degrowth is beginning right about now “mid 2020s”.
quite different wording than you are using.
but whatever, Reality doesn’t care what our opinions are.
I am afraid you are right. We have been seeing population rise for a long time, and resources of many kinds have become increasingly difficult to extract. Wage disparity has been growing since about 1968 according to at least one estimate. Growing wage disparity goes with growing complexity. And growing debt seems to go with growing complexity.
Exactly where tipping points occur, and what strange actions fix them, for a time at least, is not clear. It looks like we are at a bad point, again now, but it is hard to know if some other strange actions will somewhat fix the problems agin.
mid 2020s is not—repeat not, june 21 2025
but if you choose to remain convinced that it is, i can only let you continue with your current fixation
the 2020s are more than half done! sure early 2020 2021 2022
I’ll grant you mid 2020s is 2023 2024 2025 2026 (mid point December 31, 2024).
later 2020s would be 2027 2028 2029
the end of 2026 is only about 550 days away.
tempus fugit, and you should know, at your age (I’m getting to the “almost done” years also).
Interesting point: The mid-point of the 2020s is December 31, 2024.
Norm in 2010 I had called for a collapse in 2015 based on Jeffrey Brown’s model of ELM . I had no inkling about QE and money printing which enabled shale . Around 2019 , I changed to 2025 but then Covid came to give another extension of BAU . I am with you . One has to understand the concept of ” tipping points ” where we are . Entropy is a one way street . So 2025 -2026 etc . It is FUBAR for IC . Kick the can down the road is the name of the game .
“… in 2010 I had called for a collapse in 2015 based on Jeffrey Brown’s model of ELM . I had no inkling about QE and money printing which enabled shale . Around 2019 , I changed to 2025…”
so you are admitting that you have a terrrible record when making these predictions.
I’ve been commenting here since mid 2017 (8 years! wooo, though reading OFW much longer than that).
in 2017, there were a few commenters saying it will all be over by 2020.
if you pay attention to your own past, you should see that “2025-2026” you are repeating your same mistake.
the 2040s, perhaps the 2030s.
BAU tonight, baby!
Let’s hope you are right. Maybe can kicking can work a while longer. Timing is terribly difficult to figure out.
David , if you knew about QE in 2010 then you should be the chairman of the FED and if you knew about Covid in 2019 then you should replace RFK . Question — are Malthus , Hubbert , Meadows , Catton , etc idiots or ahead of their times ? All made forecasts based upon info available at their time . Another one — who is the GOAT in football — Pele, Maradona , Messi , Rinaldo ?? Who is the best batsman in cricket — Don , Sachin , Sir Richard ?? . Different era’s . So my opinion — you are comparing ” apples and oranges ” and you don’t understand ” tipping points ” . Of course as your sign off quote ” BAU tonight , baby ” . I am with you as I grab my second glass of Laphroaig single malt .
“… you don’t understand ”tipping points”…
I certainly do, which is why I often repeat that the end of IC could be in a month or a year.
not to pick on you, but it’s rare that someone admits to 15 years of mistaken opinions, thanks for sharing.
we can’t know everything, but “fast doomers” in my opinion tend to fixate on one or a few “bad” things.
the primary surplus energy economy dictates the state of the secondary financial economy, and since surplus energy looks like it will decline gradually, I’m expecting the world financial economy to decline gradually also (though “bumpy”, some mild years and some severe down years just ahead).
This. I have hundreds of pounds of rice and beans from 2010. Everyone assumes that once problems arise, the powers that be are going to just throw up their hands and we all die off. WRONG. They will break every rule, violate every norm, do whatever it takes to keep the oil flowing. If the alternative is die off, they’ll manipulate currencies, censor news, declare martial law, whatever it takes. It currently IS the end of the world in Gaza and Ukraine, but Walmart’s still open in my corner of Ohio. I suspect there’s going to be a lot of that going around before this is done. Triage towards the center, and pump until you cant pump anymore……
The powers that be will certainly make new rules, if the old ones don’t seem to be working. We can see with Trump’s election that very different leaders can be elected. They certainly will do what they can to keep things going.
Going , going gone .
” Today’s most exalted professions — medicine, law, consulting, engineering, high finance — are all deeply codified. They’ve spent decades standardizing best practices, benchmarking performance, and reducing errors through systematic frameworks. Ironically, it is that very systematization that now makes them vulnerable. ”
How AI is killing elite jobs .
https://medium.com/design-bootcamp/the-end-of-prestige-how-ai-is-quietly-dismantling-the-elite-professions-0b96b649edf4
I can see this happening. Before AI, parts of some of these jobs were sent to workers in poor countries. This was a different way of saving money.
Now, AI can write reports, with citations. Unfortunately, experience to date shows that AI can hallucinate. It can make up citations that don’t exist, and it can even “write” them. Whoever is reviewing them needs to be looking out for this. Otherwise, AI’s hallucinations will simply build on one another. The approach that was used in the past will increasingly lead to published garbage. We have already seen this, with a book list of summer reading in the Chicago Sun Times showing imaginary titles, and the footnotes to the MAGA health report showing imaginary references.
Using this approach seems to lead to garbage citations, and a corrupted data base. While it looks inexpensive and quick, it doesn’t really work properly.
“It can make up citations that don’t exist, and it can even “write” them. ”
Another human ‘ability’ copied by AI-
“Unfortunately, experience to date shows that AI can hallucinate”
Yes it can and does more frequently than its ‘handlers’ are willing to accept. Working with Chat GPT3, I found that it couldn’t do maths, but its ‘confident’ output gave a strong impression that it’s answers were correct. Indeed the ‘handlers’ of ChatGPT3 admitted that its maths was a bit shaky, and offered a plugin from a specialist maths company called Wolfram.
After asking Perplexity several times for company DUNS numbers (Dunn and Bradstreet), and it [Perplexity], giving several wrong outputs, after 3/4 hour of back-and-forth, Perplexity finally admitted that it didn’t have access to the DUNS database.
There is clearly some level of intelligence with these systems, but trusting these systems ‘wholesale’ without any ability to check their reasoning, is a seriously bad idea!
Indeed some in the industry are starting to wonder if ‘reasoning’ is ‘in-there’ at all, and perhaps LLM’s Large Language Models are little more than your phones Auto-Correct on steroids.
Think about it another way. When a young student is taking exams, its not the answer to an exam question that is most important,.. its the ‘working-out’ written in the side column, which tells the examiner whether the student understands the question properly.
When AI can give me an answer, and tell me its trail of ‘thought’ to that answer,.. only then will I take it seriously.
“There is though, a fundamental flaw in the MMT proposition that a sovereign state cannot be bankrupted. Actually, not only can a sovereign state go bust, but it has already happened… and to a modern state not so far from home. . . .
One reason why you probably don’t know that the UK was bankrupt in all but name in 1940, is that it doesn’t fit with the post war narrative about the special relationship between democracies determined to destroy the Nazi beast. But in 1940, Americans tended to view the UK more as a monarchical empire than a democracy. Moreover, having been dragged into the First World War, few wanted to repeat the process. And that was bad news for a British government presiding over a war economy . . . “?
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2025/02/24/that-time-a-sovereign-state-went-bankrupt/
Interesting observations:
Later, he explains that in 1940, the UK was essentially bankrupt. It needed war materials and fuel, but it could only buy them from the US, using US$ or gold. It had been depending on printing more and more UK currency, but this would not work when the currency need was US$ or gold.
Bikers on their way to Los Angeles!!!
https://x.com/atensnut/status/1932994243959706025
Hell’s Angles save America lmao
Link is not working for me.
Shrinking population of Slovakia: the fate similar to Japan seems inevitable
https://index.sme.sk/c/23496934/na-dochodky-nebude-mat-kto-robit-zachrania-ich-cudzinci.html
Slovakia was a major hub of military industry during the cold war. It seems that this military industry boom before 1989 was just a part of a broader decline of the Eastern and Central Europe.
Now revived by the Russian war.
The war provides jobs, even to a country not directly participating in the war.
world GDP growth rate of 2.8%.
https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/NGDP_RPCH@WEO/OEMDC/ADVEC/WEOWORLD
Tim Morgan has written that by his own independent calculations, world GDP growth rates may be only about half of what is officially reported.
and he writes that world GDP may have peaked in 2023 and has not grown since then, though that is indefinite as of now:
“Though much further analysis remains to be conducted, it’s starting to look as though the global economy may have peaked in 2023.”
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2025/05/29/304-has-growth-ended/
it’s all downhill from here.
and of course “all downhill” is reflected in this OFW article also:
“[2] Over the next 10 years, the general direction of the economy will be toward contraction, rather than growth.”
“[3] Overall living standards can be expected to fall rather than rise during the next decade.”
Remember, too, that the GDP calculation includes both (1) the growth in population and (2) the growth in goods and services per capita.
The world population growth rate according to the UN has been as follows (as percents):
2015 1.18
2016 1.17
2017 1.13
2018 1.07
2019 1.03
2020 0.90
2021 0.80
2022 0.88
2023 0.87
2024 0.86
2025 0.84
With this much growth in population, it doesn’t leave much room for growth in per capita GDP.
IF those numbers are correct, and they keep going at the same rate we hit ZPG about 2050.
Population growth needs to slow more in the future. Longer life expectancies (outside of the US and a few other countries) have helped keep population rising. At some point, population growth has to turn negative.
Do we trust these numbers Gail? It seems to me that if we five currency to the idea that the Chinese population is significantly less than the official numbers, plus all the below replacement numbers from the West and East Asia, to me it is impossible that the population is still increasing.
The UN numbers put the 2024 population for China at 1.429 billion. That is clearly too high.
I am willing to be that quite a few of the population estimates aren’t very good, either.
So maybe the population is not increasing (my point).
demiurge
>The theory that the universe might exist inside a black hole was first proposed in 1972 by Raj Kumar Pathria, an Indian theoretical physicist, but gained little traction.
I answer
That is what happens when science allow those who have nothing to do with Western Tradition.
Pathria was bon in Punjab and is said to be an Urdu poet, so his religions is not clear (Punjab is the heart of Sikhs), but he was definitely influenced by Hindu philosophy.
The Hindu philosophy of reincarnation and parallel worlds, which justifies the laziness of the people in India and all the injustices there still around, influenced this thinking.
Ironically he identified with the University of Waterloo.
Did Arthur Wellsley fight at Waterloo to make the Hindus great again? I say, yes. He helped to defeat the Tipoo Sahib (who was a Muslim ruler) of Mysore, who was posthumously given the title of Shah by the nationalists, and made the Hindus living in Mysore great again.
Dumb question what do the June 14th protestor object to?
Not receiving a paycheque the next day?
Trump’s birthday. He is turning 79 that day.
I made a post about high wages being unnecessary because there are plenty of examples of civilizations where the majority of workers were sl aves. Why was it censored? I hope not to protect Norman’s feelings.
I don’t think it was censored. WordPress seems to be losing some comments.
obviously AI did not like it and got rid of it
Does this AI’s name begin with “Adonis” by any chance…?
“According to the International Monetary Fund, EU countries face the equivalent of a 110% tariff when importing services from other EU members.”?
https://x.com/steve_hanke/status/1932920786698055868
Interesting!
But I thought that Germany had been a big exporter of goods to other European countries in the past, and France had been a big exporter of nuclear electricity in the past.
It says “importing services”, not goods, so that covers the German goods. As for electricity, is it a “good” or a “service”?
The chart at X suggests that even manufactured goods are subject to a little over a 40% tariff.
What the was the point forming the European Union if they slap tariffs on countries that are members of it?
It looks like the purpose of the EU was political integration instead of economic integration. Come to think of it, I’m not certain it has been successful at political integration, either.
Surely, it must be succeeding in some way.
The Eu was a political projekt. But it started as a very iniquitous EEC in the early 1970’s
The EEC made some economic sense, but of course the real plan was beyond economic and into the political.
The EEC was a kind of European funding for states to stick-with-their-knitting. If you were good at making steel, or building jet engines, then go with that. If you were good at growing olives, peppers, tomatoes, then stick with that. Problem was that everyone who *could grow tomatoes*, DID grow tomatoes which created tomato mountains, cheese mountains, butter mountains and wine lakes.
This was funny but short lived, because our government flew into Brussels in the dead of night, to sign a variety of treaties, without voter input, to turn the EEC into the EC, and then the EU as we know it today.
The EU is the chosen model of globalists, which is designed to keep pesky voters out of the loop from global governance.
Oil prices rise more than 4% on escalating U.S.-Iran tensions
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/11/oil-prices-rise-more-than-4percent-on-escalating-middle-east-tensions.html
“Trump said he is losing confidence that the U.S. and Iran can strike a deal over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program that would avoid a war in the region.”
Spiking oil prices followed by drops have happened many times in the past. I suppose this is yet another one of those times.
Native American Warfare
Archaeological evidence has continued to increase of warfare practiced by hunter-gatherers in America and throughout the world. The following book cites evidence from the oral history narratives of the American tribes. The book argues that warfare generally proceeds in a cyclical manner between limited-inconclusive and total-conclusive warfare if only because of fluctuations in rival military technologies that create and dissolve strategic equilibriums.
Evidence is cited from the oral traditions that American tribes at times fought total-conclusive wars of conquest and extermination or subjugation in which the defeated tribe was entirely, conclusively defeated. In other periods, as when Europeans first arrived on America, they fought limited-inconclusive warfare that was about revenge, ritual, prowess, identity reinforcement and such like rather than about conquest.
The following extracts focus on their earlier total-conclusive warfare in which lands and their resources were grabbed. The victorious tribe would then enter a period of generally peaceful existence in which they got on with enjoying the land and resources that they had acquired – at least until another tribe made its play for conquest. Peace was seen as the ‘normal’ state of things – once objectives had been achieved.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/9780470996461
‘American Indian Warfare: The Cycles of Conflict and the Militarization of Native North America’. In ‘A Companion to American Indian History’ (Blackwell Publishers, 2002)
.. There is a growing body of evidence that supports the idea that Native North America has gone through similar kinds of limited-indecisive and total-decisive warfare that occurred in Europe and, indeed, all over the globe.. One might argue that, at the moment of contact with Europeans, Native peoples were practicing limited-indecisive forms of war.
… It had not always been that way. Native North American organized violence, like European conflicts, may have moved in cycles of limited-indecisive and total-decisive war. Many tribal oral traditions indicate that unrestrained, highly organized violence had in fact occurred in the past. That this form of political warfare did not seem to exist when Europeans landed in North America suggests that Native Americans were in the limited-indecisive phase of a historical cycle (Jennings, 1976: 146–66).
… As a sacred history, the Wallum Olum is not unlike other Native American migration stories, which tell of great journeys, epic battles, and wholesale displacements of other groups. And whoever drew its pictographs knew both defeat and victory in prolonged decisive warfare. Basically, the Wallum Olum is the record of a long eastward march across the North American continent. The Delawares crossed ice floes, mountains, and frozen lakes in their journey, but they also fought numerous great wars with the various groups of people they encountered along the way. By their own lights they were on a trek to find a land wherein they would establish a free, bountiful, and peaceful society. From the perspective of those whose lands were being traversed, however, the Delawares were interlopers. In one part of the Wallum Olum the Delawares found themselves living on the Great Plains during one of the many lengthy pauses during their migration. There they collided with the land’s prior inhabitants. According to McCutchen, “Lenape [Delaware] victories became mixed with costly defeats. The future seemed to offer only more war and bloodshed as the Lenape faced an ever-increasing price for their territory beside the Rockies. The Lenape determined to leave, and they set off eastward on the long journey across the Great Plains” (1993: 104).
The wars did not end when they left the high plains. As the Delawares came to the banks of what may have been the Mississippi River, they encountered the Talega, possibly a group associated with the Mississippian Temple Moundbuilder culture. Frightened by the number of Delawares, the Talega decided to attack them. The resulting war lasted through the regimes of at least seven Delaware sachems. It eventually ended in a decisive Delaware victory and the Talega were driven southward (McCutchen, 1993: 107–11).
The Creeks also have a migration story centered on a long journey to the east. As told by Creek chief Chekilli at a conference with the English held in Savannah in 1735, the Creeks emerged from the earth’s “mouth, and settled nearby.” The earth unfortunately was angered by the Creeks and “ate up” a large portion of their population. Some escaped this disaster and “journeyed toward the sunrise.” At one point in their journey, the Creeks attacked a town so that each tribal member could “have a house when it was captured.” In what looks like decisive war, they attacked and killed all but two of the people living in the town. These they pursued until they came across another group of people – the Apalachicolas – who gave them black drink as token of friendship and persuaded the Creeks to “lay down the bloody tomahawk” (Lankford, 1987: 113–16).
… The Iroquois migration story recounts a tale of oppression equal to that of the Sioux. A nation known as the Adirondacks, or “porcupines” or, literally, “Barkeaters” defeated the Iroquois in a great war that cost many lives. Thereafter, the Iroquois or, more properly, the Hotinonsonni, were forced into a state of servitude and had to pay tribute to the Barkeaters in the form of animal skins and meat.
… Other origin narratives and a few published ethnographic studies mention migration and subsequent territorial conquests in ways that suggest total-decisive wars. The Athabascan migration from the Subarctic to the Southwest certainly resulted in territorial acquisition and conflict (Driver, 1975: 49). The Aztecs moved into the central valley of Mexico and began a series of costly wars to reclaim the Toltec empire (Hassig, 1995: 125–8). The Cherokees were an offshoot of the Iroquoian language family who apparently migrated from the region of the Great Lakes to the southern Appalachian mountains. Once established in the mountains, the Cherokees held their position there against numerous attacks until forced to remove in the 1830s (Mooney, 1897–8: 15–21).
… A few pre-Columbian archaeological sites also provide evidence of high casualty rates resulting from great and violent battles. Consider, for example, the Crow Creek site, located some eleven miles north of Chamberlain, South Dakota. It contained the skeletal remains of 486 individuals and is dated from around 1325.
[The archaeological record in America has continued to grow and now shows endemic warfare over many thousands of years, basically always.]
I couldn’t remember the Greek who in effect said war was a notable achievement. I thought it a bit surprising. I was surprised that ChatGPT was not responsive for 20 sec.
The Ancient Greek most famously associated with the idea that warfare is man’s greatest accomplishment is Heraclitus of Ephesus (circa 535–475 BCE).
Heraclitus believed that conflict (πόλεμος / polemos) was the driving force of change and creation in the universe. He viewed strife and opposition as essential to progress and development—not just in politics or war, but in nature and thought.
This doesn’t mean he celebrated warfare in a modern sense, but he did philosophically elevate conflict as a central, creative force in human affairs and the cosmos.
“War is the father of all things “
I think maybe it should be conflict is the father….
Spot on, Heraclitus is very much at the philosphical root of realism in the western literary tradition. The historian Thucydides seems to reflect the views of Heraclitus.
This is the fragment from Heraclitus:
“War is the father of all and the king of all; some he has marked out to be gods and some to be men; some he has made slaves and some free.”
It is no nonsense ‘might is right’ or rather ‘might is simply might’. It is warfare that determines who rules and who is subjugated.
Aristotle stands out with his ‘rationalisation’ of conquest. For him war is a type of hunting, like hunting for animals is another type. It is aimed at acquisition of prey as a type of hunting.
He rationalised it on the grounds that some tribes (basically non-Greeks) lacked foresight and were thus natural slaves to be hunted and enslaved in conquest.
It is a kind of ‘natural law’ justification of conquest and slavery, but Heraclitus seems to see conquest and slavery as simply how it goes in the real world without trying to justify it on the basis of social distinctions: rather war itself establishes the distinctions.
You can read the first 20 pages or so of Aristotle’s Politics to get his discussion of conquest and slavery – it is the starting point to his political discourse. But Heraclitus is more to the point, Aristotle is in a rationalistic-moralistic tradition.
ChatGPT will discuss Aristotle on conquest and slavery if prompted – but yes Heraclitus is the main man in the ‘no nonsense’ realist philosophical tradition.
This seems to be another source suggesting that wars have been around, pretty much forever. The fact that population grows leads to the need for more territory. Often, a group seems to head off to find the larger territory.
It is all moot. The “Native Americans” in USA are whites who had one grandparent who might have a claim to a native tribe and demand special treatment.
Just when we think you reach the lowest depths a human can muster, you go and out-do yourself and show that you can go even lower. Claiming that Native Americans don’t exist anymore is a flat-out
Laws that give special privileges to people who can show that they have some small ancestry of a particular kind tend to create distortions in who refers to themselves as Native Americans. This is pretty clearly the issue involved.
australian ”first nation” people were listed under flora and fauna until 1970
This text is not mine, but Jean Latreille’s (LinkedIn).
This time i translate for you french language ^^
Have you ever wondered why people kill each other when they go to war? Isn’t human cruelty a terrifying mystery?
Our childhood minds remember once understanding that there are, among human beings, honest people and monsters, and that we must protect ourselves from the latter if we believe we are on the right side of humanity.
Some people also believe, following certain Enlightenment thinkers, that the reduction of acts of barbarism committed by humans should progress as they attain civilization. This is very insulting to early civilizations, which are said to be aggressive “by nature.” I recently presented Malthus as an indigenous person.
His in-depth reading gives me the means to delve deeper into this surprising observation, as Malthus has become the archetype of the dominant white man who despises and hierarchizes social groups.
Now, Malthus had closely observed the work on the natives of the colonized countries of his time. And he had noticed that the need to access the food resources of the neighboring tribe, following a population increase, was the primary motive for war. This seems obvious to us, but we haven’t drawn all the corresponding conclusions. Indeed, Malthus, in seeking to develop his “population principle,” explains that it would be pointless to subjugate an enemy tribe to one’s will if the goal of the war against them is to seize its resources and fertile lands.
Taking resources but allowing one’s former neighbors, even enslaved ones, to benefit from them no longer allows one’s own population to benefit from these scarce resources. In a war over resources, the enemy must therefore disappear.
Killing then becomes the objective of a conquering army. Reducing the population of others to replace it with one’s own. Jean-Marc Jancovici likes to repeat that easy energy (and the abundant resources derived from it) is at the origin of democracy and social rights. It should be added that it is at the origin of the Geneva Convention, which prioritizes prisoners over the dead in wars, and the best possible treatment of enslaved populations.
It is important, for Malthus, to understand the motivation that explains why some peoples would be more cruel than others. 0 It seems to me to be an unfavorable judgment of human nature, especially of man in the savage state, to attribute an odious custom to perverse passions, rather than to the “imperative influence of need (…).”
Malthus noted that the Iroquois of North America, when they were about to make war on their neighbors, would say, “Let us go and eat this nation.” And if one did happen to eat one’s neighbor, it was often driven by excruciating hunger.
The need to access resources is a motivation that pushes us to the worst. Ukrainians, like the inhabitants of the DRC, verify this every day
Every civilization needs enough easily accessible resources of the right types to keep going. Malthus understood the problem well.
Malthus lived just before the industrial revolution. With the use of fossil fuels, it appeared that we no longer had the problem. Of course, the disappearance of the problem was only temporary. Once world population grew, and fossil fuel resources became more depleted the problem returned.
Just like vaccines and antibiotics make us certain microbes are no longer a threat.
Many human activities,, particularly in the service sectors of the formal economy. seem to have peaked in terms of roi and or have a negative productivity.
Not only does the federal government need to shrink but the service economy needs to shrink as well. We need to spend less money on it.
Just an opinion.
I agree.
Gail, remember before 2008 when the Dollar plummeted and Oil skyrocketed?
Well, with the destruction of our globalized economy going on, some of the same signs are showing, so far I can point out 5:
– The Dollar is falling
– Interest rates can’t go down
– Inflation is on the rise
– Used car sales and new car sales took a big hit
– The Housing market will start to deflate
So, is the same thing going to happen again? The same fracture points? The same mechanisms? The same signs? The same route to crash?
It seems like the housing market has to deflate. With a deflating housing market, many financial institutions will get into financial trouble. All of this would be a replay of 2008 and shortly thereafter.
The question is what happens next.
The amount of the fall will be greater this time. Governments will finding bailing out banks, pension plans and other financial institutions nearly impossible. If they try, it seems to me we get hyperinflation. If they don’t try, we get deflation.
Or perhaps there gets to be less interchangeability between currencies. The US goes one way. The EU breaks up, and the countries of Europe go another. There get to be various other geographical alliances. Some of these may eventually figure out a way forward.
2008 and now are just waves in the same sea
its a mistake to see them as separate events
waves in the same sea, man.
Norm you been smoking the reefer again?
I like it.
Why is the president of Mexico Jewish? Why is the president of Ukraine Jewish? Why does the director of the IBM say his top job is serving Israel?
oopps make that FBI director top job protect Israel
This is a very speculative video by a woman [Lei] in China, who follows the political scene there.
The blurb with the video says:
.
An earlier video made recently by Lei related specifically to the Lukasheno's visit with President Xi Jinping and how little the visit was reported in China. The visit was reported in Belarus, however, which is where she got her information about it. The meeting took place inside Xi Jinping's personal residence, which was a very strange place for a meeting of two high-level leaders.
Lei has interesting info. She leans to be slightly negative about China. I have been following Lei. Her claim is that Xi is being confined to his residence in the government district. He can not leave but people can come and visit him. Hence the odd meeting place. Basically he in under house arrest.
I think highly of Xi. His government had the foresight to hire retired IBM lithographers ten years ago to teach everything they know about lithography. It worked China now leads the world in lithography.
I have an ongoing debate with an industry head lithographer he insists China is still 5 years behind. I disagree.
We do both agree China can do quad exposure lithography to work around any high NA EUV machine shortfall. Higher cost lower profit but when it is an existential threat to the nation well worth the price.
>> It worked China now leads the world in lithography.
No, they’re still a little behind in node size. Some of their new developments might turn out better than what’s available in the West, but they’re not in production yet and it’s too early to say what the outcome will be.
Of course, but keep in mind that the size of a node, when going from 3 to 7nm, only changes by 10% (the node itself is bigger than 40nm, do not remember the exact sizes). We are in a regime where quantity can still beat quality. It has been so for several years. The wavelength in use is overrated, specially since the Chinese now use different (more efficient) lasing methods compared to ASML.
>> We are in a regime where quantity can still beat quality.
their cheaper electricity helps too
I doubt it . The key to power is ” who controls the guns ” . There is factional politics in the CCP no doubts but Xi controls the PLA and not Zhang or Hu Jintao , the opposing factions . Zhang is well past expiry date and Hu was a compromise candidate . Actually Li Peng the Prime Minister under Hu was more liked . Ignore .
Being from India I am very concerned . Patrick Raymond provided me with the clip . If this is not collapse then what is ? By the way the govt has instructed the local police / judicial authorities to log the suicides as accidents / incidental / family feuds etc to keep the statistics low . Patrick laments about the media . The media works for whosoever will provide the funds for it’s survival . Gerald Celente called them ” presstitudes ” . I agree .
https://www.msn.com/fr-fr/actualite/monde/en-inde-vague-de-suicides-d-agriculteurs-victimes-du-changement-climatique/ar-AA1GmGfE?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=NMTS&cvid=24f241c0bde3491ea9d82c408706233e&ei=46
https://lachute.over-blog.com/2025/06/debilite-journalistique-ordinaire.html
It seems like we are running into somewhat similar situations in many parts of the world. Not only are governments over-indebted, but fairly low-wage workers are also indebted. In India, weather conditions have to be exactly right to repay the debt with interest.
Patrick Raymond’s article says:
I would point out that the population is too high for the arable land to support. This is a big part of the problem as well. The high level of debt only makes the problem worse.
i am sorry for your country Ravi. But this is what depopulation looks like. China already started on it, as has Europe. The climate change explanation, of course, is ruminant bio-fertlizer.
A while ago I mentioned in a comment on one of Gail’s posts John Michael Greer’s theory that black holes give birth to universes. A couple of commenters roundly mocked his theory. Now I read this: “The Big Bang theory is wrong and the universe is sitting inside a black hole, scientists have suggested.”
https://archive.ph/64y0i
“Now an international team of physicists, led by the University of Portsmouth’s Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, has suggested instead that the universe formed following a huge gravitational collapse that generated a massive black hole.
Matter within the black hole was crunched down before the huge amounts of stored energy caused it to bounce back like a compressed spring, creating our universe.
The new theory has been named Black Hole Universe and suggests that, rather than the birth of the universe being from nothing, it is the continuation of a cosmic cycle.
It also suggests that the edge of our universe is the event horizon of a black hole, from which light cannot escape, making it impossible for us to see beyond into our parent universe. It implies other black holes may also contain unseen universes.
The theory that the universe might exist inside a black hole was first proposed in 1972 by Raj Kumar Pathria, an Indian theoretical physicist, but gained little traction.
In March, images of early galaxies showed that two-thirds were spinning clockwise, while a third were rotating anti-clockwise. In a random universe, the distribution should be even – so something was causing an anomaly. One explanation is that the universe was born rotating, which would occur if it had been created in the interior of a black hole.”
I spin both ways, depending on which way the wind blows
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=moody+blues+one+step+into+the+night
Passing into the room of light. “One step into the night.”
“Cosmic circles ever turning.”
RIP Mike Pinder.
Great music!
It is difficult to imagine how the Universe began from nothing, unless there is a Higher Power of some sort (God) who caused it to happen.
I suppose this narrative is an alternate conjecture. How did the whole arrangement come into being in the first place?
we maybe have to concede that there are some things the human mind is too small to understand
For once I fully agree with you. Lots that we do not know and we will never know.
demiurge, I really like it when we revisit previous conversations. Feel free to refer to me by name next time since it was me who said that if black holes within universes are where new universes are born then that would be like baby bear ripping the guts out of mama bear.
there is no shortage of stoopid cosmological theories out there, including this one.
Here’s just two objections:
If black holes are formed by supermassive stars collapsing, and we all agree with the conservation of energy, then how the fuck could a black hole birth a whole universe out of a black hole? LOL
Two. It is definitionally impossible to know anything about anything outside of this universe, yet their theory relies on the existence of other universes. Simple, idiotic logical fallacy.
There are at least five other similar criticisms I could make. Oh wait here’s a third one: the lady says that because of the theory now the universe doesn’t have to have come from nothing because it’s just a cycle lol. You can’t make that professional stoopidity up.
Given that I favor the cyclical, toroidal universe conception — a 3D donut universe constantly cycling both to and away from its central, riverine compression chamber/tube — ultimately this black hole universe theory is another mistaking of correlation with causation. They are mistaking the compression/decompression dynamic of the torus’ central riverine return function for their hypothesized black hole spring dynamic. But of course they’ve never seen any evidence of a black hole do anything else than continue to be a black hole so they are simply making up the decompression part of the cycle based on the fact that matter isn’t infinitely compressible and every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
The fact that two-thirds of the galaxies spin one way and one-third the other could be explained by the river eddy dynamic: as above so below. Galaxies are just long-term eddies formed by the river. Some spin one way some the other depending on the complex dynamics of the organic riverine flow of matter. Two-thirds spinning one way and one-third spinning the other way — instead of randomly breaking down into half and half is just a reflection of our location in the universe; our observable part of the universe emerged from a part of the river tha created more galactic eddies in one direction than the other, and maybe also because 3 is the magic number who knows.
Reante, I couldn’t remember who said the baby bear stuff. And I can’t even remember your nationality, but I assume you’re a Merkin. But the Big Bang theory itself is very violent and sees order emerging from chaos. If you ever ripped a chrysalis apart as a boy, then you might have regarded the goo inside it as chaos, but it develops into a perfectly formed butterfly.
Yes, we can but theorise about what lies outside the universe, but it is fun and mind-expanding. And after all, is there ever just one of anything? That’s why I believe that other universes exist.
As for theories being illogical or stoopid, didn’t Einstein regard some of his own theories as such, but then some turned out to be true? It’s only by theorising that we may eventually reach some truths. And I’m sure you enjoyed posting your objections, which was also theorising of a sort. Some parts of your own theorising may also turn out to be bonkers (old-fashioned word that is in vogue again), but we just don’t know which.
If I don’t take on your objections directly it’s because I admit to not being as deep a thinker as you (though I am deeper than some here), and I am certainly not well enough versed in the sciences.
Thanks demiurge.while you may not be in a position to pattern toroidal cosmology you are in a position to agree or disagree with my reasoning as to why this black hole universe theory is absurdly false. You just have to put 2 and 2 together regarding the conservation of mass/energy and also logical fallacy. You have those fundamentals down and you also are aware of how truly pathetic establishmentarian minds can be. But maybe your apparent affiny for JMG clouds that positioning.
No, we cannot theorize what is outside of this universe, if anything, because there is no frame of reference for that, no evidence. We are free to speculate to our heart’s content however, such that you are free to believe in anything you want, including multiple universes. Different strokes for different folks. But theory is based in Reason.
Toroidal theory may or may not be wrong, but in order for it to be bonkers somebody needs to be able to legitimately embarrass it on a fundamental level like I just did the black hole universe theory.
Yes I’m in Oregon. The Big bang theory is consistent with toroidal Creation as it emerges from the river. See how in this gif you can visualize the galactic eddies spinning in different directions:
https://evolvingsouls.com/wp-content/uploads/Animated-Torus.gif
“Different strokes for different folks. But theory is based in Reason.”
Pah. Reason, schmeason, I say. Meta-reality can do as it pleases when creating new universes. Different rules for different universes. Why not?
If you’ve consumed a sufficient amount of psychedelics in the past and spend any time gazing at a mandelic tapestry or any patterned surface you will be familiar with the “toroidal flow.”
Different rules for different universes would make black hole universe theory, for one, impossible. Physics: mama bear can’t give birth to baby bear unless baby is also a bear.
But there’s only one of you, right?
Do you not know that much?
dem, Paul here just called you a snowflake. He comin in hot! Bout time Paul.
https://www.facebook.com/reel/1318942069686314
That’s not a half urge in that toilet that’s a whole urge. I know cuz I clean toilets for a living.
Perhaps the black hole represents the inside of another world and God is the process forming these other worlds heaven and hell
Ukraine, Gaza, Trump, ICE, Wildfires, Inflation, etc..
I wonder why birth rates are so low?
In the 1950s birth rates were much higher despite the threat of nuclear war, Korean War, wars of decolonisation, wildfires and the enforcement of US immigration law, and generally (worldwide) much lower standards of living.
birth control is much easier now, and is much more in the hands of women, not men…..
thats why the birthrate is falling…..
there are other factors of course….but that is the main one.
Since religiosity correlates with willingness to have children, this should increase the degree of religiosity in the future.
Western societies have religious sub-groups like the Amish or Orthodox Jews, who continue to have large families. East Asian societies do not.
It was always selectively advantageous to be religious, but the ease of birth control has strengthened that by increasing differential fertility between religious and non-religious.
Before BCP, there were “consequences,” and thus some restrictions, to messing around, a situation which provided some stability to a monogamous family.
The automobile/mobility, women leaving the home whether for “emancipation” from child care or two wage earner necessity, indeed were factors as well.
But from my twisted mindset in view of my experiences with the outrageous family courts ( let’s face it, 50% of marriages end in divorce and even higher for those who attempt remarriage), my advice would be for young men to get snipped first and then hope they can get a later vasovasotomy reversal if they plan on having kids.
women like ”messing around” just as much as men do—more probably—but cheap and effective birth control allows more freedom to do it without consequences….
Wages for women are too close to the cost of childcare. Women decide that they need to work. They can’t afford childcare, commuting expenses, and all the other expenses that go with working. If they do have a child, it is only one.
In Slovakia, about a quarter of all families are single-parent families, the majority of which are single mothers. Single mothers make up approximately 86% of single-parent families. More than 860 thousand people live in single-parent families.
The proportion of single-parent families in Slovakia has doubled in the last 40 years.
“We thought we knew the reasons, that the fall was deliberate, a result of more liberal attitudes to birth control and abortion, the postponement of pregnancy by professional woman pursuing careers, the wish of families for a higher standard of living. We were polluting the planet with our numbers; if we were breeding less it was to be welcomed. Most of the concern was less about a falling population than about the wish of nations to maintain their own people, their culture, their own race, to breed sufficient young to maintain their economic structures.
But as I remember it, no one suggested that the fertility of the human race was dramatically changing. When Omega came it came with dramatic suddenness and was received with incredulity. Overnight, it seemed, the human race had lost its power to breed.”
– The Children of Men, PD James (1992)
It’s not just cultural. Forever chemicals (PFAS found, among other places, in food packaging, clothing, cosmetics, Teflon and other non-stick cookware coating, inside liners of canned foods) and microplastics disrupt and adversely affect the endocrine system. They are in the oceans, rivers and food chain. Studies have found them in the brain, testicles and ovaries. God only knows what the effects are, but men’s sperm numbers have been falling for decades, particularly in Western countries (i.e., places with increased plastic use and consumption and other exposure to forever chemicals) and the decline is accelerating, likely due to such environmental factors that are very little understood. Per Google AI: “Average sperm count of 101 million per milliliter in 1973, which decreased to 49 million per milliliter in 2018, a fall of 51 percent.” But the response is classic MAD world, “What, me worry?”
PD James’ scenario could actually occur, with a large-scale inability of both men and women to reproduce.
However, got to use the oil to make plastic, otherwise money won’t be made and oil for other uses will be too expensive if we can’t monetize the stuff that’s only good for plastics. Nothing will slow us down on the road to our own oblivion, taking as much of nature as we can with us.
The stuff that is used for plastics can also be burned for heat, but its value is a lot less if it is just burned for heat. So the sellers of hydrocarbons encourage the purchase of plastics. They make it look as if plastics are recyclable, when, in fact, the many costs in recycling compared to the low selling price of new plastics tends to make recycling non-economic. Very little plastic actually gets recycled.
May I suggest you are missing biology? Biology is at its heart self replication; what does not replicate goes extinct a the end of its lifespan.
Man does not like being part of biology, “we are not animals” is a common phrase. Perhaps so, but we are biology.
There is no economics without biology; assuming that is true, not much of a narrative is necessary.
Dennis L.
All of the claims that California, etc were once Mexican is as moot as Louisiana being French until around 1803 or so.
The map of Aztec Empire and states subject to it, which can be called Mexico, show that most of the population lived around Tenochtitlan, which is now the old city of Ciudad de Mexico, and very few people lived in what we now call northern Mexico.
Mexico did not conduct a formal census until 1895 so there is no way to know how many people lived in the northern states, but it is safe to say that the true ‘Mexico’ ends in the states of Nayarit in the west, and Veracruz in the east, and anything north was just empty territory with very few settlers.
So it is safe to say that in the territories north of that line, which includes all of the Baja, California, Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, Tamaulipas, Sinaloa, Durango, Zacatecas and most importantly the silver mines of San Luis Potosi, which produced most of Mexico’s silver, which sustained the country until the time of Mexican Revolution.
Few people know this but the Spanish silver coins, which became Mexican silver coins after its independence, was the chief currency of Asia until the Mexican Revolution made the silver coins worthless.
USA could have seize all of the fake-Mexican territories, named above, especially San Luis Potosi which would have robbed Mexico any chance it would have had, for ever, but foolish did not do so because of all the BS about slavery and all that, even though very few people lived in these areas back then.
I mentioned the traitor Nicholas Trist, who was moved and got sympathetic to the Mexican delegation trying to eke out a peace deal (probably with lots of tequila, women and bribes) who robbed the chance to seize the Baja and Sonora, but if USA took all of the above territories Mexico had no claims over them since the Aztec Empire never really ruled there and the Spanish rulers did include these territories in ‘Mexico’ for ease of administration, not because they had anything to do with Mexico itself.
Tl, dr, the Mexicans do not have claims over the Baja, Chihuahua, San Luis Potosi, etc, let alone California and Wyoming.
I wonder why the fools in the old days did not anglicize the state names in the southwest. They should have been anglicized to remove any trace of Spanish rule. hawaii should have been renamed as Sandwich Islands as well. that looks like it is the name of a food but since the city of Hamburg is doing well with an American dish named after it, the State of Sandwich would have done as well, robbing the natives any sense of their cultural identity which was very weak to begin with as its princesses would rush to wed the lowest of white settlers asap, including the last queen Liliuokalani (who went with the name Lydia before the Hawaiian separatists rediscovered her) who had wed a John Owens Dominis, whose previous occupation was a grocery clerk in San Francisco.
The Hudson Valley was tribal land of the Pequot’s. Time to drive out the European thieves and return the land to its rightful owners.
“and most importantly the silver mines of San Luis Potosi, which produced most of Mexico’s silver… USA could have seize all of the fake-Mexican territories”
You are buying a lot into liberal democratic notions of ‘sovereignty’ if you see settled persons as the basis of ‘claims’. The basic principle of territorial possession has always been ‘if you want it then come and get it’. The only ‘justification’ that a state needs to ‘claim’ territory is that it wants it, can take it, and that it is of some benefit to it/ weakens an opponent.
Never mistake bourgeois political philosophy, like popular sovereignty, with reality. It may suit states in particular historical circumstances to go along with bourgeois philosophy, or at least to give a pretence of that, but it comes down in the end to what suits states, what they are capable of and how they are capable of it.
If Mexico wants the lands back then it can come and get them.
Btw. a clear majority in California now supports secession from USA. Obviously the White House would not entertain that – while it is expected to recognise the popular sovereignty of Greenland (also relatively sparsely populated and largely empty btw.) The present international system is aimed at territorial stability and ‘popular sovereignty’ has been harnessed in law to that end.
Obviously all laws are just made up and they bind states only in so far as they are in some sense so weak that they have to submit to them. USA is politically weak and there are many things that it could do, like take Greenland, if it were not weakened by late bourgeois norms. Trump would be impeached for illegal acts if he ever tried to take Greenland.
Alexander, Caesar, try telling them about ‘claims’.
Trying to claim reparations and territories is another aspect of “chasing the white man.”
Indian tribes viciously fought and tortured each other long before the arrival of the white man. Same in Africa, where slave trade was enabled by African tribes conquering and selling fellow blacks. Even relatively genetically homogeneous populations of whites constantly battled, with wider conflicts like WWI and WWII.
All this DEI and “Diversity is strength” is of course complete BS promulgated by globalists who would like to further fragment and disrupt western civilization to gain control. It is a fundamental, ingrained genetic/biologic instinct for populations to fight to repel any potential rivals for resources, whether a pride of lions, frogs in a pond, or corals on the reef.
Blacks can adapt to Western civilization if they are raised from birth into a Western family, much like cats and dogs can get along if introduced shortly after birth and raised together; otherwise they fight like, well, cats and dogs.
https://alt-market.us/the-third-world-is-forever-chasing-the-white-man/
When white men went to other countries, they tended to raise the standard of living. Population boomed. This is part of the problem now of too many people for resources. Is having a higher standard of living, so that a larger share of children live to maturity, really a good thing? It takes the place of “survival of the best adapted.” We end up with a lot of badly adapted individuals living to adulthood.
The easiest group to manage is one that is relatively homogeneous. Mixing widely different groups doesn’t work well. Teachers have a difficult time dealing with the mixed groups.
”population booming”….and…”raising the standard of living” are often incompatible…
There’s vicious and then there’s psychopathic. Check out this psychopathic bait and switch con they pulled on these peoples. YouTube short:
https://youtube.com/shorts/yQIpvuqWIKE?si=vfwEv3Vll-jlLe3z
The missionaries are heroes of Civilization.