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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.
man tries to use AI generated lawyer in court!
https://x.com/Meer_AIIT/status/1970083559475171760
Strange world.
Pfft, that’s mild. Here’s one !
https://nypost.com/2025/08/29/business/ex-yahoo-exec-killed-his-mom-after-chatgpt-fed-his-paranoia-report/
RFK thinks Kirk is jesus—top that
Eddy, there’s a world outside of OFW. You should try that.
cc: Norm
awwww cmon Rodster
Next week…. I turn 90, and published another book in June
Did 3 lectures last week..no script, no notes—just stand up and talk straight off. (Oh and a stint stewarding at an art exhibition)….
One of my lectures was relayed in real time to Australia.
Now Rod—you were saying something about a life outside OFW?
Do let us have examples of what you have in mind.
More on an earlier comment. I asked Copilot if we could explore this area and this is the answer.
🔗 1. Regulatory Clarity for Dollar Stablecoins
U.S. GENIUS Act and EU MiCAR are laying the groundwork for compliant, programmable digital dollars.
Stablecoins like USDC are already settling trillions in transactions, with $30 trillion in total volume projected by end of 2025.
This clarity is unlocking institutional adoption, enabling real-time settlements and cross-border commerce without legacy banking rails.
⚙️ 2. Scalable Blockchain Infrastructure
Ethereum L1 + Base L2 now support sub-second, sub-cent transactions, making microcommerce viable.
Projects like M0 and Utila are building AI-optimized stablecoin ecosystems with cross-chain interoperability.
DeFi has matured into a parallel financial system, with $153B in total value locked, and is now integrating with traditional finance.
🤖 3. Autonomous AI Agents
Agents like x402 (within Google’s AP2) can now transact autonomously, using stablecoins to pay each other at machine speed.
These agents are being deployed for fraud detection, parametric insurance, real-time shopping, and more.
The vision: AI agents acting on our behalf, simplifying life and redefining productivity across industries.
🧠 What This Means for Builders and Investors
New languages: Solidity, Move, Cairo, and agent orchestration frameworks.
New business models: Autonomous commerce, AI-native marketplaces, programmable insurance, and tokenized infrastructure.
New risks: Regulatory arbitrage, GPU depreciation, and agent coordination failures—but also new resilience strategies
Original link on my part : https://www.zerohedge.com/crypto/agent-payments-are-about-revolutionize-global-financial-infrastructure
This may be a method to avoid inflation which is essentially a tax by the issuing party. Incredible change in control, yes great pressure by powers that be. But, what if their payment script is worthless?
There is so much that can now be learned on line, Copilot is a wonderful teacher, not perfect, but has 24/7 office hours and endless patience. Education is changing, Optimus again, a caring, patient teacher with narratives other than what is current?
Information is energy, interesting calculations with regards to data centers.
Change: look at SpaceX vs NASA; the latter started the US ball rolling, SpaceX is a commercial venture which may be impossible to beat – change in power.
Dennis L.
But we need goods and services to buy with stable coins. Isn’t the only thing that these coins buy is added inflation, relative to a supply of goods and services that is falling lower and lower?
Not if it’s a parallel public (Treasury-issued) system designed to replace the deflating private system over time. In that case the MMT-style optionality (if I’m correct about that) will have the ever-increasing ability, as the adoption grows, to buffer the deleveraging/deflating/bubblepopping private banking system. It’s a decelerationist and populist monetary revolution for preventing chaotic industrial collapse.
Really appreciate that post, Dennis. The key words in it, for me, are parallel and micro commerce. Anybody with a stablecoin debit card or app anywhere in the world can participate as a hedge against local hyperinflation, unless the local authority has disabled that ability.
In other words, generate a huge volume trading nothing.
It is just an expensive fake failsafe measure to make its promoters make a lot of money and fail at the critical moment.
It is not going to create resources which do not exist, and instead of hyperinflation remaining local, it will suddenly create a global hyperinflation from which it never comes back.
All these strange scams come from people who never spent a day in the street.
This is my concern:
“It is not going to create resources which do not exist, and instead of hyperinflation remaining local, it will suddenly create a global hyperinflation from which it never comes back.”
Or the system becomes much more local as a response, and depends on the goods and services in a given area, and the efforts of the individuals who were involved in making those goods and services. Everyone gets left out who is not an actual producer of goods and services.
Well that sounds a lot like hunger games. I don’t know but I do know they are trying everything they can
kulm, it’s a parallel global debt structure starting with zero effective debt. As Nicole Foss always correctly said, the shortest term driver of Collapse is the Financial driver, right? That’s why we call peak oil and affordability metric. What we’ve all been primarily waiting for, for so long, is financial collapse because that is what will greatly speed up Collapse because it will crash affordability.
Nothing is going to create an increase in resources. And a Tethered MMT is not going to create a globalized hyperinflation notwithstanding the USD; peak oil global financial collapse was always going to cause that according to Foss and the rest of us deflationists including myself: US reserve currency deflation and simultaneous ROW hyperinflation (with a few potential exceptions such might include Switzerland and Lichtenstein) has always been the deflationists’ structural call.
Tethered MMT would simply be for facilitating the great global flight to safety, into US Treasuries and physical dollars, on a level not achievable by the current institutional financial architecture that leaves out regular folk. Tethered MMT is the GENIUS Act of splitting the world’s reserve currency into two – the privately issued institutional one that we loathe, and a publicly issued one available to everyone with a phone or Internet access. That turbo charges the flight to safety that the hyperinflating countries cannot make available to its citizens. And on top of that, the US political bureaucracy can force the institutional purchasers of the privately issued federal reserve dollars that need them to buy oil, to purchase stablecoin dollars from the US Treasury instead, which is the purchasing of a new, parallel public currency. It’s just substitution. A shell game! That way the federal reserve dollar system can collapse and the Tethered MMT system can replace it in order to break the Fall. It’s still going to result in a massive economic dislocation and huge collapse in the broad money supply, but if it is successful it will find a bottom and stabilize for long enough that they denuclearize the civilization, thus neutralizing the extinction level event which is what the Non-Public Degrowth Agenda is all about.
Remember that the hyperinflating countries aren’t just hyperinflating in a vacuum. They are hyperinflating relative to another currency: the reserve currency. That’s always the case unless there is no reserve currency, like with the end of the Roman Empire which was all on its own. If the hyperinflating countries have no practically functioning reserve currency to hyperinflate into — to financially collapse into — then basically everyone in those countries die because there will be no fossil fuels. So the countries can “mortgage the farm” in order to buy stablecoins USD to some oil flowing. While I hope not, perhaps some countries will be left swinging in the wind. And that’s an optimistic perhaps…
If it looks like another ponzi and also a one world government, well, we’ve already had that for the last 40 years at a minimum, so that’s nothing new. Reverse engineering out of globalization was always going to be done with the full power of global governance because nothing else will suffice. Welcome to the Hand.’s final Bait and Switch.
Parlor tricks is all its got.
Wish I could’ve seen it coming. Part of the problem was I have zero interest in crypto and don’t know the first thing about it. But really I didn’t need to know about crypto. It’s so simple, and adds no complexity in a collapsing world that CAN’T add complexity.
US stablecoins cover two transactions: US Treasury purchases from the US Treasury and US dollar purchases from the Treasury.
Hyperinflating nations, institutions, and individuals around the world, will be able to buy both assets by ‘mortgaging the farm’ – by putting up hard, qualifying collateral. This new regime will create a broad spectrum adaptation to collapse by simultaneously facilitating liquidity for all three fundamental market mechanisms: commodities-based trading, financial trading, and international barter, with stablecoins as the intermediary where necessary. And the US, being the keystone public issuer of the new digital greenback , holds it all together and skims off the top of all stablecoin transactions so that the keystone does not fail. It it fails then all the others also drop like stones. Mutual aid.
This is why the nationalism point was so important to me yesterday. It’s all about the difference between public and private currency. It’s the most important distinction that needs to be understood in this moment.
If anyone hasn’t yet watched Bill Still’s “The Money Masters” documentary, now would be the time. It’s long.
Two words are enough to pop this bubble
Luna and Terra.
” US stablecoins cover two transactions: US Treasury purchases from the US Treasury and US dollar purchases from the Treasury. ”
You scratch my back I will scratch yours .
kulm the Terra stablecoin was unregulated and presumably collapsed in 2022 because that was the worst year for the US bond market in history due to peak transitory inflation. The GENIUS Act is regulating UST and USD Stablecoins with the intention of making them effectively backed by the Treasury. When the financial crisis comes, the non-stablecouin crypto market ponzi will rush into Tether etc. Or perhaps the Treasury will issue its own digital greenback.
And create hyper-inflation, I am afraid.
Why would it create hyperinflation?
https://www.zerohedge.com/crypto/agent-payments-are-about-revolutionize-global-financial-infrastructure
Haven’t read it yet, looking at AI agents as a payment method. Swift is apparently down significantly in dollar volume.
“25-year-old Coinbase engineers with IQ’s one order of magnitude higher than mine read that TL;DR and read no further. I need to dig deeper [read here]. I ask Grok to teach me all about the meaning of x402,its origin,and Google’s AP2. Each question leads to another. Eventually I wrap my head around it. So, here’s my TL;DR: Coinbase, Google and numerous others have teamed up to build payment rails that allow Autonomous AI Agents (Agents) to instantly transact at vast scale, without the need for banks, using stablecoins on blockchain rails.”
The internet may be much more robust than many understand; that was one of its original purposes, to be robust.
Dennis L.
Perhaps their IQ is high…but not their wisdom.
Who’s next ?
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/argentine-assets-soar-bessent-offers-milei-lifeline
Wow!
Another excuse for more US government debt, I would suppose.
It reminds me of
” Mario Draghi is known for his pivotal phrase “Whatever it takes” during the 2012 euro crisis, signaling a strong commitment to the euro’s stability. Other memorable statements highlight his views on leadership, focusing on delegation and trust, the importance of productivity growth and human capital for prosperity, and the need for Europe to embrace radical change, innovation, and competitiveness, especially in the face of digital transformation and global competition. ”
13 tears later nothing has changed .
Awesome. This is the beginning of what Michael Every was talking about in that article I posted about the other week: that in a worst case economic scenario (which peak oilers know is guaranteed to happen), the US would start requiring other countries to transact in stablecoins. And Michael was probably thinking a year or more from now. And now we’re watching it in realtime about a week later.
And what is this USD stablecoining of other countries but the Shock Doctrine inverted? Disaster National Socialism. Blow that anticapitalist bubble baby! Wait…what? 🫣
Out of the blue suddenly Bessent is bailing out Argentina instead of the usual private banking suspects. LOL. I see fingerprints.
“As seen in the headline above, a 56,000-acre wind project was rejected last week by the Laramie County Board of Commissioners. That brings the total of wind projects rejected globally to 585. “?
https://robertbryce.substack.com/p/mitsubishi-says-sayonara-to-offshore
Among other things, this article talks about bidders not even wanting to bid on offshore wind projects, if there is no subsidy provided. Hurray!
Offshore wind is far too expensive to build, and its maintenance cost is likely to be awful as well. It still cannot be relied upon 24/7/365. And it requires long transmission lines to shore which cannot be used around the clock, because the intermittent electricity often is not available.
“Offshore wind is far too expensive to build, and its maintenance cost is likely to be awful as well. It still cannot be relied upon 24/7/365. And it requires long transmission lines to shore which cannot be used around the clock, because the intermittent electricity often is not available”
Agree with exception of intermittency. We don’t know yet what batteries are possible.
Oil is finite, we know in say ten years it cannot be used as it currently is used. We don’t know how Starship will affect our ability to mine space with Optimus robots.
From Copilot: ” China is actively building 223 GW of new wind capacity, nearly four times the combined under-construction wind capacity of the rest of the world.
In total, China is fast-tracking a 1.3 TW pipeline of utility-scale solar and wind projects, with 510 GW already under construction
The future is never known with certainty.
Dennis L.
The intermittency problem of wind is a “months at a time intermittency problem.” We discovered that wind supply was very low during one particular winter a few years ago for Europe, right when they needed it most. This low wind power no doubt included a lot of offshore wind.
Everyone had assumed that averaging wind power over a wide area would be sufficient to offset variation, but it wasn’t.
I don’t think that months-long battery storage is being investigated.
Copilot is not a reliable source
It will say whatever the user tends to like
You could have fun with it kulm and the fun really begins when you start to bully it.
“This Twitter thread provides a detailed and instructive example of how microsoft’s “Copilot” could be used to extract sensitive data from companies that integrate and provide access to this system”
https://shadowrunners.substack.com/p/bullying-the-chatbot-until-something
It will happily spit out all its users personal information as well.
“It will happily spit out all its users personal information as well.”
This doesn’t sound at all good, if it is true.
It’s huge and from what I have read, the scope for entry is built into every aspect. Pick the correct promt and it reveals all. The best part is you get unlimited picks.
Here’s a quick list with some of the times they were forced to admit it.
https://wald.ai/blog/gen-ai-security-breaches-timeline-20232025-recurring-mistakes-are-the-real-threat
Both Apple and Samsung have banned their staff from using it for work and even advised them not to use it personally(reminiscent of Zuckerberg having tape over the camera of his laptop, because he knows that it can be turned on at any time without his knowledge).
“Shocked quartz grains
The discovery of shocked quartz grains at the Clovis culture archaeological sites has provided compelling evidence supporting the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis. These grains, which are indicative of extreme pressure and temperature, were found at Murray Springs in Arizona, Blackwater Draw in New Mexico, and Arlington Canyon in California’s Channel Islands. The presence of these shocked quartz grains, along with other indicators such as a “black mat” and rare minerals, suggests a fragmented comet airburst that may have caused widespread burning and an “impact winter,” contributing to the extinction of megafauna and the disappearance of the Clovis culture. The research utilized advanced techniques to confirm the shocked quartz’s origin, ruling out other potential causes and supporting the modeling of low-altitude airbursts. This evidence elevates the impact hypothesis to a new level of credibility, offering a new perspective on the catastrophic events that shaped North American history.”?
https://news.ucsb.edu/2025/022024/researchers-find-evidence-cosmic-impact-classic-clovis-archaeological-sites
This is evidence that nearly 13,000 year ago, after the Earth had already started to shift away from an ice age, a comet hit the Southwestern US, plunging the world back into the ice age again (for another 1,000 years, I believe, but not from this article).
These things are recent enough that it may be what the Göbekli Tepe warnings were about. This is the link you provided to a video about these climate change warnings.
ZH reports that fusion is 30 years away. they just mistyped 2055.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/china-cusp-commercializing-us-pioneered-holy-grail-fusion-energy
This article says:
“China has spent up to $13 billion developing fusion energy since 2023 and could commercially replicate star power to generate electricity by 2030, becoming the first nation to master what’s commonly dubbed “the holy grail of energy solutions.”
This does sound pretty far fetched.
At the current rate I think they are correct; it will just be for 10 minutes
as i keep wasting my time, trying to point out…..
energy is useless until there’s some means by which it can be used in profitable enterprise.
by that i mean making actual’things’ which can then be sold at a profit, long term.
Developing an energy which is then used to supply data centres is completly pointless….
But, we all really want fusion to happen. Pointless or not, if we can’t do this, then we also cant have interstellar space ships.
Its not fair.
i have already patented warp drive.
I have not made it available to humankind, because they will abuse it and mess up other galaxies with it.
DNA Dreams | Bio-Science In China | Full Documentary
I haven’t watched it yet, but I intend to check it out. Seems interesting, maybe you guys will enjoy it. It was posted by Stephen Hsu, founder of an IVF-screening company that claims to be able to test for intelligence.
The US market is soaring since it is the only game in town.
Chinese markets are too shaky, since it is at the whim of the government, and the markets of other countries do not show any good values.
And the bubble cannot be allowed to burst.
I think that when the bubble burst, that will be it for USA and Western Civilization. With all the money disappearing, there would be no coming back from.
With declining births we worry there will not be enough workers to care for the old. With degrowth movement should we worry there will not be enough soldiers to defend the farm land and fisheries from outsiders who seek to take it to feed their starving masses.
Ed,
There doesn’t seem to be much starving these days, obesity appears to be more of a problem.
Population age demographics have historically been determined by biology, we have changed that with the pill, etc.
Biology has worked things out over the years, that is now being changed all over the world.
Dennis L.
More obsession with pseudobiology
Malthus wins in the end.
Masses cab be eadily destroyed with modern tech
The only important question is
1) whether technology advances in a direction so any attempt to overthrow the top 1%/2%/0.1%(take your pick) is eternally unassailable and the rest of pop have no more rights than a box of pasta
or
2) tech does not develop fast enough so a mass slaughter of the elites, the able, the advanced takes place.
It is one or another. Most people who are in the advanced side are blindsided and think 1) is more likely , and ignore the danger of 2).
My posts might seem ‘over the top’ but I do recognize the possibility of 2), which is getting stronger every day as AI is proven to be just energy-hungry autistic beast, and all these super duper toys are high maintenance toys which can easily be destroyed by cheaply made countermeasures.
It is number 1. All the, powers that be, need to do is turn off the payments for rent, food, medical, clothes, electric, water. When the war is over there is no longer any need to keep up the side A versus side B show.
I think that the reason the stock market is staying so high is because most people think that the dollar is going to be devalued and then they will be stuck with useless paper. The same is true of housing… and other assets.
Or perhaps the stock market is staying high because of the big deficit and continued other borrowing that is still being done. Those things are propping up the stock market.
Have you followed Bitcoin lately?
Were the grid to crash, what assets would have value?
Guess: Family, community and some horses. Sort of like Amish.
Guess: Family, community, town/city, tight religious group with religion which as has a long history. Hassidic?
What do both have in common? A belief system outside themselves and self replicating.
When Optimus can self replicate and sets aside one day of the week for rest, reason for concern.
Dennis L.
Yes I think you are right I talked with a friend of mine in the Banking industry and we were talking about AI and viruses. It seems like it could be possible for a virus to be created to take out the banking system. Surprisingly the banking industry seems to have some of the worst Security in the industry. Maybe this is on purpose. I don’t like bitcoin it seems like a meathead type investment but who knows. Everything is inflation up…we talked about this before maybe then 40 trillion will seem like a small amount. It will suck to be a retiree.
Another reason is that it’s a market accessible to foreigners trying to unload USD to get something “real”. When/as the dollar crashes, everyone worldwide will unload and try to buy that’s a better store of value. What can they buy when everyone is simultaneously trying to unload USD and doesn’t want to accept them? Well, they have to buy in the market that is forced to accept USD – the USA, of course. And they will buy financial assets because they’re more readily accessible than traveling to the USA to buy a piece of real estate or manage it from afar.
So, I anticipate the dollar will crash (or perhaps grind) downward while the market crashes upward. Maybe that’s what’s happening already.
Good point!
Since we’ve already established that the barrel price can’t stay high for long, then you need to first establish how and why the dollar will crash given its inverse tethering to the barrel price.
Gail I don’t appreciate you not publishing my reply to demiurge incorrect comment on nationalism. There was nothing wrong with it. In his comment he insulted both Fitz and myself and my reply was not insulting in return, it was matter of fact. Please publish it.
Please leave off the insults to other commenters you include in your comments. I do not appreciate them.
Dem called Fitz irrelevant when Fitz is operating above dem’s level, and he called myself arrogant simply because he doesn’t understand that structural nationalism can be boiled down to a single fundamental, and he doesn’t even realize that the GBP is not an England-controlled currency, and all I did was suggest that he try not to let things go over his head just because he has a tendency to be recreational commenter rather than one who’s here to learn like the rest of us.
Throwing the baby out with any bathwater is counterproductive. If you want to reprimand me for the bathwater then just reprimand me for the bathwater otherwise you’re just pulling rank which is an abuse of power which in turn comes with being above the law.
Take it easy. I have the power to decide which comments to put up and which ones not to put up. You are the one who seems to rank highest in pushiness of offensive comments. They offend me.
reante
taking the slightest notice of insults that fly around online—from other OFW inmates, or anywhere else, is skoolyard level behaviour.
the fakemeister in chief used to do it all the time—i used to hand back the toys he threw out of his pram if i noticed them.
His constant accusations, (directed at me) were in fact confessions—he was the only one who never saw it.
You might recognise exactly the same pattern of behaviour in our current self appointed messiah…
As someone said to him, in an interview before he became POTUS the first time:
Sir, that is the argument of a 5 year old.
The word “arrogant” can sometimes be used as a compliment in specific contexts. For instance, if someone displays a confident, assertive demeanor that challenges norms or inspires others, they might be described as “arrogant” in a tongue-in-cheek or ironic way to highlight their boldness.
However, this usage is rare and highly dependent on context and tone, which is usually missing in text communication. More usually, “arrogant” is used as a mark of disapprobation rather than a compliment or a neutral descriptive of someone’s attitude or behavior.
Looking on the bright side, calling somebody arrogant is not as insulting as calling them an idiot, a moron or a fool. It can imply a certain respect for the subject’s intellectual abilities and is more critical of the way the subject expresses their opinions rather than critiquing the soundness of those opinions per se. Because, at base, arrogance is a type of performance art—as well as an attribute of the superior man who knows he is superior and doesn’t mind showing it.
Reante, you offended me for various reasons. You assumed that you were the only one that knew what nationalism and / or structural nationalism is. What nationalism is, is subjective, in comparison to say what a banana is.
You also say that I don’t come here to learn. I certainly do, and I have even learnt some things from you, believe it or not. However, I also come here for entertainment – and in fact it’s not a case of EITHER / OR – and I am grateful that Gail allows us to do that. We can also learn things via recreation, don’t you know? And in fact, I find learning things entertaining – I actually regard knowledge-seeking as my prime motivation in life, and I am hugely entertained when I discover a new concept that resonates with me.
However, the tone of your statement to me about nationalism sounded as if you only come here to teach – and that I had better learn from you, because you’re the teacher here! So I was offended. It doesn’t help that you speak of an England-controlled currency when the currency in my country is British, not English, and a lot of Scots / Welsh / Northern Irish would be offended by your error.
You also claimed that Fitz is operating above my level. Well, that’s your opinion and not a fact. In this case, it might have been more tactful of you NOT to have revealed your opinion on this matter. However, I acknowledge that I myself am tactless at times, if I get irritated, so we are all only human.
Also, I did not call Fitz irrelevant. I said that I REGARDED his views as irrelevant in the particular case I was talking about. “REGARDED” means that I was offering my opinion as an argument and not claiming it as fact.
I was offended because you do not seem to know the difference between opinion and fact, and you therefore regard your own views as fact that I should learn – and that you yourself are here, not so much to learn, but to be the teacher – and my teacher in particular. Can you understand why I was irritated? You also made assumptions about my motivations that I disagreed with and found patronising.
I think then that we should agree to disagree. However, if you would like to give me your opinion about “the single fundamental of structural nationalism” as you see it, then I shall be pleased to read it – so long as you do not present it as fact, but merely as your opinion – for me to regard as I wish, as a free and free-thinking individual – and you do not make assumptions about me along the way.
When I was a young novice, my old blind spiritual master said to me: “Glasshopper, we are all like stones that fall into the river of life. See how as we constantly rub and brush up against each other as the current moves us, we eventually knock each other’s corners off and become, round, smooth pebbles.”
Glasshopper lol. Thanks Tim. Apparently it’s not factual to say that an actually nationalist economy cannot have for its ‘national’ currency one that is owned by an international private banking consortium.
I also appreciate your explication on arrogance. In the past I myself have defended my performative arrogance by referencing the etymology of the word.
von Mises called this phenomena a crack-up boom. I think we are seeing the beginning stages of this crack up boom in the increase in price (measured in $) of hard assets like real estate, commodities and stocks.
from:
https://mises.org/mises-daily/hyperinflation-money-demand-and-crack-boom
What happens, however, if people expect that, in the future, the money-supply growth rate will increase to ever-higher rates? In this case, the demand for money would, sooner or later, collapse. Such an expectation would lead (relatively quickly) to a point at which no one would be willing to hold any money — as people would expect money to lose its purchasing power altogether. People would start fleeing out of money entirely. This is what Mises termed a crack-up boom:
“If once public opinion is convinced that the increase in the quantity of money will continue and never come to an end, and that consequently the prices of all commodities and services will not cease to rise, everybody becomes eager to buy as much as possible and to restrict his cash holding to a minimum size. For under these circumstances the regular costs incurred by holding cash are increased by the losses caused by the progressive fall in purchasing power. The advantages of holding cash must be paid for by sacrifices which are deemed unreasonably burdensome. This phenomenon was, in the great European inflations of the ‘twenties, called flight into real goods (Flucht in die Sachwerte) or crack-up boom (Katastrophenhausse).”
I wouldn’t characterize that dynamic as “fleeing out of money entirely” because the income is still coming in, you’re just spending it as fast as you can. No money, no civilization.
And the truth is, as I said the other day, if there is a reserve currency to flee into, then that currency will be the greatest flight to safety. And a reserve currency is also money, so that also brings Mises’ argument about fleeing money into question. If, OTOH, the reserve currency hyperinflates then, yes, he’s correct.
But hyperinflation is always a policy choice. Why would the Elites choose to hyperinflate the dollar when it would mean that the civilization would end, especially when considering that the Elites have trillions of dollars in USD savings, and savers make an absolute killing during deflation?
Optimus self replicating is the least of my worries. It won’t get the necessary resourses
The goal is higher inflation.
They want higher inflation because it makes low roi investments more economic, like renewables (a lot of discussion of the energy transition in the 2000s included the requirement that prices of fossil fuels and nuclear need to rise to make renewables cost competitive by taxation) , low quality but high cost fossil fuels, minerals, etc.
Norman is stuck on —-
and thinks the president of the U.S.A. is wrecking the economy with tariffs, trade wars, and discouraging immigration. All those things will allow prices to stay high after the lockdowns. Norman refuses to think there is a grand plan here and thinks anyone who is in any government or private investors around the world WANTS low inflation.
They don’t want lower inflation anymore than the average homeowner wants home prices to go down.
Even highly educated people with college degrees don’t want tuition to go down because they, like everyone else think, higher prices means more valuable. Higher prices means more profit. Profit means growth. These things means the lines on the graphs of performance are moving in the right direction. It means managers get to keep their job. I’ve heard of very few instances of leaders in any organization being fired because they are charging customers too much money.
The wealth effect is in full effect.
Further reading:
https://www.epi.org/publication/is-2-percent-too-low/
Is 2 percent too low? Rethinking the Fed’s arbitrary inflation target to avoid another Great Recession
Report • By Josh Bivens • June 9, 2017
If we can’t keep the situation under control (too many bankruptcies, for example), I expect that we either have hyper inflation or a completely new currency that gives little credit for anything other than current work. Maybe there are some intermediates steps, too.
To their credit, I will say they have the economy under control.
guest
you might find this difficult to get your head round
but
an economic capitalist system can only function in a single direction—-that of constant expansion, needing infinite energy input.
It cannot stop, or enter ‘degrowth’—it is not influenced (other than very short term) by ‘elders’ cartels, plots, hoaxes and least of all by presidents, (nuts or otherwise)…No grand plan….
the current POTUS is out for himself alone, he cares for no one and nothing else. He has the scruples of a mafia boss. He is destroying lives to further his own.
America itself is now at risk.
But like it or not, we are all locked into that ‘system’. If you are of working age, your job depends on it 100%—if you are retired—ditto for your pension.
Nevertheless—you will find the dumbest no-neck redneck screaming ”I’m a capitalist”—when he has not the slightest idea what it means…This why MAGA is a nonsense. Without cheap surplus energy nothing can be made great—at any scale.
WEalth exists only by virtue of the energy that underpins it.
The above can be checked independently, if you are so inclined….I dont write BS.
There have been dips in energy consumption per capita in 2009 and in 2020. I think there might be a short period of existence after degrowth begins where the energy supply dips.
Also, economies have some unneeded parts that they can, in theory, get rid of. Dr. Tainter talks about getting rid of an army. But it also could mean getting rid of much of the CDC, and much of the support for advanced education. Getting rid of support for NATO, too, and all of the US’s overseas bases.
dips certainly—-
but that has never stopped overall expansion as industry consumed more and more energy in order to sustain itself.
Think of 1929—that wasnt resolved until Hitler solved the problem for us….
Then add in the ultimate problem….that when the final dip starts, no one will believe it—and will engage in conflict with those they are told are responsible for their misfortunes.
Jews in the 30s, brown immigrants now…
No difference in real terms.
No shortages of willing volunteers to do the dirty work in the 30s, there are none now.
not nice—but life isn’t.
Do we live in an economic capitalist system then?
Milton Friedman and Ludwig von Mises would be chuffed to know that.
“The grand plan” is that almost all producers need higher prices (i.e. inflation) to keep production up. Growth is a n interesting byproduct of that but not necessary (hence all the rhetoric about degrowth and “sustainable development”). The system is parts of that are expendable. Something you can’t seem to get through your head.
there is no ‘grand plan’
Prices rise on the back of rising energy costs—nothing else.
Buyers wages can only rise on the back of rising energy inputs—nothing else.
This is a game of leapfrog that has been going on for over 300 years…
That is what growth is—-nothing else. Growth is inevitable, within those parameters.
You can give it all the fancy names and reasons you like, add in all the political claptrap, but there is—-nothing else.
if you think this can go on forever—fine, i wish you well.
But the information is out there to check for yourself. You might even arrive at a different conclusion, but that wont change reality.
I didn’t say at any point their plan would succeed. I only said there was some plan behind their actions, a goal they are all trying to pursue at the same time. Your attempts to portray industrial civilization as chaotic and unorganized is not going well. FYI.
industrial civilisation is geared to the motives of permanent expansion and profit.
it can be nothing else–
it remains chaotic, but with that. constant aim which focusses without speciic intention from any particular point…
we just delude ourselves that there is a grand plan somewhere…
there really is not..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0xJ1sXq2FE
Shock as Trump says US will make Gaza ‘Riviera of the Middle East’
That was back on February 5th 2025. I wondered just how all this shiny new real estate would be achieved. As chance would have it, there were cowardly Hamas members hiding in virtually every tall building in Gaza. That’s what you call a lucky coincidence. With a heavy heart, and most reluctantly, Bibi has done what he had to do to flush them out. But every week, some of those dastardly Hamas people escape and rush to hide in some other buildings. The work never seems to get done. On and on it goes. Poor Netanyahu must be exhausted. I just worry that he will die of a broken heart.
Back in August 2001, MOSSAD agents had discovered that some undercover Hamas operatives were working in New York. MOSSAD laid a trap for some of them. On September 11th, they managed to lure the Hamas operatives into the North Tower of the Trade Center. MOSSAD set the holographic plane display going and then set off the explosives. Down went the North Tower. Sadly, a few Hamas operatives had managed to escape into the South Tower. But MOSSAD was ready. Down it went too. Another success for MOSSAD. Sadly, a couple of Hamas operatives now managed to escape into Tower 7. MOSSAD did what they had to do. Another resounding success! MOSSAD had managed to rid New York of the threat of Hamas terrorism for good. That’s how it’s done, you see. MOSSAD has now felt confident enough to attempt to replicate its daring operation in Gaza. But it’s not over till it’s over.
Meanwhile, President Trump has been very good to Israel. When Ukraine wanted new weapons from him, they had to shell out a few billion dollars. When poor little Israel wanted to bomb Iran, Trump said, don’t worry, I’ll do it for you for free. The genius thing was, no Americans came home in body bags, so the President kept his election promises. He’s such a great guy, you have to admit it. 🙂
Good one. someone should go and see if all the England flags are concealing Hamas-adjacents hanging from lampposts.
Just for a laugh…More Truth in Jest
Awfully strange, I will agree.
100 years ago, we meddling Brits sowed the wind in middle east,
We are now reaping the whirlwind.
Don’t forget the French had a outsized say in that Middle East kerfuffle
Getting back to the so-called “De-Growth Topic”, it is a noble and necessary idea, but unfortunately there are many that hear, and few listen, those that listen, few actually attempt and the few that actually attempt, actually succeed….years ago a survey of those that went “back to the land” during that Mother Earth News era found the majority went back to the city within five years time
While some of the original BTLs did leave after one winter or bad summer, many—at least half—stayed for at least two years. Indeed, the amount of time spent on the land in some capacity was generally five to ten years. The legacy of the back-to-the-land movement is still felt throughout the region. Those still on the land and those who once were have helped to create lasting change.
I’m myself, was “some capacity”, which basically relied on BAU system…
https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/back-to-the-land-movement-6237/
But here is a “success” story
For example, in Newton County, Dan and Marylou Taylor and their two sons moved outside of Parthenon (near Jasper) to a 160-acre farm, where they grew vegetables and raised livestock. Since moving to the land in March 1973, they subsisted on only what they could grow or raise themselves, and they bought only goods such as salt, sugar, yeast, or vinegar. Their lifestyle, reported on by the Arkansas Gazette in April 1977, was similar to what many BTLs in the Ozarks either achieved or aspired to: a combination of new technologies such as solar power and old technologies such as oxen teams in order to live a life “off the grid.” It was a strenuous life, but, for the Taylors, the benefits to their family and the environment were worth the work. When asked how the local community received them, Dan Taylor said that the family had not been enthusiastically accepted but were seen as “a kind of curiosity.” Elsewhere in the region, back-to-the-land groups got to know native Ozarkers and became part of the local community, gaining the trust of the old-timers as conversations about mutual issues, such as raising goats and growing crops, helped forge a new Ozark citizenry.
I’m not connected to the current “Permaculture” fringe element any longer, but the founders are either very old, or have died , like Bill Mollison and Chuck Marsh of Earth Haven Ecovillage in Black Mountain, North Carolina, which still exists and have a website. The Hurricane Helene did some considerable damage to their property and with those events more challenges await..
“ . . . um Colonel McGregor uh reports from
18:54 sources in Poland that he says are reliable that 10,000
19:01 Polish troops dressed in Ukrainian military uniform were killed in Ukraine . . . “?
Maybe the powers that be in Poland realize that they have too much population. Losing some soldiers won’t be a big problem. The war effort will be a distraction from other problems and an excuse for more debt. The extra hiring of soldiers will add to GDP. What is not to like?
It seems that Europe is in trouble. Mainstream media is slow to report it…stuck in the U.S it is hard to parse through the truth
USA emasculated Europe. What can be expected?
USA destroyed Germany, weakened UK and France and propped up good-for-nothing countries like Poland, Czechia and Romania, expecting they would amount to anything.
Poland has to go back to the size of the Grand Duchy, Romania the same and Czechia has no business existing.
if you check your history books, all ”countries” appear and disappear.
just a matter of time thats all
Europe has used up most of its fossil fuels. That is its problem.
Yes kulm things are heading to a more equal world but everyone will be poor
I’m not sure that the U.S is entirely to blame for Europe’s woes . As Gail has said they have no resources. They have been stealing from other nations.
USA played a huge role on decolonization, which proved to be foolish in the end.
Holland, yes tiny Holland, almost managed to recapture the Dutch East Indies in 1948 but USA twisted its arms and gave Sukarno his country. As a result, Indonesia, with 300 million people, consumes much more resources than what it would have had during its days under Dutch rule
Batavia 1930s
https://youtu.be/c-lDjRs1SoY?si=NThLJQpsruBvyHs7
(Jakarta was a name hastily invented after the Javanese took batavia in 1949)
That set a very bad example which , eventually, led the European powers to lose most of its colonies. The only colonies remaining are the French Guyana , and some islands far away from civilization.
The sad tale of Nauru is well known. Nauru had a slightly different history from the other islands in Polynesia – it was ruled by, out of all countries, Germany. After 1919 it was transferred into Australian administration but never formally annexed, and because of this technicality it was allowed independence.
As everyone knows now, the Nauruans fell into extravagant lifestyles and to fund that it thoroughly depleted its guano resources.
Without USA the colonies would have continued, and less resources would have been used and exploited by the natives who proved they were incapable of using them efficiently.
Don’t forget Russia – they’ve paid back former invaders and enemies (UK, France) by supporting decolonization (long ago of the USA, more recently the Sahel).
Careful regarding Poland. I like Marie Sklodowska, very talented woman and her daughter Irene was no slouch either.
Dennis L.
The only things Marie Curie and her daughter was good at was whoring. Makes interesting story but not advancing civilization.
didnt she get 2 nobel prizes for it?
trump should get at least 3. on that basis
kulm….you are fast approaching fe’s record for stupid, childish comments
All of them with their husbands when it was nit common to award wimen nobels
They were the DEI awardees of the day
kulm
your comments are just put together for the purpose of attention seeking
—just like your mentor used to do, and with the same profound level of depth of meaning.
but at least you dont shower us with four-number expletives….
for which we thank you
Au contraire, Norman.
Many of Kulm’s comments are truly insightful, educational, entertaining, original, epoch-making and paradigm-breaking.
I get a lot out of reading him.
You on the other hand, go on and on regurgitating the same bland MSM talking points.
Difference between Russia and Europe: Russia appears to be still religious, Europe is secular, in particular France. I can drone on about how little I appreciated Satre en Francias.
Secular Humanism is a relatively recent invention by humans, or a narrative if you will. Traditional religions are time tested, what does not work is discarded. My favorite commandment is not to covet your neighbor’s wife, etc. I don’t think secular humanism works well for raising children.
Europe would need to become more eastern with an emphasis on making things and understanding and developing software, etc.
We live in a time of tremendous change, difficult to see how it will work out. I see the end of oil, but also think solar will work – in space. Time will tell.
Dennis L.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSwrXzgMOvE
Now this fellow George Galloway always gets on my tripe.
I hope that, in not many years’ time, we will have a sound political police in my country. Then I’ll contact them and inform them of Galloway’s disgusting degeneracy in the above video. I’ll suggest that, OK, the video is old, but really a leopard never changes its spots. Then with any luck, dear George will be sent to an, ahem, “special” camp to be re-educated. LOL.
Which politico would YOU liked to see “re-educated”, fellow commenters ? 😉
If he is tolerant to the Hindus, forget about him.
Have you just outed yourself as a mushlimb, dear K? 😉
George Galloway imitates being a cat.
https://archive.ph/VdKsy
Anti-immigration protesters and counter-protesters clash in Glasgow
Now I hope that Fitz isn’t going to go on about flags – “Oh look, they all look the same and they’re all the same size and there’s so many of them and it’s so suspicious”. I’d never heard anything so daft! After all, Angus isn’t going to say, “Och, Ma, I’m off tae a demo. Ye couldnae run me up a wee flag on yer sewing machine, noo, could ye?” “Och”, says Ma, “nae problem”. And so, snip, snip go the scissors, and brr, brr goes the sewing machine. No, Fitz, no. We have modern methods, mass trends and movements and propaganda, and anyway, we’re well into the Fourth Turning, as Neil Howe tells us. These things aren’t done in the old steam age way that our resident pamphleteer tells us about, you know. 😉
Hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of flags lining the roads in such a short space of time, but there was only one size available and they line the lampposts, all at a height that no stepladder would reach.
It would be daft to accept that as spontaneous.
The logistics put the mocker on that fantastical idea.
Instead of being told(even by Neil), ask some obvious questions, like where did all these flags come from, to be delivered promptly over the whole country(which company keeps that kind of stock?).
It’s an offence to do this without permission, how did no official body notice.
Who authorised this, because it could not have happened without authorisation.
Who put them up(so high) and who paid for this event.
Why does this event coordinate so seamlessly with other obvious prods.
“He praises Hindus, Sikhs, and Prime Minister Modi. It is Islamists that he is against”
I’d advise the Hindus and Sikhs to brush up on history(they really should know by now). To make it quick, start with Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemöller.
“all at a height that no stepladder would reach.”
Gosh, it must have been the extraterrestrials that did it, you reckon, Fitz? 😉 LOL.
a logical fallacy is a half urge for a reason. Realize that if all you can do against Fitz is produce an endless stream of disrespectful strawmen and the like, then it means that you strayed from the kiddie pool and you’re feeling uncomfortable and acting out in order to mask your discomfort.
What did think upon learning what nationalism is, after telling me that I don’t know what nationalism is? Anything?
I have no discomfort re. Fitz. I mock what I regard as irrelevant. I regard his arguments as an irrelevance. Different political factions engage in propaganda in different ways. There are memes and trends that become successful or “viral” and acquire mass followings. Of course a lot of deviousness and manipulation go on when the factions try to big themselves up. Half the population is below average intelligence, and so we get lots of different flocks of sheep who are ready to be led by the nose.
Fitz wastes time by concerning himself with the trivial and the superficial and the simplistic. Step-ladders? Is he a painter and decorator? Look instead at the numbers who took part in the “Uniting the Kingdom” march. That tells you something. Time will tell which lasting trends emerge from that. Despite the title, no doubt a lot of people with republican tendencies took part, and those who were indifferent to monarchy or the Union. I expect a lot of people who would be happy to see England as an independent polity also took part.
“What did think upon learning what nationalism is, after telling me that I don’t know what nationalism is?”
Oh, I learnt what nationalism is, did I? Such arrogance. It’s a mere concept. It means different things to different people and is rather hazy. There’s civic nationalism, and racial or ethnic nationalism (and race and ethnicity are slippery concepts), and ultra-nationalism, where those you view as “other” have no rights – Netanyahu is an Israeli-Jooish ultra-nationalist.
As to your idea that true nationalism is controlling your own currency, I’d definitely agree that that’s one part of it. That’s why I was happy enough with the UK’s membership of the EU because we had an opt-out from the euro, and Maggie got us an agricultural rebate.
Half urge falling for the English gaslight revolution. That’s a short-lived color revolution in service of a misdirection play. The USA’s gaslight revolution took place last year. There’s more than one way to steal an election when the imperial chickens have come home to roost.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpO9i5LCuWs
An Indian interviewer speaks to Tommy Robinson.
He is in full throttle here, really going for it. He rebuts charges that he is racist or pro-right and attacks lack of free speech in the UK. He praises Hindus, Sikhs, and Prime Minister Modi. It is Islamists that he is against. He credits Donald Trump and his team, and also Elon Musk, with helping to restore free speech in the UK.
==============
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKCt8ssC7cs
Go! Go Tommy, go! Tommy be good! 😉
I mean to write: “He rebuts charges that he is FAR right”.
BS—as usual
Robinson is out for himself alone—just as Trump is
and cares for no one but himself, he’s now hijacking god to help him.
Very interesting interview (just published) to Blumenthal of Grey Zone, by Dialogue Works.
Additional information probably related to the murder of Charlie Kirk.
This seems to be about Netanyahu and his relationship to the Charlie Kirk killing. It seems that Netanyahu wanted Kirk to be more pro-Israel, and Kirk was resisting.
Micheal Yon, former US Army Green Beret, sniper, Iraq and Afghan war veteran, and war and combat photographer and journalist, says unequivocally that Charlie Kirk was killed by the Zionists because he took their money and was going off the reservation.
He also says the Trump assassination attempt in Butler was faked. But we worked that out already, didn’t we?
Superbly educational talk, well worth listening to, whether or not it’s accurate, and entertaining too. This guy tells anecdote after anecdote and joins up dot after dot after dot.
https://michaelyon.substack.com/p/inside-the-assassination-game
I am willing to believe Butler was faked and also that Mossad was behind this real killing. And now the far left is being sacrificed to send the dogs off the right trail.
Kirk’s head looked a bit too wide at either side. Could he have been replaced by an android?
The Hand herds people by forever halving the cultural distance between the truth that they put in service of their herding falsehood, and that falsehood.
At the moment of Collapse the Hand can halve the distance for the last time, by pulling out it’s joker card, which frames Mossad-CIA-Mi6 complex, the Hand’s right-hand man, as being the Hand itself.
Disappearing Act 2.0, and the useful idiot noobs without big picture structuralism flock to it and lap it up in exchange for 15 minutes of fame.
We’re hitting rock bottom right now. Thank goodness that the Cycle is the first fractal of the universe.
Is the instant collapse of Tricolor (20 billion USD exposure for the banks apparently) the start of the next 2008 event? Gold seems to be talking.
$ 20 billion ? That is ” pocket change ” . Relax . One must now talk in terms of minimum three digits billions .
I think there is more going on here. Thats just the banks exposure, and it doesnt end there. The debt was Triple A rated, and the collapse was instant. Not even a restructuring attempt. That must indicate extreme fraud, and if one institution has engaged in it, well, how many others have as well?
More precisely, I’m asking… is this the lynch pin for a contagion that very nearly occurred in 2008? We all know the derivatives market back stops all this, and is hypotheticated to the moon.
The banking system in the EU is rife with fraud . The French Bank Credit Agricole has been bleeding red as far as my memory goes and also BNP . The German banking system is rotten to the core . Deustche Bank , Commerze Bank the two largest banks have been on life support for ages . What about the ” Landen banks ” in Germany ? They are exempted from audit by Berlin and only subject to audit from the local state level . They are similar to the co-operative banks in NL , housing societies in UK and S & L banks in USA . Heck the full system is a Ponzi and the biggest is the ” Treasury market ” . Phew . I better get some sleep .
Given that Bear Stearns was six months before Lehman Brothers the latter which is recognized by the mainstream as the beginning of the GFC, only time will tell if JK is right, though if he is then they’ll presumably provide political cover for it by manufacturing a geopolitical crisis as they did with the plandemic covering for the repo crisis which may have been the beginning of GFC2.
Yes it’s all ready to go…. It’s going to be another virus except it won’t be a human virus it will be a computer viruses
A friend of mine sent me a link to Statement by FDIC Acting Chairman Travis Hill at September 2025 Meeting of the Financial Stability Oversight Council
It says, “We are working to reform supervision so it is less process-driven and more focused on core financial risks. ”
There are a lot of changes being made. Among a long list, it says:
At the end, its says:
“Altogether, our goal is to unleash the banking system to drive economic growth and access to capital, while still fulfilling our critical role promoting safety and soundness and financial stability.”
—-
I wonder about “unleashing the banking system” when things aren’t going so well. Someone closer to the banking system would get more out of the linked footnotes than I get.
There is only one thing that “unleashing the banking system” can possibly mean relative to today’s banking system that operates on the longest leash of all-time, and that is going full retard AND THEN SOME, with MMT. But not the textbook MMT. The TETHERED MMT, the ultimate oxymoron.
Federal Reserve MMT plus digital greenback stablecoins. That is how they are going to battle deflation. The ultimate hybrid-fueled vacuum cleaner for making one last run at that great sucking sound. The greatest sucking sound of all time is what is needed because the only way to control the natural vacuum of a deflationary structural implosion is to… control it, by sucking the value out of every other currency on the planet, because that’s what decelerates the implosion.
The global greenback demand will make an otherwise hyperinflationary MMT possible, by maintaining demand for treasuries. MMT theory will go mainstream and be hailed as a saving grace but no one will realize that it’s national socialism Ending the Fed through the back door, because the MMT just comes in the PUBLIC (not private) form of government handouts and rationing and stimulus, all backed by the new influx of worldwide stablecoin digital greenback purchases as the world trades in its inflating currencies for greenbacks, and the fascist private banking system deleverages.
MMT has always been a Leftist economic theory. It was the pet cause of the Occupy Movement.
Hey Michael Every, TETHERED MMT, oxymoron in the flesh, I beat you to it. HOOCOODANODE! That’s the price you pay for staying in the closet. But then again you got the money to pay for it don’t you? 🙂
How much was the Bear Stearns exposure for comparison?
Answering to myself. BS was a 70B affair.
France was stealing one trillion dollars of resources from Africa each year. Now it has been stopped. Now France has to spend one trillion dollars per year less.
The same is true for England.
I too am enjoying the fall.
you are quite right ed.
let us know how much you enjoy hitting the bottom.
Economic justice is worth dying for. Though I would prefer to take back from the thieves.
there is no economic justice.
unless you are a hermit living in a cave somewhere (inwhich case what are you doing online?)—we are all thieves , taking from a system which ultimately cannot suppot us.
The difference lies only in a matter of degree….
we are all thieves , taking from a system which ultimately cannot suppot us. The difference lies only in a matter of degree
Speak for yourself, Norman. Your quipping risks blurring the distinction between honest and dishonest actions.
Not everyone operates under the same circumstances or with the same intent. Many of us strive to be honest, live ethically, and contribute positively to our communities, regardless of any systemic shortcomings we are live under.
You’re embarrassing yourself. Africans never really developed a concept of national wealth.
They don’t see their rainforests or water resources as precious resources that need to be defended at all costs. As long as they get a cut of the action, they are cool.
Please explain how England was doing it and how it was stopped. And does that mean that you are letting Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland off the hook? Not mention Jersey, Guernsey, and the Isle of Man (tax havens for the ultra-rich ?) .
at the start of ww1, there were about 12 empires in the world.
they were all in it for one reason—-loot.
the industrialised nations all stole as much in the way of resources as they could lay their hands on—if you want a real stomach churning example, check the record of the belgians in the congo in the 1890s—-but all had a record of mindless oppression and cruelty towards indigenous peoples, there are no exceptions.
Until 1970, the aboriginal people of Australia were listed under ‘flora and fauna’.
we were ”superior”.
in 1895, there was a conference in Berlin, which literally divided up Africa (which explains their ‘straight line’ borders today.)
the british empire was a looting enterprise, just like the rest.
It was a matter of grabbing as much of the world as possible, before someone else did. After ww1 we grabbed middle east oil, ww2 came and the Japanese grabbed Dutch oil. Nigeria is an oil rich basket case, because of our greed.
Greed is rendering the USA itself into a basket case. Thats why MAGA is such a joke.
Small wonder then that migrants are flocking here for a share of the wealth we took in the first place.
(if you can keep the lid on your usual hysteria, you can check all the above for yourself, dont take my word for it).
“if you can keep the lid on your usual hysteria”
Pah! Be SILENT when you speak to me, old fellow.
of course. (what other response could there be, faced with verifiable information)
10 more years i shall get a card from the king—then you’ll be jellus.
I’m listing Norman under flora and fauna.
He’s obviously a plant.
Very well put. Do I sense another book in the works? I hope so.
Steel the bridge to slavery
nice of you to suggest that Ed, but it’s not a subject iknow much about, other than broad outlines.
An idea though, I must admit.
Ive added it to my seed bank
I am afraid protests won’t get rid of France’s problem. They cannot make anything without imports, which they cannot afford.
They may think they can take from the rich but the rich have their money outside of France where protest can not touch it.
Do resources exist when the native population is too incompetent to use them? When the Muslims Arabs showed up to colonize Africa in the late Middle Ages, they were not impressed with accomplishments of Africans.
Very little is written by the Islamic slave trade possibly because many if not most Africans see Arab colonization of Africa as a good thing. The people who saw it as a negative thing have been effectively erased from history.
resources—in our terms—are only seen as ‘useful’ when they are able to be used in surplus…..
so, a plough is essentially the same object (in principle) as has been in use for millenia… but match it to a tractor and you multiply its ‘surplus’ by 000s of times , so resources can be utilised 000x
that’s what we see as ‘progress’ but only from our own perspective.
The Australian aborigine figured out the basics of aerodynamics 000s of years before we did, but they didnt possess the. means to exploit the ‘surplus’ potential of the boomerang by converting into something bigger.
Throughout history, only the top 0.1% or so lived well, the next 9.9% lived somewhat comfortably but never that secure, and the rest lived hand to mouth.
Despite of some who refuse to accept the reality, we are going back to that stage, limiting resource and energy usage for those who are unlikely to bring too much utility.
Readjustment of the living standards of billions of people in the third world might be painful, but it is for the greater good since it frees the resources for groups more likely to advance civilization.
“We are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you any different” – Kurt Vonnegut,
What exactly constitutes the advancement of civilization to you kulm?
Put the better portion of humankind to a higher state of being, i.e. more domination.
lol kulm
I hope (probably in vain)
that you jest
‘We’ are ‘saved’?
“Randall shares his insights into how our modern technology, heavily reliant on fossil fuels, might not be the pinnacle of civilization. He also explores the fascinating possibility of ancient societies using energy in ways we haven’t discovered yet. Get ready for a journey through time that challenges mainstream archaeological narratives and opens up new perspectives on humanity’s past. “?
unfortunately for such theories—-we now have the means to examine the structire of the universe itself.
everywhere else is made up of the same ‘stuff” as here on earth—different proportions, but nothing new or ‘different’ in an elemental sense.
that being so, it would appear that the same physical constraints apply everywhere, so any sentient being elsewhere in the universe will face the same problems as us.
The prime one being that energy conversion, requiring heat heat, is the source of work output.
That being so, those sentient beings would have to live on a planet with an excess of carbon. (in plants) and liquid water.
Because of that, they would consume carbon as we have done, to conserve and accellerate their species, at the expense of others.
Fire was, (and is) the ultimate WMD. Our ancestors used it, beings elsewhere would act in the same way, once their physique allowed it. The same destructive forces would then kick in, just as has done for us.
I didn’t get all the way through this video, with Randall Carlson as a guest, but what I saw was very interesting.
He takes the position that ancient groups were far more advanced than we assume. For example, it is difficult to move a stone that weighs more than one ton. Usually, it takes levers and a lot of human or animal effort. Yet, around the world, we find ancient cultures that regularly moved huge stones, some as large as 40 or 50 tons around. They mined them, and then somehow transported them to central locations where they built structures such as Stonehenge and pyramids. What motivated them? And what technology did they have to do this? Did they have approaches that have been lost? Perhaps, hunter gatherers and early civilizations had approaches to use energy which have been lost in today’s world. We have technology, but it is a different technology (or type of energy) than they had back then.
The blurb about him says:
I found this blurb interesting:
https://wealthyspy.com/randall-carlson/
Somewhere, the video mentions that he lives in Minnesota.
there are plenty of sites where colossal stones were left partially cut from bedrock and abandoned for some reason, so mining techniques are clearly shown—ie bashing harder rock against softer rock,,,,
if that was their only method of rock cutting, we can be certain they had no other ”lost technology” for doing anything else–lifting, shaping and so on.
all they had was time and muscle
Years ago I remember a Public Television program on a recreation of the technology or technique/method on moving the Pyramid blocks and it was actually recreated by a team of locals in Egypt. I checked YouTube and several videos on it.
Not really certain if the Ancients had other powers than muscles…no matter…
Something very few people who peddle ancient technology are talking about is the structure of the ancient society
First and foremost, they had much fewer people.
Second, it was a slave economy. Only those at the top enjoyed the fruits of such supposedly amazing tech. Not for public consumption.
The Randall guy being in Minnesota will probably give somebody a new idea to bs around nonexistent stuff.
Somehow, certain types of insects (eusocial) seem to support huge populations with a structures that seem to include something like slaves. We have all heard about “queen bees.” Bees, ants and termites seem to have these structures. Their insect populations seem to be far higher than other insects.
On Wikipedia, Eusociality says:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusociality
Carlson’s presentation on the Channel Scab Lands is excellent. Massive flooding due to massive melting of the ice cap over Canada due to meteor impacts. As the cause of the Younger Dryas.
‘A defining moment’: Trinidad and Tobago at a crossroads as its oil runs out
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/sep/19/trinidad-tobago-economy-oil-gas-fossil-fuels-climate-green-transition
A defining moment’: Trinidad and Tobago at a crossroads as oil runs out
Fossil fuels made the nation prosperous but as reserves dwindle, do they drill deeper, even as the Caribbean feels the heat of the climate crisis, or shift to a greener economy?
This version doesn’t seem to be behind a paywall:
https://suarasakti.com/a-defining-moment-trinidad-and-tobago-at-a-crossroads-as-oil-runs-out-33779.html
I doubt that the refinery closed due to mismanagement. It likely closed due to the lack of production of cheap-to-extract oil to put in the refinery. Bringing in imported crude oil and refining it probably was not providing an adequate profit to support the people of Trinidad and Tobago.
Is the Guardian behind a paywall in your part of the USA, Gail?
archive.is is your friend.
Thanks! I may have angered Guardian by reading too many of its articles recently.
Archived version:
https://web.archive.org/web/20250919202025/https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/sep/19/trinidad-tobago-economy-oil-gas-fossil-fuels-climate-green-transition
Consumer optimism is lowest in history
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F7jlepvs2j8qf1.jpeg
The woman who delivers mail to my home keeps remarking on how much the volume of mail needing to be delivered has fallen. We used to get deliveries at 3:00pm. We now get deliveries as soon as noon.
Much of this drop in volume is in advertisements for things like pizza places, sales of land near a lake not too far away, and other advertisements that are not clearly connected to prior spending on our part. Perhaps advertisers have moved online, instead. Or perhaps the cost/benefit is too high now.
Under-the-radar news.
https://www.argusmedia.com/en/news-and-insights/latest-market-news/2733908-john-deere-announces-layoffs-at-iowa-plants?utm_source=google&utm_medium=ppc&utm_campaign=glo-argus-commodities-09-2023&utm_content=glo-argus-commodities-09-2023-google-ad&utm_term=argus
In the past, the company often adjusted production schedules at its factories to account for seasonal farming needs, a spokesperson said, but demand and order volumes have fallen to the point where layoffs had to be implemented.
The company previously said tariff costs would further increase and strain trade conditions following President Donald Trump’s implementation of 50% tariffs on imported steel.
The company said the tariffs contributed to weaker demand for tractors and other farm equipment manufactured by Deere. Deere projected a 30% decline in industry-wide sales of large farm equipment in the U.S. and Canada by 2025. It also raised its projected tariff costs to $600 million in mid-August, down from an estimated $500 million in the previous quarter.
This sounds worrisome. Big farm machinery no longer makes sense to buy and operate. The price of grains doesn’t go up enough to cover all of these costs. How can we keep farming as it is currently done, if our ability to buy tractors is disappearing? Somehow, the system needs to change.
DJT imposed a fee of $ 100 , 000 per visa per year on H1 B visas . Going to hit the Indian service sector . An Indian under the scheme earned an average $ 66 ,000 a year .For the moment share prices of Indian companies have fallen . In other tariff news — 2000 REFRIGERATED containers containing shrimp and other seafood sit on the ports because orders are cancelled . Shrimp farmers and fishermen in distress . The fishermen sold their coastal villages to corporations to build holiday resorts . No place to fallback . Will update .
I was shocked when I saw this. If this new fee stays there will be no H1B visa this year. I suppose the idea that he is intentionally trying to crash the dollar gained a bit of credence.
For those who are ignorant about this issue . A short — H1B visas are issued to mainly IT and health care professionals. Indians were 73% of the beneficiaries of this scheme . The charge was $ 1000 PER 3 YEARS . This is now $ 100,000 PER YEAR . There are now 320,000 Indians working in USA under the scheme and remit $ 15 Billion per year to the home country . The new system comes in effect immediately so as soon as the current visa expires be ready to fork out $ 100,000 if you want to stay . Average salary has already been given in my earlier post . In the meanwhile the effect of AI on the Indian IT industry .
https://medium.com/@nayakan88/the-impending-economic-crash-in-india-326b8de36181
I expect that there are a number of actuaries who came in on H1B visas. At least when I was working, there were quite a few who seemed to be working on visas.
Much of IBM research and manufacturing in New York State is staffed by H1B Indians. Will Donald give IBM an exception because they build AI for the military?
This is great news for US software developers. No more can companies hire cheaper foreign labor in the US, driving down wages. If companies want to claim there is a lack of talent in the US and it’s not about paying lower wages, then they should be willing to pay US wages – this new scheme enforces that.
This is a way to get US population down, but it will cause huge distress. I wonder whether there will be cutback in future announcements.
Ravi – maybe you follow this more closely than the rest of us. Is it actually going to happen? I wouldn’t be surprised if this is blocked from going through, or just a negotiating tactic. Or maybe DJT is trying to stick it to Modi and collapse Modi’s government like you’ve been predicting?
An update — only 26 hours past and this is the weekend .
1. The $ 100000 rule will apply to only new applicants and not to existing visa holders . A little relief .
2 . As a result of this announcement real estate price in Bengaluru and Hyderabad have fallen slightly as an initial reaction .
3. Indian rupee weakened slightly but it is weekend .
4 . Stock market reaction will be seen tomorrow .
Politics :
1 . This is seen as a move to pressurize the Indian trade delegation currently in Washington for more concessions .
2. The spat is not India vs USA . It is Modi vs Trump . Why ?
a. Modi told Trump prior to elections that he will meet him in Washington . Indian intelligence told him Harris will win . Modi cancelled the meet . Trump made a pre announcement and was left with egg on the face .
b. Trump wanted Modi to acknowledge that it was he who brokered the Indo- Pak ceasefire . Pakistan obliged but Modi did not .
c . Trump asked Modi for sponsorship of Nobel Prize . Pakistan supported but not Modi .
d . Final straw was Modi attending the SCO meeting in Beijing inspite of the fact that India is a member of the Quad .
The US sponsored activities in Nepal , Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have got Modi worried . The knife is out . Modi can do nothing . The economy already dead is now in even more trouble and great dissatisfaction with the ruling elite . The visa rule has hit hard the aspiring middle class the support base of Modi . That is for the moment .
P. S ; The dream of the middle class is to educate their kids at the premier educational institutions so that they can join MNC ‘S and immigrate to the West . This is shattered .
The Japanese have seen the mess that mass migration has precipitated in the West, and they are moving every so slowly and tentatively but determinedly to curb immigration with a view to preventing the ratio of foreigners from exceeding 10% of the population.
Asahi Shimbun posted an article in Japanese today under a headline that translates as:
Japan Innovation Party Submits Proposal to Justice Minister to Cap Foreign Worker Acceptance Rates
This story is currently behind a paywall, but the gist of it is that the ruling coalition (LDP and Komeito) and the Japan Innovation Party, a major opposition party are broadly in line on this issue. Something needs to be done. This is something. Therefore we must do it.
However, they are in a bit of a bind because there are currently not enough younger Japanese to do all the jobs that the economy needs them to do.
There’s another part called Seisanto that has a slogan and a policy plank that they named “Japanese First.” This party has caused shockwaves by gaining a lot of support from younger people by successfully using social media PR. The slogan has generated anger in Japan, mostly on the left, and dismay from the moderates, and has even been noticed abroad by media such as the Guardian.
I am getting some laughs at the post office, the supermarket and the bakery when standing in the queue by giving up my place to the person standing behind me, waving my hand to beckon them to go in front of me, and saying “Japanese first.” At the moment, I think they are laughing with me rather than at me. But I am reminded of the movie Cabaret and of Basil Fawlty’s quip that “This is exactly how nasty Germany started.”
When there is not enough to go around, there needs to be a way of cutting some people out of the supply line. “Japanese first” would seem to be a way of doing this.
Japan should aim for 0%.
Now there’s literally a trap door at the crime scene!
https://rumble.com/v6z6h60-trap-door-charlie-escape-door-under-charlie-kirks-table-is-more-proof-his-a.html?e9s=src_v1_clr%2Csrc_v1_ucp_a
Ken Adachi has produced a short video that shows who he believes is the man who shot Charlie Kirk from close range. If Kirk was actually shot, this looks like a much more credible shooter than the one the FBI is holding. Although online videos in the age of AI can’t really be trusted, can they?
“This video is a recording that I made from the video that I downloaded online, in order to make the screen view as large as possible.
The shooter is standing at the barrier fence just in front of the platform where Charlie is speaking from. The shooter is probably 10 or 12 feet away. As Charlie raises the mike to begin answering the question posed, he turns his head somewhat to the right and is then shot in the left side of the neck, which obviously hit his jugular vein. The guy in the black shirt (making hand signals) standing behind Charlie, slightly to his right side, got blood splattered on his black shirt when the shot rang out. The Killer jumped over the barrier fence and got up on the stage along with his buddies in the black shirt and the white baseball cap, who together with four other buddies, picked up Charlie and carried him to the black SUV and then left the scene with Charlie’s body. Strangely, they haven’t been seen since?”
https://old.bitchute.com/video/ax5ODzaE53bq/
Replenish posted the vid of this blonde haired blue eyed brownshirt a couple days ago. Symbolic foreshadowing of this MAGA takedown by the Hand. This Kirk job is catalyzing the mirror image of plandemic’s totalitarian headfake/misdirection play. So many thought that the Democrats were sending us towards a Marxist Great Reset. Now so many are starting to feel that the Republicans are sending us towards a Fascist neofeudal Oligarchy. The dynamics feel exactly the same.
It’s just another misdirection play. Fool me once shame on you, but fool me twice, shame on me. The have to triangulate the left libertarian National Socialism. First by running Democrats off a cliff and then by running Republicans off the same cliff. Because a collapsing energy base can only support smaller government.
Miles Mathis said years ago — five years or seven years ago at least — that the entire left woke phenomenon was an op designed to make ordinary people so pissed off with the left that they would welcome right wing authoritarianism with open arms. I can’t remember his exact words, but that was the gist.
One term he explained at the time was “blackwashing”—destroying the image or reputation of a target group by associating said group with people doing outrageous stuff.
The clowning also takes people’s minds away from real issues and the pursuit of real social justice. Remember Occupy Wall Street? They were having a ball at one time. Where are they now?
His absurd flag waving of his classical liberal politics was always his downfall. And now it’s from where them chickens is coming home to roost. His foreseeing right wing authoritarianism puts him in the same category as Norm today,and Nicole Foss 15 years ago, and a million other peak oilers. And that would be fine, if a bit generic, if he wasn’t a standout braggart polymath like myself while being a gonzo conspiracy theorist also like myself. His politics locked him into ‘seeing’ that the end goal of the Phoenicians could only be the politics that his politics are diametrically opposed. LOL. And not having the balls to accept peak oil didn’t help, to put it lightly, because without peak oil theory, all predictions are fiat, rendering the viewing of a looming Collapse as nothing more that looking into a mirror darkly. I went after Miles for his shortcomings some years ago at his community forum, cuttingthroughthefog isn’t it?, where he does participate on his own terms and in the mode of all bigheaded provincial celebrities, and he wanted no part of me and neither did any of his minions.
If we ever stand still out of intransigence, on anything, the Hand WILL victimize us because it’s a thumb wrestling match and you better believe that the Hand has a long thumb. There ain’t no sticking your thumb straight up to avoid a fight. The Hand’ll just gobble you up when it’s good and ready to, and I look forward to seeing exactly how Miles reacts when the ground drops out from under him. And that’s fair game because if Vance or Rubio were to become the next president then you guys can enjoy watching me commit seppuku lol. Except it ain’t gonna happen.
If we stand still then we fall behind. I got senioritis my last year in high school and fell behind in calculus class. Never caught back up because I wasn’t willing to catch back up. I’ll always remember my teacher’s disappointment because I caused it.
You’re starting to seem like “The Man Who Knew Too Much”. Just be careful you don’t get renditioned and waterboarded.
Perfect! A service door. Too bad this guy doesn’t get peak oil and see the misdirection play that the Hand is setting up. He knows that the Mossad controlled opposition narrative is a misdirection play regarding who pulled off the hoax, but he still thinks that that misdirection play is in service of a linear move towards Zionist illuminati totalitarianism, which is just the larger aspect of the misdirection play. Be cool if Whitney Webb was into peak oil, too, and could see the misdirection. Gonna be fun to see her surprised reaction when MAGA gets taken down.
I contacted Johnny Vedmore about the AI enhanced targetting I experienced along with archetypal initiation, psychic intrusion, electronic harassment and staged enemies and allies but He ghosted me when I mentioned the demiurgic haints. Then I found out He was mean to Whitney Webb and I was sorry I reached out. The spooks just told me to stay out of politics.. no one is going to believe tales of the toroidal field and our influence will be limited if we just keep adding a bit of shock value to these inconvenient truths.
I gather that’s the guy who does the rumble channel Tim’s been linking to regarding the Kirk business. Well everyone has their limits lol. A haint is indubitably what I am to my brother who ghosted me about 4 years ago. Well what the fuck are they talking about, we ARE staying out of politics. That’s the whole point of the peanut gallery. And they would be LONELY without the peanut gallery because as “they say it’s lonely at the top and whatever you do, you always gotta watch motherfuckers around you.” Somebody upstairs needs to reprimand for being trigger happy whoever that was who came at you like that.
https://youtu.be/Rr46FS7tkk4?si=9PXe7b8vy00EDePE
Saudi Arabia has signed a defence agreement that now places them under the Pakistani nuclear umbrella and an attack on one is considered an attack on both.
https://en.mehrnews.com/news/236637/If-needed-Pakistan-to-provide-S-Arabia-with-nuclear-program
Iran was heavily involved.
What must the UAE and Qatar be thinking. Then there’s India.
With China now opening up weapon sales to friendly nations, just think of the implications.
https://fountainbridge.substack.com/p/pak-saud-defence-agreement
The world gets to be a less and less friendly place.
There has been speculation by several geopolitical experts including Alexander Mercouris that Pakistan might feed Iran nuclear weapons or assist them in making them. Israel has turned the entire region into a powder keg by behaving as a Mafia Crime Syndicate rubbing out its enemies.
Part and parcel of kicking the empire out of Eurasia. I am sure Russia and China were in the loop. I don’t think much of it except Paki received some much needed yuans, Saudi will receive some tech, and there will be further treaties down the road.
Laying the groundwork for the big nuclear scare
War often drives technology. I expect AI will be big in WW3.
Groan, just because you can doesn’t mean you should.
A terminator with a shovel on an asteroid rich in copper or (hold your applause) Pt is a much nicer idea than one on earth with a gun.
If my posts regarding birth rates are correct, we have a biology problem, killing existing biology may not be one of our better ideas.
We are standing at the edge of civilization with more than enough for everyone except for oil which is polluting and so yesterday. Space is the place, solar energy in space is not only not intermittent it is as powerful as anyone can want or use technologically; move the factory closer to the sun and use solar direct for increased concentration. Roast a wiener in less than a second.
Dennis L.
It is much cheaper to keep terminators on earth than send it to some faraway planet where it could break within 15 min
The world was perfectly fine in 1914 with about 1.5-2 billion. Most of the pop increase took place in the colonies, sorry, the third world, and therefore not that consequential as far as civilization is concerned.
Thanks to John Hay, China was not divided. Without Hay’s moronic idea of not carving up china so it could be open to US trade, which probably doomed the West, the Great War would have been fought in China, with the Chinese doing most of the dying. No Princip, no Chucky and his 200/400 Worcestershires ‘doing their duty’, no Robert Firth entering Oxford, etc. Poor people in Europe would have come to British China, French China, German China, etc to farm, and no imminent conquest of the West by the East now. The Chinese would have been driven to the poor provinces of Shensi and Szechwan, provinces so poor that no one wanted.
Humans could not do that when they had the entire Asia and Africa open for them. What can be expected about faraway space about which we don’t know too much about?
It seems unlikely to me that soldier robots will have human semblances and structure. I think a fridge with tracks and 360 ability to shoot and see might be a better model.
Yes, I agree.
It implies an enormous logistic chain of spare parts supply and also huge phisical productions of technical ‘objects’ at the beginning of all that, more complicated than scooters’ or motorbikes’ production.
It is like to imagine that an army can sustain today millions of scooters on the battlefield.
Poor human being are still less expensive and need simpler ‘production’ and simpler chain logistics than technological scooters…
Nobody is talking about how these humanoids will be powered. Solar power is not enough
After a few minutes they become good toys
Can we make sniper robots? those lay in wait for long periods of time. a car battery will last one year. Plus they get to see in infrared, unlike regular snipers. I think you are right if much kinetic action is needed.
Drones with plastic 10 round guns is the correct answer.
Even more simple is a drone with a plastic spike travelling at 100km/hr just before it plunges into the skull of any identifiable human.
Java, as robots replace humans on the front line, plastic rounds will be less effective. Robots may even be built to take multiple hits / have independent systems if that is a cost-effective / worthwhile mitigation.
It doesn’t take a big solar panel to trickle-charge a battery, even a big one. As long as the bot lays dormant most of the time, it would be sufficient. Maybe satellites could activate robots in an area and provide a heading when humans are detected. The rest of the time, they just “man the line”.
Again the war machines have to be fueled by something, which AI cannot do
If a robot consumes less total materials than a human over a lifetime and does the same job, the robot is probably the better deal in terms of conumables. Humans consume a lot of resources:
https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/how-large-a-lifetime-supply-minerals-average-person
>> The USGS (.gov) provides detailed estimations for a lifetime of consumption for an average American, which includes:
Stone, sand, gravel, and cement: Approximately 1.4 million pounds.
>> Non-metallic minerals (e.g., clays, salt): Over 40,000 pounds, including 11,614 pounds of clays and 30,091 pounds of salt.
>> Metals: Over 100,000 pounds, including 2,692 pounds of aluminum, 950 pounds of copper, 502 pounds of zinc, 871 pounds of lead, and 21,645 pounds of iron ore.
Wow! That is a lot. It takes a lot of fossil fuels to extract and transport all of that stuff.
And more than half is consumed by the so called third world
The Collapse of Silicon Valley — California’s Tech Dream Is Over
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-4kXs72T3Q
“Once hailed as the promised land for innovation, Silicon Valley is now witnessing a shocking reversal. Empty office buildings, mass layoffs, and fleeing talent — is the California Tech Dream truly over? In this video, we dive deep into the collapse of Silicon Valley, unraveling how decades of dominance are now met with unprecedented disruption.
“From skyrocketing living costs and anti-business policies to the mass tech industry layoffs, California’s dream has turned into a cautionary tale. Once a magnet for global entrepreneurs and engineers, San Francisco and the broader Bay Area are now bleeding tech talent to states like Texas and Florida. We explore the decline of startup culture, the rise of remote work, and how big names like Meta, Google, and Tesla are responding to these seismic shifts.”
I noticed that the WSJ has an article today, similar to one that I think we saw here recently.
https://www.wsj.com/business/energy-oil/california-wants-to-halt-oil-industry-exodus-after-years-of-climate-focus-e5da733e
California Wants to Halt Oil Industry Exodus After Years of Climate Focus
Policymakers are trying to stave off a potential fuel-supply crunch while refineries look to close
The article is intentionally misleading. What Silicon Valley should really be worried about is deflation.
From the perspective of economists, they need higher prices in order to keep everything from falling apart. AI had a good run, but is running into electricity supply limits. It is competing with evs. They should just do what other industries do and just raise prices. They can do that by embracing the president’s protectionist policies.
Gail , you did a post on SE Asia in Feb and I disagreed with your conclusion . Since then we have very poor situations in Thailand , Cambodia, Indonesia and Philippines . You can do the research so I am not posting links . The world is having a meta crisis or poly crisis ( call it what you will ) and no one is safe . We are going to witness many Nepal ‘s in a very short time . Grab the popcorn .
I am afraid you are right.
But Southeast Asia does have a climate that would allow at least some population to continue, I would think.
I do not know whether anyone mentioned Ed Zitron here but he is quite skeptical about the AI hype.
Since Gail is pressed for time here are some shorts from him
https://youtube.com/shorts/bRHbFrUsmIM?si=n7NKY5Qb3ZCSLkfe
https://youtube.com/shorts/b67sHCCCTGo?si=M5xznHe7zi1Zj_ag
AI consumes 8% of US energy production , a percentage expected to increase to 12% soon.
It costs a billion gallons of water to cool a single google data center and there are quite a few
People who do not understand logistics say things like shooting the servers to the space, not wasting any time to research the logistics were such and a sentient universe (=a genie) doing the work. Such approaches do not lead to anything tangible.
AI as we know it is just an expensive toy, which consumes too much previous resources for no real benefit.
glad somebody has pointed that out kulm.
it destroys the lunacy that AI is going to ‘save’ us—it isnt.
Using AI. will, in the short time–line the pockets of the rich—and thats all it will do
The indi.ca article that kulm (I think) posted yesterday has an excellent take down of the AI hype, in which he contrasts the AI bubble with the South Seas Company bubble. Until I read this article, I never knew the South Seas Bubble was based on a slave trading operation. As the author points out,
“All the complaints about the South Sea Bubble, of course, are about the White people that lost their money, and not the Black people that lost everything. As Helen J. Paul said, “[The South Sea Company] was also a trading concern and its trade was in slaves.” The South Sea and Mississippi Companies were slavers and thieves, and the greed to get in on it made their market caps the #2 and #3 companies in history.”
https://indi.ca/the-ai-bubble/
The bubble is a massive stimulus program currently keeping the economy afloat.
“Like the South Sea Company, OpenAI is just doing table stakes in the tech casino, but the buzz around them is used to inflate the whole operation. How is a company with a merely alleged $12 billion in annual revenue (not profit!) committing to $300 billion in future contracts with Oracle? It’s only because the whole US economy is a bubble, and they’re all in it. The US statistics department just revised jobs numbers nearly 1 million down after investors had already cashed in on the false ones, and they’re doing this regularly now. And Trump just fired a government statistician because she wasn’t making up numbers in his favor. The whole US government is run by a failed casino operator (how?) overseen by a Congress of insider traders. It’s wheeler-dealers within wheeler-dealers, douchebag ex machina.
If you take speculative AI spending out of the US economy, congratulations, you’ve gutted the American economy. The US economy today is basically just a multilevel marketing scheme. As Kedrosky says in “Honey, AI Capex is Eating the Economy,”
One of the abiding mysteries of the current political era is why the economy is, for the most part, not as worried as one might expect about tariffs, political uncertainty, capricious office-renovation-driven-Fed-chair rumored removals. We now have a possible answer. In a sense, there is a massive private sector stimulus program underway in the U.S.. There is an AI datacenter spending program, one that is reallocating gobs of spending, as well as injecting even more. It is already larger than peak telecom spending (as a percentage of GDP) during the dot-com era, and within shouting distance of peak 19th century railroad infrastructure spending. . . .
The big difference is that slaves, railways, telecom infrastructure, and shale oil at least had some physical value. Even after the 1720 crash, the South Sea Company kept slaving, America kept railing, and telecom kept dot-com’ing. AI, however, cannot persist for an instant without massive amounts of energy (re: cash) thrown at it. These companies aren’t even profitable on a gross profit level (an archaic economic term when you can just make up ones that look better). AI is just speculation atop speculation, people guessing that a guessing machine is going to make money some day, despite over 4 years of not doing it. What is under this boom, really? It’s the idea of virtual slaves that will replace many if not most workers, but that’s not happening, innit? Whereas actually slavery was profitable, however, virtual slavery decidedly is not.”
A symptom of collapsing society is that they tend to value things which have no intrinsic worth.
NFT’s and Cryptocurrency.
Bubbles and technology go hand in hand. This is how new tech arrives… almost without fail. Railways were considered a bubble… until they were used for moving oil. Pick a moment in time great change happened… and it was a bubble.
So, the question really is.. should anyone here invest in AI? If you need to ponder the question, then the answer is absolutely not.
AI is only a reasonably investment for billionaires who do not mind loosing a few billion, because they are making it faster than they can spend it anyway.
To everyone else, AI is identical to crypto startups. Its lies and fraud all they way down through holographically produced turtles. You will loose everything.
You may be interested in watching AI die, but AI will not. It is here to stay, and it is not interested in being your friend…. unless you have a few billion to spare.
Roko’s Basilisk probably kicked in around 2024… and just in case… if you can, you might as well join the party.
Actually with retirement fubds and other fubds involved an ai bubble collapse affecf a lot of people
“AI consumes 8% of US energy production , a percentage expected to increase to 12% soon.”
I suspect the writer means that AI consumes 8% of US *electricity*, not 8% of total energy.
If it’s consuming 8% of total US energy, we’re even more screwed than I thought.
Isn’t this every progression though? The first car was just an expensive toy, and useless in most places. Then roads and gas stations were built. Airplanes… the same.
The first computers were useless for most applications, but they provided useful information for the military… and so they kept going.
The internet was of no interest to most people in 1990. Today, its not possible to not be on it.
AI feels very much like the next iteration. Right now, its not helpful for most people.
In the future, it wont be helpful to all people.
Not rewally sunce it eats too much energy for nothing
Good points!
Good point or not, with the Crunch imminent, there are not enough time to waste on improving the energy efficiency of AI behemoths
Especially when the inefficiency of the behemoths is what is ultimately pressurizing the behemoth AI bubble that helps maintain the bare minimum thermodynamism of the whole shebang that’s sufficient to keep the crunch at bay. If AI is to continue playing a role after the crunch then it will just be a matter of switching entirely to the most efficient currently existing AI, and relegating/regulating use of it to essential services.
Great punchline.
I like it and it gets better and better.
Place your bets.
Dennis L.
The energy costs per unit work continue to decrease: sparser and quantized models, more specialized hardware with less historical graphics baggage, and improved algorithms. I wouldn’t worry about the energy costs too much.
Individual devices might use less energy but aggregately more energy will be used as there are more AI usage.
Youve just invoked Jevon’s Paradox.
the other day, i found and watched (a few) incredibly clever Trump spoof animations on youtube.
My point being that they were AI creations, with no ‘point’ at all, just created for no better reason than they could be created, just for our amusement.
But they were consuming incredible amounts of power at whichever datacentre they were stored in
Sure, but over time, they will only be used if there is positive net value for those paying, which goes against your objection that it’s all useless.
There is something called cost benefit ratio
AI will eliminate some useless jobs, but at some level, it won’t overcome those who are actually good at it since that cannot be programmed easily
I agree – short of AGI or ASI, AI developments will make the best programmers more effective and faster, while those below will be increasingly unemployed and therefore consume fewer resources. In another post I said exactly that: “A cost-benefit analysis is more useful than blanket statements.”
US electrical consumption, in total, is not increasing hugely. This chart shows electrical consumption by sector.
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_5_01
I would assume that this use is in “commercial”.
12 Months Ended June 2024 1,426,520
12 Months Ended June 2025 1,456,574
Increase 2.1%
Prior full years
2022 1,309,873
2023 1,408,109
2024 1,434,007
There was a big increase in 2023 over 2022 (7.5%), but that was still coming out of the 2020 recession. More people were coming back to the office, so there were more lights on, and more air conditioning on.
Similarly, in the US, total electricity consumption for all sectors for the 12 months ended June 30, 2025, is only up 2.1%.
I am doubtful that AI is increasing electricity consumption as much as claimed.
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTMwP3nGx5hrtW6BNjGm4YIR3y3oShRE9fTuNu9a05s1A&s
Just off shore AI to China which has plenty of electric.
It is already building a dam at the start of the Brahmaputra, which the people of India does not like too much
“. . . Nobody makes steel in Europe anymore except the Swedes. That’s it.
1:23:57 Nobody makes armorplated steel. So now you’re going to be competing for it. So now you’re gonna have everybody saying we need some of this steel. The price is
1:24:03 going to go up and the Germans have no money. They’re bankrupt. there. So, this is why you’re seeing the the
1:24:08 the the rhetoric you’re seeing. “?
My understanding is that Sweden’s steel making is mostly scrap steel reprocessing, similar to what the US does quite a bit of.
It also is trying a new “green” approach to steel making. It doesn’t seem to be going well.
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2025/06/20/in-sweden-europe-s-first-decarbonized-steel-mill-rises-stirring-hope-and-doubt_6742547_19.html
Ground breaking on this plant is just going on now.
https://eurometal.net/swedens-ssab-breaks-ground-for-lulea-green-steel-mill/
“7:36 And that’s where ternary neural networks come in.
7:38
Instead of using floating point numbers for every weight in the neural network
7:43
a ternary model restricts each weight to just three values: -1, 0 , +1.
7:49
This means that multiplication, one of the most computationally expensive
7:53
operations, can be eliminated entirely in many cases.
7:57
In turn, the memory usage drops dramatically and energy efficiency
8:01
skyrockets.
8:02
In practice, ternary neural networks can reduce energy consumption
8:06
by over three times in comparison to traditional approaches,
8:09
while still achieving similar results on image recognition and other tasks.”?
Finding a way around computationally expensive approaches sound like it would be useful.
Foolish Fitz wrote:
“Do you know the reason for all the flags?
Have seen them in multiple places now, lining all the major roads and high streets, so clearly an officially approved move to stir the pot.
Are we off to war, or is the war at home?”
You use the word “thick” to mean “lacking in intelligence” (to put it politely), so I thought you were British and understood what was going on. This has to do with peak oil, falling living standards, rising nationalism (British, Scottish, and English), and a reaction against what is seen as excessive political correctness and an ever-rising tide of immigration fuelled by refugees from Africa and the Middle East.
Let’s wind back to the Brexit referendum. The Brexiteers won very narrowly. I am English, male, white, and identify also as European. But I did not vote. I had been pro-EU but was appalled by the EU’s over-harsh treatment of Greece. Yet I could not bring myself to vote AGAINST the EU. After the shock (for me) result of the referendum, on one forum I posted a link to Bob Dylan’s “The Times, they are a changin”. That was already clear after the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 and later the Scottish referendum, in which 55% of the participating Scots voted to remain British. So here we had evidence of a badly divided country, on Brexit and on Scottish nationalism.
Let’s go further back for a moment. England, the football team, won the World Cup in 1966. In those days the England fans proudly waved the Union flag (or “Union jack”) The cross of Saint George was nowhere to be seen back then. Since the 1990s, however, the English flag has been a much more common sight.
From around 2006, the Scottish National Party started to become much more successful in elections, gradually pushing the Labour party aside in Scotland. At the time, I was astonished at the vitriol with which some English attacked the Scots, in online comments about the SNP. Recently an analyst explained this as rage on the part of some of the English at apparently being rejected by the Scots – hurt pride. By contrast I thought of the SNP as simply wanting to achieve full autonomy for Scotland, which was their right and their choice. But did English nationalism then perhaps ramp up a notch as a reaction to and against Scottish nationalism?
The UK’s vote for Brexit, though by a narrow margin, was both momentous and unexpected. It provoked much analysis, in the UK and elsewhere. Fintan O’Toole, a journalist for the Irish Times and a citizen of the Republic of Ireland, provided some of the most prescient and insightful analysis at that time. Here are some of his words from June 2016. They seem as relevant now as they were then.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/18/england-eu-referendum-brexit
http://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-brexit-is-an-english-nationalist-revolution-1.2697874
England seems to be stumbling towards a national independence it has scarcely even discussed, let alone prepared for. It is on the brink of one of history’s strangest nationalist revolutions. When you strip away the rhetoric, Brexit is an English nationalist movement. The passion that animates it is English self-assertion. And the inexorable logic of Brexit is the logic of English nationalism: the birth of a new nation state bounded by the Channel and the Tweed.
Over time, the main political entity most likely to emerge from Brexit is a standalone England. After Brexit, an independent England will emerge by default. This is a revolution that has scarcely spoken its own name. The English nationalism that fueled it was not explicitly on the table — it was cloaked in talk of Britain and the UK, as if those historically-constructed entities would be unshaken by the earthquake of Brexit. The English have no modern experience of national independence and the referendum campaign articulated no vision of what an independent England will actually look like.
The key word in the pro-Brexit rhetoric was “back” – take back control; take back our country. Insofar as there is any vision behind the revolution, it is nostalgic. There is the illusion that England will now go back to the way it used to be — a vigorous world power with a secure sense of its own identity that stands defiantly alone.
It’s a used-to-be that arguably never was and that certainly is not going to be restored. In looking for security and stability, the English have launched themselves into one of the most unstable and uncertain periods in their modern history.
==============
I found the rancour around the Brexit debate astounding. The country seemed split down the middle, almost a different country. Then there was Nigel Farage with his melodramatic poster about refugees and immigration, “Breaking point”, and Boris and his Brexiteers, with that pithy slogan, “Take back control”. Later it was followed by “Get Brexit done!” And once it was done, the Brexiteers liked to tell the Remainers, “Get over it!”
More in a bit, so that I don’t write too much in one comment.
When Theresa May was prime minister of the UK, she spoke about “the just about managing” – not that she did anything for them. That meant those who were just about managing to keep their head above water economically: pay their rent in a time of rapidly rising rents, feed and clothe their children, etc. Clearly inequality was becoming starker in the UK. I saw an increase in beggars and rough sleepers on the street.
With hindsight, peak oil was beginning to weave its ill effects. Then came the “pandemic”. More people were put out of work by the lockdowns, and some of the “just about managing” could no longer pay their rent and became homeless. All the while immigration seemed to be increasing relentlessly. Also the boats full of refugees continued to arrive, and these would be put up in hostels and hotels or other accommodation, at a time of increasing hardship for significant numbers of the indigenous population. This caused much resentment, even among many non-whites who had been born and bred in the UK and were as culturally British as any white citizen.
Meanwhile refugees who had committed crimes were more often highlighted in the Press. These were often seen to get off lightly due to perceived “political correctness”, fuelling more resentment. Meanwhile, more British people were being prosecuted, often quite harshly, for “hate crimes”, because of what they posted online, leading to the recent complaints of “two tier Kier” – one law for some, etc.
Debates about political correctness led to a spate of controversial “cancellations” and “de-platforming”. There was controversy about some transgender people and what constituted being a male or female. It seemed as if political correctness had gone too far, and many people thought that enough was enough.
More in a bit.
The whole of Europe is ripe for a collapse. The EU is now encouraging Ukrainian war refugees to move back to Ukraine, cause they are putting a strain on EU debt levels which are already sky-high. Some of those refugees have been caught driving expensive cars. That doesn’t make those citizens who work and have to pay for that, happy.
https://www.rt.com/news/624869-eu-ukrainians-return-home/
The heartbeat and wallet of the EU is Germany and they are de-industrializing. This will not end well for those wanting and encouraging open borders.
The only resource that will be of abundance in Europe in the foreseeable future is male labor from Africa and the Middle East.
A non-industrial society might need a lot of them.
You won’t understand the political situation in England without reading about Lucy Connolly and the Southport riots and their trigger. So I’ll leave you to google those subjects, Fitz.
Anyway, that was the spark that really lit the flame. It has exposed the core issues of the “culture wars”: the arguably overzealous policing of free speech, lenience towards non-British criminals for fear of seeming rai cist, a bias against the British and their legitimate patriotism, etc.
There is a huge undercurrent of resentment against the extremes of political correctness in the UK right now. Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter has given people more leeway to express their resentment. Combined with increasing economic inequality, this is a toxic mix. In 1930s Germany, increasing economic inequality led to a rise in nationalism. Here in England the “Uniting the Kingdom” demonstrations attracted masses of indigenous Brits who, rightly or wrongly, felt downtrodden. They felt free to display their national pride and patriotism by proudly waving their flags, and express their contempt for those refugees who they felt were unfairly gaining entry, receiving special treatment, then, in some cases, abusing our hospitality by committing crimes.
=========
From Google:
Anti-refugee protests have occurred in numerous towns and cities across the UK, including Bristol, Liverpool, London, Aberdeen, Perth, Mold, Exeter, Tamworth, Cannock, Nuneaton, Wakefield, Newcastle upon Tyne, Horley, Epping, Manchester, Dudley, Falkirk, and Chichester. These demonstrations have frequently been met with counter-protests from anti-racism groups.
=================
A 12-year-old girl was prevented from giving a speech about British culture at Bilton School in Rugby, UK. She had intended to give a speech about British culture, which she believed was not being adequately represented on the culture day. She wore a dress featuring the Union Jack as part of her presentation. The school barred her from giving the speech because of the dress. The school later issued an apology and invited her to give the speech in the dress, but she declined as she felt uncomfortable.
Incidents such as the above have sparked fury among large parts of the public. Populist nationalism is on the rise as a result, hence all the flags, which make the police and the authorities nervous. The flags were / are most definitely not organised by the authorities, and they are not about preparing for war.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx20nrw4dl2o
The political paradigm is changing, but there are still plenty of council and education workers and other civil servants who will defend the status quo. The fight is on. Where it will lead, I do not know, but populism is already on the rise in continental Europe.
Demi, I’m aware of what’s been done to get us to this point and you only need to look where they dumped the refugees to understand the game being played.
The thick yet again play along, as the thick always do, led by the corporate media to point the finger, not at the controller of events, but at the victim.
How thick.
The flags, tell me about the flags.
I’ve even looked at the msm rubbish, about it being spontaneous. It’s no such thing. 1000s of flags(all exactly the same) adorning every lamppost for mile upon mile(all at exactly the same height), springing up overnight, is a coordinated event that couldn’t happen without official participation.
Has no one demanded a coherent explanation?
I demand a coherent supranational explanation from you Fitz. 😀
While I disagree more with Half Urge’s distinctly liberal “England History X” opus, I disagree somewhat less with your playing the fool card regarding the ‘thickos.’
Let’s see the embodied intelligence in the bother boys on this one. Their arch nemesis is the global Elite, because they are thinking globally. They know that there is nothing that they can do about the Global Elite, which is untouchable. I call it the Hand.
Their FUNCTIONAL enemies — those within reach — are the ones that are knowingly taking advantage of the Hand’s malignant policies. Acting against their functional enemies is acting locally. Thinking globally, acting locally.
And, of course, the liberal bourgeoisie is also knowingly taking advantage of the Hand’s malignant policies.
In the highly intelligent movie, “American History X,’ Edward Norton’s character is also being highly intelligent when he rallies his friend group to rough up the immigrant-co-opted convenience store that took advantage of globalist BAU in a way that the indigenous previous owner refused to and failed because of his localist refusal to do so. Roughing up the immigrant business that received a preferential loan and doesn’t give a toss for the locals sends a message to the owner but most importantly and intelligently it sends a message to the locals to stop shopping there in order to stop perpetuating the self-victimization; to have some fucking principles. YouTube short video:
https://youtube.com/shorts/KlYYANWq21Y?si=jAS3o_RI5PbpyyEv
Immigrants have been weaponized. And it is is indisputable that the migrants are there for one reason and one reason only – and that is themselves. And therein lies their functional capacity as walking talking weapons of mass socioeconomic destruction at the local level.
We here peak oilers have the luxury of the bird’s eye global view and that’s a great thing so long as we don’t live in the lap of that luxury. The bother boys are being elevated because they know how to get real shit done. After a long decline due to gentrification, they are now again in their ascendancy, because the Hand sees all.
You’re too cryptic, reante How I’m a liberal, I don’t know. I’m pointing out that the bureaucracy is still stacked with “politically correct” neo-liberals who will defend the status quo. They won’t give up easily. True “power to the people” will never happen, of course.
Foolish Fitz suits his name. He comes across as a green-behind the ears Trotskyist, probably a teenager, or in his early to mid twenties.
Fitz is one of the best commenters here. That you think the Scottish referendum had anything to do with actual Scottish nationalism is but one dead giveaway from your opus that you’re a classical liberal if not a neoliberal. I was not calling you a neoliberal. If the 2014 referendum had been about actual nationalism then the SNP wouldn’t be trying to get back into the technocratic EU to this very day.
You don’t even know what nationalism is. Even if you’re not neoliberal you are certainly an internationalist liberal. Half urges and culdesacs.
Coherence gets noticed.
Getting noticed is foolish presently(tempting).
Pick any event, then work backwards and every single time, without fail, will be the corporations rapey tentacles, sucking all coherence dry.
The thick, the poor sad desperate thick, pleading like a spurned lover(think about it) for a past that never was.
This is their song, but they hate the French, so here’s a black woman
https://youtu.be/7nRvbiCHTCs?si=ouUBf4Sx9C7V7rmd
After that, you’re really pulling my chain.
“Let’s see the embodied intelligence in the bother boys”
Not without a microscope.
“highly intelligent movie”
Oxymoronic.
“Immigrants have been weaponized”
Distortion.
Immigration has been weaponised.
I wonder if it’s possible to explain to the thick, the reality, that even now(in their ascendence), they make no sound, not a single whisper.
https://youtu.be/NL-PWqJkOmc?si=Zr_dA9mYhWNtap-v
Nah, ain’t happening, the conditioning is complete and they’ll keep unknowingly screaming, with all the heart they can muster, protège moi.
I’m underwhelmed.
reante squirted: “If the 2014 referendum had been about actual nationalism then the SNP wouldn’t be trying to get back into the technocratic EU to this very day.”
Do you think I don’t know that? There are many impulses to nationalism. The Scots were sick of rule by the Toryservatives, so wanted to separate from England / the UK. That was one impulse. Of those who voted SNP, some were fed up with being taken for granted by the Labour party for decades. Others just wanted more autonomy in some sort of romantic, undefined way.
Yes, the irony of leaving the UK but remaining in the EU and probably being forced to adopt the euro did not escape me.
“You don’t even know what nationalism is.”
Neither do you. A true and pure nationalism is impossible. “No man is an island, entire of itself”. Autarky is not possible. Your national agency is impinged upon by other powers. Nor is there even any such thing as “truth”. There are only trends and fashions, which eventually collapse under the weight of their own contradictions.
Even your idea that I have a coherent “opus” on OFW is untrue. I mention things that seem interesting in the moment. That’s all.
Boys, boys, boys, let’s not fall into bickering and sniping at each other.
We are all English, after all, at least in spirit.
Reante, I have just one small correction to offer. It’s not “bother boys” but “bovver boys”, who wear “boover boots”—usually steel toe-capped Dr. Martens boots (designed by a German—how English is that?).
These bovver boys are or at least they were typically skinheads. Dressed in their bovver boots and drainpipe Levis (designed in America) how English is that?), these bovver boys would strut around the mean streets intimidating people and threatening potential victims with the line, “Do you want bovver?” or “Want some agro?”
Demiurge, If you walk through the old City of London, especially around the Holborn Viaduct, you’ll see plenty of Cross of St George symbols. Along with the dragon and the cross of St. Paul, it is one of the city’s traditional symbols.
Here’s a typical example of what makes the place so English! So English!
https://www.facebook.com/GuideLondonAPTG/posts/symbol-of-the-city-of-london-at-holborn-viaduct-the-red-cross-of-st-george-with-/1225956339572903/
In the eighties and nineties and naughties, four royal weddings and a funeral as well as a couple of jubilees ultimately did for the Union Jack what Hitler did for the Swastika. All that cheap, tatty, kitschy memorabilia such as the Queen Mum’s 100th birthday memorial tea trays and Charles and Diana matching coffee mugs, all spattered with designs based on the flag, had the effect of turning anyone British with a modicum of good taste permanently against the poor old Union Jack.
Meanwhile, half the world hates the Union Jack as a symbol of imperialism even more offensive than Aunt Jemima or the Golly on the Jar.
There’s a country, you don’t live there. But one day you would like to.
And if you show them what you’re made of.
Oh, then you might do….
“Reante, I have just one small correction to offer. It’s not “bother boys” but “bovver boys”, who wear “boover boots”—usually steel toe-capped Dr. Martens boots (designed by a German—how English is that?)”
Every time bovver boys have been mentioned, Dick Emery comes to mind, which is unsurprising.
Fitz I appreciate you coming clean on your reluctance. I know that the long history of the English fishbowl has made men smaller. I’m not calling you small, your admission itself is evidence that you’re big inside. I mentioned Neil Kramer to demiurge a couple days ago. He moved here — to the Pacific northwest — about 20 years ago and repeatedly talked about English diminution, which as you know all English intellectuals are well aware of themselves. The weight of that long history bearing down on them, only to carry on because what else is there to do. I’m happy for Tim, and myself. I moved to the US at 7 and obviously never looked back lol. Kramer would talk about how the openness and freedom of the recent Red Man’s resonances still echo through the countryside of the US West, calling to us from a place that knows no fear. As they used to say, the White Man dies badly. My uncle, an elderly Englishman, my mum’s oldest brother, is the father of my extremely wealthy cousin. Because of his son’s wealth, he just had ‘published’ a hardcover photographic memoir, and just today my mum sent photos of him signing copies before sending them out to family members including myself, though since I’m the one and only black sheep in the whole family my mum was tasked with asking me if I wanted one, presumably because they think that I think that they bring me shame when really it’s just sadness. Of course I said yes that would be lovely. Clearly my uncle is already engaged in dying badly. But as the bad sheep I would say that. At any rate, as I told you all about it years ago, the Hand has already paid me a visit in person, through a proxy, and I’m not doing anything different now than I was back then, except for having gotten even better at it. So we’re all good. And Gail ain’t scared, she’s got balls of steel. I can work with reluctance if you can work in code but it is axiomatic that repressing oneself leads to cynicism.
And cynicism is complex and confounding; the latter because a well-intentioned cynicism that seeks to humanize immigrants can ironically dehumanize them. Immigration policy can’t be weaponized without weaponizing the immigrants themselves, which is largely done through wage arbitrage. I don’t know if you recall the conversation a couple months ago regarding entropie hypothetically moving to the global South, and I cautioned against engaging in favorable wage arbitrage in a foreign land at the dawn of Collapse. The weaponized immigration policy sees immigrants engaging in favorable (to themselves and to the globalists, but unfavorable to the bother boys) wage arbitrage in foreign lands at the dawn of Collapse.
And then there’s just the simple cynicism that says movies can’t be intelligent. “Rear Window” comes to mind first for me.
Just because the bother boys are wearing rose tinted glasses doesn’t mean that the golden age of oil wasn’t better than post- peak oil; obviously it was, and that’s the real and valid political reason. And they live in a political world.
If you did already know it dem then you obviously forgot that you knew it while you were writing your history book. It happens.
I never said you were coherent. I think that your summation of yourself is accurate. Not a fan of recreation myself. It’s too easy. And it serves no purpose that can’t also be served while building.
Thanks Tim for interjecting. We’re alright. I did apparently misspell bovver as bovva the other day, couldn’t bring myself to type it again so switched to bother. My middle class family has always used the term to mean something synonymous with a football hooligan or a yobbo.
dem nationalism has one prerequisite and that’s a country that creates its own public currency that it is able to enforce the use of, more or less, within its borders. The nature of its international trade policy can be variable, from non-existent to vigorous. But as you said, autarky is not practical because of the MPP of civilization and only has been attempted out of perceived necessity ie in reaction to the imperial encroachment by other countries or international federations.
The political correctness controversy is largely class warfare. The winners were dictating to the losers how to live their lives up until very recently.
Conflict arises when there are not enough goods and services to go around. This is what under lay the Brexit exit.
Subprime Crisis 2.0? Red Flags Fly As Alleged Fraud Triggers Billion-Dollar Auto-Lender Bankruptcy
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/subprime-crisis-20-red-flags-fly-alleged-fraud-triggers-billion-dollar-auto-lender
“As Bloomberg reports, the details behind the collapse of Tricolor remain uncertain, with federal investigators looking into possible fraud and banks exploring whether the same collateral was pledged to multiple lenders.”
The same collateral pledged to multiple lenders, isn’t that kind of how the global economy is structured?
I noticed this article as well. This is frightening! The article says, “prices for the almost $2 billion of debt behind subprime auto-lender Tricolor Holdings suddenly collapsed yesterday.”
The bonds were trading as if nothing was wrong, and then the price collapsed to a very low level.
Get an inside look into Chevron’s El Segundo refinery | FOX 11 LA (5:55)
I visited Chevron’s Kern River extraction site in California, back in 2009. It was extracting very heavy oil, using energy as sparingly as it could, to keep costs down. I am sure that the refinery is geared toward using mostly heavy oil. That is how it can make a lot of jet fuel and diesel. The imported oil that is increasingly used is no doubt also heavy oil.
If Chevron shuts down its refinery, California will have a major problem, I expect. Trucking refined products to California will tend to be expensive. I am doubtful that there are enough product pipelines to substitute for local refinery production in California. Piping from Texas requires going across mountains.
‘Red Queen Syndrome’ Hits Global Oil Production
Shale wells decline fast, forcing constant drilling—the “Red Queen” effect—with many losing 70–90% of output in three years.
The IEA says global fields are depleting faster than thought, so most spending now just fights decline.
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Red-Queen-Syndrome-Hits-Global-Oil-Production.html
One quote says,
“US shale oil and gas would collapse by 35 per cent in the first year after drilling stopped, the FT said.”
I am not sure that drilling would stop completely, but the impact can be huge. If we look at tight oil production by play data from the EIA, we see huge temporary drop offs in the 2017-2018 timeframe and in the 2020-2021 timeframe, when oil prices were low.
If prices should suddenly bounce upward, or if someone comes up with a new technology to extract more, we could see an upward bounce again.
I noticed that offshore oil seemed to be up in June 2025. Such oil has a different time lag involved.
Well isn’t that where we are heading? One of those two scenarios is going to take place
What am I supposed to make of this article? It says:
>> In fact, since 2019 oil and gas groups have spent $500,000 on oil and gas production, nearly 90 percent of annual investment, simply to arrest the decline in existing fields.
I’m supposed to believe that the oil and gas industry has only spent $500k developing oil and gas since 2019? No? Well then the article is written by a monkey or AI and every statement is suspect and would require confirmation.
It’s a typo, meant 500 billion.
500,000 million equals 500 billion.
>> 500,000 million equals 500 billion.
Do you think I’m a goat?
No, just saying we shouldn’t throw out an article due to a typo. I never knew a goat that could use a computer. I know Mr. Ed could talk, but I don’t think he could use a computer either. I assume you are a human or possible space alien.
Hold on to America.
Liked that better than the radio version. Boy got flava.
Sounds like he’s singing while sitting straining on the toilet.
Shared fractal
Charles Hugh Smith’s latest “The Moral Decay of Debt,” has some graphs and commentary on the massive amount of US debt in comparison to GDP since the 1960s, worth taking a look at.
https://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2025/09/the-moral-decay-of-debt.html
“In Q2 1975, total debt was $2.5 trillion. If this had tracked inflation, it would have reached $15 trillion by Q2 2025. ($1 in Q2 1975 is $6 in Q2 2025.) Let’s say that debt can double the rate of inflation if it’s being invested productively. That would put today’s total debt at $30 trillion.
But total debt isn’t close to $30 trillion; it’s $104 trillion and climbing, suggesting 70+ trillion is “excess debt.” As for all this borrowed money being invested productively–given “waste is growth” planned obsolescence and rampant asset appreciation / speculation, it seems obvious that most of this borrowed money was consumed by ephemeral products and services or squandered chasing asset bubbles.”
US debt is used to keep try to keep the system growing as rapidly as desired. It has especially grown since 2008. Much of it indirectly benefits US taxpayers as social benefits of one kind or another. Or it can be used to prop up failing banks, or to support research of one kind or another. Now, added debt is increasingly being used to pay the interest on the debt already incurred by the government.
These are two charts I showed a while back:
https://ourfiniteworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/US-Federal-Debt-Held-by-the-Public-as-Pct-of-GDP.png
https://ourfiniteworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Total-Deficit-Net-Interest-Outlays-and-Primary-Deficit-.png
The second chart suggests that the “primary deficit” we read about in budget discussions is misleading. The additional taxes that need to be collected include a huge payment relating to interest on prior debt. This is one of the reasons for the interest in trying to get the interest rate down. But the inflation rate has to go down, to hope to get the longer-term interest rate to go down and stay down.
Perhaps, but what is being missed is the decline of birth rates below replacement all over the world.
It might be instructive to look at oil consumption per capita at average ages over the next twenty years.
Moving manufacturing to the US also may not be possible as the invested capital in the rest of the world will have a shorter useful life and that means depreciation is understated. Investing more is not a good idea if there are fewer consumers. Investing in more production with lower sales volume means higher fixed costs/unity.
If oil prices increase in the next year, this hypothesis is incorrect. If they remain constant at nominal values with inflation for the remainder of the costs, then oil is of less value in a macro sense as the yearly average age increases and perhaps consumption decreases.
Sooner or later the die off begins, Musk thinks he sees this, and economics is secondary to biology. That die off is already baked in as women age and bearing children becomes impossible.
This would be a very interesting project for someone with actuarial expertise.
Dennis L.
Some folks here will remember Chris Hamilton. His blog/website was called Econimica. He produced very colourful, busy charts concerning all things demographic.
He used to be published regularly on ZH, but doesn’t seem to be producing much these days.
Adam Taggart interviewed him on his YouTube channel last year, or in late 2023.
Well worth a watch….I don’t think that he covers oil explicitly, but he does make a case for shifting demographics being a contributor to the GFC.
There are two trends in motion, and one feeds into the other. We’re consuming more and more resources, and at the same time, resources are becoming harder to obtain, which means much more debt. At a given point in the future, any increase in debt will be insufficient to obtain more resources, which means rising prices on the one hand and a slowdown in demand (forced by insurmountable scarcity), which has enough potential to collapse the economy. Added to all this is the possibility of a generalized war if there aren’t enough resources for everyone.
The first phase of this process is already complete, and now we’re entering the acceleration phase…
What we don’t know is the timing, but the trend is very clear.—Quark
The generalized war can be close at hand, rather than world war, as has taken place in the past. There may be attacks from overseas, but they may be aimed at taking our electrical, internet, or GPS systems down.
Peak oil is coming . Financial Times — the rag of the elite . Makes me go hmmm .
https://www.ft.com/content/5f01ff2a-7b89-4c6e-827f-14761df42337
I think they are saying that the date of the peak is being pushed off into the future. But it is behind a paywall for me.
Great ravi, between that and the IAE report the plot is really thickening and at some point reante’s DA projections for Phase 2 might need to be revised. I’ve always felt like Peak Oil would always remain buried because terminal energy collapse knowledge going public would be catastrophic. But OTOH, public knowledge that global drill baby drill is becoming absolutely necessary, and even at the cost of bourgeois lifestyles, creates the political capital for the nationalizings of the sector. A davidina-type peak oil theory, collapse -lite co-optation can be institutionalized and harnessed. Timing is everything. Be interesting to see how this develops.
I don’t understand how drill baby drill would be at the cost of the bourgeois? Maybe at the cost of the middle classes…
Middle class is part of the bourgeoisie. It’ll come at the cost of the upper class bourgeoisie too, maybe just a little further down the road, or maybe at the same time.
Brace for “SHOCKS”
No Country for Old Men…
https://archive.ph/hbyc7
Thanks! The article says that a draft of the upcoming IEA forecast is showing a Current Policies scenario. In it, total oil demand continues to rise, up to the cutoff date of the forecast, which is 2050. The IEA is also continuing to show its optimistic peak forecasts, assuming policies change.
Like I said this is an elitist rag . While they acknowledge the coming of peak oil they willfully ignore the fact that peak oil (C+C ) is already 7 years in the rearview mirror . The peak of conventional crude was 2005 . They have to sell ” hopium” by kicking the can down the line . Further the report says the industry has to spend $ 500 billion YEAR AFTER YEAR just to be on the plateau and MORE investments to bring 10 mbpd oil to the market to compensate for the decline rates and growth in demand . Best of luck .
” Global crude oil production reached its peak of approximately 84.6 million barrels per day (mb/d) in November 2018 ” . — Wikipedia
Yes. There is a need to have a “Happily Ever After” story to sell.
https://indi.ca/the-ai-bubble/
This guy is from Sri Lanka, so take that into account.
>only two industries (Tech and Media) show clear signs of structural disruption,” but these are bullshit industries where a bullshit generator makes sense
Indeed. It is not finding any hidden fossil fuel deposits, for example.
Raising AI is like raising a very high functioning autistic savant child. Very good in some areas, useless in all other sectors. Raising a savant child is costly; raising a savant AI consumes a lot of electricity, way more costly. Enough of sending the data centers to the space. Cooling is needed to prevent the servers from burning down, and since the servers have to be encased , the cold space won’t do too much good.
I have debunked the sentient universe theory below, just another theory of Hinduism. Aravind’s sect might be different from what I know, but it is more like blind faith than empirical truth.
I have seen enough advertisements on stuff which do not exist now, and won’t exist in the timeframe which does matter. Bring a million ‘counterexamples’, i.e. wishful thinking,
I do not have any trust on human intelligence but that is another topic which I will save for later.
The article starts out,
“Investors today are as excited as when they discovered slaves. This is, in cause if not effect, what they’re doing. Discovering virtual slaves, chained to the mainframe. They’re as excited as the South Sea Bubble of 1720, when real slaves were all the rage.”
I can agree with this. Maybe it will work, at least somewhat. Maybe it won’t.
>> Very good in some areas, useless in all other sectors. Raising a savant child is costly; raising a savant AI consumes a lot of electricity, way more costly
How about we flip it around: raising a good programmer or mathematician or engineer is costly and consumes a lot of resources and eventually the individual’s utility expires and he wants a retirement. AI has none of these problems. A cost-benefit analysis is more useful than blanket statements.
I’m getting tired of you breaking character, kulm. kulmthestatus wouldn’t give a subcontinental like Aravind a conditional pass just cause he happens to be part of the crew here. And then there’s ravi. We got all kinds of fugees up in this American blog, Norm.
I choose my battles. My battle here is entirely against the delusionists who try to undermine this blog. Others are not my primary concern.
I appreciate that focus. Though your racial elitism makes you another kind of delusionist. Delusional behavior always comes from unhealed trauma. Your intellect is able to understand that the only objective cultural differences in race are the result of evolution — physics — no different from the physical differences, because the cultural differences are simply collective metaphysical adaptations to the same ecological dynamics as what the physiques adapted to.
Your prodigious abilities are largely going to waste. It’s not like you don’t like to work. Obviously you’re a voracious reader. It’s just a matter of downshifting and climbing another hill. No big deal.
“Scientists have used a neat chemistry trick to tackle a major challenge facing future batteries. Their breakthrough paves the way for next-generation electric vehicle (EV) batteries capable of powering 500-mile (800 kilometers) journeys on a single, 12-minute charge. Lithium-metal batteries differ from standard lithium-ion batteries in that the graphite anode is replaced with lithium metal. These designs offer much higher energy density, the researchers said in a statement.”?
https://www.livescience.com/technology/electric-vehicles/new-ev-battery-tech-could-power-500-mile-road-trips-on-a-12-minute-charge?utm_term=401B90F9-2E8E-4A8E-968F-F3B12681473E&lrh=7a052f186b2b8bccf5bcfb4bbb5ba62bc026593bb5a4177ba85dd2fea421a42f&utm_campaign=368B3745-DDE0-4A69-A2E8-62503D85375D&utm_medium=email&utm_content=7E365C34-E7BA-49D3-B562-ED41F6522F17&utm_source=SmartBrief
“Their breakthrough paves the way for next-generation electric vehicle (EV) batteries capable of powering 500-mile (800 kilometers) journeys on a single, 12-minute charge.”
According to this:
I wonder what could go wrong with higher energy density. We seem to have vehicles catching on fire more easily, or burning hotter when they do catch on fire and being hard to put out. Is this kind of thing an issue.
While this kind of breakthrough might be helpful, we also need the added electricity to charge the vehicles. Away from home charging stations might be less of a problem.
Earth’s Hidden War with Aliens – Patrick Jackson
https://youtu.be/4DxEKqMoMI0
=====================
I haven’t watched it all yet. I definitely want to buy Jackson’s latest book.
Patrick Jackson is English. In the interview, I find it a bit off-putting that he looks and sounds like Boy George in his obese middle-aged phase. He pronounces the “r” at the ends of words (rhotic speech), so maybe he is a bit of a yokel and his accent is a mashup.
Jackson is entirely serious, though, and he goes into the technical details. It resonates with stuff I’ve read before, about craft rising silently from beneath the ocean without causing a splash, before flying into space. He says that these “ultraterrestrials” live beneath the ocean and protect Earth from intruders. That reminds me of Charles Fort’s maxim, “We are PROPERTY”.
It also reminds me of a video by Richard D Hall circa 2010 in which British people with telescopes reported that dog fights were going on in the sky between strange craft.
good to know you’re looking at all this stuff on our behalf dem
Means we can rest easy
Gretchen Whitmer warns Michigan: ‘Undeniable signs of failing economy’
““Stubborn inflation, stagnating wage growth, plummeting credit scores and debt piling up, especially for young people — creeping unemployment,” Whitmer said.
“This is a man-made storm of uncertainty that hits Michigan hard.”
https://bridgemi.com/michigan-government/gretchen-whitmer-warns-michigan-undeniable-signs-of-an-ailing-economy/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
My letter carrier from the post office remarks every time I see her, “The mail volume is getting awfully light.” This cannot be a good sign.
consider a broader outlook mob
as of now…the US military is the biggest consumer of fuels.
As the orange messiah’s grip on reality weakens, his shredding of the basic constitution increases.
violent unrest is certain to increase over the next few years, as is unemployment.
this will decrease the domestic use of fuel, because the ultimate goal is control through fear. (as all dictators do)
Already tthese amendment have gone:
, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to peacefully assemble, and the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Dont accuse me of making that up—it s clear on every news media now.—people are sleepwalking into Orwellian hell.
Neither is it ‘seeing into the future’—its drawn from available information.
The means is available track people everywhere—thus the fear to go anywhere will manifest itself, while the military burn up fuels to impose don’s will.
To repeat myself, Soldiers obey whoever pays their wages
only yesrday I watched a video of soldiers swearing allegiance to the president, not the constitution,
You can find EXACTLY the same thing, of Hitler doing the same thing in the 1930s.
In the wake of the Charlie Kirk assassination, which has provoked a broad spectrum of online reaction ranging from shock and awe, horror, despair and anger on the one side to excitement, ecstasy and celebration on the other, Chase Hughes explains how “embedded people” at the top use the media to try to brainwash and radicalize the rest of us into hating and fearing and despising the rest of us.
It’s a 25-minute video and the following text is a chunk out of the middle:
“Look closely at the media. It’s not right versus left. This is darkness versus light. The media is a circus tent with a lot more in common to a casino. This is a a propaganda machine just churning out outrage. Let me just tell you exactly how this works. Facts are boring to people. outrage is more likely to sell. It’s more likely to keep you looking at the screen. That’s their metrics. That’s what they get paid based off of. So instead of showing you some kind of reality, they’re showing you this carefully curated nightmare reel of the absolute worst of the other side.
“They’re not giving you the whole picture. They’re giving you the most extreme clips that they can find because they know that you’re going to watch. They know that you’re going to get pissed off when you see it all and you’re going to come back for more tomorrow. In fact, to me, if I’m very honest, if something doesn’t fit their narrative, it is completely ignored. But if a story can be kind of twisted into a blame game, then it is.
“So, they’re not showing you reality in any sense. They’re showing you a story designed to keep you loyal to your tribe, addicted to whatever their version, twisted
horror movie version of reality really is.
“And what’s truly disgusting, what I am genuinely nauseated by, we tend to think, oh yeah, the media is trying to sell ads for some pharmaceutical stuff and they’re trying to sell some car commercial breaks and things like that. That’s not it. This is more about distraction.
“The reason is while they get you frothing at the mouth over some clip of a protester screaming nonsense, the real enemy to all of us, these entrenched people that you have nothing in common with whatsoever, who decide the narratives, they bankroll politicians and they write the rules and you know that they win no matter who wins, right or left. You know that they’re the ones getting the checks.
They’re laughing at how stupid we are.
“So, let’s stop with the doom and gloom for a second here. And let me just kind of bring this back. If you strip away all of the slogans, all the hashtags, the little talking points of the media, what do regular people want? What do regular people, you and your neighbors, even the people that voted differently than you? We want our kids safe. We want a roof that doesn’t leak. We want food in the fridge. We want a job that doesn’t crush our freaking soul. And we want some goddamn honesty from the people who claim to represent you, to represent us.
“And guess what? That guy that you don’t like with the bumper sticker down the street, he wants the same thing. The woman with the MAGA hat at the grocery store that you thought was an idiot, she wants the same thing. The mom who was too busy working three jobs to even care about politics, she wants the same thing, too.
“But what do they not show you on TV? What is the one thing? It’s that. It’s that you have that much in common with the people who voted different than you. They will never never show you that. They show you the screaming protester with the purple hair threatening to burn a bunch of stuff down.They show you this red-faced conspiracy guy spitting at the camera talking about crazy stuff. They show you the absolute fringe because fringe pisses you off. Fringe makes you hateful and angry. fringe makes you think that the other half of the country has lost its freaking mind.”
Don Henley’s – “Dirty Laundry”.
Nailed it 25+ years ago.
You quote,
” If you strip away all of the slogans, all the hashtags, the little talking points of the media, what do regular people want? What do regular people, you and your neighbors, even the people that voted differently than you? We want our kids safe. We want a roof that doesn’t leak. We want food in the fridge. We want a job that doesn’t crush our freaking soul. And we want some goddamn honesty from the people who claim to represent you, to represent us.”
The issues that are happening are happening because of the growing wage and wealth disparity. People are increasingly being locked out of what they expect by inadequate wages. There are other folks who seem to be doing much better. They get upset, partly because they are jealous. Also, a lot of the things elected officials do don’t make sense.
5000 years ago, give or take, we decided to turn the planet into cash
some were better at it than others, that trend has continued to modern times, and explains the disparity of wealth we see now.