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The Energy Institute recently published its updated energy report, the 2025 Statistical Review of World Energy, showing data through the year 2024. In this post, I identify trends in the new data that I consider worrying. These trends help explain the strange behaviors that we have been seeing from governments recently.
A major hidden issue is that prices never seem to rise high enough, for long enough, to prevent production of fossil fuels and other mineral resources from declining relative to what is needed for the world’s rising population. Reserve numbers appear plenty adequate but, because of affordability issues, we cannot actually extract the resources that seem to be available. We should expect declining production because low prices drive more and more fossil fuel and other mineral producers out of business.
[1] The world’s per capita affordable supply of diesel has been declining, especially since 2014.
Because of it is high energy density and ease of storage, diesel is important in many ways:
- Diesel powers a substantial share of modern agricultural equipment.
- Diesel is the fuel of the huge trucks that carry goods of all kinds.
- Diesel powers much of the world’s construction and earth-moving equipment.
- Diesel (and other similarly energy-dense but less refined fuels) allows long-distance transport by ship.
- Diesel is widely used in mining.
- Diesel powers some trains, provides backup electricity generation, and powers some irrigation pumps.
Figure 1 suggests that the supply of diesel started being constrained during the 2008-2009 recession. The decrease became more pronounced starting in 2014, which was when oil prices fell (Figure 12). In fact, this downward trend since 2014 continued into 2024. The constraint in diesel production/consumption comes through oil prices that fall too low for the producers of diesel. If prices rise, they don’t stay high for very long.
If there isn’t enough diesel, cutbacks in some applications will be needed. One new workaround for the inadequate supply of diesel seems to be a reduction of international trade through tariffs. If goods can be produced closer to where they are purchased, then perhaps the economic system can accommodate the declining availability of the diesel supply a little longer.
It should be noted that jet fuel consumption is also constrained. The type of oil used is quite similar to diesel. Transferring the transportation of goods from trucks and ships to jet aircraft is not a solution!
[2] Copper supply seems to be constrained.
There has been much discussion of transitioning to the use of more electricity and less fossil fuels. This would require both a greater build out of electricity transmission systems and more use of electric cars. Each of these uses would require more use of copper. Electric cars are reported to each require 40kg to 80kg of copper, while cars with internal combustion engines use only 20kg of copper. Building charging stations for all these cars would further add to copper needs, as would adding new transmission lines to carry the higher total electricity supply.
Figure 2 shows that even with the expected increase in demand for copper resulting from a shift toward electrification, total world extraction of copper has remained relatively flat. A major issue is that it takes a very long time to build a new copper mine. Worldwide, the average time to new production is 17.9 years. For this reason, a temporary increase in price cannot be expected to drive up production very quickly. If diesel is used in extracting copper, and diesel’s consumption is constrained, the restricted diesel supply can also be an issue in expanding the copper supply.
The new tariffs on copper, announced by President Donald Trump, seem to be intended to drive industries that use copper to look for substitute minerals. With a very long lag, the tariffs might also lead to an increase in copper production. Tariffs have more staying power than volatile price changes. There doesn’t seem to be a quick solution, however.
[3] Platinum extraction also seems to be constrained.
Platinum currently has a wide variety of applications, including use in catalytic converters, jewelry, medicine, and industry.
Some people are also hopeful that platinum will enable the wide use of hydrogen fuel cells to help meet the world’s demand for electrical power in a way that doesn’t require burning fossil fuels.
One issue mentioned in the lack of growth in platinum production is persistently low prices. New mines will not be opened unless it is clear that production will be profitable. Another source indicates that the largest producing country, South Africa, has been having problems with electrical supply and rail transportation. These problems, in turn, seem to be related to South Africa’s dwindling coal supply. Its peak coal production took place in 2014. We should not be surprised if South Africa continues to have problems producing platinum in the future.
[4] Up until this report, the Statistical Review of World Energy has used an optimistic approach to quantifying the benefits of intermittent renewable electricity.
The traditional method of evaluating energy products involves analyzing the amount of heat produced in combustion. In past years, the Statistical Review of World Energy used a method that essentially assumed that the intermittent electricity produced by renewable sources (including hydropower) completely substitutes for the equivalent dispatchable electricity generated by fossil fuels. I think of this as the “wishful thinking” methodology.
The current methodology gives renewables less credit, recognizing the fact that intermittent sources substitute primarily for the fuel that electricity generating plants would use. It is becoming increasingly clear that intermittent power doesn’t work very well on a stand-alone basis. Many types of workarounds, including batteries and backup fossil-fuel generation, are required to supplement it.
The new methodology gives about 22% more credit to nuclear power than the old method. Nuclear power can be counted on 24 hours per day. Also, like fossil fuel generation, it provides the necessary inertia (the energy stored in large rotating components such as generators, which allows the power system to maintain a steady frequency) to keep electricity moving through transmission lines. Without sufficient inertia, electrical outages similar to that recently experienced in Spain, are likely.
The revised methodology seems to align better with the methods used by the US Energy Information Administration and the International Energy Agency. In the past, it has been confusing with major agencies using different methodologies.
[5] With the new methodology, there are significant changes in patterns from past reports.
With the new methodology, the percentage of energy generated directly by fossil fuels is higher than many of us remember from past reports. Now, the portion of fossil fuel consumption that comes directly from fossil fuel generation has been reduced from 94% in 1980 to 87% in 2024. Using the old methodology, the fossil fuel percentage in 2024 would have been 81%.
Figure 5 shows the history of non-fossil fuel types of energy, as percentages of total world energy supply. It should be noted that even these types of energy require some use of fossil fuels. Such fuels are used in the initial construction of the devices, for their maintenance, for energy storage, and for transportation (or transmission) to where the energy product is used.
Figure 5 shows that the share of energy produced by “Nuclear” hit a peak of 7.6% in 2001, and it has been declining ever since. “Hydroelectric” has grown a bit over the years relative to world energy supply.
“Geo, Biomass, Other” as a share of world energy supply has been relatively flat in recent years. It includes biomass in the form of ethanol and biodiesel, which are non-electricity forms of renewable energy. It also includes electricity from geothermal generation, and from burning wood chips and sawdust.
The only real “winner” in recent years has been “Wind + Solar.” As of 2024, this category amounts to 2.9% of world energy supply. It certainly cannot, by itself, power an economy like the one we have today. Section 7 of this post explains a bit more about this issue.
[6] The sad state of nuclear generation deserves a discussion of its own.
There seem to be many factors underlying the substantial decline in nuclear electricity, as a share of total energy supply, between 2001 and 2013:
- There were three major accidents at nuclear power plants, leading to worries about the safety of nuclear generation (Three Mile Island, 1979; Chernobyl, 1986; and Fukushima, 2011).
- The pricing scheme for wind and solar generally gives “priority” to wind and solar. This leads to negative wholesale prices for electricity at some times, and very low prices at other times, for nuclear power plants. This pricing scheme tends to make nuclear power plants unprofitable. I expect that this lack of profitability has been a major issue in the recent decline of nuclear generation.
- There doesn’t seem to be enough uranium produced to support much more nuclear generation than is used today. The US has been using down-cycled nuclear bomb material, but that is now becoming exhausted. See my earlier post.
- Uranium prices never bounce very high for very long. If prices were a lot higher over the long term, more uranium mines might be opened, and more uranium extracted.
- Opening a new mine often involves lag times of 10 to 15 years, making any ramping of uranium production a slow process.
There is also the issue of financing any shift to nuclear electricity. Upfront costs are huge, but nuclear power plants (with proper fossil-fuel-based maintenance) can operate for 60 to 80 years. As limits on fossil fuels are reached, building all these plants, using large amounts of fossil fuels, seems likely to reduce fossil fuels energy available for other uses. This makes financing a major challenge.
[7] The recent annual rising trend of 0.2% in per capita consumption of energy looks vulnerable to disruption by any economic problem that arises.
A major reason why energy consumption keeps rising is because, as population rises, there is a need for more food, housing, and transportation for this larger population. The consumption of energy products allows people to meet these needs. In fact, every aspect of GDP depends upon energy consumption.
Figure 7 indicates that world energy supply per capita rose between 1965 and 1979. It remained relatively flat between 1979 and 2002 and then rose quite rapidly until 2008. Since then, its growth rate has again been essentially flat. Fitted trend lines show what these growth trends have been:
I have written recently about the huge US government debt increase since 2008 that has tended to prop up both the US and world economies. With all this “support” since 2008, the fact that world per capita energy consumption growth has only risen by 0.2% per year is frightening. With the high level of debt, there is a danger that there will be another major recession that could bring huge financial difficulties. At some point, higher debt levels become unsupportable. Thus, what is really an energy crisis can “morph” into a financial crisis.
The types of events that have brought energy consumption down in the past are quite varied, as shown on Figure 9. Note that the lows keep getting lower. There is a danger that another recession-type event could come along and push the world economy toward a long-term downtrend in energy supply per capita.
[8] China plays a huge role in the world’s energy consumption. As resource limits are hit, China has the potential to pull the world economy down with it.
China energy consumption (Figure 10) follows a very different pattern from world energy consumption (Figure 6).
There are several important things to notice about China’s energy pattern:
(a) China’s energy consumption is heavily dominated by coal.
(b) There was a sharp expansion in China’s energy consumption, starting about 2002. This is related to China joining the World Trade Organization (WTO) in December 2001. On Figure 8, we noted 2.0% annual world per capita energy consumption growth between 2002 and 2008, which was far greater than in either the period before 2002 (at 0.2%), or the period after 2008 (at 0.2%). This shifting pattern was largely driven by China’s spurt in energy consumption after joining the WTO.
(c) China’s energy consumption has been growing more rapidly than that of the rest of the world. This is closely related to China’s becoming the leading manufacturer for the world economy, at the same time most of the wealthier countries have been moving manufacturing to lower-cost areas (ostensibly to reduce CO2 emissions).
(d) China’s energy consumption now plays an outsize role in the future of the world economy. In 2024, China consumed 27% of the world’s energy supply. This is more energy than that consumed by the US (16%) and the EU (9%) combined.
(e) With this energy dominance, any stumble in the world’s supply of fossil fuels and other mineral resources will affect China.
One area where China is running into limits is with respect to oil supply. China imports most of its oil. Comparing 2024 to 2023, China’s total oil consumption decreased by 1.4%. Its diesel consumption decreased even more, by 2.8%.
As the leading manufacturer of the world, China has been consuming huge amounts of minerals such as copper. This Copper Council report seems to indicate that China uses about 56% of the world’s copper supply. If there is a shortage of copper, China will be affected.
We can look at energy consumption growth on a per capita basis. Not surprisingly, China’s rapid growth has pulled down per capita energy consumption growth elsewhere.
The pattern shown in Figure 11 is disturbing. Outside of China, energy consumption per capita has been falling for a long time. The rest of the world, to a significant extent, has lost its ability to manufacture the goods needed for its own people. China’s energy consumption per capita is now reported to be on a par with Europe’s, but China, too, faces issues as it encounters resource limits of many kinds.
No wonder there is conflict among nations! Every country would like limited resources. If one country has more, other countries will get less.
[9] Inflation-adjusted oil prices have bounced around, rather than following a consistent upward pattern. This limits their long-term impact on production.
Commodity prices of all kinds seem to be influenced by many temporary situations, including debt availability and concerns about war. Higher prices do induce short-term changes that can influence supply of some energy products. For example, when oil prices are high, more production of diesel can economically be achieved by “cracking” long molecules of very heavy oil to produce shorter diesel-length molecules. When oil (and diesel) prices are low, this conversion process starts to be money-losing.
Thus, as we saw in Figure 1, diesel production increased between 1994 and 2008, in line with rising oil prices (Figure 12). Conversely, diesel barely held steady between 2008 and 2014. After 2014, when oil prices were clearly lower, diesel production fell significantly.
A major problem in creating greater mineral supplies for the long term is that new mines of all types take many years to develop. So does opening a completely new oil field. Prices tend not to stay high enough, for long enough, to encourage opening new mines and new oil fields. We see this pattern repeatedly, in diverse areas, including oil, copper, platinum and uranium, holding down the supply of these mineral resources.
Over the long term, affordability seems to play a larger role than rising demand in the prices of commodities, holding prices down. As a result, it is low prices that seem to lead to the falling production of commodities.
[10] Conclusion
This analysis confirms what I have shown earlier: The world economy is hitting energy limits in many ways.
I have written about the world’s diesel and jet fuel shortage in the past. Updated data from the 2025 Statistical Review of World Energy confirms that the world’s diesel supplies are not rising sufficiently to keep pace with world population growth. I believe that the shortage of diesel, and perhaps of oil in general, underlies the push toward more tariffs. One effect of tariffs may be to reduce the amount of long-distance shipping.
The 2025 Statistical Review of World Energy includes data for a few minerals that will likely be used if there is a transition away from fossil fuels. Of the minerals shown in the report, copper and the platinum group seem to be the most limited in supply. The relatively flat production at a time when demand should be expected to be rising gives us a clue that limits are being reached. Unless someone can figure out a way to get prices to stay at a significantly higher level, low supply of these minerals is likely to remain a long-term problem.
The overall energy supply does seem to still be rising slowly, but progress in transitioning to non-fossil fuels is painfully slow. We hear much talk about ramping up nuclear electricity production, but my analysis suggests that such a transition will be difficult, at best.
There is a great deal more analysis that can be done with the new data. I expect to be looking at this data in more detail in future posts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR2FcHoQLlU
“What if scarcity is a lie?”
Sort of an amusing concept (“ignore physics!”), although I agree with some of what he says.
Pretty much a waste of time this video. I could have listened to some music or solve a chess puzzle instead.
It’s from a British university. Yes, the content is nonsense, but I appreciate the occasional reminder of how the general public is being informed and what it is being led to believe.
The Property Tax System Is Breaking—and Ohio Might Be Ground Zero
By Allaire Conte
August 1, 2025
https://www.realtor.com/advice/finance/ohio-property-tax-crisis/
“While Ohioans enjoy an extended sales tax holiday this August, state lawmakers skipped summer break to tackle what many call the state’s most urgent housing issue: skyrocketing property taxes. But even as talks continue in Columbus, millions of homeowners across the state are watching their bills rise as their patience wears thin.
The warning signs are getting harder to ignore. In Mahoning County, the tax delinquency rate has hit 18%, with more than $70 million in unpaid property taxes. Some neighborhoods in Youngstown are even seeing rates as high as 1 in 3 homeowners behind. In Cuyahoga County, values jumped 32% on average after reassessments, fueling a $60 million increase in past-due balances.
And it might get worse: Homeowners could face an additional 25% increase in property taxes in the coming years unless lawmakers step in, according to Matt Nolan, president of the County Auditors’ Association of Ohio.”
The Buckeye State now ranks eighth in the nation for property tax burden—ahead of even New York and California—yet it sits 40th in median household income
It’s just a bad here in Florida…now the idea is to eliminate property tax altogether..
Another bad idea to replace it with regressive taxes of increase in sales taxes, state fees and other charges which burden the working class even more.
Property will become even more of a bubble with the investment hedge groups .
We are seeing a major shift here.
Oh, in Florida, home owners insurance is the same with the steep increases, if you can get it…more likely forced on to Citizens..the government last resort option
Rising property taxes have to be a problem in many parts of the world. Rising insurance costs becomes a problem as the supply of goods needed to repair homes becomes increasingly constrained. Home ownership in general is increasingly out of reach of families.
Couples will find it increasingly difficult to raise a family, unless they are willing to live in quite cramped quarters, usually rented.
Self-termination is most likely’: the history and future of societal collapse
An epic analysis of 5,000 years of civilisation argues that a global collapse is coming unless inequality is vanquished
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/aug/02/self-termination-history-and-future-of-societal-collapse
History is best told as a story of organised crime,” Kemp says. “It is one group creating a monopoly on resources through the use of violence over a certain territory and population.”
All Goliaths, however, contain the seeds of their own demise, he says: “They are cursed and this is because of inequality.” Inequality does not arise because all people are greedy. They are not, he says. The Khoisan peoples in southern Africa, for example, shared and preserved common lands for thousands of years despite the temptation to grab more.
Instead, it is the few people high in the dark triad who fall into races for resources, arms and status, he says. “Then as elites extract more wealth from the people and the land, they make societies more fragile, leading to infighting, corruption, immiseration of the masses, less healthy people, overexpansion, environmental degradation and poor decision making by a small oligarchy. The hollowed-out shell of a society is eventually cracked asunder by shocks such as disease, war or climate change.”
History shows that increasing wealth inequality consistently precedes collapse, says Kemp, from the Classical Lowland Maya to the Han dynasty in China and the Western Roman empire
Today’s global civilisation, however, is deeply interconnected and unequal and could lead to the worst societal collapse yet, he says. The threat is from leaders who are “walking versions of the dark triad” – narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism – in a world menaced by the climate crisis, nuclear weapons, artificial intelligence and killer robots.
This was posted on Justin’s Blog C&E website and saw the recent post about hunters and gatherers
In theory, the result could go either of two ways:
1. Serious collapse, perhaps back to something close to hunter-gatherer in some places.
2. Increased complexity somehow comes out of todays problems. With this complexity, some subset of today’s population will work around today’s issues and allows energy to be derived in new ways.
Eugyppius writes about:
Trump’s Tariffs and those Goddamned Freeloading Europeans—
A brief primer on why the American empire exists, how it works, and Europe’s place in it.
Whenever I talk about things like tariffs, Trump supporters appear in my comments to tell me that Europe has gotten a free ride for long enough and that it is time we learned to pay our way. I find it a little frustrating to read this, because in Europe it does not feel like we are getting a free ride at all. In fact it seems like the opposite: The most common complaint on the populist German right is that our political class refuses to represent our interests and will not stop carrying water for the Americans.
I recognise that I’ll never be able to put this right, but it’s worth trying, because it is important to understand the world as it is. The truth is that the United States is an imperial power. Generally speaking, it does not give foreign nations free rides and it does not hand out unearned favours. There is however a lot of confusion here, because hardly anybody bothers to describe honestly the geopolitical strategy pursued by the United States or the nature of the American empire. Western liberalism cannot conceptualise imperial politics, and while empire generally benefits political elites on both sides of the Atlantic, it is not necessarily or always in the interests of ordinary Americans or ordinary Europeans, which is yet another reason not to talk about it.
The Americans and the British before them expended enormous effort to preempt the emergence of a dominant power on the European Continent that might challenge their successive naval empires. They fought two world wars to stop Germany from becoming just such a power. This great struggle ended in 1945 with Western Europe as a fully subjugated imperial province. Since then, the Americans have coordinated the NATO alliance and guaranteed the security of European countries not out of charity, but because Europe is their provincial possession. As a rule, they have not wanted Europe to assume full responsibility for its own defence, because a world in which America no longer guarantees the security of Europe is a world in which Europe is no longer an American province. It’s that simple.
https://www.eugyppius.com/p/trumps-tariffs-and-those-goddamned
I do not know what nationality Eugyppius is from but I think he is at least sympathetic to the German interests.
The farce called Poland is only about 1/2 Poland, the rest German lands awarded to them by Woody Wilson and Stalin.
I have said several times that the world was fine without Poland and Czechia, the latter having no claims to exist at all.
Because Woody Wilson awarded all of the lands won by the German Empire in 1917 back to USSR, it became USA’s responsibility to protect Europe from the Eastern Hordes. If Woody did not act like an ignoramus and recognized Germany’s claims in the east in exchange to giving back Alsace Lorraine , stopping the Hordes would have been Germany’s responsibility.
If USA wants to leave Europe, the borders of Germany, Poland and other countries of Europe will have to be vastly readjusted, to the expense of the Poles, the Czechs, etc. IF USA doesn’t want to do that, it will have to pay for the damages it caused to Europe in 1918.
Jeffery Sachs takes up DJT on free loading by other countries .
https://x.com/memenist_/status/1951638794073198728
The US likes to be “king of the mountain” or the world hegemon. The US is now up against limits in trying to keep this going. We will be in uncharted territory if the world economy as we know it falls apart.
This seems to be the last day for comments. I may be a little delayed in putting up a new post, but I am still around.
No hurry. Tell us about Turkey?
Tourism seems to be a major industry in Turkey and the Greek Isles. Once it stumbles, both Turkey and Greece will be in even worse shape than they are now. There is quite a bit of agriculture here, too, but it is pretty clear that farmers are not getting rich.
Thanks for another month of service.
Dennis L.
More like the King Kong of the mountains since even now it shows its ignorance of geopolitics.
I am not an expert. It seems to me the world has been a better place with the US, far from perfect but better. We have become so nihilistic, seems like self flagellation is back in fashion.
Dennis L.
Yes but what does Europe bring to the table? They have very little natural resources. Thats what grows GDP not financial hocus pocus… they are not innocent bystanders they have manipulated many countries just the same
The centre will not hold .— David Korowitz .
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/everyone-should-leave-eu-afd-head-weidel-blasts-openly-corrupt-brussels
Basically, all of the “green” ideas are not working.
We will have to see which parties win the elections. At some point, green ideas have to prove their worth.
“We will have to see which parties win the elections. At some point, green ideas have to prove their worth.” Agreed. but at some point something may be better than nothing.
Solar photovoltaics may not power a steel mill, but a near by bank, no inversion, heating a pile of rock in the basement could help keep a home warm and do so with after tax income plus aiding the environment. Rock is probably a battery with a good lifetime.
All or nothing is many times just that, “nothing.”
Dennis L.
correct. their geopolitical stance is even worse if at all possible, as is their ability to keep the UE democratic.
Hunter-gatherer inequality, warfare, slavery
The assumption that hunter-gatherers were egalitarian is giving way to more complex and evidence-based understandings of the human past. Western archaeology went through a deep ‘hippy’ period after the 1960s, and that still has some popular currency.
Inequality among HGs seems to be related, along with social and cultural complexity, to concentrated patches of resources, like salmon runs, and mammal migrations along rivers.
https://journals.openedition.org/paleo/6607
> Foragers or Feasters? Inequalities in the Upper Palaeolithic
Over the last half century, the dominant view in European archaeology has been that Upper Paleolithic societies were highly mobile egalitarian groups. While this model may be accurate for resource poor areas, it is increasingly evident that in some rich refugia like the Dordogne and Charente [France], more complex societies existed that exhibited transegalitarian types of characteristics including socioeconomic inequalities. Ethnographically, it is in the context of transegalitarian types of societies that unique features occur such as rich burials, prestige items, feasting, complex astronomical observations, elaborate numbering systems, rituals in deep caves, and other special features of the French Southwest Upper Paleolithic. Indeed, due to the socioeconomic dynamics involved, these features make the most sense as part of transegalitarian societies, whereas both the dynamics and these features are rare or are completely lacking among ethnographic egalitarian foragers. This paper re-assesses the status of Upper Paleolithic hunter/gatherers from the transegalitarian perspective. It focuses particular attention on the role and importance of prestige items making the important distinction between communal ritual prestige items and individual status prestige items. Ten other key features are discussed briefly that indicate the existence of complex hunter/gatherers in the Upper Paleolithic.
*
We now know from the archaeological record that warfare was endemic among hunter-gatherers. Neither does warfare, among HGs, seem to be associated with high inequality.
HGs even practice/d slavery, and the Pacific NW is a classic example of how complex HG societies function.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2016134118
> Ecological variation and institutionalized inequality in hunter-gatherer societies
Research examining institutionalized hierarchy tends to focus on chiefdoms and states, while its emergence among small-scale societies remains poorly understood. Here, we test multiple hypotheses for institutionalized hierarchy, using environmental and social data on 89 hunter-gatherer societies along the Pacific coast of North America. We utilize statistical models capable of identifying the main correlates of sustained political and economic inequality, while controlling for historical and spatial dependence. Our results indicate that the most important predictors relate to spatiotemporal distribution of resources. Specifically, higher reliance on and ownership of clumped aquatic (primarily salmon) versus wild plant resources is associated with greater political-economic inequality, measuring the latter as a composite of internal social ranking, unequal access to food resources, and presence of slavery. Variables indexing population pressure, scalar stress, and intergroup conflict exhibit little or no correlation with variation in inequality. These results are consistent with models positing that hierarchy will emerge when individuals or coalitions (e.g., kin groups) control access to economically defensible, highly clumped resource patches, and use this control to extract benefits from subordinates, such as productive labor and political allegiance in a patron–client system. This evolutionary ecological explanation might illuminate how and why institutionalized hierarchy emerges among many small-scale societies.
Interesting! I have been trying to read the academic article you linked to as well as well as the section you quote. The authors seem to have been trying to distinguish between four different hypothesis regarding what is going wrong. The situation here seemed to be that high ranking family groups got control of concentrated resources.
I expect that there are many ways inequality can arise. The situation back then illustrates on situation that can exist. But it doesn’t rule out the possibility that other reasons inequality can exist. I find it interesting that slavery could exist as far back as in hunter-gatherer times.
There was a white woman called Olive Oatman who was kidnapped by a hunter-gathering Native American tribed called the Yavapais, used as a slave and sold to another Native American tribe. I’m not sure why there is this perception that forced labor was not necessary or desirable in hunter-gathering societies.
I read some of the wikipedia entry on olive oatman. The tenor of human culture is largely dependent on the ecology because we’re largely products of our environment. Desert peoples like the Yavapais live harsher existences. The entry says that the girls were used carry water, collect firewood, etc. All able bodied Yavapais would be used to carry water, collect firewood, etc. I carry water and collect firewood lol. So let’s not forget the orwellian elitist industrial conceptions of slavery. In truth the Yavapais probably just didn’t want to needlessly kill little girls that posed no threat to them so they took them in but them earning their own keep in that harsh environment was non-negotiable.
The entry says that more ecologically wealthy Mohave indians came along and took pity on these white girls having to endure the Yavapais way of life so they gave them a hell of a good trade deal in two horses. Not a fair trade at all for the Mohave unless the Yavapais and/or Mohave were short on breeding females. At any rate the girls were taken in by the Mohave as their own, though the younger sister ended up dying, supposedly of starvation, which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
I read a bit further and it sounds like the Mohave may have experienced a drought and food shortages that the younger Oatman girl did not have the constitutional strength to survive.
Notice how these corrupted anthropological arguments conspicuously leave out Dunbar’s Number which is foundational to the classical anthropology of the 70s and 80s and 90s when the field was in its prime.
In formerly superabundant ecologies like here in the PNW, exceptions to the rule that H-G societies are necessarily egalitarian, are found. Populations exceed Dunbar’s Number in order to move towards equilibrium with the food supply: physics. There is so much food that you can practice H-G without moving around, and still exceed Dunbar’s Number. But the fact remains that the Number always remains because it is hardwired, and any human societies that exceed it must institute hierarchy in order to persist. The famous ‘tribes’ in the PNW that kept slaves numbered 10,000 or more, which makes them on the order of proto/pre States, and not tribes,.Ecology is a series of overlapping boundary states, and the H-G mode of subsistence is able to achieve a modicum of hierarchy under very particular circumstances just like subsistence farming below Dunbar’s Number can be achieved under very particular cultural circumstances.
Ecological disturbances and the deprivations that they bring, are almost always what causes cultural dysfunction but occasionally its the opposite, in superabundance, and fighting over superabundance, that does, because the costs of the dysfunction are perceived to be outweighed by the benefits of the superabundance. The yin and the yang. But this still obviously a far, far cry from the omnipotent agricultural eugenics of civilization.
Excellent Point: “any human societies that exceed it [Dunar’s Number] must institute hierarchy in order to persist.
Instituting the hierarchy takes energy, as well, and this higher energy supply must be maintained.
You say,
“Ecological disturbances and the deprivations that they bring, are almost always what causes cultural dysfunction but occasionally its the opposite, in superabundance, and fighting over superabundance, that does, because the costs of the dysfunction are perceived to be outweighed by the benefits of the superabundance.”
Interesting. I haven’t seen the detail to support this, but it seems likely.
It’s axiomatic to classical cultural anthropology that the handful of times that civilization has independently arisen in human history — and these arisings are referred to as pristine States — it has always been the result of regional, chronic human compaction. Ecological disturbance and depletion. Dozens of habitually warring societies relentlessly bumping up against carrying capacity and fighting over who is responsible for it, until one society makes the fateful, taboo decision to farm a wild, starchy plant species capable of providing small surpluses, leveraging those surpluses, and the rest is history.
Superabundance has never led to civilization but it can lead to low-level hierarchy. Almost all of the famous native American ‘tribes’ we can name were not egalitarian because of the many regional North American superabundances of surf and turf. They were chiefdoms above the Dunbar number, and confederations of chiefdoms, practicing proto-religions, numbering in the thousands and confederated tens of thousands. The egalitarian bands and tribes below the number, however, surely far outnumbered the chiefdoms.
It ‘seems’ completely imaginary that humans are ‘supposed’ to be ‘egalitarian’ and that food abundance, hierarchy and indeed slavery are ‘cultural dysfunction’.
Humans are primates with dominance hierarchies, the same as very many other species. The idea that is ‘dysfunction’ is just an hallucination of someone’s cortex.
PNW communities are entirely sustainable, so suddenly it is not resource stress that is the ‘problem’ but resource abundance.
It is nonsense with no basis in reality.
Said directly but with frustration. If you run a business and stay in business you know all these things, it is biology and not all are equal, not all are suited for all jobs and not all jobs pay or are worth the same.
A team is greater than the sum of its parts, but while each part does better than alone that does not mean there is not a similar relative difference as with individuals.
A guess, I was not in the military; officers on the battlefield, the poor ones die, those who follow them die; those who do not die look around and reevaluate leadership and changes are made. In Vietnam it was not unheard of for poor leaders to have “accidents.”
Biology is not equal, biology is 80/20 because that is the best God can do. We have narratives in part to ease the pain of reality, but that does not change reality.
America had great riches, those are now pledged against the CC. As outside physical capital which supports imports to the US depreciates, it will not be replaced, those imports will become either less and more expensive or non existent. Narratives within the US which were emotionally satisfying but fail to match reality(believing your own lying eyes) will in effect be cancelled. Those seeing reality and seeking opportunity will survive, those chasing a feel-good narrative will have a very painful time. Think a sociology degree with $200K debt but a ivy league diploma. The phrase that individual needs to learn is “Yes boss.”
Dennis L.
What if the people chasing a a feel-good narrative
are the off-spring of very wealthy people? What if the people promoting a feel-good narrative, a slave morality if you will, are the off-spring of the super-successful?
Your morning cup of coffee just got a LOT more expensive — and it’s not stopping anytime soon. Thanks to a surge in international tariffs, the U.S. is now facing an unprecedented spike in coffee bean import costs, leaving roasters, cafés, and consumers reeling. From Starbucks to your local grocery store, coffee prices are soaring, and Americans are furious about it.
Small businesses are being crushed. Coffee chains are raising prices again. And families across the country are waking up to the harsh reality that even basic daily staples are becoming unaffordable.
So, what’s behind this caffeine crisis? A volatile mix of:
New import tariffs on major coffee-exporting countries
Global supply chain disruptions
Skyrocketing transportation and labor costs
Clchallenges devastating coffee-growing regions
☕ In this video, we break down:
How the tariff war ignited the current coffee inflation
What retailers and suppliers are doing to stay afloat
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DG3ipjki_uY&t=187s
This isn’t just about coffee — it’s about how economic policies and global tensions are crushing everyday Americans. If tariffs can do this to your cup of joe, imagine what’s next for groceries, gas, and more.
I was in the US in early april, and a single shot espresso at a small local chain cost $3.99. are we going for five bucks espresso? Better rename it depresso.
Inside China Business youtube channel discusses how Chinese firms make deals directly with exporters for right-of-first-refusal, cutting out the Western middle-man, and the commodity never hits Western commodity exchanges. As a result, Western firms lose insight into price dynamics and predictive capability, and prices are subject to spikes and the commodity subject to shortages.
Thanks Ivan . I had forgotten this ROFR . In oil it is VZ and Angola . I will do some research on other commodities and repost later .
“Ari Ben Menashe: I believe that he and the people around him realized that this is going to be devastating for the US and the Middle East. And I believe that the people around him realized that their relationship with the Arab countries will fall apart without a peace deal in Gaza, a ceasefire in Gaza. Remember, Saudi Arabia, oil.
Remember, now he wants Syria to make a deal with the Israelis. Not necessarily Netanyahu, I’m saying the Israelis. Yes? He wants a peaceful Middle East and he wants to get the Nobel Peace Prize for it.”?
https://forbiddenknowledgetv.net/israel-has-the-epstein-blackmail/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
I don’t agree . Trump has been taken over by the zionist and the anti Russia lobby . He is powerless as Putin has said several years ago on all earlier Presidents . It is the black suits and the black briefcases that make decisions .
Agree completely
Yep the whole purpose of the reverse false flag assassination attempt — besides helping get him elected of course — was to remind him that he is a dead man conditionally walking. His gag is to be that guy who talks the anti- imperialist talk but can’t walk the walk. The TACO thing. Because that sorry state lies between the neoliberal neither talking the talk nor walking the walk and, presumably,the Gabbardian walking the anti- imperial talk (that she currently doesn’t get to talk given her current ‘nonpolitical’ job duties.)
” Trump has been taken over by the zionist and the anti Russia lobby”.
Correction: The US political system has been taken over by the zionist and the anti Russia lobby.
However, we may have reached a tipping point where Imperial delusion and hypocrisy is overwhelmed by institutionalised incompetence, as crunch time seems to be approaching.
the amerucan political sysyem has finally collapsed under the weight of it own greed….
there may be ‘influences’ from outside, but if you scan back i50 years or so, greed has been the untimate driving force…
Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, carnegie et al—-they had a commom goal, to rip the earth apart and convert natural resources into cash…
the above applies to everyone btw,,,just a matter of scale.—the final outcome was inevitable.
No plots, no conspiracies—-just pure greed.
Now it is time to convert the moon into money. Then Mars.
The rule of the super rich the same as it has always been.
Cover the moon with PV and luxury resorts. Sell the electric to Earth via microwaves.
“Ari Ben Menashe: My take on it is that President Trump wants a deal in Gaza, wants a ceasefire. For once, he’s doing the right thing, he wants the right thing, he wants a ceasefire in Gaza.”
Every accusation is a confession and every claim a fraud.
Anyone that looks at Trump’s times in office, can see this is a bare faced lie, just like his BS about Clinton almost getting a Palestinian state.
I take it he’s working on the premise that if you are going to lie, lie big.
No western leader has ever attempted to stop the kiddie killers. Quite the opposite in fact and normalisation with Saud is a legal impossibility, as the king made an edict, that they would never normalise without a Palestinian state, that includes lots of territory that the kiddie killers now squat on.
It’s all too late now anyway. The deliberate starvation of hundreds of thousands of children has gone past the point of no return and unlike the heavily propagandised and controlled west, the rest of the world watch in horror and will not forget or accept. Trump has always been a willing and very active party to this, no matter what lies they now tell.
The genocide encampment is disintegrating, as the spineless murderers flee in ever larger numbers.
https://www.tasnimnews.com/en/news/2025/08/01/3366589/israeli-cities-plagued-by-suspicious-fires-blasts-disruptions
I was reading for weeks, western (un)alternative media claiming that this was happening in Iran, but no matter where I looked, I couldn’t confirm.
Turns out that the accusation was yet another confession.
If all that’s not bad enough, wait until people find out what they do with the thousands of Palestinian children they illegally abduct off the streets(after the rape & torture, which is well documented). People might be amazed to find out that a place with a population smaller than London, where less than 13% of people hold donor cards has the largest skin bank in the world and it just gets worse if you follow that trail. So much worse.
Anyone that think the Germans were bad in the 30s-40s, ain’t seen nothing yet.
I would advise everyone to follow North Korea’s civilised route. If you promote Zionism in North Korea, you face the death penalty, which has a nice balance to it.
I am afraid that it is The Power that Be that really run things. They want control of the world. They want Israel to fight Palestine.
“They want control of the world”
To obtain total control, you need the heartland and to get the heartland you first must control completely the trade routes, to then strangle the heartland.
If these trade routes happen to bottleneck in a region rich in hydrocarbons, then that region becomes the ultimate key.
The unsinkable aircraft carrier forced onto the region is now sinking, the panic is showing and death always travels with panicking madmen.
All i can say is good riddance.
Could it be that this is a reflection of biology? There is no long term power which runs the world, it changes; one group attains power, coasts, another comes along and replaces it.
If resources alone were the key, the Amerindians would have pushed the Puritans into the Atlantic forthwith.
Biology adapts, its DNA has more codes than necessary at a given time and at different periods those genes are “expressed.” So far, biology is the only self replicating organism which in humans is sentient.
People are looking for a deep state. Perhaps at its core, any government has a group of people forming a hierarchy trying to make a living and in conventional society, the guys trying to attract a mate and self replicate.
“They want Israel to fight Palestine.” Why? Guess: Israel needs weapons, the US makes weapons which make a good profit margin. War is a racket, some general.
Dennis L.
Obsession on biology
Which is powerless against artilleru
The message.
https://x.com/GreyHairOpsGuy/status/1951281719493243291
” WAHA is $0.50 today, which doesn’t cover the $0.75 G&P fees, so I’m being charged $0.25 to dispose of my gas. To top it off, my state lease is “royalty-free,” meaning the state won’t be sharing in those G&P fees. So I still owe a 25% royalty on $0.50, or $0.125, for a total owed of $0.375, which is paid out of the Wisconsin landowners’ share of oil revenue. My wells have 15,000 GOR of gas, so 15 MCF:1 BO means this is a $5.63/BO deduction on my oil from my gas. That reduces the price of WTI from $68 to $62.37, which is below my break-even point of $65, so my wells are uneconomical in the strip. Fortunately, the gas is rich at 5.5 gpm or 1200 BTU, so there is some offsetting NGL value, but someone smarter than me will have to do the rest of the math.
FML
we die.
That is, Permian byproduct gas is so cheap that after taxes and royalties are deducted, it costs them money, which is deducted from the oil associated with the well. The bottom line for each barrel of oil pumped is below the break-even point, which leads one to believe that small producers are losing money right now. And the big players offset their losses with other sectors such as international oil or refinery products. ”
Quark .
With this situation, no one will do much new drilling. They will wait until prices are higher.
What price are they waiting for? Wages for oil must have gone up and overall expenses for drillers must be high.
Trump acting out his tantrums by stealing hundreds of billion from those he hates is one thing but placing more nuclear missiles close off Russian coast to act out his and Grahams personal hate is cause for impeachment. Sadly we have a uni party.
Everything you are seeing is part of the elders plan if the tariffs were not there and threats of nuclear annihilation not present the price of oil would have been lower thereby causing more harm if you have believed the conventional spin don’t worry you have been played like the majority who are missing what is really going on
I am afraid you are right. The “plan” is really to keep oil prices high enough. It is not evident to all of us.
” If that were not enough the BBB also immediately cancelled the fines for automakers that fail to meet zero emission vehicle quotas. Such companies have been able to remove these fines by purchasing zero emission vehicle (ZEV) credits from automakers who exceed the quotas; predominantly Tesla. This source of income has been important to Tesla, amounting to US$2.76 billion in 2024 (compared to US$7.13 billion net profit). In Q1 2025, Tesla would have reported a loss of US$189 million without the US$595 million in ZEV credit sales. The majority of this income came from sales of US ZEV credits, with lesser amounts coming from Europe and China. Trump has even frozen US$5 billion that was to be spent on expanding the US EV charging network . ”
Car trouble with Trump tariffs . A detailed analysis of USA , Canada , Japan , Mexico , UK and EU .
https://rogerboyd.substack.com/p/car-industry-q3-2025-trump-trouble?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=571129&post_id=164609499&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=26quge&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Tesla will be terribly hurt by this new legislation. Not only will buyers no longer get tax credits after the end of the third quarter, but also Tesla will lose the benefit of the zero emission vehicle credits.
Optimus and AI dwarf autos. The value is not in the cars, it is in the software. Robo taxis are an unknown, guess is utilization rate will make them very cheap to run along with minimal maintenance.
Guess: electrical vehicles will work. There is a rumor supposedly from auto mechanics certain “cheaper” autos have an engine life of 100K miles.
Interesting calculation is computing the cost of various “stuff” in bit coin now vs one year ago. Something is very off, numbers are too different.
Dennis L.
There is no value in software. Today, it can be reproduced easily and nearly effortlessly. Telsa is an example of a company that failed with its self driving software (because it was just awful), and needed to start again…. recently.
Sorry, engine or battery life of 100,000 miles? If they are from China… well, I agree.
No matter, that dream will be over when the diesel stops flowing.
Microsoft seems to have some value.
“No matter, that dream will be over when the diesel stops flowing.”
Maybe, maybe not.
Dennis L.
Microsoft’s value seems to come from its proximity to power. If most of its business came from government contracts with Uganda and large Ugandan corporations, it would have no value.
Guest, does that make the income any less real? People in the US use their software and apparently like it, since they keep buying it.
And besides, about half their income is from overseas regions:
https://bullfincher.io/companies/microsoft-corporation/revenue-by-geography
And finally, wasn’t the broader argument about whether software has value? The answer seems pretty obvious to me … you enjoy posting on this forum? Use digital payments? Well, that’s software (and hardware).
yesterday i was watching my friends AI auto lawnmower doing its thing
really clever
except that after weeks without rain there was no grasss to cut
genuis of AI
In a delusional land people ride optimus and AI. How, i do not know, but like a Salvador Dali psinting, anything is possible, ism’t it?
Indeed, its economic model is very fragile. It relies on racketeering political authorities who are asked to foot the bill for their connection. As I have often said, the sign of economic virility for a local elected official is to have “his” airport, or rather “his” “Airport” , too bad if the benefits are non-existent, which is the most frequent case. If the subsidies granted to Ryanair had been spent differently, the profit could have been much greater.
Ryan air shuts down 3 French hubs . H/T to Patrick Raymond .
https://www.msn.com/fr-fr/finance/autres/ryanair-se-retire-de-trois-a%C3%A9roports-fran%C3%A7ais-en-r%C3%A9action-%C3%A0-la-hausse-de-la-fiscalit%C3%A9/ar-AA1JzoPo?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=NMTS&cvid=ef03ce117ff94142c3d7e0c4b5822124&ei=27
Elon Musk’s 900 million dollar flop show .
https://archive.ph/tiCPH
Boring tunnels is not working. Only 4 miles out of 68 operational in Las Vegas, since the project was started 10 years ago. Many other tunnels have gone nowhere.
🇩🇪 Germany’s BMW sees 29% profit drop in Q1, marking third straight yearly decline. Sales down 8%.
Audi and Mercedes are doing worse.
https://x.com/MyLordBebo/status/1950861509631840711/photo/1
Hi everyone, just a quick message from France.
You were talking about gas… and honestly, I don’t really see how I’m supposed to keep paying for it at this rate. Heating with gas is quickly becoming a luxury for the average French citizen.
Here’s what my current bill looks like:
€1,142 for gas consumption
+ €250 for the subscription fee
+ €468 in VAT
+ €269 in various taxes (yes, we’re very creative when it comes to taxation…)
That adds up fast.
But don’t worry, there’s a miracle solution: the €15,000 heat pump.
With that, you can expect to save around €700 to €1,000 per year.
Which gives you a payback period of about 15 years…
… on a system that, guess what, also lasts around 15 years.
So yeah, we’re totally saved. 😉
Thank you for the update. Western Europe has committed suicide by trying to pursue regime change in Russia, putting the current Ukraine regime in power for use as a proxy, and never dealing in good faith. Nothing against you personally and I don’t make any assumptions about your views, but I think this is something like payback and karmic retribution, at least at the national level.
If your leaders had any sense, they’d turn Nordstream back on, the lines that are still operational. Instead, they’d rather destroy the peasants and do Uncle Sam’s bidding than backtrack.
Relax, there’s good news for you.
Trump’s EU gas deal means you get to pay only 5x the price you used to pay Russia and US gas will also displace cheaper Norwegian gas.
That means you’ll have more money left over to send to Ukraine.
I have a heat pump, very well insulated home, after 30F it doesn’t work very well. Ground loop is probably better if you like digging deep holes and then circulating water.
Dennis L.
How long is that billing period? Are you allowed to heat with wood?
Agree. I think those are yearly prices. About 11 times more than what I pay. and I live in a colder climate, in a log home which is of course poorly insulated.
Yes, that’s my gas bill for the year 2024.
Funny enough, there are tons of articles popping up about new regulations on wood heating…
Which just happens to be the cheapest option here, along with pellet stoves.
In any case, I’m planning to get rid of my gas boiler — it’s becoming pretty obvious I won’t be able to afford it much longer.
I’ve started insulating my house a bit better, and like many others, I’m doing everything myself now.
Plumbers and electricians have become completely unaffordable these days.
You are probably doing the right thing, as Qatar have announced that if the EU continues to make demands, Qatar will cut off all gas supplies to Europe(around 10% of all European gas use comes from Qatar).
https://english.almayadeen.net/news/Economy/qatar-threatens-to-stop-lng-exports-to-eu-over-climate-rules?utm_source=mango-searchx&utm_medium=title_and_relatives&utm_campaign=Qatar
For my Dad’s house we cut and split about 3 cords a year to supplement their oil furnace + heat pump. The wood stove is in the basement with a large ventilation grate in the middle of the 1st floor. We both belong to a sportsmen’s club with several hundred acres that sells firewood permits for $25 a pickup truck load.
The club just timbered off the mature hickory and oak trees so there are about 100+ cords of tree tops just laying around ready for the stove in less than 6 months. A sweet deal could be arranged for someone to de-limb and cut the tops into pole wood that can be moved with a track loader to a central location for easier access to the general membership. Maybe you could look around for a private landowner who needs some tree debris cleared and cut your costs?
Yanking the boiler and installing a stove would probably exempt you from any increase in future wood burning regulations. That’s how it is in cities around here. They grandfather-in wood-only houses under a TINA hardship rationale. We have an electric furnace that we’ve never used and I’ve always meant to yank it for this reason but we’re out in the countryside and such regulations wouldn’t likely ever make it out this far.
Don’t scrimp on the stove if you get one. Get a fully firebrick insulated firebox with a full baffle. Shell out for the glass window too for when the lights goes out.
There’s a definite romance to Collapsing in place, too.
Bill for the year? A thousand pounds for the year? That’s nothing, considering UK personal income. I thought you meant monthly, haha.
Oops, France and Euros. Similar enough, though…
if you had tax i’m at 2000 € only for gas consumption only for heating and 1000 €for electricity , that’s almost 3000 € for the year…
2K+ all said and done. Wonder what he pays for electricity.
And of course, electricity is in terribly short supply, also, especially in winter, when heat is needed from the heat pump. It might work in summer, to cool a bit.
Increasingly electricity will be dedicated to Bitcoin and AI I don’t see any other way. Not saying it’s the right thing just this train has already left
BTC is still 70% owned by individuals-you should become one of them. All Wall Street wants is number go up-the more that pile in the more the number go up. I’m hitching my small wagon to that nuclear reactor fueled rocket ship.
Its game theory man-get in the game or get left behind.
IG , the best way to play the game today is not to play at all . Win guaranteed .
” ‘None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free” — Goethe
Ignore ravi IG. The future is bright and that glow, as before, can only come from coal.
Forget data mining and go straight to source.
“If even the biggest natural gas producer in the world can experience a 20% spike in coal consumption because gas has become temporarily expensive, then the world is nowhere near the stage where it can reduce coal consumption at all, let alone by the percentage suggested by the UN. In fact, coal demand is likely to keep growing further in response to AI-fuelled growth in electricity demand.”
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Coal/Coal-Isnt-DeadIts-Just-Catching-Its-Breath.html
Norman steampunk Pagett, start digging your garden up(IG will forward the necessary funds), we’re going back to the golden age of coal.
Trying to create a new emergency in Italy…
Mainstream media in Italy is desperately trying to create an emergency situation about some deaths (apparently) caused by west Nile diesease by mosquitos.
Strangely in center Italy (Campania and Lazio).
It is not clear to me in fact why those mosquitos have skipped more southern regions in their travel from Egypt to Italy and they appeared only in the center of Italy…
It is also not clear if those people died for other reasons and then where found positive to west Nile or died for west Nile disease.
Any considerations from who have heard anything about west Nile or this similar situation are welcome.
https://www.tgcom24.mediaset.it/cronaca/west-nile-allarme-stima-10mila-casi-picco-dopo-ferragosto_101666518-202502k.shtml
Perhaps the idea is to scare the people with some exotic illness.
Some comments on Wolf Street .
” Well the good news is, Microsoft, Facebook, and Nvidia will cross $10 Trillion mark tomorrow morning. None make anything tangible. Nvidia resells graphics cards from Taiwan. Kids call it AI these days. In concept it means (with enough “compute”) a million monkeys with typewriters can produce War and Peace. I am not quite sure what Facebook does. ”
” Nvidia is valued at $120 Million per employee. ”
😂😂
All the more reason for stock prices and money supply to go “poof”.
Facebook is refining the next stage in the evolution of AI,
superintelligence
https://www.techrepublic.com/article/news-meta-mark-zuckerberg-personal-superintelligence/
AIs should be public utilities for the common good. Not funnels for money from the workers to the oligarchs.
They will be funnels for money from the workers to the oligarchs.
What about when that funneling dynamic threatens the ‘oligarchs’ themselves huh?
they can’t help it, like the scorpion and the frog. the oligarch mob obeys mechanistic rules.
Right, when it comes to Elites, you agree with Hugh that free will does not exist, but when it comes to yourself, you’re in full control, which is interesting because that’s exactly how the Elites themselves feel, just with the roles reversed.
I rolled the dice and left. But you can not talk of free will when characterizing groups, because they have internal dynamics that will generate certain outcomes. I am sure there are individuals within the elites that are more prepared, due to partial free will. They generally do not try to guide the mob, which is also what I do not do.
Individuals also have internal dynamics that will generate certain outcomes but we still acknowledge individual free will.
I think our difference in perspective continues to lie in our different conceptions of the Elites. For me they are civilization’s managerial working group. Beyond oligarchy. Thus the relevance of group-based free will (consensus), as a working group. For you they appear to be merely a self-organizing predator class wherein there is no group will beyond the funneling of wealth. Two completely different things.
Thanks.
I think your summary of our worldviews is very accurate.
Norm’s summary is, I’m a gonzo conspironut and you’re just a conspironut.
That seems reasonable. I use them, they are incredibly useful tutors. Somehow in programming they come up with what appear to me to be simple, ingenious solutions. using syntax inherent in the objects and procedures.
A guess, it is going to become increasingly difficult to give narratives which are at odds with objective reality. That is defined as actions which at a given percentile will produce reproducible results.
Guess: Search engines are so yesterday. Now, how does one replace the lost add income?
Dennis L.
Set an index for Data, and then through a derivative scheme involving rehypothecation, value each byte of data at least 10,000x what it is actually worth.
From there, make all your products free, in order to block out small innovative companies. This will secure a monopoly on all data systems from HR, to Design, to Marketing, to Customer Interaction. It works in any industry… especially Healthcare and Medical. Eventually, it all feeds into military solutions.
From there, just wait until some disruptive technology provides cover for a new system to take hold. At this point, the previous fiat currency (data in this case), is no longer valuable.
The Romans already tried that during the days of Nero, and a lot of subsequent Kings tried that to create inflation, so nothing new.
I guess that is the same as creating perceived value, where value is not. The financial system’s underpinnings is always just a repackaging, and hope that the masses buy it.
They masses always seem to buy it.
So, what do we have today. Social media, which is the sharing of nothing. Crypto currency… which is literally nothing. Data for feeding AI, which is also literally nothing. Nothing seems to be all anyone is interested in.
I suppose we are all being told… look you will own nothing, and you WILL be happy. Because, if you aren’t happy with nothing, well, there isn’t much else.
And so the system continues… never quite collapsing… always on less energy per capital… but sliding in digital assets to keep it real. Emperors cloths etc.
Objective reality and senile delusions are sometimes interchangeable as the AIs create their fake realitues, citing nonexistent references.
There is discussion in this article about vaccines being unavoidably unsafe. This is why producers were given liability protection from vaccine injuries.
https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/rfk-jr-drops-stunning-new-vaccine-announcement
RFK Jr. Drops Stunning New Vaccine Announcement
Looks like the deficit is going to ramp up.
The explosion of imports unwound.
Imports plunged by 30.3% in Q2 to $3.65 trillion annualized, more than undoing the entire historic tariff-frontrunning spike in Q1. Imports are a negative in GDP.
Imports of goods: -35.3%
Imports of services: -5.4%.
Exports declined by 1.8% in Q2 to $2.63 trillion. Exports are a positive in GDP.
Exports of goods: -5.0%
Exports of services: +4.4%.
“Net exports” (exports minus imports) improved from the historic all-time worst in Q1, to a negative tariff $1.03 trillion, the least terrible since Q1 2024.
Question “If import of goods is down then from where Trump will collect the
tariff ” ?
Of note, Ford would have had a profit last quarter except for the tariffs they paid.
Not an isolated condition.
Prices will rise, even a 15% tariff half eaten by the producer will rise prices 7.5%.
The Editorial Board of the WSJ wrote an opinion article related to the strange GDP numbers:
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/gdp-report-economy-consumers-donald-trump-tariffs-d9879d98
The Weirdest GDP Report Ever
The economy grew 3%, but mainly because imports collapsed. Alas, investment fell too.
If US producers are losing money, as Ravi points out, then the loss of domestic investment makes sense.
Sort of a guess: The US is somehow covering trade deficits, this implies a CC someplace. When the ability to pay the interest on that CC stops, the US has no more assets to mortgage. It stops.
Putting on tariffs should move some of the offshore profits to the US, and eventually some manufacturing.
No matter what, what can’t go on won’t.
Permian oil looks like a peak if for no other reason the inability to get rid of the waste water. Inability to export oil to Europe. Looks good on paper, bit of real life problem.
It comes back to solar, H and a solution I shall not mention.
Social problem is people want to keep buying cheap stuff. The CC is full, work is no longer an option.
Observation: I have more than a little experience in real world distributions. They are not the graphs economists love, they are most likely not the continuous equations they like, they are distributions which on first glance are more or less random. What used to require fancy math which no one could understand and challenge with real number anyway can now be done discretely. When your wallet is empty, that is the null set.
Dennis L.
I expect this relates to only a small area of Maryland.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/maryland-democrats-scramble-green-energy-agenda-sparks-power-bill-hyperinflation
Maryland Democrats Scramble As Green Energy Agenda Sparks Power Bill Hyperinflation
Fox News: “Wes Moore’s ‘green energy agenda’ tested as power
prices jump more than 1,000% since 2023”
That article is far right-wing propaganda written by Trump-lovin’, MAGA rednecks.
They just need more offshore wind turbines serviced by helicopters with jabbed pilots.
Some people claim there are underground tunnels and all that for the elites, no ordinary mortals need to apply, and they have ultraviolet facilities to grow food.
I don’t care about lettuces or some exotic veggie I have never heard about. Are they enough to raise staple food (wheat, rice, maize, potato, etc)? I have not been able to find a reliable study on it.
“Joe Neubarth
26 May 2021
·
The coming New World Order will be the Rich People who can afford underground shelters. I have toured many of their shelters and they seem to be getting their act together. Initially, they were doing stupid things like not providing a reliable source of water.
I believe those who survive will be less that 4% of the present Global Population. The other 96% will die in the coming Heat Waves and Storms and Violent Riots and Periods of Starvation.
World Governments are not doing anything to forestall this. they all seem to be eager as Trump is to see massive Global Population Reduction in accordance with the mandates on the Georgia Guidestones.”?
https://www.facebook.com/JoseBarbaNueva/posts/pfbid0vnD7ufZa3UAi47jEjgsBAWYQjyom3ZBmdWN7VePmGqnvz1dkAVDMTCDZpVb88iCJl
Left populism rising lol. Rinse and repeat til national socialism do us unite.
Probably not. They must have a lot of dry/canned food stored, and maybe have the ability to grow sprouts for enzymes and vitamins. Lettuce and arugula can make a crop in 30 days under intense lights, but they will not provide sufficient calories.
Which would means without looting the land they won’t find enough energy to go on
Which means whoever providing food for them becomes the new masters as the folks down there will become completely dependent
I assume that they plan to live on dried foods, canned foods, supplements and sprouts for a long time. not very healthy but the other options are worse.
As far as I know, Iceland grows tomatoes and lettuce in Greenhouses, using their cheap electricity. But the don’t grow wheat or other staples.
Good to know since even if they move down there they will need sunlight to grow enough food.
I’m yet to find anything that doesn’t grow under artificial lights, so I don’t see sunlight being a problem.
Not tried any root veg or grains, but that’s mostly because of limited space.
Works very well for peppers and I start all my tomatoes, cucumber, salad and leaf veg under it(no slugs and snails to worry about).
kul,
Whatever happens, it will require a different skill set, perhaps youth will be a better fit.
Dennis L.
“STORY #1 – A top lawyer who is suing Bill Gates and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla has been disappeared—snatched by paramilitary police and locked in a Dutch prison with no charges, no trial, and a total media blackout.
In a scene straight out of a dystopian thriller, Arno van Kessel was blindfolded, bound, and dragged from his home in a pre-dawn raid just weeks before his lawsuit was set to begin. His wife and daughter were reportedly held at gunpoint.
Two months later, van Kessel is still behind bars, accused of belonging to a “criminal network”—with no evidence against him ever presented.
Sound familiar? German lawyer Reiner Fuellmich was abducted under eerily similar circumstances while preparing the same kind of case. He remains imprisoned as well.
This is no coincidence—it’s a pattern. And it’s chilling.
Why are the lawyers going after COVID elites being disappeared?
The arrests are real. The silence is deafening. Maria Zeee’s report exposes what the media won’t dare touch.”?
https://www.vigilantfox.com/p/terrifying-youtube-just-rolled-out?utm_source=podcast-email&publication_id=975571&post_id=169701712&utm_campaign=email-play-on-substack&utm_content=watch_now_button&r=nm2q&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
These are the countries that gave us Mark Rutte and Ursula. What do you expect? I really can not understand Kulm’s blind faith in these troglodytes. He is more irrational than religious fundamentalists. Or perhaps he thinks that poisonous vaccines are needed to get to the singularity, or something. Remember when we used to mock the Banana republics caudillos? Well, those guys now are cautiously advancing their economies and try to build more functional societies.
Strange world we seem to live in now!
Canary in the coalmine .
Permian Basin fracking falling faster than expected
This fracking company is losing money.
Fracking in the Permian Basin is declining faster than expected due to tariff uncertainty and OPEC+ production hikes, ProPetro (NYSE:PUMP) CEO Sam Sledge said Wednesday, according to Bloomberg.
There are now ~70 hydraulic fracturing crews working in the world’s largest shale patch, down from as many as 100 at the start of this year, Sledge reportedly said on the company’s earnings conference call.
“The completions market in the Permian Basin continues to face challenges,” the CEO said on the call. “Increased market uncertainty driven by tariffs and rising OPEC+ production has resulted in more idle capacity than anticipated.”
ProPetro (NYSE:PUMP) -13.1% in Wednesday’s trading after reporting a surprise Q2 GAAP loss and a 9% Y/Y decline in revenues to $326M.
https://seekingalpha.com/news/4474549-permian-basin-fracking-falling-faster-than-expected-propetro-ceo-says
I am guessing that low oil price is a big issue in the shutdown of new drilling. Also, the depleted state of the area.
It would be nice to know if it’s low price
Less oil on the market will need to be made up somewhere. Slowing economies might help
It is both .
Ravi, if it weren’t for you, this forum would never be on topic 🙂
I wonder about the following – a few years back, OPEC tried to drive prices down / protect market share and put frackers out of business, or at least that was the commonly espoused interpretation. It didn’t work – frackers lowered costs and pumped a lot of oil. There were also bankruptcies, but investors jumped back in afterwards. I wonder if OPEC is trying this again, but this time betting frackers can’t lower prices or increase output going forward. The geology is substantially depleted now. If Mike Shellman is right, that there is a lot of debt that has never been and never will be repaid, OPEC could be forcing the financial issue now by lowering fracker revenues and forcing these guys into bankruptcy. If fracking really is EROI or at least revenue negative (debt driven), if OPEC makes this apparent to investors in an environment where the tech and geology has run its course, it could reduce shale investment permanently.
Ivan , luckily Mike has some answers in his latest post .
https://www.oilystuff.com/forumstuff/forum-stuff/selling-oil-to-europe-the-u-s-does-not-have
US rig counts at 4 year lows as inventory exhaustion, well degradation, industry consolidation, and declining free cash flows all play a part to stunt 🇺🇸 E&P’s appetite to drill new wells!
3 months into this drop, production has already flatlined with heavy declines ahead. 🛢💰
https://x.com/WhiteTundraSG/status/1951009187535995279/photo/1
Non-OPEC oil growth is fading.
Wood Mac sees supply gains from Brazil, Canada, & Guyana dropping over 80% between now & 2027.
Rystad has already cut its outlook.
Hello . How do we cover the decline rate ?
https://x.com/aeberman12/status/1950662267986661829/photo/1
Yes, I follow his posts, but it doesn’t really get at the issue of how long markets can stay irrational or manipulated. For example, were the Fed to finance shale surreptitiously, they would inflate dollars worldwide, while benefits accrue more to US producers. The same idea holds with foreign investors (that foreigners fund our resource extraction via transfer of purchasing power in exchange for unrepayable debts). Things like that make it hard to guess how quickly it falls apart. I don’t know enough about the size of the debts, return rates, refinancing ability, etc etc etc to make an accurate estimate.
Ed was talking about humanoid battlebots. Here’s one, sort of:
https://x.com/UnitreeRobotics/status/1948681325277577551
If these things end up with decent brains, a lot of humans will be instantly obsolete. The above robot is supposedly around $6k.
We need at most 1 bil. Bilogy be damned.
an impressively low price
Meaning… its a data collection device.
It’s an open platform – you can load your own software. If they are to believed, you can buy the hardware for $6k and do whatever you want. So no, not a data collection device, rather, China is just that good. Since physical construction is now at a great price point, software/AI is the remaining problem.
It is the humans that don’t have decent brains, why legs instead of wheels, do you want to walk there or ride there?
Republicans Brains are wired to deny science & reality
https://energyskeptic.com/2025/republicans-wired-to-deny-science-and-reality/
Alice j Friedemann agrees with me about Republicans. I remember listening to her on Kunstler podcast back in the day, I know she would not be on Kunstler podcast now that he has turned all right-wing.
Very few of us will fare too well in a collapse from accelerated degrowth when we have to wade knee deep into the harsh “reality” of subsistence living. I remember my own Mother lost her marbles when my Dad was “thinning the herd” of barn cats at my Uncle’s farm. I’m envisioning Alice J Friedemann showing up fresh from the City traumatized and hungry in some local’s barn nervously yakking about the IQ level of Republican religious conservatives when a stream of blood hits her in the eye from dehorning young cattle. We can skin a buck and run a trout line, energy skeptics will survive. Denying that wild animals, captured regulatory agencies and strategic philanthropists are your friends has it’s benefits when you’re trying to avoid an angry mob, inflammation and clotting and from becoming a lab rat in a digital gulag. Alice is an expert at energy analysis with blind faith in the religion of progress. Her and Noam Chomsky probably get together for drinks to laugh about how immigrants and hillbilly, knuckle draggers.
Coming in hot!
A minor cultural point of note, running out of dehorning paste during Collapse AND neglecting to apply a hot iron, is no excuse for putting the baby beast in the headgate and breaking out the hacksaw. At that point you just do the right thing rather than continue with the selfish old ways and let the bull keep its horns and you man the hell up and learn to have a good, orderly relationship with a wild young bull that will recognize your alpha status if you establish it, because that’s what a centered man does whenever necessary, and that is certainly possible because real people still do that all the time to this very day. The women may often not prefer it but they will respect it lol because they are not the ones working the large stock. That’s little c conservatism which disincludes money religions of Big C conservatisms that muck shit up just like the money religions of Lefty secular elitisms do. Life is as much about what we don’t do as what we do do, because the things we do and don’t do pair-up in cause and effect, and the beauty of Collapse is that it creates the open space in which we can re-expand the number of things that real humans have always chosen not to do out of basic heart-centered principles. If pa ain’t into principles and wants me to break out the hacksaw just because pops was the money man in the old life then pa needs to understand that it’s finally time for him to step aside cuz he obviously ain’t a Collapse stockman.
All politics is just mental excuse making for the prison planet money game that breeds all manner of fear in the heart of man.
We do not dehorn our livestock. Horns help them deal with heat.
Right on JJ me neither. When we had cows my breeding bull was a polled Murray Grey. Loved that fine beast I could have him in the open barn while I milked the cow with alfalfa on the other side of the headgate that he could never have himself and he respected that because we had wet springs every year back then and I and he was getting dairy quality grass hay in winter, so his needs and wants were being met. Did have a horned jersey bull calf until about 16mos and everyone told me that jersey bulls are just about the most dangerous bulls and he did get a little zesty at times bucking around in the barn if he didn’t get his way but he didn’t want no piece of me he was just testing his boundaries like he should be.
The goats and sheep we have now that grow horns get to keep them. I don’t know about you but despite the horned goats naturally pulling rank on the polled ones, overall I feel like things are more orderly because of them, kinda like an armed populace. The polled goats are more relentless with each other because it doesn’t hurt, but one shot to the ribs from the horns of a goat higher up in the pecking order, is final. But I don’t tolerate bullies. The only downside of horns is that the juvenile goat horns get stuck in my cattle panel fencing, at the posts so I need to maintain a close count of them and keep my ears peeled for distant sounds of distress.
I don’t know quite how to reply to this statement.
I cannot tell if your incoherent and rambling statement is some type of satire of conservative thought or actually real.
Well you did basically say that you think Republicans’ brains are wired to deny science and reality, which is an elitist political sentiment. Replenish was in part reminding you that, come Collapse, ivory tower liberals won’t be as well adapted to reality as they think they are, and comparatively less so than rural Conservatives who know how to do stuff including making difficult and necessary decisions.
Liberals are city folk who have no idea how things work without big government and big corporations. This wasn’t always the case but it is the case, now.
The worst liberal city people are those that moved out to the country and brought their colonialism with them. The town I’m outside of has the grim distinction of being the smallest town in the US with a Pride parade and festival (replete with drag show of course), which starts today. Had to move the flatbed truck I’m trying to sell off of Main St for the weekend yesterday, which I’m happy to do but I won’t be attending the imported clown show. The rainbow flags have been lining the street from start to finish for about a week now. The problem is rooted decadal Californian economic migration, ie real estate arbitrage, resulting in two of the three business establishments in town — the saloon and the restaurant — are gay owned and lesbian owned. So the town council came under liberal capture. But what small town isn’t divided against itself anymore? Fortunately I’m outside of city limits, in county. If I was in city limits I figure I might as well just move back to Portland again.
I live in rural Iowa. You have an idea of rural conservatives that was true about a century ago. Most conservatives around my parts are even most Bourgeoisie people you could meet.
Most Conservatives around my rural part of Oregon are New Country bougie too but they’re still gonna be more capable than ivory tower liberals because they’re not doing office work. Myself I only hang out with real country boys and I also spend some time with the homeschooling conservative Evangelicals because they are super earnest and salt of the earth people who freely admit that their faith is a choice and a construct and not a reality, which contradicts Friedemann’s and your blithe stereotyping of them. And let’s not get started on liberal ‘science’ and ‘reality’ huh?
Iowa is not the U.S. You can’t possibly a place where conservatives have considerable local power and make generalities.
Most people think highly of themselves. Most people are bourgeoisie in the sense that they love having an out-group they can look down on. Conservatives and liberals both look down on each other. So do people who have loyalty to sports teams.
People with low self esteem are a minority, despite what the media might tell you, with their manufactured epidemics of bulimia, wrist-cutting, and mass shooters.
guest I define bourgeois as having middle class wealth in order to live a middle class lifestyle. One of my country boys, now retired, has middle class wealth but he grew up in Missouri without shoes on his feet and will never have a middle class lifestyle. He did buy rundown land for his son, who is about as good as New Country gets, that the son is paying him back for half of it, which makes it a family circumvention of the real estate bubble. The land — owned or BLM land — is the only thing them boys care about which is why I care about them. Where rednecks and a Gen X slacker see eye to eye.
Structurally looking down on others is just what happens to human nature when put in a multicultural prison beyond Dunbar’s Number. I’ve been looking down on New Country conservatives and liberals alike, in this conversation, because selling out to the prison wardens in order to live the consumer lifestyle is human behavior to be looked down upon in my book, even acknowledging that biophysically we are largely products of our environment. In my experience spirit can endure much environmental hardship, and that’s from where a new leaf unfurls.
Google says
While the world Jewish population grows at roughly 0.7% annually, the Haredi population is growing at an estimated 3.5% to 4.0% per year, according to the Haredi Research Group
The Jewish population will increase by 1.4.X in 50 years. The Haredi will increase by 5.5x in 50 years.
Water is a finite resource. Who knew?
Irene Slav has an article on OilPrice addressing the water problem in the Permian:
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/The-Permians-Dirty-Secret-Is-Bubbling-Over.html
Bullet points:
“Wastewater disposal in the Permian Basin is straining geological limits.
Texas regulators are restricting new injection wells due to rising reservoir pressure, seismic activity, and potential damage to oil reserves and freshwater resources.
Legal disputes are emerging among drillers, with Stateline Operating suing Devon Energy and Aris Water Solutions for $180 million.”
I am sure the ecological damage to ground water reserves is not “priced in” in any way. As with other companies that produce toxic waste or cause massive ecological damage, they will eventually shutter by going bankrupt with no money to pay for remediation costs.
Saw that one, nice catch.
My guess: we are the limits to earth, we need Starship and while it is promising, the payload to date seems limited. We have to find stuff up there make stuff up there and then drop a reasonable amount down here, gravity works fairly well going down, up is always an issue.
We keep coming back to a hydrogen economy, we need a way to produce it without polluting both the temperature and the waste products. It keeps coming back to, drum roll please, “A cubic mile of Pt.”
Trump’s plan is reminiscent of China’s early economy, pollution be damned. We are going to try and export our oil and keep the waste products here at home. Perhaps a bit of cogitation on that one is in order, corollary of NIMBY.
Dennis L.
Why don’t bring water vapors from Jupiter?
I don’t think it is an efficiemt use of these mythical devices, which is like asking Pegasus to drive a manure cart, but it is an idea.
There are too many Lawyers looking for a paycheck. In a resource depleted world, law will become a vigilante affair and may lack a formal process we have grown accustomed to.
Like western movies, where the lawyer’s deposition was done by a pistol.
More like mob justice, witch hunts, and blood feuds.
https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/another-canary-las-vegas-economy-tanking-just-it-did-2008-and-2009
Another Canary: The Las Vegas Economy Is Tanking Just Like It Did In 2008 And 2009
A good canary. Boom-bust cities like Las Vegas and San Francisco lead the way for the rest of the market, or at least that’s how I remember it.
Have you got the odds on Vegas tanking?
A lot of Chinese tourists like to gamble.
I was at night club one time and the loudest people there were the a group of Asians, presumably Chinese. They were gambling.
Turning away the business of foreigners as significant consequence for an economy that orientated itself around globalization for the last 50 years. This is especially true of places like Las Vegas and San Francisco. Consumption that was done by wealthy foreign tourists cannot be substituted by local wealthy citizens.
two economists post a model in which population skids below the level in 1500 AD.
https://mishtalk.com/economics/the-depopulation-bomb-two-economists-make-the-case-for-humans/
It seems this population forecast agrees with OFW but for different reasons.
I’m sure Mish is familiar with the oil dilemma but he doesn’t mention anything about energy (neither do the commenters) perhaps because as he says free markets find solutions.
Maybe they looked at fig 6 (world energy by type) because it looks so plentiful.
Or given the solar hype it will widen to a 3rd of the total , never mind that blob of coal. (If oil was broken down to show tight would it be noticeable?
I think most people think there’s enough oil but it goes to the winners.
Maybe it’s hard to predict the future.
Assuming the pattern that holds now will hold in the future is an iffy assumption, at best. Maybe that is the problem with all of these models.
I would like to see a model for the US with Amish, Hasid, and Mormon in one group and everyone else in the other group. How long before the fast grow group out numbers the slow/negative growth group? How long before 90% of the population is fast growth?
See Gail’s comment that preceded yours.
The first two are militatily useless
Population of passenger pigeons 1865: 6 billion
Population of passenger pigeons 1915: 0
Given depopulation is the openly stated objective of the Globalists (500M target) and soon robots will be able to replace many “useless eaters”, a bet on reduced population seems a good one.
The Georgia guidestones or whatever is not an openly stated objective of the globalists. 500M is just the historical mean. A bet on a reduced population is a good structural bet because of peak oil. Every capable person is ultimately responsible for their own survival.
“Joe Neubarth
18 April 2018
·
I keep on seeing people who are amazed that the Republican Politicians cannot see that they are accelerating Global Heating.
They know damn well what they are doing. It is called the Republican Global Population Reduction Program (RGPRP).
Years ago, I saw the pamphlet for donations to build the Georgia Guidestones. My father, a millionaire, had been solicited for a donation in late 1977, but Dad refused.
The brochure talked about the importance of getting the Global Population down to under half a Billion. It claimed that Southern Asia, Africa and most of Latin America could be set aside for Nature and wild animals. (What the hell!)
The fact that those three regions were spelled out, but Australia was passed by, was obvious proof that the intent was to eliminate all people of color in those regions.
(I.e. the majority of Rich White People were not targeted for “disappearance/elimination.”)
Dad refused because he was married to the Samoan Royal Princess who had a beautiful light brown color to her skin. Dad would not support any Republican Racist Nonsense so refused to donate.
When I asked him about it, he said that, “Those modern Republicans have all turned into money worshipping racist A$$holes who believe the dark people and the poorer people need to be removed from the Earth because it is getting overcrowded. It is just Hitler Racist Eugenics Crap expanded to the entire Globe.”
I do believe Dad was correct. Dad was murdered after refusing to donate. He was 73. Three young men smashed his skull in in three places (with a bent double construction rod that was recovered a short distance from the crime site)and took his wallet to make it look like a strong-armed robbery. It may have been, but you do not need to kill an old man like that to take his wallet. I believe it was a deliberate murder.
Those Rich Republicans did get their money and they did erect the Georgia Guidestones that mandated Massive Global Population Reduction. It is all there carved in the stones on a small hill in Georgia.
We are seeing that program in process now.”?
https://www.facebook.com/JoseBarbaNueva/posts/pfbid02DTGLeHjtkpePhrVzu1Qo2qmb7a32vkBiUutpeNygJJfrPpka7bvNMtLkLgUpvttol
Not a conspiracy theory.
They say the purpose of educating women in poor countries is to stop them from having too many children. Women naturally gravitate towards administrative positions with no work/life balance. Many of them find they can only “afford” one child. What no one says is the main reason a career orientated woman can afford one child is because the cost of child-care is very close to their wage.
In developed countries, no says the purpose of educating women and giving them hiring preferences is to prevent them from having children.
Good article on inflation and its causes by Barry Ritholz. It’s not just money printing, there are real underlying supply and labor factors driving some of it. The main area that above-average inflation has hit is services.
Caution, he uses BLS inflation measurement, which are politically goal-seeking, so his numbers are likely way off.
https://ritholtz.com/2025/07/what-is-driving-inflation/
https://youtu.be/LT96QsadYtw?si=aX2U4s5yQXX_Sf4-
I thought this was a good description on dent by Nate Hagens and Lyn Aldon
I just listened to this again and at the very end Lyn goes on about Egypt and how they are well positioned and I wholeheartedly disagree. They are burning oil to make electricity. They are an energy importer now but other parts are interesting you can’t stop the train so have to figure where it is going
Macgregor likes to say about Egypt: “100 million people living on infrastructure built for 30 million”. I suppose something similar could be said for Iraq and many other countries. Today I looked up Iraq’s population, about 45 million, up from only 25 million around 2000. +80% in 25 years.
Look at the graph showing which items are rising fastest: hospital care, college tuition, college text books, and childcare.
I think that these costs are rising faster due to rising “complexity.” Every hospital has to have all of the latest machines and contracts with many physicians. Its cost keeps rising as it tries to keep up with the latest (and most expensive) medical practices.
Young people are being pressured to go to college “to get a good job.” Debt and printing money has been very much behind this. Residence halls have become much fancier, with a bathroom for each bedroom. Now students, with the available debt, can supposedly afford these fancy accommodations. Colleges have been forced to add more layers of deans, to compete for research grants, to that faculty can do more research (and less teaching). The cost of college has gone through the roof.
The college textbook situation textbook has gotten ridiculous. Actually printing books with today’s graphics and colors is terribly expensive, which is a major part of the problem. Often, faculty will put together selections of readings for students. These change every year. This makes books impossible to resell, further elevating costs. Online books are often just rented, but then they are expensive.
I am sure that the higher child care costs vary by state. But workers want more reasonable wages. And there are increasing standards of ratios of teachers to students, and how much parents expect the children to learn. It gets to be more of preschool, not just day care.
Personal observations:
In engineering, kids can and do start college in high school, attend CC. A well qualified student starts university engineering with math through diff. eq. physics and chemistry; basically they start as a junior. In MN I believe there is no tuition for these two years in CC while a high school student.
It is reported that a competent welder out of cc can do six figures without too much effort. For every two electricians entering the trade, five are retiring. An industrial electrician is a very highly skilled individual. Put in some overtime, no damn student debt, marry a hairdresser, have some children, buy a house and have the deans learn to code. Oops, coding is being taken by AI.
Education is changing, it can be more focused, it is now cheap, cheap, cheap. Deans, dorms, manicured campuses, those are expensive. AI doesn’t need an office. Some of you will find it odd, but AI is quite good conversationally. We can do experiments on computers that previously required a well equipped laboratory for all the students. You can play with the values, graph the output; that replaces a signal generator and scope along with all the wires and a bench. Now, go multi screen and add AI. Ask questions, get immediate answers. AI can share a screen, it is looking over your shoulder. Can you call your tenured prof at midnight to ask a question?
Personal prejudice and guess: for 90% of the students at a university the reason they can’t afford a house is they spend their life paying for the luxurious lifestyles of the tenured profs and associated deans. For them it is a nice life, it comes on the backs of our children.
Observation on predictions here. Have you checked bitcoin lately? Today about $118K, one year ago, $29K. Have you checked your grocery bill in dollars over a similar period?
Dennis L.
One aspect that I had to undertake was caregiver with my Sister for our Mother
The 2025 edition of Caregiving in the US, released by AARP and the National Alliance for Caregiving, reveals a rapidly evolving caregiving landscape that now includes 63 million Americans, a nearly 50% increase since 2015. This surge underscores the growing demand for family caregivers who provide essential support to those with chronic, disabling, or serious health conditions. The report outlines key policy areas, such as financial support, workplace protections, and access to services, offering a roadmap to build a more supportive system for family caregivers, who form the backbone of long-term care in the US.
https://www.aarp.org/pri/topics/ltss/family-caregiving/caregiving-in-the-us-2025/
Medicaid changes will hurt family caregivers, experts warn
by Alejandra O’Connell-Domenech – 07/27/25 2:00 PM ET
The Hill…
We are very concerned of the impact of the just finalized Medicaid cuts on the community of family caregivers,” Jason Resendez, president and CEO of the alliance, said during a call with reporters earlier this week.
Medicaid recipients will be subject to more frequent eligibility checks, in part, due to revised work requirements for the joint state and federal program. Now, adults between the ages of 19 and 64 will need to work or participate in community service activities for at least 80 hours a month to be eligible for health care coverage under Medicaid.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates the package will reduce Medicaid spending by roughly $911 billion over the next 10 years and increase the number of uninsured Americans by up to 10 million.
More to budget for the military, AI and tax breaks
Senile, incoherent musings aside, trade jobs are impossible to get in states with Spanish names, because there are no shortage of impprts from down south.
All the curies were good at were whoring.
Poland was, is , and will never be relevant for stem.
“Look at the graph showing which items are rising fastest: hospital care, college tuition, college text books, and childcare.”
Medicare/Medicaid set a floor on health care costs, costs are then set higher to catch as much of the insurance dollar as possible. Each year the floors are ratcheted up which increases the inflation which ratchets the next year, etc.
College tuition was a result of observations that people with a college degree made more money. It is a good guess they were also brighter than those without a degree – NOT universally true, close enough. That made college an easy sell, WWII and GI bill set the floor. Advertising the increased income was a tide which lifted all educational parts, junk studies could ride along with real studies and more deans, etc came on board. All this was based on historical data pre understanding by colleges they could “grow” by doing good. They also had much more money for the elites, those permanent residents on the campus green.
Used text books put a ceiling on textbook prices, only way to sell new was change the problem sets which had to be handed in to be graded. A problem not in a current book if submitted as problem 1 would most likely be wrong. Computers in my world are changing calculus, discrete math can be done as accurately as wanted, hey, that is the essence of limits.
Childcare was consumerism, a religion to sell more stuff and enrich those with stuff. By biology, children have small class sizes limited by mom’s ability to bear children. By observation first born children do best, primogeniture. Also, in a family, the elder children can help/teach the younger children. It is a very efficient group. There is no such advantage in childcare. Farming is an extreme example of this, work centers around the farm, mom can work and tend the children as they will be also working.
We have run a social experiment without fathers. Empirically it does not work. We have run experiments with childcare and empirically it does not work; look at the population, too much convenience food leading to a health crisis. Mom is exhausted from work, runs to the grocery store convenience food is faster, family is so busy no time to eat together, share experiences. Next day, off to the races, get to work so one can buy more stuff.
I disagree strongly with work being more fulfilling. Most work is tedious and that is the reason it is called a job. Marie Curie was an exception and Irene was remarkable. These are not examples upon which to base a civilization.
Next problem please.
Dennis L.
“We have run a social experiment without fathers. ”
It worked in Africa with Negro people.
Negros have more or less rejected the nuclear family. It is alien to how they lived in Africa, where they live in matrilineal societies.
“College tuition was a result of observations that people with a college degree made more money. It is a good guess they were also brighter than those without a degree – NOT universally true, close enough. That made college an easy sell, WWII and GI bill set the floor”
High wages for elites have less to do with education and more to do with the fact they are being groomed to be future leaders. In the distant past, there were far fewer colleges and the ones that existed prepared the elite for managing society. What changed in the 20th century was that the elites planned to outsource manufacturing jobs out of western (white)countries and needed something to replace manufacturing. The fact that they convinced large swaths of America’s middle class that a Star Trek type of civilization was close to happening and all that was stopping it was structural unemployment was also a factor in getting people motivated to attend in an arms race that didn’t benefit anyone but the elites. I don’t think it has been calculated but elites have probably made billions if not trillions conning peasants into thinking they could educate themselves or borrow themselves into becoming the elite or creating a Star Trek economy just by getting extensive education. The higher the tuition, the more the elite make off college attendance. The purpose of increasing college attendance was never about improving the economic well-being of the middle-class or the working class.
“Mom is exhausted from work, runs to the grocery store convenience food is faster, family is so busy no time to eat together, share experiences. Next day, off to the races, get to work so one can buy more stuff. ”
Good luck getting rid of this lifestyle. The War on Terror and the ongoing demonization of America pre-1945 pretty much makes any attempt at organizing society around kinship or religion or ethnicity or… off limits. The Amish and ….. are the only exceptions.
“hospital care, college tuition, college text books, and childcare” are the costs rising fastest.
All excellent blue pill endeavors. You can’t beat $100K debt for an arts or social sciences degree and the brainwashing of your kids should start as early as possible.
I wonder how hospitals are replacing their $200K-$500K payouts for those unfortunate deaths of patients on ventilators and Remdesivir?
Fred, the lockdown fiasco , according to the experts, hurt the finances of hospitals because they couldn’t do as many procedures or surgeries as they could before the lockdowns. Hospitals generate most of their income from procedures and surgeries. As full as they claim the hospitals were,, many people avoided hospitals and many hospitals saw a reduction in activity.
The Covid patients didn’t make them enough money because there weren’t enough of them. That is my guess.
Does anyone have a handle on the US debt? It seems it’s about 41 trillion right now and running a service charge on the debt of 1 trillion per year and then budget deficit of 2 trillion per year? Is that right? Just wondering for the next shoe to drop.. I think it will start to snowball in 5 years. Do these masters of the universe really know what they’re doing or are they complete? Idiots?
I think that the game is still to try kicking the can down the road further by adding more debt. At the same time, there is an attempt to cut some government spending, some of this by laying off government workers and some of it by ending programs that pay others. Over the longer run, the government needs to pare back, so that the system becomes ever-more like one-man rule.
I don’t know whether anyone knows precisely what to do. Part of the plan is to try out high tariffs and see how much that they can make stick. The tariffs should give the US a disproportionate share of the world’s resources to use. Of course, it takes many years to build new mines and factories. I think Trump is doing as well as any US government leader could do.
The debt level keeps expanding because there are so many entitlements that people expect to continue, and tax rates are moving slightly down. This situation is hard to fix.
I don’t have time, but should some wish perhaps make a simple excel spreadsheet with some recursive functions. Look at the increase in debt and compare that to the necessary increase in the velocity of money. My guess is the money velocity is maxing out which means some debts go unpaid at due date. That decreases the PV of said debt, which looks like deflation. The printing of money has to go somewhere, it may well be destinations cannot be increased quickly enough.
Another more specific guess, the derivatives cannot be increased quickly enough, this is where the real problems begin. If the required increase is exponential, that leads to infinity; infinity wins and limits money growth.
Some interesting questions and perhaps look at the problem from what is highly unlikely which narrows the possible outcomes.
Dennis L.
The solution is simple “send more money and weapons to Ukraine”.
If we make it 5 years without a crisis I’ll count our blessings. We could have a debt/bond/currency crisis at any point going forward.
Russia rolling out biometric facial scanning for bank access:
https://ria.ru/20250729/gref-2032121712.html
Use a translation app:
>> Gref reported that the problem of biometrics has been completely solved: with the help of mathematics, 100% facial recognition has been achieved.
>> According to him, Russia it has become the only country in the world where this problem has been solved.
>> 1 million 200 thousand terminals for payment using biometrics have been installed throughout the country.
>> The head of Sberbank emphasized that not a single case of fraud has been recorded in this area for a year and a half.
And Mexico – previously optional program becomes mandatory with iris data:
>> Mexico has made the Unique Population Registry Code (CURP) mandatory for all citizens, integrating biometric data into a unified identity platform. The move raises concerns among privacy advocates about surveillance and data security.
>> Mexico has officially introduced a digital identification system by signing a law that turned the previously optional biometric-based citizen code into a mandatory document for all citizens. Last month, legislators approved amendments to a law related to the 18-character personal identifier, known as the Unique Population Registry Code (CURP), with the change formalized on Wednesday through a decree.
https://www.bioenabletech.com/news/mexico-implements-biometric-id-for-all-citizens
Yep. No prizes for guessing who is in charge in both countries. It is much easier to defend yourself against this kind of intrusions here, but it is also better to keep a foot in other parts of the world.
I find very interesting all the Countries along the Silk Road:
Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kirghizistan, Afghanistan.
Although they are very different among them and some of their ethnic groups have been used for bad purposes.
But those countries represent, in my view, an area where one can still live (with difficulties and danger) in a really free way, with own horse and own herd.
I personally like a little less Africa.
Unfortunately I would be a stranger anywhere, but in some of those countries I think that there is a kind of freedom that in Europe or USA can only be dreamed of.
You, drb, I think know better than me the situation above.
I am of course rather partial to Iran, but also appreciate Japan a whole lot. Russia does have a lot of country side where liberty can be experienced. i am sure one could find ways to live well also in many central asian countries, but have no experience there.
All of them adhere to Islam
Enough said
Islam is showing to be less dangerous than Christianism and Judaism, lately.
Greek mithology or nomadic animism seem to be less dangerous, in fact they have been completely erased.
Islam is not better or worse than Christianity. Iran at least is a 3000+ years civ., unlike all white civilizations. Except for a tiny Etruscan descended group, they are a bunch of troglodites.
It’s interesting Student, I know Americans that think Italy is the place to live 🤣. They don’t know the language and think they can get cheap land and healthcare.
I think it’s getting late in the doomsday clock it’s best to look closer. What about parts of Sardinia? Seems like they have good soil and good people.
Few tourists go to Sardinia. It is very clannish, so unless someone has relatives there, they are not welcomed.
I think there are still a lot of tourists going there, due to relatively pristine nature (sea and the interior). But of course the main land uses them as they always have. Some large refugee camps are there for example. Regarding welcoming folks, I thought they were welcoming, but of course I speak the language and have learned over the years to make myself liked. There are I think 5 Nato bases, so pick your spots carefully.
I renounced my idea of buying a vacation farm in Italy in olive growing regions due to the fact that emigrants squat wherever they can, and then it is impossible to remove them unless you know organized crime people and are willing to act outside of the law.
It is difficult to explain in few words.
First of all, we should say that, about Italy, it probably was more correct like that in the past (70s, ’80s), but definitely not now.
Italy is a place now where old people are targets (to be discontinued), because they represent ‘a cost’ for the new iper-capitalist society.
They are the first ones to be vaxxed for anything from flu to Covid (and various times).
It is difficult to escape, it was difficult for me that I’m a normal person in middle age, it is impossible for old people.
And if you succeed in escaping, when you go to a doctor or to an hospital for whatever reason, they would surely ask you why you are not ‘in line’ with vaccinations ‘required’ for old people.
Then, I would say that Kulm is correct, I would say that Sardinians may have appeared nice to some US tourist went there to spend money and go away very quickly, but actually Sardinians are normally not kind with other Italians, similar to Corse, so it would not be my first choice.
Although I appreciate their way to defend their country, like them.
Italy is a place with great differences from one Region to another, I’ve always found very nice people in Emilia Romagna and Marche.
I prefer a little more Marche, because seaside is a little bit better there (for me) and the area is less exploited from industrial point of view.
I also like Liguria, which have nice seaside, nice towns and nice mountain too, but if you are not from Liguria or at least married with a Ligurian person, it is more difficult than living in Sardinia.
So, in my view, go to Marche, not far from Ancona, then please keep me posted, so I will know if I can also go there 😀
A guess: AI is making it more and more difficult to lie; this makes running a government very challenging. Tell the truth and lose your job, lie and keep it for one more year or until things go broke. Sort of the Soviet saying, ”
They pretend to pay us, we pretend to work. “
I found this relaxing. A guy builds a house with only half a dozen steel hand tools.
If the design is simple enough, perhaps the home can be built by hand. But who shaped the rocks in the design? Finding the right rocks and reshaping some rocks would have taken a lot of effort.
In France, during the 16th-century civil war, improperly called the “war of religion,” some cities and towns were regularly taken and razed to the ground, almost every year. This also indicates a significant and rapid capacity for reconstruction. Even with simple means. But with an expert workforce. Recently, a sociologist was talking about the evolution of the French countryside; those who remained were manual workers, hard workers, earning a good living, married to women who agreed to only be housewives (and probably a little bit of their husband’s accounting), with little or no debt, unlike those who left for the city, to get degrees and live poorly in the metropolises, with low wages and double jobs, who could hardly afford childcare.
So the women did no work even back tgen, living like Madame Bovary, based upon Flaubert’s mistress ( who was the mother of Guy de Maupassant- some people suspect Flaubert was the father).
ATTN: entropie
If you enjoy this, also check out:
Richard “Dick” Proenneke lived alone in the Alaskan wilderness for 30 years, building a cabin by hand and documenting his experiences in journals and films.
His videos appeared on PBS often during their funding drives. Videos found on Youtube.
Building an Anglo-Saxon house:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb2bfBon6zE
Very simple tools and no cement.
i dont think. thats an anglo saxon house—though i would be happy to be proved wrong
You are wrong. This is an example on how you would build the first house on a new settlement. The following years would be spent on constructing a larger and somewhat more refined house, but of course still a primitive house. This is the kind of construction used in many parts of the non roman europe. For instance germanic and slavic areas.
When the roman empire collapsed, these houses got more popular again in the former empire. They may very likely be popular once again, so make some effort in studying the video I linked.
when I opened that link yesterday, for some reason a totaly different house image came uo to the one that shows now.
The one that shows now is a typical anglo saxon dwelling.
No idea why that should have happened.
Does Uber Eats deliver there?
So, the only way to build this is out of the arm reach of local authorities and it’s very well done.
Years ago there was a story of a man that had a hidden underground dwelling on Nantucket Island off Massachusetts. It was on the property owned by the boy scouts and this guy excavated and used salvage materials from the local town dump with a hidden entrance. Certain neighbors knew of it but liked the euy and ket his secret.He did a lot of chores for those rich. He lived there a long while until some scouts accidentally stumbled on his entrance…
The authorities demanded he moved out. He was unfazed and shrugged it off saying he had another hidden home somewhere else on the mainland as a backup
Man’s castle is underground on Nantucket
The Associated Press
https://www.southcoasttoday.com/story/news/state/1998/12/04/man-s-castle-is-underground/50538960007/
The democrat party has nothing to say against the US government drive to world nuclear war.
The democrats can’t say, “We don’t have enough nuclear warheads, or even enough conventional warheads, We need to stay out of any conventional war.
It is OK to use tariffs and other tools of war. For example, approaches like sabotaging the internet or electrical system of other countries are OK.
A look back. This very prescient and insightful article from ABC Australia is dated 13 September 2011.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-09-13/loewenstein-9-11-no-good-to-israel/2896906
START OF EXTRACT
The 9/11 attacks had barely happened and the smouldering wreckage in New York and Washington was still shocking America and the world.
Israel already saw an opportunity. Then former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was asked to express his feelings about the terrorist action in the immediate aftermath.
“It’s very good,” he said. He quickly added: ”Well, not very good, but it will generate immediate sympathy.”
He argued that the attack would “strengthen the bond between our two peoples, because we’ve experienced terror over so many decades, but the United States has now experienced a massive haemorrhaging of terror.”
In 2008 the Likud leader hadn’t changed his views. He told an audience at Bar Ilan University that 9/11 remained a positive for Israel.
“We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq,” Netanyahu said. The events had “swung American public opinion in our favour”.
Israel’s ambassador to America, Michael Oren, continued this deluded thinking last week.
The logic was clear; as long as Washington could be convinced (or hoodwinked) that Israel was fighting the same battle, Zionist expansion in the occupied, Palestinian territories and constant intransigence in the region would be rewarded by American largesse.
This symbiotic relationship has led both nations to share similar foreign policy goals but the results have been disastrous; America and Israel have contributed to a decade of unprecedented decline and imperial overreach, despite some wishful thinking within academia.
Not that such views are ever heard in the American Congress or Australian Parliament; our politicians are obsessed with displaying loyalty to Zionism at every conceivable opportunity. By their actions, they are killing any chance of Israel surviving as a Jewish state into the future without expanding apartheid against the Palestinians.
END OF EXTRACT
~~~~~~~~~~~
My opinion on that:
Netanyahu said Israel had benefited from 9/11. “9/11 – Cui bono?” My question. Definition: “Cui bono” means “who benefits?” in Latin. It is often used to ask who gained an advantage from a crime or situation. This can help to identify suspects or motives. So Netanyahu gave himself right away there.
In 2007, former Italian president Francesco Cossiga referred to the 2001 September 11 attacks as a false flag: “all democratic circles in America and of Europe, especially those of the Italian centre-left, now know that the disastrous attack was planned and realized by the American CIA and Mossad with the help of the Zionist world, to place the blame on Arab countries and to persuade the Western powers to intervene in Iraq and Afghanistan”.
So, Netanyahu in cahoots with MOSSAD was involved in 9/11 is the conclusion that I have reached. Who thinks I am wrong? The majority of the citizens of Israel are as decent as those of any other country, in my opinion. But just look at what Netanyahu has done to the reputation of his country. I regard the man as a psychopath.
‘In 1986, then-U.S. Sen. Joe Biden said, “[Supporting Israel] is the best $3 billion investment we make. Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interests in the region.” ‘?
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/joe-biden-1986-israel/
This sounds about right.
Only 3 steel framed building have ever collapsed due to fire: the Twin Towers and Building 7. What an amazing coincidence!
More interestingly, no plane hit Building 7.
Everyone who’s not an idiot understand this. Unfortunately we have a lot of idiots running around.
The whole crap in Thailand-Cambodia are for the casino rights between Thailand’s ruling family and Cambodian ruling family, no more, no less.
The various countries of Southeast Asia, Vietnam, Thailand, Burma and others, were fighting forever, events which stayed there with few others paying any attention.
All of Cambodia and Laos were part of Thailand until the King of Thailand, son of the king who is shown in the King and I (which is banned in Thailand), gave these areas to France as concession and making Thailand itself as a buffer zone between UK and France.
In 1940, as all of mainland France had been conquered by Germany, the Thais attacked the now ownerless French colony of Cambodge, and reclaimed 3 provinces, which includes the areas now being fought over, as well as the region which includes Siem Reap (Angkor Wat). The name Siem Reap means “Victory against the Siamese(Thais)”, so it was quickly renamed Phibhunsongkram. The Angkor sites themselves still remained under colonial control but was surrounded by Thai territories all around, so it was kind of a hostage.
In 1946, there was a political crisis in Bangkok, which was exploited by France to coerce the military faction holding power then to return the seized area in French Camboge in return for some financial aid, and the generals treacherously agreed.
So, tl.dr, all of Laos and Cambodia used to be Thai territory, and the Thais are just reclaiming what the French stole from it in 1946.
The borders drawn by UN (read: USA) around 1945 were not drawn with too much thinking around local conditions. As the power of USA gets weaker, they will return to a more natural state of things.
You say, “As the power of USA gets weaker, they will return to a more natural state of things.” I am suspicious that the natural state is a more disconnected state. It takes energy supplies to keep a broader, larger economy going. The less energy is available, the smaller the individual countries.
More disjointed state as the weaker countries will be exploited and dusmembeted without US overwatch.
You must be on something.
Who is exactly is waiting to exploit and dismember weaker countries but can’t because of the presence of United States military forces around the world?
And hasn’t the U.S. exploited these weaker countries and dismembered people in these weaker countries they didn’t like in the past?
Maybe you aren’t on anything. Maybe you’re a major bootlicker for American hegemony.
What is ”optirealism ” ?
” How to feel good? The French are feeling down. In all the polls, they tirelessly display their pessimism fueled by the fear of unemployment, terrorism, and war. Too much bad news, too much pessimism. And yet, yet the world is not getting worse and worse! On the contrary, people have never lived so long, so rich, and so free : this is what Parisien magazine asserts , which this morning explains why the world is really getting better. The decline in poverty, the slowdown in deforestation, in France our trees extend over 15 million hectares , a level identical to that of the Middle Ages. Our forest area is increasing by 50,000 hectares per year, five times the size of Paris. There is also the very sharp decline in infant mortality , the reconstitution of the ozone layer.
Psychologist Jacques Lecomte, who explains his reasons for being optimistic, advocates a new way of seeing the world. Optirealism , a combination of optimism and realism: “telling yourself that the future is lost leads to immobility ,” he says. By being optirealists, we consider that progress has already been made and that things can get better provided that everyone, at their own level, rolls up their sleeves. And if you’re not convinced, you have all weekend to read the new issue of Philosophie magazine , which has a highly philosophical question on the cover: ” Can we be well in a world that is going badly? ”
Translated from a French rag .
Just when you thought AI was more than enough . 😎
This is more than a little untrue. We are at the edge of the system turning down. Young people are especially having a hard time making a living. This seems to be the ostrich in the sand approach.
“This seems to be the ostrich in the sand approach”
Person already well-off believes he will continue to be well-off.
More on this breaking story at 6:00 p.m. as more details become
available.
My wife and I are also optirealists. We look and say things were so much better 30 years ago. We conclude things will be much worse in 30 years. So we are enjoying how good we have it versus what will be in 30 years.
Driving down the road “this is a lovely road no pot holes well paved”. “That car dealership is intact and not a burned out shell”. Optirealists.
That is a good way of trying to stay positive in a world with resource depletion issues.
In 30 years, most people will not have autos to drive down the road, so that’s enjoy road trips while we still can would be another one.
Some people just don’t want to hear good news.
Things are actually getting better but some people want to believe things are getting worse.
Maybe they’re depressed.
IG , read my post on ” optirealism ” . You fit that to a ‘T’ .
Ditto.
Whilst I joke about the BAU party keeping going, it really is a privilege to have it and Yes, our roads are shit, but the easy solution to that is just drive a bit slower.
Anyone notice how popular dystopian fiction has become in recent decades?
People ( pop culture nerds) casually refer to the zombie apocalypse as an eventuality, even though most people using the term don’t believe in zombies.
Macron’s plans to go to war with Russia are just what France needs. Put some backbone into their ungrateful young people.
Videos of conscription gangs (sorry “recruiters”), throwing the ingrates into the back of vans will usher in a new era of prosperity.
https://youtu.be/m-lu6YdVwFM?si=_EcMMiA-TMbwU0un
tl, dr: Nato could seize Kaliningrad and Russia may just write it off since it does not want to risk a WW3
But, let’s say Kalingrad is seized. Who should have it?
During the 1990s there were talks to give Kaliningrad, Konigsberg until 1945, back to Germany, but London, Paris and Warszawa balked and the talk went to naught.
Recently oil was found near a town held by Poland in the western side of the Elbe, which used to be called Swinemunde until 1945.
Poland has a name to Konigsberg, Krolowiec, although it was NEVER part of Poland.
But if it is given to Poland, that country will have to cough of Stettin and Swinemunde, and also oil there.
A lot of choice territory given to Poland was like giving the family jewel to a retarded child. All Poland can do is turning everything it touched into shit, something it was quite good ever since the last competent monarch, Sigismund of the Vasa dynasty in Sweden (he was also king of Sweden for some time, inspiring the character of Fortinbras, the King of Norway also owning land in Poland) died in 1632- his greatest achievement was conquering Moscow and holding it for some time, and if he did succeed holding on to it and nipped Russia at the bud, I would have had a much higher regard on Poland than now.
“Nato could seize Kaliningrad and Russia may just write it off”.
Nato can barely pull its underpants up, never mind take on Russia, but Yes maybe they could embark on a suicide mission.
The Oreshnik missile system is in serial production now and it appears to be designed to deliver tactical nuke levels of destruction, without using a nuke.
MacGregor, Ritter, Martyanov et al deride Nato’s ability to do anything serious in a conventional military sense. However, their deranged Ukrainian proxy looks soon to expire, so maybe they will try something desperate.
People worry about forcing AI to align. A completely vague phrase with zero content. Humans have no values, no laws, no limits. What will AI align with starving humans in *aza, cutting off energy for EU, weaponizing viruses? Align with Islam? Maybe no so good for women. Align with oligarchs that want more and more for themselves?
Align with the bible? Not exactly a clear guide lines.
We need to get real. AI will just be one more tools we, the human and machine society, use to rule over others. Be the others human or machines.
“After succeeding in pushing through the Bolshevik Revolution in November of 1917, one of Trotsky’s first acts in his new position as People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs was to publish the “Secret Treaties and Understandings” that Russia had signed with France and Britain. These documents revealed the secret negotiations in which the Entente powers had agreed to carve up the colonial world after the war. The stash of documents included agreements on “The Partition of Asiatic Turkey,” creating the modern Middle East out of the remnants of the Ottoman Empire; “The Treaty With Italy,” promising conquered territory to the Italian government in exchange for their military aid in the campaign against Austria-Hungary; a treaty “Re-Drawing the Frontiers of Germany,” promising France its long-held wish of reacquiring Alsace-Lorraine and recognizing “Russia’s complete liberty in establishing her Western frontiers”; diplomatic documents relating to Japan’s own territorial aspirations; and a host of other treaties, agreements, and negotiations. “?
https://corbettreport.com/wwi/#part1
Yet Woody Wilson awarded all of former Russian Empire’s territories back to USSR.
He should have honored the Brest Litovsk treaty, which would have finished off USSR at birth.
Did we need Poland and Czechoslovakia? Yes, just as we needed HIV and herpes virus in our body.
HIV was a scam like COVID.
AZT was the same type of toxic treatment as Remdesivir and ventilators. Designed to kill patients to get the death numbers up and keep the propaganda going.
You won’t find a fiercer defender of the medical-industrial complex, one the few industries still remaining on U.S. soil that is profitable, than the LGBTQ community.
The part of Turkey I have visited so far was formerly Greek. The inscriptions at Ephesus are written in Greek, for example. Many of the mosques were formerly Greek Orthodox Churches which have been converted to Mosques.
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EU’s $250 Billion US Energy Import Plan: Wishful Thinking?
Grab your popcorn and watch the EU drama unfold over the deal (with two charts).
Anas Alhajji
Jul 29 2025
EU largest Oil and LNG Provider In the First half of 2025 was the US
Reuters (Opinion): EU’s Pledge for $250 Billion of US Energy Imports is Delusional
Bloomberg: EU’s $750 Billion Energy Deal With Trump Looks Hard to Reach
Summary
The EU pledged to buy $750 billion in US energy over three years as part of a trade deal with Donald Trump. However, the target is unrealistic—US energy exports totaled just $330 billion in 2024, and EU imports from the US were under $80 billion. Critics say the deal lacks specifics, isn’t legally binding, and is more political than practical. Constraints include limited supply, refinery needs, market competition, and delays in nuclear tech.
The US was the largest exporter of LNG to the EU, with a 54% share of total LNG imports, as shown in Figure 1. Russia followed at 16%, Qatar at 9%, and Algeria at 6%. The EU also imports gas via pipeline from Russia and Algeria, as discussed in the EU Monthly Gas Tracker.
The US was the largest crude oil exporter to the EU in the first half of 2025 as shown in Figure (2), followed by Kazakhstan at 13.47%, and Norway at 12.64%. Some of the oil form Kazakhstan and Turkey could be Russian crude. The crude form Egypt is mostly form Saudi Arabia and its allied in the Gulf.
links .
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/eus-pledge-250-billion-us-energy-imports-is-delusional-2025-07-28/
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-28/the-eu-s-monster-energy-deal-with-trump-looks-hard-to-achieve?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
This is consistent with my expectation that other leaders have figured out you just talk/agree in person to appease Trump, but take little or no action.
Nothing was signed and my understanding is that von der Leyen has no political or monetary authority or mechanism to commit the EU states to such an agreement.
We are in a suprapolitical time now, ivan. Have been for about 5 years.The Overton window is smashed by the Hand. The trade deal is not yet consistent with your expectation because the announcement was only just made; stay disciplined.
The final catabolism of a consumer Europe commences. And the backdoor bailouts for the albatrosses are either ending or will result in East-West trade collapse. And the Big Nuclear Scare draws ever closer.
The three year to.eli e of the trade deal is just the Hand running last- resort interference: fucking with the timeline for by pushing it out further than is possible. The deal may float American fracking for another six months imo. Most machinations from here on out have to be about floating the reserve currency that holds the whole shebang together.
You are correct. Von der Leyen has no authority. The ‘deal’ needs to be ratified by 27 EU countries, and the likelihood of that is Zero.
This means that the tariff will go back from 15% to 30%. That is effectively Check-mate for Trump, who frankly hates the EU anyway.
No, that is Check for ‘Trump,’ to which ‘Trump’ (the Hand) has now Check-mated.
The Europarliament will not prefer 30pc sanctions plus another 100pc secondary sanctions for any European country that takes receipt of Russian oil, whether via India or elsewhere. Obviously the Europarliament will not prefer that.
See the high structural intelligence in what is taking place, otherwise you’re just accepting a political narrative.
This is post- history.
Though I’m not a fan of Korybko in general given that he’s clueless about peak oil, latest is apropos of this conversation in that he’s analysing the EU trade deal and the incoming secondary Russian sanctions WRT the three albatrosses in Turkey, China, and India.
https://korybko.substack.com/p/trumps-shortened-deadline-for-putin?utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true
By offering inflated figures, headline-making numbers, and “big wins,” the EU ensures that:
The U.S. defence industry is financially bound to Europe;
The U.S. energy sector is locked into Europe but with limited capacity to actually deliver on the stated numbers, which means European buyers are back on the market anyway;
The U.S. financial system continues to absorb European capital, which is only a function of persistent European trade surpluses vis-a-vis the US; and
Any attempt by the U.S. to reduce its European footprint would now come at an enormous domestic economic cost.
In effect, Europe has engineered strategic entanglement for the U.S. in European security affairs under the guise of submission. Trump thinks he’s winning, but the structural reality is that the U.S. is being burdened with more responsibility, more expectations and more economic exposure.
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/sundown-on-the-potemkin-empire-trumps?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1351274&post_id=169582050&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=26quge&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Interesting view!
Thanks ravi. Simplicius is a good writer — “nectarine narcissist” is golden — but he’s always been a seductive, controlled opposition trashman. He only goes one level deep. In refusing peak oil which is a subject he is well aware of, his generic cool just serves the function of a Pied Piper. Wouldn’t be surprised at all if he’s an agent. He’s kind of an insidious version of Pepe Escobar imo. That he would make the desperate, pretzel logic, anti- American thesis of that Wallace fellow the main focus of his article, which you excerpted from, is laughable imo.
Entanglement? WHAT entanglement? Selling arms and energy isn’t entanglement. It’s fucking America’s core business. And extracting unfulfillable promises to buy unrealistic amounts of arms and energy is, on the structural level, the best way to maximize what can be wrung out of the political theater. That Simplicius reprints that the US’s selling arms to Europe makes the US financially bound to Europe makes Simplicius an orwellian idiot in that moment. It’s just red meat for his anti- American zealots. Which is why he’s insidious.
What he later reprints from Big Serge is better. And what he reflects upon at the end of the article is actually relevant and almost circumspect (Eastern cornucopianism notwithstanding) but not truly circumspect because he refuses the energy context of peak oil and also willfully refuses to acknowledge that the East is also under the structural thumb of the global Elites and in doing so plays into the elite Disappearing Act:
“The only ray of hope, at least in regard to the topic of tariffs, is the following: the overall tariff plan was never really meant to be an isolated cash grab, but rather the beginning of a structural re-engineering of the entire financial system—with first the US and, presumably, the rest of the world, as consequence. This is evidenced by Trump’s repeated invocations of nineteenth-century US, and his desire to replace the income tax with tariffs.
As such, we shouldn’t necessarily mock and judge each individual tariff transaction on its own merit, but rather give time for the broader arc of the long-term plan to play out. Maybe there is hope that something in the system will be rejigged by the gradual implementation of this new—or rather, reenvisioned—paradigm. But ultimately, one cannot escape the feeling that, even despite hopes for a broader global restructuring, any benefits that come will too represent nothing more than the dead cat’s final feeble bounce. The systemic undergirdings prevalent in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are simply not in place anymore, and the monstrosity of global finance and capital which has grown since the post-war era likely cannot be undone with even these far-looking and well-intentioned half-measures.
At this point, the only transformational certainty lies in the rise of a rival system in the East, which will eventually lead to the demise of the one operated by the Old Nobility. The only problem: it is impossible for them to go down without a fight, and they will have to trigger major war in preservation of their waning hegemony.”
I saw a similar article. It looks like a deal that cannot really work unless energy prices are far higher, and far more is exported to the EU.
How is Europe able to do anything without actually energy resources? It seems like in the future all they will export is tourism, and finance… it doesn’t seem to make sense going forward
Only 18% are non EU , the rest are inter EU .
” In 2023, more than half (53%) of nights in tourist accommodation were spent by domestic tourists, travelling inside their own country, while 28% were spent by internationals from other EU countries and 18% by non-EU guests (see Figure 6).
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Tourism_statistics_-_annual_results_for_the_accommodation_sector#:~:text=In%202023%2C%20more%20than%20half,guests%20(see%20Figure%206).&text=The%20majority%20of%20the%201.4,continents%20(see%20Figure%207).&text=EU%20countries%20display%20varying%20patterns,EU%20(see%20Table%205).
What sane American would vacation in the middle of world war three?
“How is Europe able to do anything without actually energy resources”
It can’t and it won’t. That’s one reason why it’s de-industrialising.
“That leaves us with an awkward truth. Trump has locked in higher costs for Americans, while failing to create new incentives for reshoring or domestic investment. At best, this protects a few legacy sectors. At worst, it accelerates inflation, feeds supply chain inefficiency, and leaves American firms caught between rising input costs and stagnant consumer demand. . . .
By offering inflated figures, headline-making numbers, and “big wins,” the EU ensures that:
The U.S. defence industry is financially bound to Europe;
The U.S. energy sector is locked into Europe but with limited capacity to actually deliver on the stated numbers, which means European buyers are back on the market anyway;
The U.S. financial system continues to absorb European capital, which is only a function of persistent European trade surpluses vis-a-vis the US; and
Any attempt by the U.S. to reduce its European footprint would now come at an enormous domestic economic cost.
In effect, Europe has engineered strategic entanglement for the U.S. in European security affairs under the guise of submission.”?
https://warwickpowell.substack.com/p/the-great-entanglement?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=email
“EVs Linked to Motion Sickness”
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/world-news/technology-world-news/evs-linked-to-motion-sickness/
I wonder how important this motion sickness issue is. I mostly get sea sick on boats that tip back and forth. I have ridden very little in EVs, but I haven’t had a sea sickness issue. The article says,
I concur, Mrs. Tverberg.
There are no studies cited, just anecdotes from a student and a psychology professor who claims he is a motion sickness expert. There’s no underlying theory behind motion sickness presented that explains why some people have it and others don’t. The only thing that sounds interesting is the sudden acceleration observation.
Maybe a solution is to slow down the acceleration in evs…instead of incorporating sound…based on some flimsy theory that missed cues are causing motion sickness.
” I mostly get sea sick on boats that tip back and forth. ”
The last time I experienced motion sickness, I was a boy and on a small boat that didn’t move quickly, but rocked left to right ; or tipped as you said. It may not just be speed of motion but the type of motion, and whether we are accustomed to the motion that determines whether we get sick. These factors are seem based more on physics than psychology.
Who gives a rats A$$ in who is winning the race to the bottom? I don’t care what I want to know is when is this crash going to hit and why is the system still going. It definitely feels like wiley coyote but I definitely don’t care who is winning the race to the bottom…..that guy may or may not know what he is talking about….blah…blah blah that’s why it sound like to me at this piont
Patience grasshopper.
Dennis L.
Some people just want to watch the world burn.
Sad, really, when they could put themselves on the path to financial independence by making the right investments.
So Kevin comes in the debate about the AI race and says, well, the chinese chips are not as good as NVIDIA but they cost less and the Huawei board architecture is such that you can operate many more of them on a board (at an electricity cost). So if you look at chips the US is winning, if you look at the whole system China is already winning now. Basically they have parallelized chips by building superior boards and architecture. I think the race is over.
The people at Nvidia and the people at Chinese chip makers are interchangeable and Jensen Huang goes to Peking at least once per year
Enough said
For some reason, I am not getting the video you link to. Others may be seeing it.
Is this the link to the transcript for it?
https://kdwalmsley.substack.com/p/stargate-chatgpt-and-big-tech-ai
Stargate, ChatGPT, and Big Tech’s AI plans are already dying
no, that is a past one. Here is the link with the https://www removed
youtube.com/watch?v=X6pUDf7u9r0&t=392s
I see the original link just fine. Might be good to get some long-term puts on Nvidia if this is correct.
It is a never ending race. Who is ahead changes from time to time but the struggle goes on.
“Donald Trump called in to a news station on 9/11 and said it wasn’t a plane that took down the towers.”
https://x.com/i/status/1948066662332412187
trump is obviously a regular on ofw
all we have to do now is figure out what name he goes under
If he is he would have invited Gail and her husband to Mar a Lago
it is not that they live far from there.
the evidence is everywhere Norm yet you refuse to believe.that conspiracies exist
people conspire—yes—usually for financial gain in some form or another. or political advantage (more financial gain)
What they do not do is conspire to project holograms of aircraft onto a building, after conspiring for the previous 6 months to stack the building with explosives or whatever.
The evidence is nowhere.–you just imagine that it is.
I think for myself…you should try it sometime
you believe that it is all going down in 2025 what’s to say that there are others that believe this also and they have made a secret plan to stave off collapse, Trump could be part of this plan that is why he’s now releasing details of what really happened for 9/11. Admitting you may be wrong in one of your conclusions is near impossible sometimes
i have said we will look back on 2025 and see this year as the real beginning of terminal decline…. Trump is the symptom of this decline….there will be no MAGA for anyone….
I have not said we will crash in 25 in the absolute sense.
we can only be absolutely certain of that with hindsight…i just present info that is out there for people to decide for themselves.
I am not the only one to point this out.
No one—-no one, no matter who they are, can plan to stave off future economic collpase….no matter how wealthy they are…
yes—it can be staved off for a time. A billionare can buy certain amenities that a pauper cannot, that is obvious.
but he is deluding himself.
it can only be short term, because we all require energy-support.
in time, large quanties of cheap surplus energy will not be available at any price….at that point, wealth becomes irrelevant.
Land-wealth—certainly, but without external energy, the land can only be worked with muscle power.
Which severely limits the wealth output of any given parcel of land.
Whether you accept the reality of it, is irrelevant. There are no conspiracies involved—just our collective stupidity. (i do not exclude myself from that)
by the way the planes were controlled remotely they were real not holograms
“by the way the planes were controlled remotely they were real not holograms”
That’s one theory. Another is that they were missiles cloaked by holograms. The speed and trajectory of these things told experienced pilots that they could not be planes.
https://odysee.com/@911PlanesHoax:c/9-11-3D-Projection–A-Missile-Cloaked-in-a-Hologram:b
“Some analysts brainstormed the problem back in 2020.
They believe that they solved the problem.
The plane was actually a missile cloaked within a plane-shaped hologram.
So what about the plane-shaped hole?
That was made separately – somebody somewhere fired a DEW at the building.
A DEW is a directed energy weapon.
Eventually the building collapsed.
But that was as a result of the nuclear explosion way beneath.
The impact of the “plane” / missile did not cause it.
And collapsing buildings do not fall neatly within their own footprint.
Nor do they turn to dust.
As for the “plane”, its left wing seemed to disappear just before the impact.
As the video explains, the holography used was not perfect.
This was all meticulously planned. Soe analysts believe it must have been two years in the planning.”
“by the way the planes were controlled remotely they were real not holograms”
That’s one theory. Another is that they were missiles cloaked by holograms.
That’s another theory.
I subscribe to a third theory—which doesn’t cost anything per month—that the Twin Towers were demolished in the usual controlled demolition way, no planes missiles were fired at the towers, no holograms were employed, no nukes or DEWs either, and—this is the kicker—everything broadcast on TV purporting to show the collapse of the Twin Towers was Hollywood-style special effects.
They showed the world a movie and didn’t show the actual demolitions.
Because that was the easiest, sleasiest, smartist, slickest, most feasible, and most reliable way to do it.
There would be no need to show actual footage of a pretend plane-crash-style terrorist attack if the general public could be made to believe that the special effect “made-for-TV” movie version was authentic. And thanks to decades of conditioning, the movie- and TV-watching general public could.
Tim wrote:
“everything broadcast on TV purporting to show the collapse of the Twin Towers was Hollywood-style special effects.
They showed the world a movie and didn’t show the actual demolitions.”
No. In the age of the camcorder and the internet, Joe Public was able to post their own recordings of the planes. Richard D. Hall of “Rich planet” actually tested your theory, Tim. Different recordings showed the planes from different angles. So that proved your theory wrong.
Richard D. Hall actually requested the radar data of that day for the second plane. When he got it, he was astonished. The plane we saw had left no trace on the radar, yet there was something invisible flying alongside it, about 110 feet away. He surmises that this was an invisibility-cloaked drone projecting the hologram. All ultra-hi-tech stuff, because technology never stops until it has to. As President Eisenhower warned, “Beware the military-industrial complex”.
I wish oilwells were the same as bullshit mines….
Bullshit mines really are infinite resources.
Great work demiurge. Some of us figured out it was missiles with 3D daylight holographic projectors mounted to them way before 2020.
And I am the only one I’m aware of who figured out that it was a positron beam disintegration device via positron-electron annihilation.
This is the soundtrack to the beam that was run for several hours that morning. It goes out to Tim.
https://youtu.be/HinzCSYu4YY?si=VInlLLySMN_iyVQ8
Seeing the Hand is like smelling life on the inside; when you’re dressing out an animal and you’ve taken the bark off and now you’re opening up the body, the internal pressure releases and that life on the inside, that washes over you, is anything but anodyne. Anything but anodyne.
Demiurge, you and Richard Hall may well be correct.
Or you may have been bamboozled by some false evidence or an incorrect interpretation of true evidence.
But in any case, I have my theory and I’m sticking to it in the hope that the BBC will come along and do a story on what a whacko conspiracy nut I am.
Just like they did on Richard. See those eyes? Those conspiracy whack-job eyes?
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-65201949
No, I don’t think he’s a whack-job. As far as I know, he’s a reasonably honest and reasonably smart conspiracy analyst.
“Richard D. Hall actually requested the radar data of that day for the second plane. When he got it, he was astonished. The plane we saw had left no trace on the radar, yet there was something invisible flying alongside it, about 110 feet away. He surmises that this was an invisibility-cloaked drone projecting the hologram.”
This sounds like an unnecessarily complicated way of doing it, and far from foolproof as the tech could have failed, which would have been a trifle embarrassing for the Hand or the Elders or whoever was pulling the stunt. You must admit, my way is neater and more foolproof.
In any case, a surmise doesn’t sound like proof beyond reasonable doubt, does it?
Also, radar data can be fabricated. There is no reason why an organization that can pull off 9/11 as an inside job and at the same time successfully sell it as an Islamic terror attack can’t manufacture some dodgy radar data, is there?
Reante, that soundtrack to the beam was awesome!
It has done wonders for my tinnitus.
Is Richard Hall “blackwashing” ordinary decent conspiracy researchers by acting like a prize prat? Some people think so.
I fished this out of Substack:
Something stinks
Anybody else getting a strong whiff of counterintelligence from this story? Weird conspiracy theorist guy picking on a father and daughter in wheelchairs. Up there with ‘Weird conspiracy theorist woman picks on grieving mother’ as we’ve had in Ireland. Consider the optics for the public. Richard D Hall presents his low production shows with a big rotating globe behind him (some conspiracy theorist). Yes I know, all those 22s. I get it. Big clues dropped on purpose. It may well have been some kind of satanic ritual. Arianna Grande is a self-confessed witch and all that. But to claim that Martin Hibbert and his daughter Eve didn’t go to the concert and got their injuries somewhere else is just ridiculous and that’s clearly the point. To make ‘our side’ look nuts and unsympathetic and downright nasty. That’s how these operations work. Surprised to see the amount of people falling for it but we’re clearly not used to this kind of warfare.
https://aislingoloughlin.substack.com/p/richard-d-hall-the-guy-picking-on
That woman is a bit obvious. She comes across as a herder and produces no real evidence. She even quotes this,
“However, in a ruling on Thursday, Judge Richard Davison ruled in favour of the pair and said that without this early decision, Mr Hall would “use the trial as a vehicle to advance and test his staged attack hypothesis”
but sees no problem with a defendant being denied the opportunity to present their evidence and so potentially prove their innocence.
Reading the comments, she’s even more obvious.
I’m not defending him, as there’s always been something about him that troubles. That said, there are many glaring holes in the official account.
Tim wrote:
“any system that could have produced a realistic hologram of a passenger jet in full sunlight back in 2001 would have been exotic technology. Any system that could have simultaneously ridden in a missile while cloaking said missile would have been more exotic still.”
Yes, and that’s exactly what they had and what the downing of the Towers showed. Generally exotic technology is kept hidden for one or two decades by the state and military before being revealed. Just look at all the fuss over crop circles in Wiltshire circa 1990. As revealed by Jacques Vallee, There is a military base there, and they were practising firing their infra-red laser beams from invisibility-cloaked drones in the sky. A story was put out in the press, that was picked up all around the world on the same day, that two identified fat 60-year-olds had been doing them all themselves in the fields under cover of darkness. As if, but the NP’s of this world would have believed it.
https://boingboing.net/2010/03/23/in-search-of-alien-g.html
https://boingboing.net/2010/04/08/crop-circles-part-de.html
https://boingboing.net/2010/06/21/of-crop-circles-meme.html
https://boingboing.net/2010/04/28/of-flattened-flora-a.html
as i said
if oil wells were as inexhaustible as conspiracy mines…
the world would would be fine…
(but thanks again for defining my intellectual level dem—I do appreciate it.)
reante wrote:
“Great work demiurge.”
Thank you, reante, but it wasn’t my work – I merely pointed to the web resources that examined the evidence. 😉
Thanks for the chat Norm back to bed goodnight.
NP’s rude comment shows that he does not understand modern technology or make the effort to do so. Most people have seen film of Michael Jackson’s post-death holographic stage performance. Apparently NP has not. No doubt he pines for the days of the mangle, the crank-handle, and the antimacassar. He should stick to writing his pamphlets (no doubt with his steam-powered quill) about the era he does understand, namely the steam age. 🙂
yes—i confess to not having seen jacksons holographic image….
too busy writing pamphlets….but at least you spelt it right this time dem, so things is improving—well done…
Understanding modern tech does not mean blind acceptance of every piece of conspironuttery just because someone posts it, here or elsewhere.
I asked a BOT, because I’m interested in the current official state-of-the-art.
TIM: Many people have seen film of Michael Jackson’s post-death holographic stage performance. I have not. Are there any systems that can produce realistic holographic images of moving objects such as people, cars, or airplanes in full sunshine that observers would mistake for the real thing?
BOT:As of my last knowledge update in October 2023, there are several advanced technologies and systems that can create realistic holographic images of moving objects, although achieving full realism in bright sunlight remains challenging. Here are some key developments:
Light Field Displays: These systems capture and reproduce light from multiple angles, allowing for 3D images that can be viewed without special glasses. However, they still struggle in bright environments.
Volumetric Displays: These create 3D images by projecting light into a physical space, often using rotating screens or particles. They can be impressive but are not yet practical for outdoor use.
Augmented Reality (AR): Technologies like Microsoft HoloLens and smartphone AR systems can overlay digital images onto the real world. While they can be effective, they require screens or lenses and may not work as well in direct sunlight.
Laser Plasma Displays: Some experimental systems use lasers to create plasma in mid-air, producing visible 3D images. This technology might work better in outdoor environments but is still in early stages.
=====
Based on the above response, any system that could have produced a realistic hologram of a passenger jet in full sunlight back in 2001 would have been exotic technology. Any system that could have simultaneously ridden in a missile while cloaking said missile would have been more exotic still.
Thanks, but I’ll settle for video editing, which was mature technology well before 2001. What was it William of Occam said about the most parsimonious explanation being most likely to be correct?
demiurge, in my view, Tim, an elder statesman here, is subtly playing the devil’s advocate in this conversation and, in doing so, is challenging you to step up your game and outcompete him in the free marketplace of ideas. His arguments have weaknesses. See them and exploit them, and then further construct your own arguments on top of the work of others that came before you.
Tim wants to see you grow beyond citing Hall and Vallee, and to see you force him to stand down as he did with me on the oceanic CO2 topic the other day. I want to see it, too.
And thanks for introducing me to Vallee btw. In thinking I’ve just made a new discovery from it, which I’ll detail another time.
Push yourself!
NP wrote:
“Understanding modern tech does not mean blind acceptance of every piece of conspironuttery just because someone posts it, here or elsewhere.”
On that I agree. I check the evidence. You do not. You have a tightly closed mind, a lazy intellect, and are probably just not very bright. I certainly do not accept the “conspironuttery” of the US govt’s official version of 9/11, which many specialists of multiple fields found massive holes in, and of which John Michael Greer recently wrote that “it stinks on ice”, like the official story of JFK’s assassination.
As for my misspelling of pamphlet, I did that for the purposes of derision, Squire Pamfleteer. 😉
you are quite correct about my lack of intelligence dem….
trying to explain conspironuttery to a conspironut proves it.
Demiurge, when 88 years old you are, as bright and spritely and open-minded as Norman is, you will not be.
And nor will I.
And that’s if we get there. I’ve survived the 42 “unlucky year” and the early fifties “midlife crisis”, but even I am balking at the prospect of crossing 75 barrier, when a lot of men drop dead or develop Auldtimer’s Syndrome and start dribbling on their shirts!
I see this happening all the time in recent years, men in their mid-seventies falling over like horses during the Grand National. And there’s Norman still going on and on like the Energizer Bunny. He may have galloping senility, but at least he’s still galloping—just like Foinavon in 1967.
The Manchester Attack: An Independent Investigation
by Iain Davis
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Manchester-Attack-Independent-Investigation/dp/B0D9DPMY1X
https://d1b14unh5d6w7g.cloudfront.net/B0D9DPMY1X.01.S004.JUMBOXXX.jpg?Expires=1753953211&Signature=I2U-ZtWzObnXf06c6i8nAVCnPjxj1MiRpuu7cbdhBYg2UcDUwFDAzVsKzDY-9sLqXtWkMrheWvRte–THa2r-0GYfN1Df~NWrbzsKDzUZye2NY8k17DSP6UCymo7P~tAmNJuaXefvkKTONmOM6VQMK~sezpKu6jF43YMgAKG9SE_&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIUO27P366FGALUMQ
=======================
I don’t know the answers, so I’ll consider reading the above.
A promising technology to make green hydrogen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFwYZ2bPkU8
NewHydrogen ticker newh
If I understand this concentrated sunlight can make hydrogen. At home, in the desert.
see also
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pkox2gPbiQ
What! No cubic mile of Pt? Count me a skeptic on this one but would/could be pleasantly surprised. Use it in IC engines and many problems solved.
Dennis L.
using waste heat to power this new technology such as nuclear plants this is going nowhere we are history very shortly.another popcorn moment enjoy the ride Ed. Food water and defence is all you as an individual can do now. Get ready for the Lord of the Flies scenario.
” Get ready for the Lord of the Flies scenario.”
More like get ready for prison like conditions outside of prison.
In other words, hell on Earth.
I really enjoyed the movie version. I volunteer to play the role of “Piggie”, it will challenge all of my acting talents in drama department
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HzujtW6mNFs&pp=ygUdbG9yZCBvZiB0aGUgZmxpZXMgbW92aWUgcGlnZ3k%3D
Lord of the Flies – Piggy Comforts Ralph (colorized)
Mike Jones wrote:
‘I volunteer to play the role of “Piggie”, it will challenge all of my acting talents in drama department’
I find that quite alarming. To what extent do you identify with “Piggie” ? Were you a hugely obese git as a boy, or did you balloon up into one as an adult? Are you currently on Ozempic?
Perhaps you would enjoy dressing up as an elephant? There’s quite a nice impression of one in this clip. Start in at the 2 minutes 31 seconds point:
i thought hydrogen could only be ‘released’ from its bond with something else—ie H2o etc
Finally caught that one. It is a dry hydrogen.
Dennis L.