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One of the chapters of the Sierra Club of Minnesota has asked Joseph Tainter and me to give Keynote speeches on October 25 at what is being billed as Minnesota’s First DeGrowth Summit. On site space is pretty limited, but free viewing will be available by internet.
If you want to attend in person, you should probably sign up soon.
This is the notice that the organizers have said that I can share:
Minnesota’s First DeGrowth Summit – October 25, 2025
The DeGrowth Summit, hosted by the Sierra Club North Star Chapter’s DeGrowth Team, will bring together organizers, artists, gardeners, educators, and community members to share skills, spark collaborations, and celebrate the many ways we’re resisting extractive economies and creating thriving local futures.
There are 3 ways to participate in the event: The in-person event is held in Minneapolis, MN where there will be presentations by two keynote speakers, Gail Tverberg and Joseph Tainter. In addition it will bring together organizers, artists, gardeners, educators, and community members to share skills, spark collaborations, and celebrate the many ways we’re resisting extractive economies and creating thriving local futures. Expect food, drop-in spaces, workshops, and a vibrant marketplace of ideas—from climate justice to co-ops, repair culture to Indigenous sovereignty. This event is free and you can register at: www.tinyurl.com/degrowthsummit
The second option is a “Watch Party” in Rochester, MN. Here we will gather at the Squash Blossom Farm for lunch and watch the live stream together. After the live stream is done, Gail will be arriving from Minneapolis to have a “Fireside Chat” with the group followed by a bonfire and wiener roast. The cost is $25 which covers the expense of lunch, dinner and the event space. Space is limited to 50 so sign up soon at:
Rochester DeGrowth Summit Watch Party
The final way to participate is to view the live stream online. The live stream will include the keynote presentations and two other presentations TBD. You can register for this at www.tinyurl.com/degrowthsummit . At the bottom of the registration make sure to check the box for virtual and a link will be sent to you prior to the event.
Some additional information:
The Minneapolis Event is at New City Center, 3104 16th Ave S, Minneapolis, MN 55407
The Watch Party at Squash Blossom Farm is at 7499 60th Ave NW, Oronoco, MN 55960
This is the graphic shown in early web material.
I expect to put up a “regular” post in the next few days.
Did they read Norm’s book ? Analyst at Rabobank .
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/steel-real-no-steel-production-means-no-military-power-no-industrial-backbone-no
The article didn’t mention that there is a difference between high quality steel, with the right minerals added for the particular application, and low quality steel that comes from melting down whatever used steel it is possible to acquire. In the latter case, the steel is probably good for making wheel barrows, but not for making high tech equipment. The US and Europe make predominantly (or entirely?), the latter type.
Europe still produces som iron ore, Sweden produces 85%-90% of european iron ore, the remaining production is mainly done in Norway. The Swedish iron ore is mostly processed by SSAB, mainly in Sweden but they also produce some in Finland. SSAB produces about 6% of European steel production. Some other producers in EU import iron ore from mostly Canada and Brazil, EU import is almost as large as LKAB production. So guessing scrap metal steel around 85% of production i EU.
Swedish steel production is operated by state owned company LKAB, Their main iron ore mine in Kiruna recently had to start extracting iron ore from beneath the town. Kiruna is situated in the most northern part of Sweden and its only excuse to exist is the mine. The town had to move to give place for the mine. This summer the church was moved:
Sweden would need coal or natural gas, as well, so smelt the iron ore, wouldn’t it? I know new methods are being worked on.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/scientists-develop-clean-efficient-method-210700807.html
EIA has posted a figure for world crude oil production last June (84.184 mb/d) — this is 0.5% below their highest monthly figure (84.593 mb/d, for November, 2018).
I wonder how this last-June number have been so high, given the flagging oil prices ( http://oil-price.net/ ) — is world crude oil production in “terminal decline”? ( https://davecoop.net/seneca )
Forgot the EIA link:
https://www.eia.gov/international/data/world/petroleum-and-other-liquids/monthly-petroleum-and-other-liquids-production?pd=5&p=0000000000000000000000000000000000vg&u=0&f=M&v=mapbubble&a=-&i=none&vo=value&t=C&g=00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001&l=249-ruvvvvvfvtvnvv1vrvvvvfvvvvvvfvvvou20evvvvvvvvvvnvvvs0008&s=94694400000&e=1748736000000
Production growth in June was driven almost entirely by the spectacular increase in Saudi Arabia and the recovery in Canada (due to the completion of its spring maintenance). The rest showed minor variations, up or down…
Quark .
Saudi Arabia has lots of stored oil, I understand. It can ramp up reported production, whenever it wants.
No , it cannot ramp up production whenever it wants . The increase in production is not an ” on ” ” off ” switch . KSA has in the past used its SPR release to camouflage its production constraints .
I am not saying that Saudi Arabia can ramp up production whenever it wants. I am saying that Saudi Arabia has stored up, already pumped oil that it has not treated as “produced,” which it can bring online whenever it chooses. It is this stored up, already produced oil that we are encountering now.
Thanks for the tip.
It is hard to tell from newspaper headlines what is happening with oil supply. Small innovations in far off places help. “Complexity” can sometimes be helpful.
[Reality] snippets or rather truth smack downs from that very recent conference..
Vlad personally confirms among other things:
[1]
Son of deputy CIA (also >mic but finally eliminated down by human-killer drone; posthumously awarded medal for bravery – dispatched stateside personally via Witkoff envoy..
[2]
Zaporoz npp staffed with foreign (EUboyz) safety inspectors, direct knowledge of what’s going on in terms of ukro shelling, yet they keep msm silence; cooling gensets ok
[3]
Barrier troops (tasked killing deserters) on the front lines staffed with foreigners, i.e. the pool of domestic hard liners is ever evaporating..
[4]
US self-inflicted antagonization of the Gulfies continues, e.g. Qatar..
[5]
Hints of ~HTOE considerations in terms civ development
..
.
oops filed text damaged..
[1] Son of deputy CIA (also mic profiteering family) KIA in UKR / RU while duking it out for the reds! Heroic death account as dragging fellow boyz out of the burning APC, .. but finally eliminated down by human-killer drone; posthumously awarded medal for bravery – dispatched stateside personally via Witkoff envoy..
So things are not going very well for Russia, either.
sorry for the confusion: that US prominent family guy story fighting on RU side has been thus publicly confirmed with some delay apparently; the barrier squads are meant UKR vs UKR; the overall RU war effort assessment was measured slow progress but on the winning route (still via ~volunteers enlisting NOT mass mobilization), ..
there should be some multi-lang transcripts, +more details on various add. topics including the economy and int relations, .. also on Q&A request smashed [EUgirlz] specifically, lolz..
obviously that’s how [they] see it from their vantage point..
I never did find verification of that ZH tweet that Rodster posted yesterday, that claimed what Putin said about halting oil exports. Presumably it was from that same speech but I’m starting to wonder.
THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY
Research shows that Americans tell 22% more fibs than the world average. Here’s just one of them: “It’s as American as apple pie!” From Google:
Apple pie was invented in England, with the first known recipe appearing in a 1381 cookbook called The Forme of Cury. The early English version contained apples, along with other fruits like figs and raisins, but lacked sugar, which was expensive. English, Dutch, and Swedish colonists took their version of apple pie to America.The Arctic Roll was invented by Dr. Ernest Velden, a Czechoslovakian lawyer who moved to England in the 1940s to escape the Nazis. Velden created the dessert in the 1950s and began mass production in 1958 at his factory in Eastbourne, Sussex. The frozen dessert’s popularity soared, and by 1970, Birds Eye began manufacturing it for supermarket shelves.
Yes, Mr. K the ulm – Merrie olde England even inspired a Czechoslovak to invent a delicious dessert.
The chocolate bar was invented in 1847 by Joseph Fry in Britain, who added cocoa butter and sugar to create a solid form. Daniel Peter invented milk chocolate in 1875 by combining powdered milk with cocoa, creating the modern chocolate bar we know today.
And we English invented the English language, which the Americans use every day of the year, because they haven’t invented their own language yet. I suggest we charge the Americans a tariff for using it: a penny for every English word they speak, think, read, write or hear – BACKDATED! Over to you, Mr. POTUS !
But as for Mr. K’s heroes, the Germanic races, let’s list the miserable ills that they have been responsible for spreading across the world: Alzheimer’s syndrome; Asperger’s syndrome; schadenfreude; Frankenstein’s monster; and the cuckoo clock. I ask you and mean to say. 🙁
We speak English but we speak it correctly.
The czechs inventing some dessert. Big deal.
You missed my musings about American English. The English of the lowest class during the Elizabethan era.
AI: That /kitchen handy/ guy was a jew living inside larger German speaking-bohemian diaspora within [CZE], where they were invited historically in the later middle ages..
mountain village ranged <5km from the Austro-Bohemian frontier.
It's rather complex out there in the world.. /sarc off
Ebonics bailed out American English though wouldn’t you agree kulm?
Iran relocating its capital from Tehran because of water shortages. Among the factors driving the decision, is the high cost of transporting water to the capital when the existing facilities no longer provide enough.
He added: “The reduction in water behind the dams, the drying up of some wells, and the high costs of transporting water from other areas all indicate the need for a change in approach. If we want to transport water from this area to Tehran, the cost per cubic meter will be up to €4”.
Tehran’s dams normally provided 70% of the capital’s water, with the remaining 30% provided by underground resources. However, low rainfall and increased evaporation have reduced the dams’ share and increased pressure on groundwater.
The president said: “Development without considering the impact on resources and expenditures will result in nothing but destruction. If someone cannot establish this balance, their development is doomed to failure.
“In some areas, the land is subsiding by up to 30cm per year. This is a disaster and shows that the water beneath our feet is running out.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/02/iran-must-move-its-capital-from-tehran-says-president-as-water-crisis-worsens?
Interesting!
Water is terribly important for an area. Moving a capital is likely an issue. Depleting aquifers creates a major problem. Rainfall has always been extremely variable. Just read the Old Testament.
Some morons say hindsight is 20/20.
That is because they have zero foresight.
The Cuban Missile Crisis might have been the final chance humanity had.
The commies in CIA and other spy organizations exaggerated Soviet nuclear power, clouding the judgment of Kennedy.
If Joseph P. Kennedy Jr did not die, he would have become the President by then, and he would have no qualms about using nukes against USSR.
USSR, despite of its boasts, had a grand total of 68, sixty eight, nukes. How many of them would have successfully reached their targets are doubtful. Plus it lacked the power to cover all of USA; the Northwest and Alaska were out of its range.
USA had an advantage of 17-1 in nuclear weapons. Some southern states would have gotten a nuke or two. And every major city in the east bloc would have been nuked, and China would have thought twice before having their own nukes, and would have restrained North Vietnam.
Nuclear war should have been fought back then; it was the commie sympathizers in CIA, etc. which stole the final chance humankind had.
Both sides have now pretty much lost their buildup of nuclear weapons. They have been down blended and used as fuel for nuclear power plants.
US refinery on fire. Payback?
https://x.com/ABC7/status/1973976441802142013
When some facility in Russia was hit, a bridge at Baltimore was crushed, shutting that harbor for some time
https://apnews.com/article/chevron-refinery-fire-el-segundo-64f6a91853c3080d6852359c691c4073
Massive fire erupts at Chevron refinery just outside of Los Angeles
California has been at the center of questions about closing refineries. Given how companies have been treated, they would like to close their plants. Insurance companies have been plagued with restaurants that are losing money being set on fire by their owners. With so much concern about refineries in California, a person wonders what is going on.
Degrowth warriors strike a blow for the planet?
Or Newsom gets a chance to see a temporary price spike, from outage.
Zerohedge now says
Fire At U.S. West Coast’s Most Important Refinery Contained
The article says the impact on supplies has not yet been determined.
“Now here’s the thing. In the U.S., 77% of 17-24-year-olds are not qualified to be in the military, due to obesity, drug /alcohol abuse, mental / physical health, criminal history, educational deficits and more (Novelly 2022).
Novelly T (2022) Even more young Americans are unfit to serve a new study finds. Military.com”?
https://www.facebook.com/alice.friedemann
Autism and color blindness are also screened out, I believe. Autism has been greatly rising.
A lot of this has to do with the poor food and lack of exercise that children today are getting. School programs have made these problems worse. Also, whatever is causing autism. Vaccines? Tylenol?
The huge weight gains are a concern, that is a great health care cost to our society. My clinic Mayo has some employees with significant weight problems, not all, but some. Strange.
Dennis L.
Yes, great point, and that’s most likely the #1 priority [WHY] the anti-cartels campaign on the US streets came about. Then only the second – third priority assigned to “care” about getting ~fit employable masses again..
Why send the few able young to die. Rather send the sick, obese, insane, criminals.
Interesting point!
Musing About Trump’s Recent Moves . Interesting . https://www.moonofalabama.org/2025/10/musing-about-trumps-recent-moves/#comments
“US money growth has turned upwards in recent months. This argues against persisting fragility in US aggregate demand, despite Trump-related uncertainties, but employment growth has clearly slowed. The Fed has indicated more cuts in its funds rate, after a recent small 25 basis point downward move. By contrast, money growth rates in the Eurozone, Japan and the UK remain weak, and are consistent with at best trend growth of demand and output. Money growth in China is still close to the lowest figures for over a generation. The ailing property sector and rising household debt have undermined banking system capital, but China’s manufacturing industries remain hugely competitive by global standards. In India, which for the last two years has combined buoyancy in bank credit and broad money with modest inflation, the rate of broad money growth has slowed but still remains reasonably healthy. Business conditions remain challenging in many countries, but forecasts of recession are overdrawn and misplaced. “?
https://mv-pt.org/monthly-monetary-update/?fbclid=IwY2xjawNMXpBleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBicmlkETFoUGR6NzVpTVFaZElZS2x1AR6JUXd_5sQZqJAONfXoxs6u_YmaCXo2UAumltZ7NuGxAXsUYL0xQ31WBoaBKw_aem_Dtk6a6oQhMbC96LYQbaAwQ
Based on the excerpt you posted, growth in money supply is low in many countries around the world. If the shutdown in the US is extended, and Trump makes good on his promise to cut back unnecessary government spending, I would think that US debt growth would be turning negative relatively soon.
In my opinion, it takes growing debt (and money formation) to pull the economy forward. If it slows, this will tend to pull the economy down. I don’t agree with “forecasts of recession are overdrawn and misplaced”.
Interest without growth is cannibalism of existing capital.
Dennis L.
Good point!
I like this one:
Also, with not enough energy, the size of government that we currently have cannot be supported. Something the size of a dictatorship would be much more manageable.
Your energy observations correlate well with government size change although correlation is of course not causation. Still if one is the employee, it is not comforting.
Dennis L.
many people who advocate dictatorship hold the view that the evils of it will apply to other people, not to them.
history, without exception makes it clear that when a dictator takes control of a nation, the dictator is concerned only with himself and his personal survival—no matter what the consequences to the nation he rules.
think of the don in those terms, and they fit exactly. Everyone is trampled in the rush for power, despite that, everyone is subservient to his whims, oblivious to their faces being ground into the dust
—-in the hope that they might grab something of his leavings, denying the reality that they too are dispensable dross in the ambition of their dear leader.
Supposedly sodium ion batteries now have equal energy density (by weight) to lithium iron phosphate at much reduced cost. The materials are not in short supply. The presenter doesn’t seem very technical, but it’s a starting point for investigation. Anyway, if true – and I’m not saying it is – it could provide a solution to intermittent storage. Even the possibility that it could be a game-changer innovation serves as a reminder to stay humble about future doomer predictions. I guess a downside is that it’s lower energy density by volume, but I think the world could still get along even with that.
That is called “grasping tge straws”
Says the K, who can’t even spell “the”. And he didn’t even bother to try to debunk the thesis.
Even in constrained times and circumstances, technological progress marches on – until it doesn’t. Look at the inventions in the 1930s and 1940s: the jet plane and the V1 and V2 rockets, to name but two.
I sometimes type at mobile.
1930s and 1940s were wartime. Lots of investments.
And you have not answered my question about Ramanujan, the greatest proof against the existence of the Guardians.
“And you have not answered my question about Ramanujan, the greatest proof against the existence of the Guardians.”
That’s because you misunderstood my use of “the Guardians”. You thought that I meant what some here refer to as “the Elders”. I meant the supposed “Ultraterrestrials” and will use that word in future. Some think they are behind the masses of UFOs noted over the centuries, and they are conjectured to live right alongside us. Conjectured but not yet proven, of course. Read John Keel, Jacques Vallee, Richard L. Thompson, even Charles Fort. But you are not open-minded enough to gain anything by reading them. You are a closed-minded technophobe and adhere to your own rather weird and rigid “philosophy”.
As for ignoring questions, you have not replied to questions about your nationality and ethnicity. What do you have to hide – and WHY ?
I prefer not to talk about my personal details. I have never asked yours and am not interested on it.
About the other premise, i will answer in the next blog post since today is the last day.
“Look at the inventions in the 1930s and 1940s: the jet plane and the V1 and V2 rockets, to name but two.”
I’ve done it on my fingers and on my pocket calculator. And either way, it adds up to three. 🙂
Lol and that was not a typo.
“Even in constrained times and circumstances, technological progress marches on – until it doesn’t.”
You can’t have it both ways.
Ivan was telling peak oil collapse systems theorists that sodium ion batteries are a collapse game changer, which they are very obviously not.
Kulm’s response was accurate yet you committed a red herring by going after his typo ffs.
Btw. I’m not “Ivan/RU” by any stretch..
Funnily enough, as posted above about past Valdai, we are living in the utmost crazy times when sons of CIA deputy directors are signing-in and dying in the Red Army during a proxy conflict .. wtf!
ps NOT correct clearly talked about ~whatever cheap manna sourced batts~ as extending bumpy plateau not solving-game changing !@!
I know you’re not jak, but you did say decades even when it would take decades to scale up. Even Chinese total btu coal production is post-peak as I understand it.
There is still the big issue that our big need for energy is for heat, in winter. Solar is not good for heat in winter. We don’t have a way of storing heat from summer to winter.
Maintenance of every modern convenience is an artificially raised threshold for success. If worst comes to worst, we can dig holes a few meters down as it doesn’t get as cold below, or economize like was done historically with Kotatsu tables. The question for me is whether IC can be maintained at all.
Yes, that’s has been mentioned couple of times already.
Essentially, if you can get ~affordable 15-25kWh sized plugin hybrid packs, that’s most of the daily commuting needs. You feed it overnight with npp/coal grid.
Moreover, it’s great in ea$ily deploy-able mass transit partial trolley buses.. Plus the use of home energy storage for PV and also large utility scale batt arrays. In total this should prolong peak quasi plateau for decades..
The only question: IF/WHEN, as it could be too late as of now..
jak because of your mature systems theory you have stated that you believe that there is a Non-Public Degrowth Agenda operating, though not at the scope that I believe it, yet you also think that another battery technology might be able to intensify the mode of energy production of the entire civilization such that BAU-lite can undulate along for several more decades.
Did the Hand somehow not think of that yet and ivan has bettered the Hand and is effectively telling the Hand to humble its doomerism and stop it’s DA in favor or a new battery based BAU-lite? Or is it just hobgoblins at work this morning because Russia’s back is suddenly against the wall.
Lot of options indeed!
Frankly, my attitude is merely probabilistic and adjusted on the fly.. And out of decades interest in that particular tech angle knew what is necessary for ages – but the industry was not delivering (on purpose)! For instance as we speak most of the PHEVs manuf. globally – the western (incl. JAP) companies are based on NMC batteries (& small sized at that), which is absolute crap for the application. The Chinese are starting just now pushing proper lithium based PHEVs in volume.. This should/could have occurred easily +10yrs ago (the sodium stuff is just a new-ish offshoot from core megatrend)..
RU against the wall? Well perhaps only minutiae of the war..
[intensify] as in mostly rearrange existing capabilities meaning yes; the batt storage concept at its core is a cheap trick against human ~lowish energy state confinement essentially – IF YOU CAN GET IT – which mankind in various forms thought after relentlessly in various lesser forms for ages (e.g. local water wheel-mill ponds on every tiny creek)..
Not real example just explaining the human drive towards it: The [sodium-li hack] it’s ~like if we could from some ~easily obtainable cheap carbonates build sturdy 3d hydro dams up everywhere.. storing rain and then dumping it down on dynamos.. You see no extra rebar, no concrete, no giga trucking, .. needed.
If get there (soonish) for me it would mean +10-30% prob rate boost for the theory we are living-experiencing within some ~simulation fish tank game~ ..
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/sep/25/study-of-1m-year-old-skull-points-to-earlier-origins-of-modern-humans?CMP=share_btn_url
An Asian look rather than an African look.
Some excerpts:
The highest IQ people today seem to be Asians. Could there be a connection?
My understanding is the highest are the Ashkenazi Jews. It is interesting they seem to have come through Italy in the times of the Romans. The Ashkenazi do well in science Nobels and of course, money.
Dennis L.
I am most curious about the Ashkenazi. I agree on the smart, rich, powerful part but I do not believe they are Jewish. Further, I think they come from the area of present day Ukraine. If anyone has a good reference I would appreciate it.
They may in the past have applied the label Jew to avoid issues with Muslims but the mothers were not genetically from Palestine.
Buckminister Fuller said, humans originated in Asia based on population distribution. Why would humans move out of Africa, across Europe and Asia, then explode in population?
The explosion in population has mostly taken place as fossil fuels became available. China held down any population explosion related to increased coal availabilty.
Population grows to carrying capacity of the land, given available food, energy, and water supply.
Rivers that drain large areas of land are population explosion places well before oil. Egypt, Sumer, several in India, several in China. The Mississippi in North America.
and the Amazon though it was used in a way that left little in the way of artifacts
surplus water brings surplus people, agreed.
but surplus fuel multiplies that by 100 or 1000
No grains needed to form big cities (Scott: Against the Grain); no metals to make lasting devices. We can assume that the civilization was not very advanced.
because temperate climates, hot and cold, foster developments that improve chances of survival
The highest IQ people are Ashkenazis because their ancestors were just like the semite herders of the ME; both were herding highly social, high-strung milk goats under semi-nomadic pastoralism in difficult ecologies long before almost anyone else was engaging in such complex cultural practices. What they were doing was a true art. Both cultures parlayed that into the herding people.
How about the handful of Norwegians? They encountered a pretty difficult climate to be up against. But it was hard for the economy to get very far, with the great need for heat and the short growing season.
If one wants to see other than Negros in deep human history one has to read the Germans, Max Planck Institute, or the Chinese.
Moreover, ~1.2M yrs of hunting tools made by humanoids ~confirmed.
The skull housing lot of ccm3 !
Humanoids learned to cook food well over 1 million years ago. This helped the brains.
Yes, meant as longer distance (eg spear) hunting tool vs earlier meager brainiac attempts (eg base level traps / smashing wooden limb) etc.
How was charlie shot?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQe2j9ZA7YI
I know this is off topic but it of such high quality I had to post.
Shot from the back?
If I were the defense attorney of Roberson I would be doing my happy dance.
Power for AI. Interesting story.
Unrealistic solution like shooting the server to the space will be floated, milking gullible people lots of money and going nowhere.
kul,
When someone’s narrative is undermined, hysteria, disbelief and sometimes depression is a result. You are consistent in your narrative which is rooted in literature(I am not good at literature, a guess) selectively chosen. All that is historical, tomorrow is yet to be written.
If one invests in your direction one can go broke quickly or slowly, if one invests in tomorrow one can go broke, or become very wealthy. Only one bet makes sense.
Dennis L.
Human behavior is the same. In the dats of the Iliad and now
I.am not promoting any investmenr. I am infavor of preservatipn but am not asking people to buy something promoted by a snake oil salesman who prefers playung a politician.
Thank you for the link, Ed. Fascinating insight. I’ve subscribed to Anastasi’s channel. So technological progress continues. But these data centers need masses of pure water. Here they partly solved that by putting the waste heat to good use.
That us called “too little, too late”.
Locktober
Active Shooter in New Canton | Entire Illinois Town on Lockdown
Something to increase the call for more order.
https://www.wgem.com/2025/10/02/pike-county-officials-searching-active-shooter-near-new-canton/
Suspect dead after allegedly shooting and injuring wife, wife’s parents found dead in New Canton
Oil prices “will skyrocket” and immediately exceed $100/bbl without Russian crude supplies to the global market, Vladimir Putin says
https://x.com/zerohedge/status/1973831803896017133
WTF? that would KO the global economy. It can’t handle another oil shock.
Knocking on heaven’s door now folks. Gabbard will make peace within 6 months of the beginning of the BNS. That’s the heaven I’m talking about. But it won’t be this world.
drb what did you end up paying for the deez? Did you go out and get another tank too or you happy with your current capacity? I’m good with mine, looking forward to less wrenching in my life anyway. Thinking more about how after all these years I don’t have a quality made to fit scythe. Might have to just eat the milking goats one day and go back to paleo. That ain’t so bad.
I have an 8000 liters tank and that is fine for our needs. We have our weekly meeting at 17 so we will discuss what to do. we had more urgent business to attend and there are still 1000 liters in the tank. Apparently the structure next to the distillation tower was hit so the damage might be less than expected. We also need to discuss how much standard diesel, how much -15C, and how much -35C (this is basically kerosene. we have half a dozen 55 gallons drums).
yeah that’s a nice big one. What you have left in your tank is about the size of my tank. that’s potentially good news about the damage. hadn’t considered that you’d need some separate winter fuels too being up north like that. Have fun watching how things play out over there over the next while.
The gasoline crisis in Russia has spiraled out of control
Fuel prices are rising, gas stations are going bankrupt, and in Crimea and Sevastopol, half of all stations have already shut down. As of the end of September, 38% of the primary oil refining capacity, which amounts to 338 thousand tons per day, was not operating at Russian refineries.
The outages have remained at record levels throughout the second half of September. The main cause is drone attacks, which account for up to 70% of all shutdowns.
Amid the crisis, Russia has been forced to import gasoline from Belarus.
https://x.com/visegrad24/status/1973680918066762137
There’s a lot of propaganda out there. Russia ran out of missiles in the early months of the war, but somehow keeps launching them. How true this new refinery issue is, remains to be seen. Drb said there was a recent price bump but I think it was on the order of 10-15%, nothing crazy.
I don’t know if oil prices would skyrocket (except perhaps for a day). Without Russian crude on the market, the world economy would definitely be hurt. We need the fuel to make diesel and jet fuel around the world.
Jane Goodall, famed primatologist and conservationist, dies at 91
https://abcnews.go.com/International/jane-goodall-famed-primatologist-anthropologist-conservationist-dead-91/story?id=109868347
she was the GOAT! a total babe too.
She was a good person.
I had the great fortune of hearing her speak at an educators’ conference in Kenya in the 90s. She was very inspiring.
A creation of Richard Leakey. She didn’t even have a college degree and started as a ‘secretary’ of Leakey. Go figure.
Leakey is said to have ordered his female acolytes to remove their clitorises so they would not be interested in sex and not have children, since having children diverts time away from apes.
Goodall is said to have had a son but he is not featured anywhere in her obit at all.
I guess I’m having one of those Mandella-effect things – if it wasn’t her, wasn’t some beloved female save-the-monkeys activist killed by poachers? Or maybe it was just a movie to that effect?
You’re thinking of Dian Fossey. A quick google revealed that answer for me.
That was Dian Fossey, another one of Louis Leakey’s recruits.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dian_Fossey
Fundamental flaw of humans: Who makes the money is more important than quality of life for everyone, what’s best for the “common good,” or even survivability.
Like the canard about wars being fought over resources. No they’re not. A country can always buy the resources. As long as you’re not doing something horrendous to the country that has the resources (see. e.g., George Washington’s suggestion that we stay out of other countries’ affairs and simply do business with everyone), and you are producing things that people in other countries want to buy, the countries with the resources will be happy to sell them to you at market prices. Wars are fought over who is going to derive the profits from having control over the resources – that is who gets them for next to nothing and can therefore make the profits. The costs of getting this access to foreign cheap resources via war are socialized onto the backs of the taxpayers who fund the war machines, so that private companies can then make the profits. Would be a different story if the the private companies had to internalize the costs of obtaining those resources by fielding their own militaries, and countries’ militaries were truly for defense, instead of being corporate expeditionary forces operating under a false pretense of defense. “War is a racket.” (General Smedley Butler, 1935)
Here’s today’s case in point: Sanctioned Chinese company builds revolutionary natural gas turbine, but Americans won’t be able to buy them.
“Only a handful of companies across the world build natural gas turbines, and order backlogs are hitting records amid soaring demand for new electricity.
Electrical utilities and power producers currently have a five-year wait on new orders, and place large non-refundable deposits with manufacturers just to get in line to buy.
Aero Engine Corp has been under sanction for over five years, so North American and most European buyers cannot place orders for these turbines. But demand across the world is skyrocketing, and Aero Engine will easily find markets.”
https://kdwalmsley.substack.com/p/sanctioned-chinese-company-builds?
Another way that things are not going too well.
I deduce from this article that China and other Asian countries don’t seem to be shipping as much to the US, this next quarter. Rates for shipping are very low.
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/asia-west-coast-container-rates-plummet-demand-seen-waning-through-year-end
Container rates on the eastbound trans-Pacific continued their plunge as ocean lines increase blank sailings amid weak demand that’s expected to persist through the end of this year. . .
Forecasts cite consumer concerns over rising prices, tariff concerns and trade shifts for a muted outlook through the end of the year.
I am afraid this article may be right.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/will-ai-eat-our-brains
“The danger is what it does to the human brain. Its whole ethos is to produce the answers to all things.”
Like what the pocket calculator did to people learning, using and becoming good at math. All this AI stuff is a byproduct of the digital revolution and it was the iPhone and iPad that put all of this AI stuff into 5th gear.
This is way over-pessimistic. Humans need to have the intelligence and curiosity to ask the questions in the first place. AI apps can’t do that. I use ChatGPT, which I have found to be superior to CoPilot. ChatGPT does occasionally make mistakes or omit things, so then I have to correct it. I have to use my brain to keep it on track. Most of the time, it does bring me the correct answer, saving me a lot of time trawling through Google or Wikipedia etc.
The result then is that either I very quickly return to the subject in hand in order to delve deeper, or I am inspired to move on to the next subject or to think new thoughts. Curiosity plus inspiration are human traits. AI does not by itself have such emotions or indeed any emotions. Humans are also neophiles: they seek the new. Just because AI has given them an answer, they don’t stop thinking. They won’t just collapse on the sofa and zombify. Nature abhors a vacuum, and they move on to the next thing. Humans and technology are a partnership – one depends on the other.
Certainly, technological innovation means that we lose things as well as gain things. How many young people know their multiplication tables these days? Probably very few. But how much does that matter? They don’t need to in this highly wired age, where an answer is usually just seconds away.
The danger, as we OFWers know, is that if the mass availability of energy disappears, then our computers and machines become useless statues. Or if we run out of rare earths, then we will no longer have all the components we need for our computers and microchips.
Years ago I used to read about, or watch on YouTube videos about, the late Doctor Leir, who removed so called “alien implants” from people who reported them. I watched these videos out of curiosity and for entertainment, rather than taking them seriously. These implants apparently out tried to move out of the way of his surgical instruments. Bizarre. But today we have the answer that they didn’t have back then: artificial intelligence. Also, I watched one documentary about a man who claimed to have picked up an object dropped on the road from a flying saucer. He attempted to have it analysed. One lab sent it back, saying they wanted nothing to do with it. Eventually another lab examined it and determined that it was made of a material unknown to humans. today we have the answer that they didn’t have back then: nanotechnology. Under BAU, technology marches on – until it doesn’t.
Will AI help us discover new nano-materials, to keep BAU going for longer? Will it help us genetically engineer new crops, to feed us better and more efficiently? Or will its energy needs help to overwhelm and destroy BAU?
It won’t discover anything which has not been discovered. It might make some methods more efficient but that will be about it.
Oh dear. If it’s too hard, the K can’t understand it. 😉
1] Read my comment again, but carefully this time.
2] Watch the video linked to below.
3] Put on your dunce’s cap and go and stand in the corner. 😉
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uq-deRtvedI
How AI Is Saving Billions of Years of Human Research Time | Max Jaderberg | TED
Another nerd lookimg for his billion.
I watched 100+ clips of such nature.
Have you heard aboit Nikola Danaylov? He interviewed a hundred such individuals. I do not see him.
I slso used to follow the singularity univ. And also Ben Goerzel.
I have seen them all brfire. Thid one is not that impressive for me.
”My Ukrainian prediction was part of this sub-framework under the DA which I call the Horse trading Theory of Everything (HTOE). It’s basically the Hand’s geopolitical restructuring away globalization under political cover. It’s first two horsetrade was that Russia would reclaim Ukrainian resources (farmland mainly) in exchange for taking responsibility for the old Soviet reactors and spent fuel pools. ” — reante
They better get moving fast .
”Vast nuclear plant in Ukraine is being cooled by emergency diesel generators, Russia says ”
https://archive.md/ttPmZ#selection-1053.0-1065.17
I go back and forth between “Putin is a pro-western stooge trying to sabotage victory while doing just enough to not be ousted by his generals” and “Putin plays 5D chess and is dragging out the conflict to improve Russia’s military aresenal and strategic position while the West devolves”.
Russia could have turned out the lights across Ukraine long ago, thus diminishing its fighting ability, but chooses not to.
If the country runs out of gasoline or diesel they will oust him. He and his crew have some strikes on them.
If Putin was a pro-western stooge then the FSB counterintelligence would have killed him by now because Putin wouldn’t be capable of operating in a vacuum. I think you should give the intelligence services of the world more credit.
It’s the Hand that runs almost all the Intel services on the planet that is playing 5D chess, and the timing of a narrative climax like a Big Nuclear Scare is everything. It’s the Hand that chooses not to Collapse Ukraine already by having Russia treat it with kid gloves this far even though Russian refining capacity is getting trashed while Russia is ultimately still willingly exporting oil to NATO countries. Real or not real? LOL.
Welcome to the HTOE.
Strange situation!
To ruminate on that very question, take the pop number [x] land size. Compare/contrast with US, China, EUrope, .. , India.
You necessarily come to an answer that’s going to be always very difficult operation [full spectrum] management wise both in terms of domestic & foreign policy – and somewhat irrespective of that natural resource base endowment.
This obvious [weak] point has been lately exploited massively in terms of depicted fire balls over hard to service/replace o&g installations. Performed mostly by cheapo drones (planes & balloons) and in some cases also reportedly by direct human on/near site sabotage action.
As many alluded here – if continued – it can quickly reach – escalate up into another prior historic MAD level thresholds..
Of course it’s difficult to manage when you play according to the West’s parameters. No tit-for-tat, just absorb the blows and don’t respond in kind is how Putin likes to play. Putin could get the Houthis to press a button that attacks US bases in the same manner that the US gets the Ukrainians to allegedly push the button that attacks Russian forces.
True.
Yet, it’s not likely the [“US admin proper”] pushing ~all these buttons on their own volition there to escalate.. These are rather murky affiliates of the mil-industrial complex and various lesser state actors (e.g. msm: Poland’s gov directly supported the bottom of the sea NS pipeline blow up crew now locked/charged as suspects in German custody).
Which makes the whole game even more dangerous and hard to contain.
Nevertheless, if [reante’s] overall PO-HTOE bird’s eye globo top level theory is correct we can’t completely deny even the seemingly most outrageous part of the game plan, being RU cooperating here in pre-limiting (phasing out) their existing oil infrastructure aka war – taking hit as cover.
For one thing, lets say if none of the recently lost facilities files under brand spanking new install – perhaps it could be also derived-confirmed otherwise (e.g. fuel specific tuning of said installations). I have no direct knowledge to evaluate it now..
Yes, seems despicable line of thinking, I personally grant it now merely single digit %probability. But the program (should it ever exist) landing the civ slowly through PO times is not for the average sentiment..
Yeah jak if we really wanted to as a group, we could go down just that one rabbithole of investigating which refineries are being hit, what their particular specs are, etc. Unless with your connections you can just get some classified copies Handed to us.
Landing the civ slowly isn’t despicable from a bird’s eye view. It’s what everyone would want were they to be aware of the situation as we are. It’s only the excessive self-interestedness that doesn’t want oneself to be among the DA’s collateral damage that finds it despicable, right? Excessive self-interestedness is just a failure to take full responsibility for one’s circumstances. And taking full responsibility doesn’t just mean being the greatest, most mobile (as necessary) pepper that ever lived. It could also mean being at peace with becoming collateral damage of the DA because the Hand earned the right to carry out the DA as it sees fit. Hell, without the Hand and the Elite predecessors, none of us would be alive in the first place. They are People Farmers who farmed us into existence. Complaining — and I’m not saying that you’re complaining — is just irresponsible sour grapes.
I don’t take reante’s framework seriously and the idea that Nordstream was led by the Poles instead of US/UK and now they’ve got the perps is also fantasy.
Everyone knew jak was barking up the wrong tree on that reply Ivan. 😁
I wrote that PL “supported” as in facilitated.. likely in some maritime/shore re-supply role etc.
[UK/US boyz ]retired or not – were likely more closely connected to the planning and execution itself.
Reante’s framework does most likely exist – as documented in recent post exchanges (and previous historic accounts of hand’s nudging – chiefly in globo security/fin matters).
The point of high disagreement though remains about the [scope!] Hence, I’d agree with the most limited observable scale of it. That in practice manifests for example as occasional POTUS angry outbursts against UKR, and various efforts (on both sides) to keep the comm. lines among super powers still open.. despite the ongoing ankle kicking.
jak, about the scope. When we’re talking about the Handiwork we’re just talking about manufactured consent writ large, right? Nothing less than a Consent Factory, in the parlance of CJ Hopkins. Anything ambitious in life, at the personal level requires getting after it day in and day out, right? Day in and day out, year after year. Because that ambition manifests as one kind of complex operation or another. And someone like myself is going to recognize that when I see it because I myself am engaged in such an ambition. Like the Hand, I’m also farming too many animals lol in a transitioning ecology. In my case I’m transitioning from hill forestland to mixed coppicewood pasture. The fundamentals are simple but the dynamics are complex. And the relational aspect is paramount. I’m a relationship farmer. Likewise the Hand’s farm, though it be scaled-up in the extreme, is a relationship farmer and, thus, has many farmhands whose job it is to help us relate in various ways to its management plan, and those relationships are especially important when the management plan requires changes that disrupt the animals’ preferred routines.
A global management plan means global control. The world has been living under that full spectrum dominance for about 40 years now. A forty year old farm is a dialed-in farm. Every year brings incremental improvements and refinements. The farming itself is an endless exercise in reaching for greatness through trial and error. And though the global Hand itself, that faces very little opposition to its plan, only emerged about 40 years ago, it emerged from centuries -old selfsame regional and continental practices, except that now it powered by the internet and television age which it also controls. It’s a veritable Matrix that it has built.
I just pick out a few little nuggets from its orchestration every day. The Factory is like the Foxconn campus. Gargantuan. Compartmentalized. Global statecraft makes the Manhattan Project look like tiddlywinks. Pretty much all that they have to do is to get farmhands to dedicate their working lives to working in one of the thousands of Factory compartments is to pay them well to do their assigned work, tell them not to stray from their compartment, and have them sign an NDA, and things basically run themselves. A mature operation is 99% self-organizing but that self-organizing dynamic falls within the parameters of the management plan. I sketch out the various ways that the self-organization is in service of the plan, and perhaps that’s why the scope of the DA strikes you as too great.
reante> sorry off topic meandering..
may I pick you brains a bit?
What kind of forest you happened to transform into pastures about? Is it partially mixed green-leafy? The soil of forests tends to vary greatly..
Especially, in cultural landscape the ~worst type of soil was purposely set a side for forest vs pastures and fields. Obviously, prime pristine forest land is something a bit different though, but that’s usually only the CAN/RU-Siberian perma_c guys could afford at scale..
What is your key toolset in that transition? Heavy green / mulching, nitro fixers and pioneer species? Any ~mineral amendments in scale.. ?
I am with Fast Eddy this is the oddest war I have ever seen. In a real war you bomb them back to the stone age. Sewage treatment plants, water plants, electric plants, train depots, bridges, airports, telephone exchanges, natural gas distribution, gasoline storage, etc….
Kill them burn them starve them induce disease, cut off water, ….
Put simply WIN
Perhaps the proverbial penny just (finally) dropped during last dayz and hours.. The US announcement of supplying long range missiles in coordinated fashion with [EUboyz steeling ~150B assets] is already altering RU policy both domestically as well as int.
+anecdotally: one of their key msm/propaganda outlets YT [Greco boyz] channel just completely dropped [Donnie_b and MAGAers] after long years of sweet talking support and ~5D chess nonsense..
The assumption with nuclear power plants (and associated cooling ponds for spent fuel) is that external electricity will always be available, if needed. This is not proving to be true.
Thanks ravi. The Zapor plant has always been the primary suspect for being one of the components of the Big Nuclear Scare, for obvious reasons. But it’s the Ukrainian one that Russia is already taking responsibility for, and which Ukraine (or the Hand) is being irresponsible towards.When Russia does end up cake walking across Ukraine to secure the Western plants, my guess is that it will be done during the Big Nuclear Scare under the Rahm Emmanuel model of crisis acting. The BNS might be really, really huge though, the Hand does have a penchant for going big, so it may go as big as it feels safe doing without risking chaotic Collapse. I do expect Israel to become enveloped in the BNS, and MAGA will be buried six feet under, possibly by military coup.
There is a subtle nuance to point out: “Zaporizhzhia’s” array of reactors is now (not) cooled after previous ~proper shutdown procedure.. Indeed bad npp situation overall but certainly NOT immediate looming catastrophe..
The grid-cooled spent fuel pools of the world are potentially the human extinction level event risk, at least for the northern hemisphere anyway. And Zapor is one of the largest and oldest plants in the world so it’s pools must also be among the largest. The threat from active reactors themselves pales in comparison is my understanding.
I’m guessing that all the oil and gas installations in Russia that are getting trashed are in the fallout zone of Zapor fuel pools, but not the vast majority of oil and gas production, which would make those installations expendable if indeed it turns out that the plan is to let Zapor cook as part of the BNS.
If the spent fuel pools cause a major event that kills lots of people, but changes the biology of the survivors so that they are in some way smarter, that could be a huge benefit.
Unfortunately alpha particles strip electrons (ionize) DNA along with everything else in the body. If they do it too much then you die. If they don’t do it too much and you don’t die, and you receive continuous non-lethal exposure for the rest of your life, all that the body can do is send additional resources (nutrients) to the the detoxification and repair complexes, and the body’s having to do that over years and decades will change epigenetic expressions that reprioritize nutrient flows for the long-term, but actual gene mutation will require intergenerational adaptation.
However, intergenerational human genetic mutation to chronic alpha-particle ionization means that the intelligent body has just made ‘permanent’/structural the upregulation of those complexes will pull resources from other functions such that the genes controlling those functions will have to mutate into lower performance genetic functions in response. It’s a zero sum game; a closed system. Humans would generally get smaller, and weaker — less fit. Biological robustness is an ecological state that emerges out of high fertility. (Sperm count, for example, has fallen by 50pc among the mainstream of humanity because the ecology, including the food supply, has a serious nutrient cycling problem as a result of industrialism.) Biological fragility results from poor nutrient cycling.
Nuclear fallout — and we’re talking here about a concentration of fallout that dwarfs Chernobyl — destroys fertility across the entire ecology. There are no benefits to that. The only benefit is time, so long as survival can be maintained. But really it just comes down to location location location. Try not to live downing of the nuclear power industry if you can help it.
BTW, the published analyses of the genetic mutations of the feral dogs of Chernobyl that attempt to put a positive spin on the relatively low chronic exposure from the fallout, are total junk ‘science.’
At 16.15 on Tuesday, the government has gathered for a press conference to present Sweden’s new Minister of Health, Elisabet Lann (KD) [48]. The start is rolling as usual. The other ministers who are attending welcome the Minister of Health, and Lann herself gives a speech about her new assignment. At the same time as the floor is handed over to Jakob Forssmed, she falls forward and remains seemingly unconscious on the floor. The other ministers rush to help the Minister of Health. First to arrive is Ebba Busch.
After a few seconds, the camera is pointed away from the minister and the press conference is interrupted. The broadcast was also interrupted and a test image was shown. After a few minutes, Elisabet Lann was back. “This was not exactly a normal Tuesday, and this is what can happen when you have a drop in blood sugar,” she says, according to Aftonbladet’s reporter on site.
The journalists on site seemed taken aback by the incident that unfolded on the stage in front of them. According to Aftonbladet’s reporter on site, Elisabet Lann was led out of the press conference shortly after the fall. A few minutes later, the four ministers returned. After the ministers commented on the fall, the press room was closed and the journalists were ushered into a meeting room outside.
https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/JbjB6b/regeringen-presenterar-forandringar
I feel for this courageous woman and I wish to donate her any future vaccine of mine.
“The journalists on site seemed taken aback by the incident that unfolded on the stage in front of them.”
Because we all know by now that the CV19 Vax is totally “safe and effective”. It must be, it has to be something else, there’s no other explanation. Science must look further and explore what could have caused her collapse.
A few months back, I was matching a Series A football match and a young, mid 20’s physically fit, well conditioned footballer collapsed on the pitch. Players from both sides were stunned and in tears. They knew or had a good idea. The match was subsequently called off.
I think most people sorta know. I got an usual text from my mom recently when I was at work during the middle of the day. Saying “how much she loved me and how proud she was of me”. And that was the day Hulk Hogan died of heart attack.
She is fairly young and the new minister of health. I suppose a person might guess that this is another vaccine injury.
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/openai-new-data-centers-more-power-new-york-city
I think someone here mentioned that AI won’t use that much energy 🤪
And i proved the person wromg.
Could the new data center be run intermittently, on close by wind and solar power? (I don’t know whether there is such power.) If so they wouldn’t be such a problem for the grid.
I’ve been getting Candace Owens shorts on my YouTube feed since the Kirk deal and she’s been on an absolute bender. She’s really unleashed the beast inside. Of course, she’s an operative. On of my favorites lol. Goodbye Zionism. Here’s the latest one
https://youtube.com/shorts/aVf-TFgztJ8?si=XCd1iSrhXHol-uOb
Charlie Kirk said explicitly that the planned to abandon the Jewish cause, about 48 hours before his death.
This is almost two weeks old now, but it’s worth viewing if you haven’t seen it already.
In this scenario, Charlie is shot in the head from behind and above at close range from a pressurized CO”-powered air gun built into the camera mounted on the wall.
The bullet exits through his throat and is seen to move down through the air above his knees.
An operative removes the shooting camera during the confusion shortly after Charlie’s lifeless body is carted off.
All caught on camera!
Or is it AI?
https://x.com/InquisitorFren/status/1969521532428042729
Thanks for that correction. I suppose maybe all of her shorts that I’ve watched were from the first few days then, but I think she’s still on a crusade.
I just don’t see that a projectile passing right through soft tissue is going to make his body jump like that. Out in the field I shoot lungshots at my animals, from the side, with a .22 magnum and there’s no body jolt from the impact even when the bullet goes through a rib bone or the shoulder blade. They. jump afterwards from reflex. His body jumping isn’t a reflex, it’s from an impact about simultaneous to the sound. And then there’s the blood dynamics that don’t add up. If the blood squib hoax theory is true then the impact machine was wirelessly connected to whatever made the sound.
A new (really!) Candace short came on my feed in which she shows how two other newly minted anti-zionist crusaders, Marjorie Taylor Green and Theo Von who’s another very popular conservative influencer, have both publicly declared that they are not suicidal in the wake of their “Mossad Dunnit!” campaign. Then after Candace has done that, she proceeds to solemnly announce that she is also not suicidal. YCMTSU. Lol.
Whitney in rare form. does she mention a guy who is not tribe? but a fairly complete, compact presentation of the plan for south america, which is hat they would like to do to eurasia and africa.
She is a tough to listen to person. She’s highly intelligent but she speaks so fast and just loads up on so much information without pausing, I end up losing track of what she’s saying.
Whitney Webb is at her best when she is being interviewed by someone who gives her a short leash.
I have thought that the world was moving toward more separate countries, rather than trying to join countries together. It takes energy for any of these unions. She talks about integrating South America, in almost the way the European Union was formed. I don’t understand what will work.
Presumably if long distance transport is expensive controlled regional blocks could be easier to organize and manage. Che is rolling in his grave of course.
Wow drb she’s talking about what I’m talking about, except she’s talking about it from Fitz’s perspective. And she knows way more stuff about it cuz she’s Whitney Webb and I’m just a lowly sketch artist in the peanut gallery. But I (we) know the Big Picture, so I’ll say it again: if only Whitney Webb would wake up to peak oil, then she’d see that digital greenbacks aren’t about next-level imperial domination, they’re about KEEPING THE CIVILIZATION FROM COLLAPSING. And she WRONG about surveillance. They will be encrypted. If it looks like they’re going to be encrypted (I wouldn’t know) then that’s a MISDIRECTION PLAY, AS ALWAYS. Lol.
Genius dissidents like her are never going to adapt to Collapse because they’re always going to think that the Elites are purposely collapsing civilization for their own ends. But that’s the plandemic generation of dissidents for you. Tragic. The were funneled into that by none other than the Hand but also by coming up on progressive forefathers of dissidence like Matt Taibbi and Chris Hedges. Though I hate to say it but Taibbi is probably an operative.
If it looks like they’re going to be a surveillance tool
On second thought I doubt the surveillance/encryption topic has anything to do with a Hand misdirection play. I don’t really see the motive for that. The surveillance/digital ID complaint is probably just Whitney conflating or associating USD stablecoins with CBDCs because the bankers are publicly jumping on board with them.
Tether has been buying a shitload of Bitcoin, which I don’t like the look of from a stability standpoint, even though I still can’t be bothered to look up what Bitcoin even is. I’m getting the feeling that the Hand Is using these private firms to build out the stablecoin ‘ecosystem’ (hate that usage) to a critical threshold such that when the rest of the cryptobubble pops, tether and the like will get drug down by their exposure to it, and the Treasury itself would take over the system. Tether is a private company that profits of of people/institutions buying their coins and Tether using that money to buy mostly treasuries and profiting off of the interest on those purchased assets. But, naturally, Tether is using its profits to further chase money and become exposed to risk while doing so. But it’s portfolio itself in general is interesting and relevant to Collapse in that it is heavily investing in gold and, like Webb talks about and I talked about last week, hard farmland assets that point to a civilizational future including commodities-based currencies and straight international barter.
With it’s investments exposure, Tether is a doomed capitalist intel front — one of the co-founders was a child actor — for a future national socialist nationalization that turns it into a true digital greenback. So now I’m coming back round again to seeing stablecoin’s vulnerability to being surveilled, that Webb’s alarmed about due to them being a public blockchain technology, as a misdirection play again. The true, nationalized NS greenback version will be a fully encrypted public banking service simulating cash money’s anonymity. The national socialisms are all about the restoration of public trust while standards of living collapse.
The Slow Demise of Russian Oil Production
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/slow-demise-russian-oil-production-000000572.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9uZXdzLmdvb2dsZS5jb20v&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAF9peFTe79ES-9VN6K8m3U03W9igEVYqjY4raeVLxooA0Tx2F0lhX5UzlCk03FueBI61umW0R6ctg2HfOtfb8QrZs0dfsSyhjpwq1BVy1O7KBeKcHY4TqScyPcAe540ZAjEl3lRdEpYbdM-s7FsnSUtnGgJqCKR7MBax5sHl_LOr
What I read from this is that Russia doesn’t currently have the capability to use the advanced techniques that US oil drillers use to extract oil. Because of this, their oil production will fall.
This makes me think that some country or organization will come in later and get more oil out. It makes Russia a tempting target to attack for the purpose of getting its oil, especially if supplies are low elsewhere. Shale supplies elsewhere would also be a target.
Assuming that “fracked” oil from shale tends to be “light”, the world over, shale-oil fracking doesn’t make much diesel or jet fuel, anyway.
I suppose Russia’s production of SMD (sweet middle distillate) oil may be in permanent decline.
Visa is now implementing a digital greenbacks pilot program. My Google newsfeed algo is making my life easier.
Cramer: “I’ve sold everything oil and gas”
https://x.com/OilHeadlineNews/status/1973390153851777165
WOW!
People assume that shortages mean high prices, oversupply means low prices. Oversupply really comes from recessions, and lack of demand (which does lead to oversupply). Perhaps that is what he is thinking.
There is a direct correlation from oil consumption to GDP. If there are huge oil gluts due to lower consumption than GDP must be way down. But that is not what they tell us
Oil demand is a world issue, not just a US issue. Quite a few countries aren’t doing well. There is a missing middle class quite a few places. They are increasingly being priced out of vehicle purchases and long trips.
Right but again… there is a direct correlation between oil use and GDP the rich can’t consume enough to make up for the poor
Two near professionals show pretty damning evidence re: Kirk. Specially for me the disappearing walking guy in the published roof video. This is 100% a tampered with video, or it can be completely made up. AI has limits. Verdict for me: kid not the shooter.
I think it was the guy in the front with the sunglasses. His security. The way he grins after the shot like a cold blooded killer.
The stereotypical brownshirted aryan is my favorite misdirection play too: national socialism killing Zionism because Zionism and Collapse don’t mix. Gotta love the Hand’s human side.
drb have you considered why they wanted you to think there was a shooter in the first place? The truth is usually buried two layers deep.
Isn’t it funny how ~every generation must mature (self-test) through similar rare look behind the curtain opportunity, e.g. JFK, the 2001 thing, .. etc.
Yep statecraft is like watching Rear Window. Even if we’re killing it in making like Jimmy Stewart’s eyes for an hour and fifteen minutes, we might then make the mistake of taking one too many hits off the bong and there goes the greatest movie of all-time. That’s life.
The Hand wants us running a gauntlet and I wouldn’t want it any other way.
to have a ready made goat.
“Verdict for me: kid not the shooter.”
You mean Tyler Robinson, right? His lifestyle is too unstable for me to believe he had the skill set to pull off a single kill shot. The killer knew what type of damage it would inflict at the precise angle and that the person would not survive before arriving at a nearby hospital. That to me was a highly trained, professional Hitman who did that.
Chris Martenson explored that idea in one of his recent videos.
https://peakprosperity.com/solved-analysis-reveals-kirk-killed-by-rifle-round-but-not-from-robinsons-position/
https://odysee.com/@Chris_Martenson:2/260926-ACI-Kirk-Killed:7?src=embed
well yes plus the shot must have been low caliber. did you see what happened to the cow femur in the tests?
It really does feel like the system is starting to break. I think/ hope Gail is right. I am not expecting pension or social security benefits to last much longer than 2032. But I hope that we get a slow decline . Maybe the great simplification as Nate Hagens says.
That would be a bit like ripping off the band-aid off … slowly. Perhaps if we could set a date, and then all agree to a few weeks of The Purge before settling in for a nice pleasant life where all food is grown locally, and beer and spirits are created with care.
I hear peasants in the times before only needed to work hard a few months of the year, and then just enjoy life and relax for the rest. That seems like it would be pretty good, all in all.
Im sure some one will tend to those spent fuel rod ponds, so they wont be a bother to anyone.
That with added proviso – > very seasonally and point of (hist) time dependent situation.
As the country folk was often forced mobilized by the local land lord to man up on the “special projects” of the day, be it fortifications, digging up water-river channels, road work etc..
Also in later time they were forced to add income (profit) via various cottage industries.. usually some sort of tiny metal or basic woody assembly type of work, all family (child labor) working around the table in the kitchen under the sporadic light.
But off-seasons it could be generally evaluated as correct assessment especially for the most distant era.. say before ~16th century.. depending on geo-locale..
I kind of expect pension and social security benefits to stop with some shutdown. If this shutdown lasts long enough, it would seem like they could try out temporarily stopping them now.
If the US Federal Government fails, I expect that state and local governments will do more. There might even be regional governments. But none of them will pick up expensive, hard to fund plans, without huge cuts in benefits.
It is hard to know. IA, where I lived for many years seems to have a problem with a super in Des Moines. Corn is a problem in that >40% goes into ethanol which is a thermodynamic loser, always has been. Farmland appears to be declining in price, many farmers take loans against the land for operating capital. RE taxes on farmland are based on assessed value which in MN is close to fmv. Decrease in fmv would suggest tightening of local budgets.
SS apparently has a “surplus” but that surplus is invested in government bonds which at one time were short term in nature, need to be rolled over. The last bond auction did not go well, cash under the pillow is something one can sleep on.
There does not appear to be enough free cashflow.
Economics does not exist without biology, biology has cycles from birth to death, human ability to add to gdp is a function of age or demographics. Demographics in the US would appear better than most, but were one French, uff dah. They didn’t want children and they don’t want immigrants. Children don’t mature overnight, takes twenty or so years of investment. Well, it is something to sleep on if the woman is the right age.
Dennis L.
This Wolfstreet article talks about the Social Security Trust Fund. In the early years of Social Security, the workforce was relatively young. Not too many benefits needed to be paid out.
https://wolfstreet.com/2024/11/04/social-security-update-fiscal-2024-trust-fund-income-outgo-and-deficit/
Social Security collected the full amount, as if retirees would be paid now. (It used the funds collected to fight wars, I believe. This helped hold down other kinds of tax needs at the time.) Instead the Social Security Trust Fund was funded by special US Treasury Bonds that couldn’t be publicly traded.
If you scroll down in the article, it shows income and outgo by year. For the last several years, outgo has exceeded income. So it has been a net drain on the system. (Medicare is a whole lot worse.)
Current taxes have to pay everything that is needed now, including interest on these special Treasury Bonds. The system has to pay for the rising costs of the elderly and disabled, one way or another.
I respectfully disagree.
IMO I think the opposite will happen. I think they want EVERYONE on social security or something. Because they can use that to inflate (artificially) the dollar and switch (nudge) people to digital currency.
I mean what happens when Gas stations and retail starts accepting Bitcoin. And your bitcoin outperforms your “old” dollars. (And they will use that term I guarantee it)
And by giving everyone social security you can also control how much they consume. (and that’s the real big issue) in a world of scarcity.
You really need electricity to put everyone on social security or something like that. If you use electricity, everyone is bumped off, the first windstorm that goes through. We are becoming less able to fix up after windstorms.
I think the doomsday plan (assuming it comes down to it) would be 4 days of power and 3 days of darkness. It would conserve 32% of overall energy consumption. (table cloth math).
I know it sounds “crazy” but desperate times, somethin.
I AM THE MOB: “They’ll think of something.”
We can already observe what happens in areas with low power production: a few hours per day is what they go for, at least as long as they are still able to maintain a fixed schedule.
They have been spinning this failing capacity to rebuild after storms as “climate change”, as if windstorms are getting too strong, or the “neoliberals” restricting government spending. They downplay extensively the material (resource) and labor shortages. I substitute low birth rates for labor shortages and ask a search engine why is a complex phenomenon being attributed to one cause.
The Brave search engine’s AI agrees with me.
” Material constraints and low birth rates are not discussed in the provided context as contributing factors to these rising costs; instead, the focus is on climate-driven disaster intensity, inadequate disaster recovery policies, and systemic inequities that disproportionately affect low-income communities”
I forgot about prejudice. Prejudice is the perfect cover for every problem facing late-stage CIVILIZATION. Prejudice falls into a category of “not trying hard enough”. If everyone tried hard enough, there could be enough uranium for everyone.
” If this shutdown lasts long enough, it would seem like they could try out temporarily stopping ”
That is exactly what the president has been quoted as using the lock–I mean, shutdowns, for. To get rid of things they can during a shutdown that they couldn’t get rid of , if the U.S. federal government was not shut down.
I guess we’ll find out how necessary America’s space program is soon enough.
Watched that very TV news clip as well, thinking along similar lines!
At the presser Kennedy standing behind Donnie_b was trembling in somewhat higher freq. than usual.
Perhaps, this will be the exact [focal point] of further policy acceleration, “unexpected” smackdown by other means.
We could assume (if included) that PO-hand favorable agenda might be easily identifiable there. Obviously, they could also push for some ~meaningless kiddie political turf war stuff, but why waste this opportunity in the first place.. right.
I don’t like this . Refining problems in Russia .
Novak proposed eliminating duties on gasoline imports from China, South Korea, and Singapore.
https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/8079558
Diesel exports banned for the rest of 2025 .
Novak proposed increasing gasoline imports from Belarus to 300,000 tons per month.
Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak proposed increasing Belarusian gasoline .https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/8080021
It looks like attacking refineries is the main strategy. Today Yaroslavl’s refinery was hit, I have not had time to check news but locals told me it was sabotage. As luck may have it my tank is nearly empty so we had to call our supplier. He reacted to the news (in fact he told us) by quoting 70 rubles instead of the 52 of the last time. I was expecting 56 to 58. Tomorrow we will call around.
That don’t got nuthin a do with luck drb. 😂
I expect Macron has been on the phone to Putin already, calling him a cowardy custard. How long before Putin escalates and does a partial nuke of a Ukrainian city?
The word on the st. is that Macron is NOT the most active freaked out dog, although the loss of remaining post colonial revenue hurts (in past two decades FR lost last ~10-20% of that legacy income) in which game RU-CHN played major role..
The most elevated freak outs are legacy lesser-junior coalition [Adolf-boyz & girls] from the EU comm., Baltic mini states, and Scandinavia..
Meaning, the pre-imagined prize of stealing RU oil/natgas again is slipping away, they are getting desperate in terms of sinking EUR global reliability because of that failed bet on sanctions/theft agenda.
Well that’s what the eurocrats get for listening to their Intel agencies as if the Intel agencies are on their side rather than what they are which is the errand boys of the Big Show upstairs.
So now I gotta ask what exactly you mean by the Adolf Boyz? Seems like that’s come in a couple different contexts which means I must have misunderstood the first time.
And what kinda bigwig connections you got, anyway, pal? This here is the peanut gallery and we don’t take too kindly to success around here.
Well, lets make an illustrative contrast-comparison again. You are right [] is somewhat spongy-fluent concept.
Do you recall that former-former-former Chancellor, he used to play as kid on some of the remaining WWII rubble sites. Later made real lifelong friendship with the Vlad from ~similar generation also still able to recall the end/over-tail of hardship days. Both bettered their countries in joint effort massively. Now contrast it with that beyond irritating Euro comm. head bit@# from a family of quite stupid WWII gen staff.. or that Kohl’s protege green coated DDR matrona, sadly such faulty-spoiled milieu keeps on giving unfortunately..
ps there is only < handful number of ~PO related public sites – tracking the topic continuously throughout few past decades, occasionally I had to briefly return reading-posting to soak up the spirits of the day so to speak..
btw. success is very relative sport discipline, we are all mere peanuts – ants afterall ..
The rest of the world still needs refined diesel from Russia, I am afraid. Supplies are pretty short, worldwide.
It would be nice to see basic brakedown of the situation.
Fake numbers just illustrating the point:
[90% war damage, 10% natur PO depletion]
[70% direct war damage, 20% int. sanctions regime, 10% natur PO depletion]
Problem with doing that is that the war is because of 2018 peak total global oil liquids, which means that the breakdown is 100% peak oil, and especially for someone such as myself who predicted well before the war ever started that the Hand would see to it that Russia reclaims all of Ukraine because all of the Ukrainian former Soviet nuclear power plants are Russia’s legacy responsibility for decommissioning during Phase 2 of the DA because no one else will be capable of doing it. Ukraine will collapse and Russia will cakewalk through the country just like Al-Nusra did through Syria so that Russia can secure the Western Ukrainian power plants.
Yes, utilizing for it the overall (~2018) PO perspective is correct. I meant it more in the curiosity about day/day situation overview of that conflict though.
The damage done is very embarrassing.
More importantly, it revives the <20yrs old discussions at various PO sites if we ever get (and when) to the potential point of direct – malicious attacks on energy facilities. Personally, I DID NOT expect it at least for the ~quasi core countries say before 2035-45.. !
Obviously for the more distant (laymen) audiences: East Asian, US, it's still seemingly filed as nothingburger as of now..
Appreciate you putting up with me. You keep on shortening that timeline now and pass it on to drb but whatever you do don’t bother davidina.
My Ukrainian prediction was part of this sub-framework under the DA which I call the Horse trading Theory of Everything (HTOE). It’s basically the Hand’s geopolitical restructuring away globalization under political cover. It’s first two horsetrade was that Russia would reclaim Ukrainian resources (farmland mainly) in exchange for taking responsibility for the old Soviet reactors and spent fuel pools. The second horsetrade was that Israel or Zionism at the very least, would be wiped of the face of the Earth in exchange for ME peace because the ME still has the cheapest oil on the planet but is surrounded by tens of millions of poor young Arab men who don’t see much of it.
The overarching goal of the Hand’s HTOE for Phase 2 of the DA is to redistribute oil and gas flows in order to prioritize the needs of the nuclear armed and powered nations. Common sense top priority, right? In that context I am assuming that Russian refinery capacity is being brought all the way down to the agreed upon level that Russia will safely need for domestic consumption during Phase 2. That way all the rest of the oil must be exported to prioritize other nuclear countries. And that way Russia can’t go off the reservation during Phase 2 and start refining more than what was non-publicly agreed upon.
I’m not negating the case for the overall HTOE, but tend to voice out lite skepticism on that (decomissioning priority aspect) as the following angle is debatable: because the very UKR NPPs are mostly mid-lower output already paid /~warn out installations..
placed on the outskirts of the major core countries..
Now compare/contrast the overall costs of the UKR affair so far. It has clearly costed the global economy at least fractional $T already ..
Not insignificant even in the age of (digital) money print.
And that’s way higher price than possibly spoiled few thousands km2 of landmass.. in some eyes..
jak the engineered Ukrainian war doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It exists in the context of a nuclear powered civilization’s total collapse. Ithe only way to prevent…THAT… is through David Icke’s old
Problem -> Reaction -> Solution
Right?
And besides, keeping the zero-sum post-peak continuous low-key financial crisis from becoming a full-blown one is all about the engineered interplay (tightrope walk) of both artificial demand destruction of global non-essentials via geopolitical shenanigans and the artificial maintaining of barely adequate global GDP via sovereign debt spending, and the ukie war facilitates both. If this civilization doesn’t keep wasting money on new kinds of stoopid shit in order to barely maintain the pressure of the Everything Bubble then it’s toast.
And war and war threats that keep everyone on tenterhooks is the single best way to jawbone the barrel price up and down as necessary to keep it within the price Triangle of Doom. And add the bigmouth clown Donald Drumpf into the mix and you’ve put a cherry on top of that racket
It cannot be denied that a lot of humans are not ready to enter the new phase of civilization.
You don’t enter Type I Civ by being nice, emphasizing pseudobiology promoting incestuous groups, recognizing quaint notions like human dignity, or sticking to 20th century notions like Pareto’s principles.
You enter Type I Civ by being mean to the weak, the less able and the less rich, having zero restrictions on research, ethics be damned.
You enter Type I Civ by having a winner take all philosophy, leaving absolutely nothing for the rest. It is not 20-80, but 1-99, or more likely 1-999,999,999.
The worker bees will be discarded while those who enter such civ will be very few.
Perhaps. We will see. If there are resources available (which there certainly are, if we include sunlight, wind power, water, and biomass), some people will survive and do well.
As far as I can see, the economy will always need worker bees. Every beehive has worker bees.
Tim Groves oal states got uppity, UK incited Russia to ‘discipline them’.
But, after World War 2, the continental states became prostate and no longer had the ability to rebel.
Thus the need to have matrons disappeared and the matron should have been fired.
Russia should have been allowed to break into 100 plus countries, none of them significant and always fighting against each other, like China’s warlord days.
When Putin was installed, he was a WEF alumni so the west was fooled.
The Americans are incapable of thinking for long term. They thought dividing USSR was enough – Russia should have returned back to Muscovy, a word not used since the 16th century, each oblast of Siberia allowed to become independent, etc.
Keeping Russia alive after 1991 was the most stupid mistake the west made.
It is the perfect Leopards eating your face situation.
At its peak in the late 19th century, the Russian Empire covered approximately 22,800,000 square kilometers (8,800,000 square miles). Russia’s current size is approximately 17,100,000 million square kilometers (6,600,000 square miles), so it has lost 25% of its former area.
Still, Lithuania has lost proportionally much more. At its peak around 1430, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania controlled an area of approximately 930,000 square kilometers (360,000 square miles), making it the largest state in Europe at that time. Today it covers a mere 65,300 square kilometers (about 25,200 square miles).
You’ve said repeatedly that the countries of Central and Eastern Europe such as the Baltic States, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, etc., shouldn’t exist, and you’ve blamed their existence on President Woodrow Wilson. If Russia was to break up into 100 small countries, the result would be 100 more Lithuanias, Latvias, Estonias, Moldovas, Serbias and Slovakias. Is that really a situation you’d like to see?
Yes. They are Asian countries and the more Asian countries they have, the better since that means theuly eould be too budy fighting each oither to bother the west.
Yes, I can see your point there. from the West’s standpoint, having the East divided and at war with themselves would be very convenient.
When I look at the current Ukraine war, that is precisely what I see going on. Russia and Ukraine were both part of the Russian Empire and both part of the USSR, speak very similar languages and are closely related culturally and through blood ties; and today they are at war with each other, killing each other, wasting each other’s resources and destroying each other’s infrastructure.
Boris Johnson and Vicky Nuland must be splitting their sides at how well this is going.
If Russia wasn’t kept alive in 1991 under the MPP then most of us would be dead by now from peak oil. Your bizarre fixation often makes you into an unwitting delusionist, kulm, and for someone as bright and image-obsessed as yourself, that’s the worst of all possible worlds. You could at least start by always checking to see how your fixation might conflict with your systems theory before commenting, with a goal to eventually coming to love the merit of the systems theory over the half urge of the fixation. I mean, I know the fixation is a whole urge at an emotional level, but conscience cuts it by at least half.
We all owe a vote of thanks to Russia for saving oil until recent times for extraction. Europe has been particularly dependent on Russian oil. This appears to be the reason diesel was used in private passenger automobiles, in Europe. The US used gasoline, since that is what we had in abundance.
ㅡmost of Russia’s oil come from a place xalled Yamal, near the arctic.
The Republic of Yamal would deal directly with US and Canada.
I associate Yamal with LNG exports, not with oil exports.
https://www.upstreamonline.com/lng/russia-s-yamal-lng-exports-fall-in-first-eight-months-of-2025/2-1-1872486
For reporting purposes, LNG sometimes goes in with oil. It is not part of crude oil, however.
http://gpf-europe.com/context/maps/?id=9838
Oil producing regions of Russia
Some of them are inland but most of them are accessible by sea
Yamal peninsula is up on the north.
On the map you link, there are two big brown spots where oil and natural gas extraction are performed. Yamal peninsula is at the north end of the eastern one. It is my impression that the oil tends to be in the southern part of this very large brown spot. This is where the green oil pipelines are shown.
I have always heard that in the Northern Hemisphere, natural gas tends to be more predominant in the north, and oil in the south (but this is not always the case).
Anyhow, the exports from the Yamal peninsula are LNG, not crude oil, as far as I can determine.
But kulm it’s not like the USSR collapsed into nothing. It was a nuclear superpower with absolute negotiating leverage and the critical infrastructure under its control. The West had to buy them out.
Their nukes were getting old and their military was in shambles until 2010
Which is why it did notj do anything about Ukraine till 2022
Till debt do us apart . Spain debt — Courtesy Quark .
Historic record for Spanish debt.
https://archive.md/Fcd5i
“Public debt increased by 4% year-on-year in the second quarter of the year, reaching a new record of €1.69 trillion, equivalent to 103.4% of GDP.
Compared to the same period last year, public debt has grown in absolute terms by €65 billion, while in relative terms it has decreased by 1.8 percentage points, from 105.2% of GDP to 103.4% of GDP. Despite the decrease, Spain is on the list of only five countries in the entire EU whose debt exceeds 100% of Gross Domestic Product.”
In reality, it is much worse.
The publicized debt corresponds to the debt presented in homogeneous terms to Europe. It is the so-called excessive deficit protocol debt (the debt harmonized with European criteria), but it is not the total debt.
The actual debt is €2.236 trillion, less the portion of debt consolidated among different sectors (debt between parties that should not be accumulated in the total because it would be duplicated and therefore should be discounted), that is, less €349.998 billion. Therefore, the actual total debt is €1.886 trillion (much higher than the total of €1.69 trillion).
See the total liabilities of the Bank of Spain.
https://www.bde.es/webbe/es/estadisticas/compartido/datos/pdf/a1104.pdf
Spain and everywhere else needs growth to pay back debt with interest.
Governments have failed before. They may fail again.
” While many investors talk about the link between low-interest rates driving the economy and markets ever higher, this correlation is very weak. We only need to look at Japan to understand that low interest rates do not guarantee a booming economy. For decades, Japan has pursued super-low and even negative interest rates while drifting into and out of recession. In short, other factors have been driving Japan’s economy rather than simply keeping rates low.”https://brucewilds.blogspot.com/2025/07/low-interest-rates-do-not-guarantee.html
“ Werner (1992, 1997, 2005, 2011b), using Japanese data, shows that credit for GDP transactions explains nominal GDP well over several decades, while alternative explanatory variables (including interest rates and money supply) are eliminated in a reduction from a general to the parsimonious specific model.” P23.
https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/339271/1/Werner_IRFA_QTC_2012.pdf
‘In May 2020, as I conducted my latest monthly analysis of the quantity of credit creation across 40 countries, I was startled to find that something extraordinary had been happening since March that year. The major central banks across the globe were boosting the money supply dramatically through a coordinated programme of QE.
This was the version of QE that I had recommended as the second policy step in Japan in the 1990s – namely, for the central bank to purchase assets from outside the banking sector. As these payments forced retail banks to create new credit in a massive burst of money supply not previously seen in the post-war era, firms and non-bank financial institutions that had sold to the Fed gained new purchasing power as a result.
Even the Bank of Japan, having previously argued for two decades that it could not possibly purchase assets from anyone other than banks, suddenly engaged in this unusual operation at the same time as other central banks, and on a massive scale. . . .
The Fed knew this would create inflation, as Blackrock later confirmed in a paper which stated that “the Fed is now committing to push inflation above target for some time”. ‘
https://fortune.com/2023/03/20/is-federal-reserve-too-powerful-inflation-quantitative-easing-richard-werner/
Of course, these analyses are from the point of view of the how much the money system should grow, to keep banks from failing.
The underlying problem is that the economy needs a growing supply of inexpensive energy. If that is not present, no matter what the Fed does, the economy will fail at some point.
ID cards in UK . Tim Watkins .
”The problem facing the UK state is the same problem facing Big Tech more generally… that active IT systems are energy hogs. And the one thing the UK is notoriously lacking is surplus energy. Last year the UK had to import more than 15 percent of its electricity – a figure that is expected to grow rapidly as its nuclear and gas generation is retired even as it builds out unreliable wind capacity. This is why Big Tech is currently pushing nuclear as the only means of powering the proposed AI data centres. But here in the UK it takes quarter of a century to build a nuclear power station because of the pre-build approval process. ”
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2025/09/30/batteries-not-included/
I don’t think we’ll get digital ID cards in the UK for several reasons:
1) As you mentioned, the energy situation is dire.
2) The pushback from the public (it is seen as unnecessary, expensive and pervasive)
3) The UK government and civil service are notoriously bad at rolling out new, complex systems (e.g. track and trace)
That is fine. It’s the camel nose under the tent.
I would point out that even if the UK builds nuclear power plants, it is not clear that uranium to power them will be available. This is a different problem. The problem of prices not rising high enough, for long enough, to encourage extraction of uranium affects it, just as it does fossil fuels. The easy-to-extract uranium is taken first.
The npp world ran in large part on Mtons -> Mwatts reprocessed fuel for the past several decades. “IF” the big boyz agree to further limit the arms stockpiles it could be revived easily.. But obviously the globo-political situation is not favorable to it at the moment..
Homeless shelter line stretching around the corner…. Welcome to the New World Order!
Supply and demand shocks in the COVID-19 pandemic: an industry and occupation perspective
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7499761/
“. At the occupation level, we show that high-wage occupations are relatively immune from adverse supply- and demand-side shocks, while low-wage occupations ”
There are a couple ways of looking at this.
One is “high wage jobs=good low wage jobs are bad”
Another is that high income jobs don’t need resources and are powered mostly be human ingenuity. If that is true, then non-labor costs for companies that have a large percentage of high-income workers should be low. The opposite should be true for companies that have a large percentage of low-income workers.
Lastly, people might be tempted to advocate to minimize the amount of low income jobs available in order to pandemic-proof their economies, increase productivity or save the environment.
Of course, this relates to the indirect covid shut downs of demand.
The financial system was in an artificially good place at that time. Governments added huge amounts of debt and provided income to citizens with it. The next shut down (which may relate to the US government not being able to reopen, or could be something else) will likely be different. The financial system is not immune to problems; next time will likely be different. Then the high wage people in the financial system will be hurt.
The medical system includes a whole lot of high wage people who could also be hurt. The economy cannot support the high cost of US’s high cost health care system. Somehow, it needs to collapse down.
‘What is the most important job in the world?
It’s the guy that comes up with new ideas to get governments, businesses and people into more debt. Why? Because unless the level of debt increases month on month, year on year the system will collapse. As the system will ‘run out’ of money.’
Growing debt seems to pull the economy along, so what you are saying makes sense, at least in good times.
But growing debt is only a temporary band aid. It has the side effect of growing interest payments. It tends to push the local currency down, in relationship to other currencies. It tends to make imports more expensive.
There is a real temptation for governments to add debt to the point that hyperinflation takes place.
Like the job of coming up with these ideas to hide troubles in the economy of GB.