|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
We are at a time when there seems to be far more conflict than in the past. At least part of the problem is that slowing growth in the world economy is making it more difficult to repay debt with interest, especially for governments. A related issue is that government promises for pensions and healthcare costs are becoming more difficult to pay. Donald Trump is trying to make numerous changes that are distasteful both to other countries and to many people living within the US. What is going wrong with the economy?
In my view, major cracks are developing in the economy because we are heading toward a collapse scenario of the type that Dr. Joseph Tainter talks about in his book, “The Collapse of Complex Societies.” No one has told the general population about the potential problem, partly because they don’t fully understand the issues themselves, and partly because the underlying causes are too frightening to discuss with the public. At the root of these collapse-related issues is a physics issue, which is only gradually being fully understood.
In this post, I try to describe some of the issues involved. I don’t believe that the situation is hopeless. At the end, I discuss where we are now, relative to historical patterns, and some reasons to be optimistic about the future.
[1] Economies need to “dissipate” energy on a regular basis, just as humans need to eat food on a regular basis.
In physics terms, economies and all plants and animals are dissipative structures. So are tornadoes, hurricanes, and ecosystems of all kinds. All these structures have finite lifetimes. They all need to “dissipate” energy to continue performing their expected functions. Humans require a variety of foods to digest; economies require energy types that match their built infrastructure. The amount of energy required by an economy tends to rise with its human population.
Figure 1 shows that since 2008, world energy supply growth has only barely been keeping up with world population growth. Physics tells us that energy dissipation is required to create any part of GDP, so energy consumption that rises with population growth should not be surprising.
The dips in per capita energy consumption in the latest period correspond to major recessions in 2008 and 2020. Rapid growth in per capita energy consumption seems to take place when growth in some low-priced fuel temporarily becomes available.
[2] Low energy prices are at least as important to the economy as low food prices are to individual households. Low energy prices seem to allow investments that pay back well.
If a family spends 10% of its income on food, the family has lots of money left over for non-essentials, such as a vehicle, trips to movies, and even a foreign vacation. If a family spends 50% of its income on food (or even worse, 75%), any little “bump in the road” can cause a crisis. There is little money available to spend on housing or a vehicle.
Figure 2 shows that oil prices were under $20 per barrel (adjusted to today’s price level) in the 1948-1972 period. This corresponds quite closely with the rapid-growth early period shown on Figure 1.
The economy was able to add many types of helpful “complexity” during this early period because of the growing supply of cheap oil. It could add interstate highways and many miles of pipelines. Inventions included television, air conditioning, early computers, and contraceptive pills. Many families were able to buy a vehicle for the first time. Women started to work outside the home in much greater numbers.
Many of these early types of complexity paid back well. For example, interstate highways made travel faster. Early computers could handle many bookkeeping chores. Contraceptive pills made it possible for women to plan their families. Without so many children, working outside the home was more of a possibility for women.
[3] Many indirect changes took place between 1948 and 1970 that would be harder to maintain if oil supplies stopped growing as rapidly and as inexpensively as they did during this early period.
If we look back, we know that in the 1600s and 1700s, people worked pretty much all their lives. It was the growth in energy supplies in the 1800s and 1900s that allowed governments to expand their services. They could promise to provide pensions and health care benefits. The rapid growth in oil supplies in the 1948 to 1970 period allowed even more expansion of government benefits, as well as other changes.
US Medicare was added in 1965, providing healthcare benefits to the elderly and disabled. Schools were integrated, promising better education for Black children. After actuarial models started to suggest that pensions could pay out a great deal in pension benefits, businesses started to award pensions to workers, in addition to Social Security.
Social standards started changing, too. Dating couples didn’t have to worry about the woman accidentally getting pregnant, at least in theory. No fault divorce became available. Government programs became available to provide funds to single or divorced parents with children.
Of course, if wages of young people started to stagnate, or if there were too many divorces of low-wage people, this whole approach wouldn’t work as well. It would be harder to tax wages enough to pay for the many benefits for the elderly, the disabled, and those with low incomes.
[4] Governments facing the problem of high-cost oil did exactly what families with suddenly high-cost food would do, if they had unlimited credit cards. They ran up increasing amounts of debt, to pay for all the promised programs.
We know with our own finances that if we are spending too much on food, we can temporarily work around this problem by maxing out our credit cards and adding more debt in other ways. I believe that the world economy has been doing something similar for a long time.
The push toward added debt has become much greater since 2008 (Figure 1), but the general trend toward increased debt started back in the early 1980s, about the time Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher began their terms. Businesses decided that they needed to use what they now called “leverage” to obtain higher profits.
The debt that economies added was a kind of complexity. If the debt was invested in factories or industry that paid back well, everything went well.
But not all the uses of debt went into approaches that paid back well. For example, paying doctors to give high-priced treatments to elderly people who were certain to die within a few months did not provide much benefit to the economy, apart from the money the physician and the rest of the health care system obtained to spend on other goods and services.
Another way the growing debt was used was to invest in international trade. Companies found that they could outsource many kinds of manufacturing processes to low-wage countries in Southeast Asia, leading to cost savings relative to paying for high-priced US labor. (Human labor is a type of energy used by the economy.) In these Southeast Asian countries, coal was used for many processes, making the energy part of manufacturing costs cheaper, too.
The US and other Advanced Economies (defined as members of the Organization for Economic Development (OECD)) seemed to benefit because goods made in Southeast Asia were cheaper than what Advanced Economies could make for themselves. Two major issues arose, however:
a. Wages for the less-skilled workers in the US tended to stagnate or fall.
One reason for stagnating pay was because of wage competition with low-wage countries. As a result, the middle class has tended to disappear. Wage disparity has become a problem.
b. Advanced Economies tended to lose the ability to make many essential goods and services for themselves. If a shortage of inputs were to occur in the future, they would be at a disadvantage.
[5] Now the consequences of too many governmental promises are becoming clear.
Advanced Economies around the world are finding their debt levels ballooning. Much of their higher expenditures are on programs citizens expect to continue forever.
US leaders can see that practically the only way that they can fix this situation is by cutting back on many programs the public depends on. If a leader like Trump has a lot of power, he can also try to get a larger share of the world’s output by imposing tariffs on the output of other countries. Neither of these approaches will be popular with very many people. If nothing else, there will be conflict over who gets cut out if cuts are necessary.
Other Advanced Nations face similar problems.
[6] Leaders have not told the public about the likelihood of a shortfall of energy supplies and the difficulties this would cause.
Physicists have been warning that a shortfall in fossil fuel supplies was likely to occur since the 1950s. More recent models, such as the modeling represented in the 1972 book, The Limits to Growth, gave a similar picture.
Part of the confusion has been that economists have given an optimistic view of what is ahead. Their (oversimplified) models indicate that in the case of a shortfall, prices will rise. With these high prices, a huge amount of difficult-to-extract fossil fuels would shortly become available, or substitutes would be found.
In my opinion, the model of economists is incorrect. With the middle class shrinking, there is not enough “demand” to keep the price of any commodity up for very long. Instead, prices tend to bounce up and down. This can be seen for oil on Figure 2. Pricing represents a two-way tug-of-war: Prices need to be high enough for the producers to make a profit, but end products (including food grown and transported using oil) must be inexpensive enough for consumers to afford.
With one story being told by the physicists and another by the economists, competing belief systems arose:
- One saying that there would be a major shortage of fossil fuels, particularly oil, starting in the first half of the 21st century because the only fossil fuels we can extract are the fairly accessible fossil fuels. There are constraints caused by geology that seem to be difficult to work around, arising from limitations caused by physics.
- The other saying that any such problems lie far in the future. We should be able to develop new techniques quickly. Otherwise, any shortfall should cause prices to rise high enough to pay for more expensive techniques, or to find substitutes.
Both sides could see a need to limit consumption, one side because we appeared not to have enough, and the other because, if we really could extract as much fossil fuels as they considered possible, models suggested that there would be a climate problem.
To try to satisfy both sides, politicians decided to push the “save the world from CO2 emissions” narrative. This approach had an added benefit: Businesses wanting to import low-priced goods and services, made in China and other low-cost countries, very much favored it. The limitation on CO2 emissions of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol was simply a local limitation on emissions, not a limitation on CO2 on imported goods.
[7] The Kyoto Protocol, as implemented, has had the opposite effect from the hoped-for reduction in world CO2 from fossil fuels.
What has happened with the 1997 Kyoto Protocol is precisely what businesses, looking to sell low-cost goods made in Southeast Asia, wanted. Manufacturing and other types of industry have tended to move out of the Advanced Economies, and into lower-cost countries.
Total world CO2 emissions have risen, rather than fallen.
[8] The supposed transition to wind turbines and solar panels is not going well.
Wind turbines and solar panels, the way that they are now being added to the overall electric grid, are having far less benefit than most people had hoped. Of course, their benefit is only with respect to electricity production. Farming, transportation of many kinds, and other industries use a great deal of oil and coal, in addition to grid electricity.
Figure 8 shows a breakdown of world energy consumption by type. Electricity from wind turbines and solar panels makes up only the tiny reddish portion at the top. It represents only 3% of the total energy consumption.
We usually hear about wind and solar electricity as a percentage of electricity production. This is a higher percentage, which averages close to 15%.
The areas with the highest percentage of wind and solar electricity generation are already experiencing blackouts because differences from grid electricity have not sufficiently been compensated for. For example, Spain experienced a 10-hour blackout on April 28, 2025, because of low “inertia.” Inertia usually comes from the rotating turbines used in the production of electricity using coal, natural gas, nuclear, or hydroelectric.
Figure 10 shows that in 2024, wind and solar electricity amounted to between 5% and 6% of energy consumption in Australia and the EU. Their high level of usage helped to bring the world average up to a little under 3% of total energy.
[9] There are important things about ecosystems in general and our economy in particular that we are not told about.
I don’t think that educators and politicians are generally aware of the following issues relating to ecosystems and our economy:
a. Ecosystems are built to be resilient. As dissipative structures, ecosystems and economies are “self-organizing structures” powered by energy, just as the human body is. We need not fret that we are responsible for species extinction. Ecosystems, like plants and animals, have short lifetimes. A replacement ecosystem will quickly develop if adequate resources (such as sunlight and water) are available. Furthermore, the waste (or pollution) of one species helps provide the nutrition for other species; CO2 provided by burning fuel helps plants grow. Over the long history of life on earth, 99.9999% of plant and animal species have died out and been replaced by other species.
b. Ecosystems and economies also tend to heal themselves, just as human wounds tend to heal themselves. If a fire, or a type of beetle, destroys an ecosystem, replacement plants and accompanying animals will soon find a way to populate the area. If a major government fails, or banks fail, somehow workarounds will be found to take their place. Human systems need order; if governments fail, religious systems that provide order may become more important.
c. Humans, unlike other animals, have a built-in need for supplemental energy, such as firewood, or fossil fuel energy. Over one million years ago, pre-humans figured out how to cook part of their food. Because of this cooked food, their jaws and digestive apparatus could shrink in size. The improved food supply allowed their brains to improve in complexity. Also, cooked food greatly reduced the time required for chewing, allowing more time for toolmaking and crafts. Heat is also important for killing pathogens in water.
d. Humans are smarter than other animals, allowing the population of humans to grow, while the population of many other species tends to fall. This issue continues today:
The large rise in the population of the less advanced economies contributes to the huge number of immigrants wanting new homes in higher income countries. The book, Too Smart for our Own Good by Craig Dilworth, discusses this issue further.
e. It is ultimately the rising population issue discussed in (d) that leads to the typical overshoot and collapse situation. The issue is that available resources do not rise fast enough (in the area, or with the technology available) to provide enough physical goods and services for the population. If a new approach can be developed, or a neighboring area with additional resources can be conquered, population can start to grow again. Figure 12 represents my attempt to show the shape of a typical secular cycle (also called overshoot and collapse cycle) based on Turchin and Nefedov’s research regarding collapses of agricultural economies.
f. Outgrowing our resource base is not a phenomenon that began with fossil fuels. In 2020, I wrote a post explaining how Humans Left Sustainability Behind as Hunter-Gatherers. In 1796, when world population was about one billion, Robert Thomas Malthus wrote about population growing faster than food production. This was before fossil fuels were widely used. Now, about 230 years later, population has risen to eight billion, thanks to the availability of fossil fuels. We need major innovations, or additional energy resource types, if we want to work around obstacles now.
[10] We seem to be reaching the end of the Stagflation Period in Figure 12. We are likely starting along the long downslope of the Crisis Period.
In my opinion, the Stagflation Period began when US oil production peaked, in 1970. The estimated length of the Stagflation Period is 50 to 60 years. The 1970 peak is now 55 years behind us, so the timing is just as expected.
The Crisis period is next, listed as lasting perhaps 20 to 50 years. This is the period when governments and financial systems fail. What we think of as national boundaries can be expected to change, while countries themselves will generally become smaller. With less energy per capita, the quantity of government services provided can be expected to fall. Government organizations can be expected to become smaller and simpler. It is unlikely that democracies can continue; authoritarian rulers with a support staff are more likely. Plagues may cause the overall population to fall.
We don’t know if the pattern shown on Figure 12 is the correct model for modern times, but we should not be surprised if things do change in this direction. Governments may fail, and, in fact, the replacement governments may fail repeatedly.
I believe that uranium production is also constrained by prices that never go high enough, for long enough, to increase supply.
To pull us out of this predicament, new energy supplies will need to be developed, or old ones dramatically improved. At the same time, the system will need to reorganize in such a way to use these new, improved energy supplies. I would expect that in the new system, the general trend will once again be toward more complexity. New customs and new variations on religions may also develop.
It is theoretically possible that AI could help us find solutions quickly, so we never go deeply into the Crisis Period.
If much of the world economy does temporarily head downward because of limited fossil fuel supplies, some researchers might continue to work on solutions. Other people may temporarily need to focus on growing enough food, close to where it is needed, and finding sufficient fuel sources to at least cook much of this food. Nice things we are used to, such as home heating and repaving of roads by governments, are likely to be cut back greatly.
[11] Hope for the future.
We know that there are many ideas that are being worked on now that might be helpful for the future. They just aren’t ready to be scaled up, yet.
At the same time, some energy types we have today might work better if used in a different way. For example, solar panels seem to provide intermittent electricity for a long period, with relatively little maintenance. If they can be made to work where intermittent electricity is sufficient, and their use directed specifically to those locations, perhaps this might be a better use for them than putting them on the grid. Solar panels are made with fossil fuels, but they do act to stretch the electricity from those fuels.
Another possibility for hope comes through greater efficiency in using fossil fuels. History suggests that if we can figure out how to use fossil fuels more efficiently, the price of fossil fuels can rise higher. With a higher (inflation-adjusted) price, more oil and other fossil fuels can perhaps be extracted.
One thing that strikes me is the fact that economies are put together in an amazingly organized manner, with humans seeming to be put in charge of them. Everything I can see seems to suggest that there is a Higher Power, which some might call God, that is behind everything that happens. People talk about economies being self-organizing. However, in a way, it is as if a Higher Power is helping organize things for us. It appears to me that creation is an ongoing process, not something that stopped 13.8 billion years ago or 6,000 years ago.
Seeing how ecosystems heal themselves, and how humans have made it through many secular cycles so far, gives me hope for the future.
How AI is going to save us. As if we didn’t have enough problems.
Again, I heard all the stories 2015-17.
I don’t care if I stagnate. I am not going thru this bs again
There obviously creating a NWO!
Buckle up.
It can’t be avoided.
*you can’t be neutral on moving train.
Markets Rebound As Vance Plays Good Cop; Says ‘Willing To Be Reasonable’ With China
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/markets-rebound-vance-plays-good-cop-says-willing-be-reasonable-china
I wonder how much of this is orchestrated for insiders to short the market and then go long.
The self-organizing economy works strangely. Any too extreme movement gets pushed back.
Fastest TACO yet .
””Don’t worry about China, it will all be fine! Highly respected President Xi just had a bad moment. He doesn’t want Depression for his country, and neither do I. The U.S.A. wants to help China, not hurt it!!!”
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/markets-rebound-vance-plays-good-cop-says-willing-be-reasonable-china
Ah, the good old days sound like today with shingle family women raising the kids and no one knows who’s the Daddy….
Think men were always the hunters? Stone Age women took down mammoths too – and that’s not all
What were the lives of women like throughout the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic periods? Modern archaeology is only just beginning to provide a clear picture
https://www.historyextra.com/period/prehistoric/stone-age-palaeolithic-women-hunters-social-role/
The invisible work of women
“In early societies, so much of what was produced – whether it was baskets or fishing nets, or some of the earliest forms of clothing – has disintegrated with time. Women were heavily involved in manufacturing those perishable goods, but because they haven’t survived, I think we have, to an extent, really sidelined women’s contribution to these societies,” says Bateman.
Life was harsh, and women were certainly not confined to passive roles. They crafted clothing from hides and sinew, stitched with bone needles, and their handiwork was essential to life in freezing conditions. They gathered plants, berries, roots and nuts – knowledge that required expert ecological awareness. And, as recent research shows, many also took part in the hunt.
It’s only in the last couple of decades or so that archaeologists have begun using the latest DNA technology – more recently examining teeth – to find out that some hunters originally presumed male were actually female,” says Bateman.
Believe me, in my lifetime I’ve ran many women that were excellent hunters
i wasnt denigrating the role of womem, in fact i think women were the great tool innovators.
i was putting across the point thatnurturing a baby doesnt fit well with hunting techniques..
I notice this article says,
The article also mentions that plants were an important part of the diets, too.
In the European forests, the hazelnut may have been predominant 5000 years ago. Even here in the Alps this is the case in places, although the natural Triassic is spruce, beech, larch. In northern Germany, it was possible to prove that hazel harvesting and processing played an essential role, there are places for drying and roasting large quantities.
Thus, in addition to fish, meat and herbs, the food of the ancients would have consisted to a large extent of nuts. They are easy to store and trade and hygienically packed by nature. Nuts are, first of all, fat. People are likely to have fed on fat metabolism.
I am afraid that for a long time there have been few opportunities to live on the basis of glucose or starch. In individual cases, there may have been cattail (typha), but it does not grow everywhere here. All starchy vegetables known to me are created only by breeding. The rutabaga (Brassica napus) reached Germany from Scandinavia in the 17th century. The Roman philosophers have recommended a mainly glucose-based diet based on cereals, honey and wine. And what happened? Rome has fallen!
Yes, thanks.
What most of the “paleo diet” proponents don’t tell us is that [true paleo] means NO grains fed meat in the first place.. Which is possible-doable but rather elevated luxury as per today’s setting. And obviously an impossibility at current overall pop densities..
I don’t see why it’s impossible. Read Simon Fairlie’s 2010 book ‘Meat: A Benign Extravagance’.
https://www.amazon.com/Meat-Benign-Extravagance-Simon-Fairlie/dp/1603583246
The blurb about “Meat: A Benign Extravagance” says:
We seem to be eating too much meat now. Cutting back would seem to be helpful.
Our sheep and lambs never get fed grain, though to get them from pasture to pasture they will chase me for what I call the doritos mix, mineral salt and a little bit of grain. You can taste the difference versus lamb that was raised on grain. Our wool processor says that our wool is much better because of this.
For meat chickens, I give them grain in the morning, but only enough for the morning, after that they have to forage. The state inspector said these birds are perfect, whatever you are doing don’t stop, or as one friend said that’s worth squawking about.
For laying hens, they get grain in the winter, but otherwise only enough to keep them from wandering too far, yes no fencing at all. The eggs are so much better than any free range organic you can buy, with bright orange yolks.
https://www.umasspress.com/9781625349026/lambs-in-winter/
Acorns was most likely an important crop in stone age northern Europe. They consist of starch. They have to be leaked from tannic acid, before eating, there are different procedures for this.
In north america there are records of acorns being a staple crop. Acorn shells don’t preserve as well as hazel nut shells, hence the lack of archeological evidence in Europe.
People in Europe have forgotten about this food source. But there is a growing interest, I know several people who collect acorns and use it as a staple crop.
Something to keep in mind. Georgia gets a lot of acorns in the fall, also.
Don’t forget to leach them to get rid of tannic acid. Tannic acid is poisonous in quantity. Occasionally cows can die from gorging on acorns. Pigs are more tolerant than other livstock,
My goats forage for acorns under the oak trees. Crunch crunch…they love them
With such arguments, I always think: what other mistakes have they made if they have thought so logically at this point?
And then I think: help, I’m surrounded by imbeciles!
Cited from B the Honest Sorcerer’s blog this morning https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/the-mythical-return-to-coal?
comes this excellent essay. (Actually, both are.)
https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2025/09/15/insights-from-the-lotka-volterra-model/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
I agree that both are excellent. Blair Fix in the second post says,
The first post is about coal. I agree that we are past peak in coal, as well.
They can’t cover this in the UK press, apparently, but Times of India does. The headline is hyperbole but telling news. Shape of things to come here, I think.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/etimes/trending/why-are-millions-fleeing-the-uk-heres-why-the-country-is-seeing-mass-migration/articleshow/124477818.cms
Hope Norman doesn’t get left out of the exit door…maybe he can get dual citizenship somewhere and be safe and effective..Fast Eddy may help
Millionaires are leaving the UK because of high taxes and lack of suitable housing. This gives a hint why (taxing the rich) cannot work.
Young people would also like to leave because of the falling standards of living.
i’m just a pound short
as usual
Well don’t come to New Zealand, we’re taxed even higher. Last thing we need is mass pommygration
New Zealand is so far south, it’s a wonder it doesn’t fall off the edge of the world, or at the very least, slide down the globe and bump into Antarctica.
Good article over at Zerohedge on rising electricity costs.
https://www.zerohedge.com/ai/goldman-maps-out-power-bill-crisis-afford-concerns-stay-localized#google_vignette
A lot of really good charts including this one:
https://x.com/zerohedge/status/1976028841929039982?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1976028841929039982%7Ctwgr%5E1ddbeafbeac61a79dfe81b93812676d7773ccd11%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fai%2Fgoldman-maps-out-power-bill-crisis-afford-concerns-stay-localized
It’s not just production, which is what the ZH article complains about when they talk about states shutting down facilities in order to be “green,” (ZH articles are always heavily slanted to getting digs on leftist / Democratic mismanagement, as if the Republicans cared about the grid and it’s not a resource problem), the existing grid can’t carry the increased demand load. So, sizable upgrades to the transmission grid would also be required.
Good triage would involve making AI data centers generate their own electricity so that the investors who believe in this dream pay for it, instead of being subsidized by all consumers, who are required to pay for the increased capex costs through their electric bills.
“Good triage would involve making AI data centers generate their own electricity so that the investors who believe in this dream pay for it, instead of being subsidized by all consumers, who are required to pay for the increased capex costs through their electric bills.”
There is an alternative idea: Perhaps making AI independent of the grid(humans) is a short sighted idea.
We are becoming politicalized, if it is not part of our personal narrative, it is false and even evil.
Dennis L.
tagio didn’t say anything about putting AI on its own grid. Obviously that wouldn’t work. He’s saying that the profitable AI bubble shouldn’t be fundamentally subsidized by common folk to the point where they start becoming unable to afford their leccy. Then there’s the specter of automating away their jobs Not liking being taken advantage of isn’t a political sentiment in and of itself.
It’s all becoming moot anyway. If you listen to NPR regularly while driving the steel horse, the mainstream liberals are being herded into a virulently populist, anti-AI politics. Once again the fragmenting MAGA is finding itself all alone on another big issue.
If AI could use only intermittent electricity, separate from the grid, that might work. The intermittent energy could allow models to run off historical data when electricity happens to be available. Perhaps the rest isn’t so heavily electricity dependent?
Nice idea. I do think if AI is gonna stick around for Phase 2 then it will be the Chinese type and not for consumer culture but rather essential services. Sticking it on renewables nodes where applicable and running it’s operations during the nighttime on hydroelectric power.
Many things are going into rising electricity prices. Transitioning to electricity would not work!
Given your thesis which I believe, what will work?
Dennis L.
A long downward fall of the economy, and then up again, because of some innovation that unlocks remaining coal and uranium?
Some new approach that works off of the gravitational force?
Something totally new?
Second coming?
It looks like we are doing pretty badly in many directions. While we may have some natural gas left, it is terribly expensive to ship as LNG, so it is not as useful as a person might hope.
The big problem is too many people, and that is a difficult one.
you should look into natural hydrogen also known as white hydrogen ,my late father always told me not to worry water energy would save us so white hydrogen or natural hydrogen will saveus , its clean, cheap a d there is an unlimited supply down in the earth , I personally have invested a couple of thousand dollars in these companies to help this new energy prospect take off ,I believe this energy prospect to be the only hope mankind has .As you have said continually we need “cheap energy” to power the worlds systems if capitalism and population growth are to continue.
once you have unlimited energy
then
you need unlimited person-growth to buy and sell the stuff you produce with that energy.
funny–aint it, while everybody bleats on about the first part….
very few can see that the second part goes hand in hand with it.
imagine—having an unlimited number of power stations, and no lightbulbs—that, in effect, is what we are talking about…..
Less people leads to less effects of scale. Our technologic culture is connected to large populations, think of roads, wires, satelites, farming, fishing, semi-conductors, communications but also glass, steel, ceramics, textiles.
Are we past peak solar and peak wind!
Probably not. There is quite a bit in the pipeline. China is changing (reducing) its support for wind and solar.
https://www.energyconnects.com/news/renewables/2025/february/china-revamps-power-market-rules-in-challenge-to-renewables-boom/
Notice when shows or celebs get washed up they always get into politics.
Kid Rock, Saturday Night Live, Howard Stern, Colbert, Joe Rogan, Bruce Springsteen, Tim Allen,,,etc.
Politics has always been the “last refugee of a scoundrel”.
I have thought about that. Perhaps “stars” have something in their projected images which are very influential emotionally.
Would Eisenhower be electable today? No hair, but intelligence beneath the skin/bone.
I suspect this is very well understood by those in power. Politics is power and today that is projected visually.
Dennis L.
There is a story that David Eisenhower (as he was called as a boy) hurt his leg and the dr recommended amputating it.
Unfortunately for millions of people in Central Europe, she refused.
Eisenhower NEVER did anything to upset the Soviets. He was the best US president USSR ever had.
If someone else was there , for example, the British, French and Israelis would have owned the Suez canal now.
USSR should have been crushed long ago. Eisenhower was too timid.
Media spin and reality .https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2025/10/09/britain-now-fully-dependent-on-imports-to-avoid-winter-blackouts/
The story about electricity needs and availability is complex. The example given here relates to how the media misses important details in describing winter electricity availability. They will need to import natural gas to keep the system going. The batteries that are available are only available for a few minutes. The inter-connector with Ireland goes both ways, so it could be an electricity drain, not source.
Bill “GATES OF HELL”
Looking like a wreck on CNBC. He really shouldn’t go on tv looking like this.
https://x.com/wideawake_media/status/1977313667411542252
Bill Gates should at least comb his hair.
This is exactly how Howard Hughes started. And look what happened to him.
https://x.com/BeschlossDC/status/1329558474632650753
“Exclusive: AI could erase 100 million U.S. jobs, Senate Dem report finds”?
https://www.axios.com/2025/10/06/ai-us-jobs-cut-100-million-democrats?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Here in England, looking back to the early 1980s and the enthusiasm about computing, we got headlines in the newspapers such as “Chips with everything!” In British English, “chips”, referring to food, means French fries, so that was a pun. (American “chips” are “crisps” in British English).
Google tells me:
2002/2003: This period marks the point when more than half of British households owned a computer, as ownership rose from 49% to 55%.
By 2015/2016: Computer ownership reached a peak of 88% in UK households.
So the revolution didn’t happen all at once, but now we can’t imagine a world without computers – unless it’s one that belongs to our past. (“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there – L. P. Hartley).
I’d say that AI is starting a second computer revolution. This one may be faster, but we shall see.
I was sceptical about AI when I first tried out CoPilot a few months ago. It “forgot” things that I told it (e.g. in my parameters for complicated lists) and got some things wrong. I recently switched to ChatGPT and I find it phenomenal, so I have ditched CoPilot. (Dennis L tells us that CoPilot is good for programming and code, though).
ChatGPT is a marvellous researcher and secretary, and it builds complicated lists and downloadable CSV spreadsheets containing the answers to my queries, and it also provides illustrative images of them if required. A friend recently sent me an email of an article he had written. His prose was a bit leaden, so I put it through ChatGPT, and it toned up his prose amazingly. It was much tauter and better presented. So I have changed my opinion about AI now. Why wouldn’t I want a free researcher, secretary, and editor? Probably different versions of AI have different strengths, though, so you need to find those that suit your purposes.
Now the question will be about resources. But AI itself will be able to speed up research about alternatives, and I am sure that it will help in the creation of nanomaterials that could provide replacements of materials in short supply.
The couple of backwardists and reactionaries here will disagree, of course. But so be it.
fish and chips they eat in the UK came from Israel.
*Jewish, I meant to say.
I’ve heard both Italy and Portugal. I think really Saint George must have brought them!
Laughing quietly.
Dennis L.
The politicians need to find a scapegoat for all the problems they have created over the decades. Aren’t “Democracy, ” women’s suffrage, illegal alien invasion and a fractional reserve debt-based fiat monetary system wonderful things? One of the problems was the creation of the bureaucratic bloat and a nation festering with parasites. Now that the host can no longer support them through the twin exigencies of increasing cost of raw materials /energy and the snowballing debts, these non productive people will have to be cut. Just blame it on AI. It kills two birds with one stone: AI eliminates parasites now that they have served their purpose, and it enables a digital control fence to be built around the producers.
“For starters, the tax law has to be changed so that there is a 90% tax (not 15%) on capital gains from passive activity , i.e, from “financialization,” to penalize this non-productivity. It is a destructive wealth extractor and transferer from productive to the non-productive.”
In the UK in 1975 the marginal tax rate on *un-earned* income was 98%. At the time very rich people paid about 83% on their earned income, so they kept 17% and not 2% if they’d worked for it. 50 years later, the UK tax on dividends is lower than the tax on wages or salaries which seems crazy.
“OSHA admits it told healthcare employers not to report covid vaccine injuries: After a whistleblower alerted The Defender, an OSHA spokesperson confirmed an internal directive telling healthcare employers not to report or track COVID-19 vaccine injuries. OSHA removed the policy from its website after inquiries from The Defender. Critics said the directive concealed the scope of vaccine injuries and made it difficult for injured workers to obtain workers’ compensation or disability benefits.”?
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/exclusive-osha-admits-healthcare-employers-told-not-to-report-covid-vaccine-injuries/
The article says:
How ridiculous!
I’m going to make another attempt on #oil to explain why I think it’s going to end up with a $40 handle in the best case, with a $20 handle in the cards (black swan). It has nothing to do with the fundamentals of the trade, and everything to do with prior precedent and existing market signals.
https://x.com/LibertyOffense/status/1976683139146686756
I agree that oil prices might drop, but I don’t think the gold-to-oil ratio is very useful in explaining much. Oil is primarily traded in USD, not gold. It makes more sense to price a commodity against a basket of commodities to identify price deviations rather than relying on just one.
The party that has got a name representing our actual car affordability problems is going to be a part of the new Czech government.
Motorists for Themselves – Wikipedia https://share.google/DGpKA7Yt0ntCdqwJF
https://www.topky.sk/cl/11/9224213/Babisova-nova-vlada-nabera-realne-kontury–ANO–SPD-a-Motoristi-si-rozdelili-moc
Also some interesting adjustments regarding the ministries are going to be implemented.
This is a way to hit back when things aren’t going well.
Trump Administration Warns Food Stamps Could Run Dry Next Month
“The Trump administration is quietly warning state governments that it will soon run out of money to pay full Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits — potentially cutting off aid to 42 million Americans if the government shutdown continues into November, according to a letter obtained by Axios.
https://www.azexpress.net/en/news/884/scoop-trump-administration-warns-food-stamps-could-run-dry-next-month
a hungry man is an ANGRY man. -Bob Marley
I read something in the last few days that said they’ll continue to pay SNAP out of tariffs income.
trump wants violent unrest
that way he can use the military to suppress it (that has already started)
and then ”suspend” elections as ”temporary measure” until he ”straightens things out”
after that there will be no more elections, at least not honest one…
i would heve thought this was glaringly obvious…
We’re headed that way no matter who’s driving the bus.
Trump is no different then Starmer in your country.
i might be wrong mob.
but i dont recall starmer—for all his faults—having to settle lawsuits for for fraud, or openly bragging about being a sexual predator, or threatening to jail his opponents., before taking the office of prime minister
the above are just a sample—i can supply the full list if you dont already have it.
of course you might see these as virtues in a leader.—you may even want a dictator to rule your life…. (well everybody elses life of course)
who am i to judge
Well, Norman, the US is a much greater nation than the UK. It provides much greater opportunities for sleaze of all kinds.
Starmer has been caught feeding at the trough, accepting presents for service rendered. But the opportunities available to him as UK PM are very modest compared to what a POTUS has access to.
I seem to recall, though, that you were totally untroubled by all the sleaze that Joe Biden was neck deep in while he was “in power”. Such as all the Ukrainian and Chinese kickbacks and the “10% for the big guy” boasts of his sun Hunter. All this apparently passed you by.
So it occurs to me that you are less bothered by sleaze per se than you are by scandals attached to Donald Trump. You have Trump Derangement Syndrome, but not Starmer Derangement Syndrome or Biden Derangement Syndrome.
Your derangement is obvious, but it is not general or total. It is a specific derangement concerning a cartoon character with orange hair who is living rent free in your head and irritating that poor tortured thing between your ears that passes for a brain.
Until you kick this cartoon character out of your head, you will not get any better.
oh—i nearly forgot starmer accepting a $450m bribe with wings on it.
how silly of me to miss that!!!
No more honest elections?
Heaven forfend!
This does sound very disturbing:
“Trump Administration Warns Food Stamps Could Run Dry Next Month”
Nobody mentioned it yet..
Morgan can oftentimes outmatch himself in clarity of thought in writing and as a superb wordsmith.
So, in summary (mine): ~deep chaos at many/most “western civ” enclaves and some quasi stability through reform and autocracy by the Asian giants.
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2025/10/11/312-a-stroll-along-revolution-street/
B from The Honest Sorcerer has an October 5th post on The End of Degrowth. I see a lot of conversation on OFW today regarding Venezuela. The degrowth article is very good & he has an interesting take on Venezuela and Iran.
One thing B says is this:
This is what happened starting in the late 70s and the early 1980s, as it became clear that we lost the rapidly growing supply of cheap oil.
He also says:
We are in some sense already at war with China. It is just not playing out as in hot wars.
Degrowth is here since the 1970s?! LOL. B is a kook just like the other B of MOA.
I am also saying something equivalent to “DeGrowth started in the 1970s”. This is when we lost an expanding supply of $20 per barrel oil. Governments made promises and the economy changed as if that growing $20 per barrel oil would stay forever. Of course, it didn’t. So the government had to substitute debt. It is that debt that is pulling the economy down. It is the growing substitution of debt for oil that started about 1980 that is the problem.
None of that has anything to do with degrowth which seems like a word that now equals fascism in meaninglessness, as a result of overuse/abuse.
Steve From Virginia always insisted that fashion was fundamental problem of civilization. Reverse Engineer always countered that the will to power was the problem. Neither of them were wrong but Steve’s argument was the more exclusive one.
Fashion desires something for nothing and though that do be a will to power it also has no traction. It’s a dandy exercise in futility. Losing traction is the merit-based aspect of the standing still that causes us to fall behind. Let every key word be a deep lug on a knobby tire.
seems trivial now…..but rember back in the day, when you used to get free gifts as a reward for buying petrol?
there was so much of the stuff available, they bribed you to buy it.
think about it—-it was the summation of our surplus energy economy—that was our ‘lifestyle’ back then, we lived on the surplus energy of oil.—note the ‘surplus’ part.
flying was so cheap, it became commonplace–planes were like buses.
we’ve moved on since then, but we still think we have that ”surplus”
we dont…..we lost that, and subsituted debt to make up for the surplus we no longer have, to kid ourselves (we are all MAGA nuts) that our dreamtime will not become a nightmare.
but it has become a nightmare.
the chief maganut has made promises he cannot keep, that the dreamtime will go on forever.
but his billionaire buddies know better—they know what will happen as reality kicks in…this is why they bought the supreme court, in order to give him absolute power as POTUS.
Now you have militia on the streets, with the backing of a man who has total disregard of the law and constitution.
the dreamtime ended in 1970, now the debt time is coming to an end, 50 years later. (inevitable)
welcome to the mid-2020s
Yes, those were the days, when you funded half your expenditure with Green Shield stamps, eh, Mr. P ? I expect you think those days will come again.
But NP is already prepared for peak oil. He’ll fuel his 1960’s bubble-car with his own home-made dandelion wine. Way to go! 😉
you are showing signs of creativity dem
all is not lost
Mark Sledoda explains to Nima Alkhorshid that US is near to attack Venezuela and make a regime change there (probably substituting Maduro with the new Nobel peace prize winner).
Objective?
Put hands on Venezuelan oil and substituting Russian oil purchase currently made by India and Europe with Venezuelan oil become, at last, property of US.
Trump is about to take his easy win, that is Venezuela.
Venezueallah is just another Gaza stroke with options and costs.
There never seems to be an easy win, today, I am afraid.
https://x.com/BowesChay/status/1977086003220255044
Made the news on ZH too, I think. Anyways, explosive factory in Tennessee went up.
Strange!
One of my great uncles died in a famous gunpowder storage explosion near Bologna in July 1940 (his wife was pregnant with their 3rd child). As Italy had joined WW2 2 months prior, it has always been assumed that this was the British’s work. That was a much bigger event though.
The link says:
.
“My ability to grow crops has not been very good. I have been trying to do it without the things that wouldn’t be available without fossil fuels. That approach doesn’t work well at all. You need netting to keep critters away, for example.”
Gail, my ability to grow crops was not great either. I bought this farm over 30 years ago. I needed a wife that was good with vegetable gardening, I already had the sheep and chickens doing well. So here is my wife’s book that just came out about our farm and more.
Lambs in Winter
Sketches of a Vermont Life Through Seasons of Change
by Alexis Lathem
“Finding hope in a small farm, an engaged community, and an age-old connection to the earth
After half a lifetime spent moving from place to place, Alexis Lathem at last settled down with her husband on a small farm near Vermont’s largest city. The lyric essays of Lambs in Winter take readers through the seasonal cycles of raising sheep and hens and growing fruits and vegetables while confronting the challenges of winter storms, summer floods, invasive weeds, and pests and diseases.
Ever conscious of her place in a historically colonized and ecologically degraded landscape, Lathem wrestles with ethical questions that come to many rural dwellers who—following Thoreau—set out to “live deliberately,” in a time of climate crisis, persistent racial inequity, and growing economic inequality. Likewise, she grapples with the moral complexities of small-scale animal husbandry. Through her efforts at self-provisioning, without holding illusions of the self-reliant individual, Lathem finds herself deeply embedded in the community and reliant on others, especially as her region deals with repeated catastrophic flooding brought on by climate change.
Through elegant prose and insightful investigations into pressing contemporary issues, Lathem evokes the world of her farm and the surrounding countryside with a spiritual awareness of the human journey on this earth. Living in place, attuned to the unfolding changes in the world around her, gives her much to grieve, but the pages of Lambs in Winter are luminous with moments of joy and beauty.”
https://www.umasspress.com/9781625349026/lambs-in-winter/
The dollar is our currency, and your problem.
Hey jazzguit, lets bring in a little drums compliments of rock solid time keeper Kenny Aronoff on drums.
John Cougar really had it right 35 years ago in the YouTube prolog. Because it wasn’t just nature’s aversity from weather, pests, blight, soil erosion etc. The biggest was the parasitic bankers and traders. Now they have morphed into private equity and venture capitalist monsters, Blackrock style.
For starters, the tax law has to be changed so that there is a 90% tax (not 15%) on capital gains from passive activity , i.e, from “financialization,” to penalize this non-productivity. It is a destructive wealth extractor and transferer from productive to the non-productive.
We need to decentralize. Penalize mutli-unit dwellings and give tax break advantages to small single family housing.
“Peacefully” protesting and voting are useless to effect change. That’s what the globalists want us to think as they laugh at us. There are no political, legal, or consitutional remedies. Only money and bullets will talk. I disagree with those who say violence is never the answer. I am well aware that consequences from violence can be the utlimate “be careful what you wish for.” But “violence in the face of tyranny is often necessary.” wrote Brandon Smith of alt-market.us in an article back @ 2014. “Sometimes, you just have to fight.”
Rain on the scarecrow.
jazz congrats on your success.
Jazz, thanks for the link…just noticed it. As a Helene and Scott Nearing “Living the Good Life” discipline myself will read it myself. Actually, visited Mrs Nearing several times at Forest Farm Homestead in Harborside, Maine before she died. Gracious hostess and tolerated my “city boy” naivete.
The mission of The Good Life Center is to perpetuate the legacy of Helen and Scott Nearing.
The Good Life Center, through its programming and preservation of the historic Forest Farm homestead, advocates for simple and sustainable living skills, social and economic justice, organic gardening, and the non-exploitation of animals and the environment.
https://goodlife.org/
I know the graft in the EU . I drive along a stretch of a street 1-2 kms where the EU offices are located and have the time to study the landscape . Why ? The speed limit is 30 Km/h and traffic lights are every 200 metres . It is another world . Chic restaurants , men and women are so well chiselled and dressed that would put Armani , Dior and YSL to shame . All living off the fat of the land . However the problem is it is never enough .
”Finally, the fakes and the real ones. Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, poor thing, can’t live on 4,900 euros a month. ” . Patrick Raymond . Use translator .
https://lachute.over-blog.com/2025/10/les-miserables.html
Request to Patrick . Please update on the political situation in France . Merci .
The way the well-off make money, from dividing up real estate and renting it out. These folks can’t afford very much, so they are happy to live with the low rent that goes with modest quarters. Living on the street, with nothing over their heads would be worse.
Pingback: A Banquet of Consequences – Revelation Six
“China’s long-time complaint has been that, despite buying 70% of the world’s iron ore, they don’t have pricing power. They need to abide by Western-controlled pricing benchmarks like Platts. Chinese analysts point out the absurdity (https://asiatimes.com/2025/10/chinas-cargo-ban-gives-new-meaning-to-bhps-broken-hill-origin/): 2024 mining costs were “only a little over $10 per tonne” yet prices hit $130 based on these foreign benchmarks. This results in obscene profit margins for BHP, which have been standing at over 50% for many years “?
https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1975797476721631497
Strange world we seem to live in. The West makes the profits on low mining costs.
Australia’s iron ore exports are used to build up the Chinese Navy
“ A team of investigative journalists discovered that Israel used images from a random cyberpunk sci-fi art project and the Scottish Maritime Museum to create fake animations of Hamas tunnels and other supposed ‘terrorist infrastructure’ in Gaza. One of the most infamous, the alleged underground command centre at Al-Shifa Hospital, was actually an animation the IDF had used the previous year when they said it was a tunnel beneath a UN school.
This should be huge global breaking news, because it clearly reveals genocidal intent. Why fake the existence of Hamas tunnels in places they knew there weren’t any? Because it was essential to legitimising the war crimes and the mass murders they were planning, mass murders in civilian locations conducted with zero military objective. The revelation undercuts everything Israel said about why it needed to invade hospitals and schools and level Gaza to the ground. And this is why you won’t see any headlines.”?
https://www.donotpanic.news/p/heaven-knows-im-pro-genocide-now
Sad!
President Trump got a COVID booster shot today, per WH letter.
https://x.com/metzgov/status/1976813781948022811
The shot heard round the world..
Both a covid booster and a flu shot. Should please the Democrats.
Survival of the wisest.
(Nazi eugenics via Darwinian natural selection)
I asked my shrink this summer of 2020. He said “Yes,”.
And I asked to speak to the oldest one too. (I realize the gravity of the question)
It may be survival of the wisest. Nazi eugenics seemed to be aimed in this direction. And the high IQs of the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans.
We have a lot of older commenters on this site.
>> I asked my shrink this summer of 2020. He said “Yes,”.
I don’t understand what exactly you asked him and I’m curious … please lay it out for this simpleton.
I asked “This looks like Nazi eugenics via Darwinian natural selection.”
He said “Yes, it was”.
ie “basically like the smartest and strongest will survive naturally. Without human selection like the nazi’s. ”
At least that’s what I meant and I assume he did too.. We obviously didn’t go into deep conversation about this and we’re doing online zoom meeting”
I see, thanks.
Back around the time the vaccine was released, scientific study results were leaked that showed a lot of the material went to the ovaries of female mice. The leak was later confirmed as legitimate when released under FOIA.
More recently, a mouse study showed that a sizable fraction of oocytes die upon vaccination, which presumably lowers fertility and/or brings forward menopause (my speculation).
So, maybe if there was some nefarious intent, it was geared more towards long-term sterilization rather than some sort of death vax.
Hey Norm.
Notice the “Don’t tread on me” second amendment people we hear so often, are oddly quite now?
My Father is a 2A advocate. When growing up he clued me in on the endless attempts to ban certain types of weapons or whole classes and calibers of ammunition. The MO is to introduce a radical bill or leverage a recent mass casualty event to stir up gun owners and when they overreact or rally to the cause.. use their reaction to paint them as gun nuts and Bible clingers. The anti-gun lobby is like any other lobby they need donations and they do this by playing on the fears of their constituents and contributing or ignoring the root the problem. The gun lobby has the support of law enforcement as well as a myriad of civilian marksmanship and gun safety programs mostly at nonprofit sportsmen’s clubs, shooting ranges and affiliated with schools.
Dad was a History major in College and taught me that registration is always the first step before confiscation. Over time, I was involved in several online debates with anti-gun folks. My favorite one was with a special forces veteran who responded to everyone one of my facts and statistics with ad hominem attacks. The other vocal anti-gun fellow in my circle was secretly deployed to Cambodia before the Vietnam War and always laments the burning villages.. maybe the Cambodians should have had better assault weapons to repel these illegal invaders?
My personal experience with a liberal political science teacher who then became State Deputy Secretary of Education sealed the deal when he bragged about shutting down the school’s marksmanship program. The only gun safety training young people have is in the form of violent tv/movie programming and anti-gun propaganda. I believe the bulk of gun violence is the result of illegal drugs, counterintelligence operations, SSRI’s and mental illness.. this is a fallen culture slipping into late stage dependency and the answer the State provides is more power to decide the winners and losers.
The answer for liberals is to be more permissive with people committing crimes and harder on law abiding citizens protecting their families. One of my Dad’s friends owns a gun shop in the City. During the BLM riots he noticed that the exterior metal doors showed signs of a pry bar and informed the local police/FBI. On a night of peaceful protests// a group of armed thugs broke in and he was waiting for them. City leaders weren’t happy about the death of one of their young people and law enforcement told him that He was on his own. In the end, the State is going to do whatever it takes to protect it’s power.. if you have a weapon (faith in a higher power, a sharpened stick) just make sure you know how to use it when the time comes.
The problem is the “dont tread on me” is a misnomer. It should be “don’t tread on we”.
See what they did there?
By having everyone focus solely on themselves they become powerless, since the whole is greater than the sum.
We are a medium to large pack mammal species. The minute the ‘we’ exceeds Dunbar’s Number, all is lost. Though the ‘me’ be a diminished state, it’s always founded in direct cause and effect.
just my own observation——
but for the past 120 years or so, american culture has been immersed in the notion that most disputes must be setlled by the use of violence, in particular, with firearms.
movies, then tv, seem to hinge on this. the good guy wins, bad guys usually die.
put this into the only society on the planet where firearm availability is universal, and the outcome is certain—universal violence, and multi gun deaths.
and the assumption that possession of firearms in a domestic context is going to protect you from over reaching government is utterly ludicrous. (that nonsense ended when the flintlock musket went out of use).
when a fully equpped army unit arrives in your town, you will hide your AR15 under the mattress and hope they go away.—-don’t kid yourself otherwise. armchair warroirs are famous for such tactics.
Government militia is already on USA streets—this is going to increase, because the don must ”create chaos”—in order to demonstrate that only he can put things right.
it looks as if he intends to do this before the mid terms—i just hope i’m wrong.
the supreme court has been bought by big oil, and has given him authority to do what he wants—the ultimate aim is to sustain the fossil fuel status quo, for as long as possible.
trump’s wealth depends on this, along with everyone else’s…. and he knows it.
that is what ”maga” is all about, when the hysteria is stripped out of it.
I am afraid you are correct. Most US citizens would prefer this outcome. Of course, those in Europe, China, and Russia would not.
Please explain this in light of all the European Castles with turrets? Simple decoration or functional.
Origin of Knights Templar and Crusades?
Dennis L.
Dennis
there is a distinct correlation between medieval times and now.
the minority owned the energy production system—the land—the majority were excluded, except for working/producing wealth from it.—just like now.
they/we, the great unwashed, got the dregs….nothing has changed much.
secure castles were the means of holing onto the status quo….just like now.
knights templar, crusaders, were just medieval jesusfreaks, mobsters carrying crosses—no different from klansmen or maganuts now, ultimately in it for loot.
Human nature does not change, any more than wishful thinking.
Try taking a broader brush to your thought processes—it would save time.
I am afraid you are right.
Looks like copilot cannot explain medieval castles
lol kulm
if you have to rely on copilot to figure out medieval history, you’ll never understand it.
we obviously move in different worlds…
ive never used copilot, and wouldnt know how.
i prefer originality—you should try it
Me neither but he was acting as if copilot was the oracle of delphi
Norman … a slight quibble. Surely firearms are universally available in Switzerland as a result of an ‘armed neutrality’ policy?
they are–but not universally.–at least not as i understand it.
anecdote on that—-50 years ago, a near neighbour (who had something of a ‘reputation’) ran off and married a swiss millionaire 25 years her senior.
he of course, had a son, who was her age.
when he came home one day and found them in bed—he shot her.
it was quite the story round here for a while.
so yes—”western justice” can happen elsewhere, but on a smaller scale i think..
This insight regarding gun ownership seems important to me:
“Dad was a History major in College and taught me that registration is always the first step before confiscation.”
Also, it seems to me that bullets are likely to run short in a few years, even if the guns aren’t confiscated. And of course, there are a lot more suicides with guns than intruders shot with guns.
Here are some more …uh, insights.
Some gun owners know how to make bullets but they can only do so if they have access to certain supplies.
Most of the homicides committed with guns are by dangerous minorities. Very few people are lamenting suicides committed by white men. In fact, suicides of all people are not considered a problem because according to the experts, we need more human population control and suicide can aid in that goal.
Jeff Bezos on building O’Neill cylinders in space as living environments in 2019:
And no progress after 6 years
hedge funds managers playing as scientists are so cute.
They hire scientists who solve problems.
They aren’t so much cute as much as they are
saving the world and fulfil our destiny to conquer time and space.
They’ll also make everyone a lot of money as well.
But of course you’re right; it’s the bankers who are responsible for all of human progress!
The economy, as it currently excists, is based on an overleveraged debt based fiat currency system. As we all know. So, it cannot be ‘fixed’ in those same terms. Period. Now what? As we speak the system is turning around in its grave and seems to be turning to a capped tokenized blockchain system. It all is written down in the Brilliant Act. For those who watch, and see too.
Yep. Blink and you might miss it. Until a few months from now you’ll unblink and realize that you’re buying and selling in stablecoins. Who? Wha? It’s making operation warp speed look like tumor exosomes being farmed and bottled in slow motion.
Stablecoins are a hopeless effort from the old system to adress business as usual. Once adoption of the new system is ‘accomplished’, stablecoins will be the digital $ that gets whiped out, within the new system of eco-debt. That is; no copper, no light. Digital assets within your portfolio, capped, so the masses won’t be able to overconsume, and the system survives without 8 billion useless eaters start looking at human flesh for protein. Soon some digital assets will become Tier 1.
Stablecoins only work if backed by dope demand; Stable tumor indeed, backed by 30% gold, 26%, ohhh tariffs 13% backed. Keep working you stupid white slave, and pay off your debt against the black minority. So we don’t have to.
Aw lol. That’s the old paradigm of dissent brother. That paradigm would just get the Elites killed. Stablecoins are not for addressing BAU. They are for addressing the Great Global Depression 2.0 on Steroids. The terminal depression. Stablecoins are for finding a bottom of that depression instead of it being just the face of a cliff. Let us know when you start using them, because you’ll clearly on be using them if you are mistaken as to their purpose.
I hope the electricity stays on if you plan to use stable coins. Otherwise, you lose your money.
Clay tablets and central markets are what have worked for ages. People come to the central market to buy and sell their goods. A person with a clay tablet and stylus marks what each item is worth in some common unit, such as bushels of wheat, or 2025 US$s. There may even be a credit system, where those bringing goods to sell get a credit receipt to use to buy other goods, based on a fraction of the market value of the goods brought to sell. You have to have a balanced market, however.
Sure, they won’t do away with cash though so that will help moderate the rolling blackouts along with people having little solar chargers for their phones during outages because the digital greenbacks economy will be app-based, or they’ll just use their batteries judiciously, or use community fast chargers plugged into generators. The funds will still be there when the power comes back on. Musk will probably play boyscout with his starlink and do heroic triaging in places that must have connectivity during extended outages.
Not serious:
1. Carrying one in a pocket would be inconvenient.
2. Making change. Chip off the old block?
Paper has some conveniences.
Dennis L.
That’s what i said.
“Stablecoins are a hopeless effort from the old system to adress business as usual.”
Why do you adress my comment as if i was a stable coin lunatic?
houtskool it may just be that I’m not really understanding what you’re saying. If anything it was the comment regarding the white and black races that I was reacting to, but I may have misunderstood that too. I’m not even sure exactly what you mean by a stablecoin lunatic. No offense intended friend.
A capped tokenized blockchain system will be promising goods and services that don’t exist? This is better–how? Which countries will be accepting this currency? I am afraid I am not aware of the Brilliant Act.
Dear Gail, that is the point. Capped means capped. The promise will be available to those who have.
Take a few weeks to learn.
https://xrpl.org/
Imagine a world of degrowth, managed. Bretton Woods 5.0
Caps are rationing. Rationing is the only way to manage collapse. In fact rationing was the only way to avoid Collapse in the first place, by not running structural surpluses in the first place lol. Our Finite World. To expect otherwise is to bargain with Reality. But at least we’re starting to see a Non-Public Degrowth Agenda now. That’s great. Knowing is half the battle.
Rationing is done by the economy by wage disparity and loss of jobs completely. A lot of people will find themselves without a way to purchase products made with energy. This seems to be the way it almost always is done.
Ration coupons, such as those used in WWII, are very difficult to do. It would be worse today. We discussed the issues involved at TheOilDrum.com one time. I decided at that time that rationing would never work today.
I would have liked to have witnessed that discussion. That’s a good point that the capitalist system is also a rationing system. It’s one that wants a person to consume. Obviously during Collapse rationing — as in the centralized welfare system of hard rationing — non-essentials will not be included, though what is and isn’t essential will probably vary somewhat from place to place, things like consumer gasoline. Get a Honda Trail 125 or Monkey now and a 35 gallon gasoline caddy with some stabilizer in it and you might get 4000 miles out of it if you’re not 5’4″ and 400lbs. We’re witnessing a successful 2 year old hard rationing system in Gaza right now, so they obviously can work today. Can they be scaled up globally? I figure we’re about to find out. Unfortunately non-nuclear countries won’t be as high a priority, but the upside to being in the Southern hemisphere is that there are no spent fuel pools. Pros and cons.
The US stock market is down by quite a bit today, on the news of possibly higher tariffs and other worrisome developments. NASDAQ is down 3.56%. The WSJ says:
According to the WSJ, Trump is quoted as saying:
WTI is at $58.86, a new recent low.
I now see:
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/trump-tariff-tape-bomb-tanks-stocks-week-bonds-bullion-bid
Stocks Plunge In After-Hours Trade As Trump Confirms 100% Tariffs & Export Controls On China
So sell a stock and get cash. What is the value of that cash in one year say in a candy bar? What is the value of the stock in a candy bar-chocolate of course. Premium Baker’s chocolate in the last 18 months 3.49 to 4.99, now this is serious stuff.
Dennis L.
If Trump doesn’t chicken out of this fight the US The economy is doomed.
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2025/10/us-china-trade-war-reaches-new-level.html
This is an interesting discussion of the tit-for-tat back and forth with respect to export controls and tariffs in the US-China discussion. After you go to the link, you will have to go down the side, and actually find the correct article. After describing the back and forth, the article says:
With this [latest round from China] China effectively gets veto power over three critical supply chains simultaneously: advanced semiconductors (via rare earths and related equipment), battery-powered vehicles and drones, and precision manufacturing across industries (via superhard materials).
It will all officially take effect on November 8, in one month.
China’s move is not really aimed at restricting exports. It just wants to discipline U.S. trade negotiators and push them back in support of free trade:
During the last round of negotiations with senior American officials in Madrid last month, China’s chief trade negotiator, Vice Premier He Lifeng, asked for the full removal of tariffs and export controls, The Wall Street Journal has reported. The latest rare-earth action, the people said, is a tactic aimed at achieving that goal.
The U.S. has yet to get understand that. Its response to China’s latest move as predictable as it is doomed to fail:
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump – Oct 10, 2025, 20:50 UTC
It has just been learned that China has taken an extraordinarily aggressive position on Trade in sending an extremely hostile letter to the World, stating that they were going to, effective November 1st, 2025, impose large scale Export Controls on virtually every product they make, and some not even made by them. This affects ALL Countries, without exception, and was obviously a plan devised by them years ago. It is absolutely unheard of in International Trade, and a moral disgrace in dealing with other Nations.
Based on the fact that China has taken this unprecedented position, and speaking only for the U.S.A., and not other Nations who were similarly threatened, starting November 1st, 2025 (or sooner, depending on any further actions or changes taken by China), the United States of America will impose a Tariff of 100% on China, over and above any Tariff that they are currently paying. Also on November 1st, we will impose Export Controls on any and all critical software.
It is impossible to believe that China would have taken such an action, but they have, and the rest is History. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
DONALD J. TRUMP
PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
China is well prepared for that move. Its GDP this year will be around 20 trillion. Its total exports per year to the U.S. are around $500 billion, a mere 2.5% of its GDP. China can do without those while the U.S. can not.
What Trump does not get yet is that the U.S. depends more on imports from China than China depends on exporting to the United States. But the markets do understand that. Trump’s move may well be the black swan event that will lead to their crash.
If Trump doesn’t chicken out of this fight the U.S. economy is doomed.
We need what China has available to sell to us, far than China needs us as a customer!
TSMC and ASML have hopefully(for them) been looking for alternatives to any U.S involvement, because not only can China bring production to a grinding halt, China can tempt them with chip alchemy.
“Researchers at Peking University has developed a method to mass produce Indium Selenide (InSe) chip, the “golden semiconductor””
https://huabinoliver.substack.com/p/chinas-historical-semiconductor-breakthrough?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
Tough choice. Stay rooted in a stagnating past, or go on to the future.
Reading the substack post, while breakthroughs have been made, there is quite a ways to go before it could be scaled up to replace silicon. So, China isn’t there yet.
“0:30
The first thing I’m going to say is this
0:32
is a a a very
0:36
significant or or a very extreme
0:38
overreaction. . . .
. The fiscal flows are very very
2:47
solid. We’re up over last year in in the
2:51
both in the leading flows and also in
2:55
the net government transfers.
2:58
As long as that’s the case,
3:01
I have absolutely no concerns about the
3:06
economy or the stock market. “?
So, added debt is still working, in this analyst’s view.
This all has to do with more debt working its way into the system, so far.
But Trump is badly overplaying his hand. The US can’t really transition to a mini-China in manufacturing.
A Flu Pearl Harbor?
“Pandemic restrictions return as country closes schools after ‘evolving virus’ emerges
“But in Japan, it has seen the country’s major flu period hit five weeks early, with fears of the virus “evolving”. According to local news outlets, an “unprecedented” early spike in cases has seen the country’s health officials claim that there is now a nationwide epidemic, with many schools ordered to close as they were during the 2020 pandemic.
It has also seen hospital chaos, as wards are now overflowing with sick patients.
And according to Yoko Tsukamoto, a professor at the Health Sciences University of Hokkaido speaking to This Week In Asia, the early spread could mean that the virus is evolving and adapting like never before – and that it is also happening globally.
He said: “The flu season has started really early this year, but in the changing global environment this might become a more common scenario. We are seeing this resistance in Japan, but it is also being reported in other parts of the world as well.
https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/world-news/pandemic-restrictions-return-country-closes-36044562
In Japan? I didn’t expect this kind of thing in Japan.
Of course, Japan has been having problems recently. There has been the “high price of rice” problem. Now, it looks like a conservative female prime minister will be elected. The “carry trade” is very sensitive to interest rate changes. Maybe things going wrong in one area are spreading to other areas.
It’s those bloody foreigners again!
From the Asahi Shimbun last week.
Japan is in the grip of an influenza epidemic, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare announced on Oct. 3.
It said the flu season started five weeks earlier than last year, its second-earliest start in 20 years.
The ministry called on people to take preventive measures such as frequent handwashing, wearing masks and getting vaccinated.
The number of flu patients at designated medical institutions nationwide over the most recent reporting period, Sept. 22 to Sept. 28, was 4,030. This equates to 1.04 patients per institution, exceeding the 1.00-threshold that indicates the start of an epidemic.
During this period, the number of childcare centers, kindergartens, and elementary, junior high and high schools that closed schools, grades or classes increased by 40 from the previous week to 135, or more than three times the figure for the corresponding period last year.
Reiko Saito, a professor of public health at Niigata University said the early start of the flu outbreak was likely influenced by the record high number of foreign tourists visiting Japan.
“A full-scale outbreak is likely to occur around late December to February, as usual. There’s no need for panic, but I believe it’s safer for children and the elderly to get vaccinated by the end of November,” she said.
https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/16071642
For myself, I predict a winter of misery for the serially vaccinated, the serially masked, and the serially frequently hand-washed. But don’t mind me. Go ahead and listen to the advice of the people who forced restaurants to put perspex screens up to stop viruses crossing from one side of the dinner table to another, and footmarks on the floor to keep shoppers at a safe social distance from each other in the supermarket.
My grandpa fought in Saipan. He watched the Enola gay take off. He volunteered too.
For those who don’t remember Saipan,
Perhaps, the additional factor at play is the current on/off weather. The western ClubMed boiled in ~30C upto just few dayz ago, while other parts of Europe dropped way lower (via Arctic southbound cold air intrusion), occasionally even with early morning frosts. So for stressed, ~malnutritioned (junkfood) city dwellers that’s just the ideal set of conditions to get compromised by even mediocre potent virus..
While the more prevalent weather pattern in recent decades has been just overall warmish gentle trend going on from summer till Christmas and afterwards few hard core cold dayz say hitting in Jan/Feb only..
As mentioned previously, we can’t discard “double/triple” trouble “jam-session ahead”,
i.e. [PO + WAR + return of little IceAge] ..
Viruses don’t exist and the ‘flu’ is just a secondary/backup/seasonal fat-soluble carcinogens detoxification, and what germ theory mistakes for ‘viruses’ are the signaling exosomes that the cells make in order to coordinate the bodywide detox protocol.
The body is forward looking. When summertime ends and the light fades and the temperatures drop, our metabolism and detoxification system wane, and if the body has been accumulating toxins during the summer, which is when it should be reducing accumulations via stronger summertime daily detoxes, then it wants to activate the secondary seasonal detox so that it doesn’t keep accumulating more toxins through the winter which it has to assume is likely since it’s been accumulating them through the summer when it shouldn’t have been.
You have some strange ideas.
I put one of those sentence through ChatGPT and told it to make it punchier. Just to show you what I can do.
“As summer ends and light and warmth fade, our metabolism and detox system slow. If the body has accumulated toxins over the summer—when daily detoxes should have been strongest—it triggers a secondary seasonal detox to prevent further buildup through the winter.”
“When summer fades, our metabolism slows. If toxins piled up over the season—when daily detoxing should have been strongest—the body kicks in a secondary detox to stop winter buildup.”
1. Scientific/Informative:
“As summer ends and metabolism slows, any toxins the body didn’t flush out trigger a secondary detox to prevent winter accumulation.”
2. Lifestyle/Reader-Friendly:
“When summer fades, your body slows down. If you didn’t detox enough during the sunny months, it ramps up a seasonal cleanup to keep winter buildup at bay.”
3. Concise & Punchy:
“Summer’s over, metabolism dips, and leftover toxins spark a winter detox to keep your body clean.”
Here’s a super short, punchy one-liner:
“Summer’s over, toxins linger, and your body kicks in a winter detox.”
Strange as it may seem Gail you seemed to be highly appreciative last month of my illumination of biological cancer dynamics. This is that same subject looked at within the precancerous context. The exosomal truth is just RNA World Theory which is the microbiology of the axiomatic Evolutionary Theory; if we ‘catch the flu’ (engage a coordinated secondary fat-soluble carcinogen detox, by cranking out billions of RNA-based signaling exosomes saying that it’s time) then we are engaging that process because we have chronic inflammation and too many nascent tumor microenvironments forming in our body.
Gail, the no virus theory has gone viral in recent years.
All sorts of people have been catching it.
It all started with a guy named Stefan Lanka, who may have caught it while researching dusty old manuscripts from ancient virological history buried in the basement of the Koch Institute
He passed it on to Tom Cowan and Andrew Kaufman and Christine Massey, and then the Baileys—Samantha and Mark—both came down with it on the same weekend.
More recently, Mike Yeadon has come out in a no-viral skin rash, and Jamie Andrews has developed a severe case of antiviralitis, which manifests as a militant conviction that no disease-causing viruses exist, and a willingness to aggressively debate all-comers until they’re blue in the face.
It’s a very serious condition, this no-virus virus thingy.
My own view: We are talking about models here. Nobody has proven that viruses exist or that they cause disease, but the viral model has a lot going for it in the way of consistency.
For instance, certain diseases with certain discrete symptoms are said to be caused by certain discrete types of virus. People in the same household, the same work place, or the same passenger cruiser tend to go down with the same disease symptoms if they go down at all. This observation argues for the same pathogen at work.
The other big thing going for the viral model is familiarity. It is the dominant paradigm; the one we all grew up learning. It isn’t easy to give up a paradigm even if it has outlived its usefulness.
Terrain theory, which argues that disease symptoms result from the body’s internal environment, such as detoxing, rather than from pathogens such as viruses. This is another model that seeks to explain our observations. Some people find it more plausible than the viral model.
There are also an environmental toxin theory and an electromagnetic influence theory, employing other models, chains of logical inference, and imaginative scenarios.
Even if the no-virus people turn out to be wrong in the end, they are doing us all a service by calling into question the current orthodoxy and shouting that the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes. Also, they may be right, and if they are, we should all benefit from the progress their insight leads to.
Thanks for your insights. If we have researchers working on making viruses more virulent, it seems to me that they must exist. In fact, we saw that people wanted to patent a new virus! Also, the fact that people in the same household tend to come down with the same illness (if they get sick). So I stay on the “viruses exist” side.
WADR Gail all that you are doing is staying on the side of logical fallacy. Circular reasoning. The circular reasoning of normalcy bias. It’s not based on knowledge. Beliefs should be based on knowledge.
A ‘virus’ has no metabolism, therefore it cannot DO anything other than have its genetic code read by a cytoplasmic ribosome such that the ribosomal genetic primordial soup — via a cumulative genetic tipping point in the soup — that either results in the relevant ‘viral’ genetic code getting sent to a nuclear ribosome for further consideration (this process is called reverse transcription). That biological dynamic — physics — is all that there is. There is no means by which a ‘virus’ can tell a cell what to do. There is no mechanism for overriding a cell’s functions. There is no genetic imperialism.
The reason that signaling exosomes — which are what ‘viruses’ really are — can alter the functions of a cell is because they are native messages from other cells that get sent to recipient/target cells in abundance such that the cytoplasmic ribosomal tipping point is reached that triggers repeated reverse transcriptions in order to influence the nucleus to prioritize the importance of those messages. It’s just a numbers game like all ecological dynamics are. Population dynamics. As above so below.
The more exosomes that are produced for the purposes of coordinating a bodywide healing, the more virulent the virologists think the ‘virus’ is, when really all it means is that the more necessary the healing is deemed to be in that moment.
A huge part of the cultural problem is that allopathic industrial culture sees sickness as a bad thing because sickness hurts. It’s just an avoidance -of-suffering culture. We can cross-reference that cultural maladaptation with the same industrial culture that refuses peak oil theory out of the same avoidant behavior, right.
Healing is what actually hurts. The sickness is what comes before and causes the need for the healing. The sickness that are all the bad habits, followed by the inflammation, the aches and pains, and additional or amplified bad habits on top of the first bad habits that seek to run from the rising inflammation. Healing is your body saying, enough! The healing forces us to lay down and accept the fact that our body needs to break down a bunch of fat-soluble carcinogens into water-soluble toxins and run those toxins through our bloodstream and filter organs and into the toilet and out of our pores, and that’s our biological homeostasis running the gauntlet of toxicity for a good cause, which is detoxification.
We all recognize that healing process with a bad hangover from alcohol. Well this is exactly the same thing. It shouldn’t be difficult to understand and recognize.
Virology is an exact parallel with the war on terror. Seeing that just requires the little bit of homework that seeing the fake war on terror took. One more step towards a fractal enlightenment.
Reante, you’ve made a very coherent and, at least to me, a very plausible argument. It all fits together very nicely—and I like the idea that virology is an exact parallel with the war on terror.
These signaling exosomes that are made in the body and are being mistaken for viruses by those embracing conventional viral theory, you say they can alter the functions of a cell because there are so many of them are produced.
Is it possible that they can spread from one person to another and alter the functions of the recipient’s cells? If so, wouldn’t this account for cases in which people appear to catch viral diseases from those they are in close proximity to?
So, signaling exosomes can alter the functions of cells they come into contact with—which ultimately produces disease/healing symptoms—but they can’t force those cells to produce more copies of the same exosomes, can they?
I am still unclear about how exosomes are produced. I asked a friendly bot, which explained: “Exosomes are formed through a process called endocytosis, where part of the cell membrane invaginates to form vesicles that contain cellular material. These vesicles can then fuse with the cell membrane to release their contents into the extracellular space.”
But what causes a cell to undergo endocrytosis?
“Under the no-virus theory, proponents often suggest that cellular processes such as endocytosis occur as a response to various stimuli rather than as a result of viral infection. Possible reasons why a cell undergoes endocytosis include: Cellular Signaling or Communication, Nutrient Uptake, Stress Responses, and Maintaining Cellular Homeostasis.”
Well, the devil is in the details, but regardless of whether we embrace virology or exosomology, we still seem to be in the realm of cells producing particles (due to being influenced by something) and these particles influence other cells to do something that makes people feel ill.
My bot is being uncooperative, leaning heavily towards the consensus view, whereas I am thinking that both virology and exosomology have something going for them, and that a synthesis that combines elements of the two may win some mainstream researcher a Nobel Prize for Medicine/Biology at some future juncture. Tweak a few definitions, invent some new jargon, and Bob’s yer uncle.
Thanks Tim. Yes the signaling exosomes that leave our bodies through our fluids and our breath and enter other people’s bodies are called exogenous exosomes and they obviously have a role to play in coordinating healings/detoxes among multiple people in close proximity. That’s just the physics of it: if the exosomes are for physically coordinating healings inside one’s own body then they will function in the same manner in someone else’s body. The question is, how much? It depends on the circumstances which can’t be quantified in vivo but can be and have been in vitro. And the tumor exosome ‘covid’ vaxx bombs — which are just farmed and injected exogenous exosomes — have been deployed based on in vitro modeling and animal testing too. And to be sure the biosphere is basically an exosomal soup — we breath them in with every breath — and what Zach Bush misnomers as the Virome though he describes it so well and in accordance with terrain theory.
Exogenous exosomes are part of ‘spread’ and another part would be subconscious inducement. We’re highly social species and when we witness someone not feeling well we internalize that subconsciously and then unconsciously with our intelligent body, and we do a self-check. If we’re in that neighborhood of need regarding a healing ourselves, and already have a subclinical level of exosomal signaling happening within us, then that integrated self-check might trigger our own healing cycle. And if course we call these seasonal illnesses because they are generally coordinated across populations because of similar environmental circumstances and climatic changes. We all evolved to have seasonal/secondary detoxes as necessary.
As to exosomal forcing of cells to act, yes and no. No, one exosomes can’t force a cell to act, like a ‘virus’ is supposed to be able to do. But, yes, a number of exosomes exceeding a tipping point will force a cell to act because a cell is evolved to be responsive to making necessary epigenetic regulation/changes. Enough exosomes literally change the information ecology of the cell such that the cell adapts to that change. Physics. Natural genetic engineering. The vaxxes are the synthetic version of that.
The mRNA of signaling exosomes are made by transcription by DNA in the nucleus and migrate out into the cytoplasm and all the way out to the inner wall of the cell membrane where there are specialized compartments that package them up in lipid membranes that may or may not have enzymes (highly reactive proteins) embedded in them that are biochemically matched to receptors of particular cells (think ‘spike’ protein).
Tim when I talk about horizontal/lateral gene transfer being 99pc of biological evolution, this is what I’m talking about. The biospheric exogenous exosomal soup that everything lives in is the macro, emergent primordial soup that began with the abiotic primordial soup of RNAs and lipids and sugars and whatnot congregating around warm ocean vents, which micro oceanic primordial soup, itself, emerged out of the elemental universal primordial soup. Fractal universe.
The biological soup is the free marketplace of genetic exchange in the name of adaptation. All species share the majority of their genes. We all came out of the last common universal ancestor.
The establishment idiotically relegates horizontal gene transfer to the microbial world because it has this narrow definition of the genetic transfer being limited to while genes, which microbes can only transfer horizontally (meaning without reproduction), but the broad definition of genetic transfer is the transfer of ANY genetic material. The have no systems theory genetic theory of everything wherein mRNA causes epigenetic adaptations in the short to medium terms such that if these adaptations become long-term the genome itself adapts by mutating, which is an anti- Darwinian paradigm. Only those at the cutting edge would understand this; surely there are many independent people outside of the Hand who see all of this.
And as always it’s because there’s no profit in it unless of course your Pfizer et al (meaning the Hand) weaponizing tumor exosomes horizontal genetic transfer under political virological cover. Although, I will add that there is recently now a new consumer market for exosomal ‘gene therapy’ that’s oriented to the wealthy holistic medicine segment of the population, though I haven’t looked into what they’re actually doing.
I think the exceptionally hot weather this summer and its extension into October has left a lot of people under par.
In Japan, as the heat has faded somewhat—although it reached 30ºC today, it has been replaced by high humidity, which is in some ways even more tiring.
The conditions are perfect for growing mold. I would definitely avoid the sashimi and the oysters too.
There is a popular Japanese term natsu-bate, meaning summer fatigue. I’ve been hearing it bandied about all over the place recently.
I read that Japan’s population fell by more than a million in 2024. It’s been falling since 2010 but a million seems to be the biggest decline it’s recorded in a single year.
In 1975 the UK had about 55 million people and estimates in 2024 suggested it could have 70 to 80 million. Given however that the Organisation for National Statistics lied with statistics in 2021-22, I’m not sure we’ll ever be very sure again.
Do you think that the published Japanese figures are reliable, or have they also been ‘adjusting’ them?
My own personal opinion as a layman is that Japanese population statistics are reliable.
Every municipality reports its population monthly to the Statistics Bureau of Japan, and also publishes the figure in its newsletter.
This is how I know that the population of my town is currently about 3,800 and is falling by about 100 people each year.
Of course, if the authorities were lying on a national scale about the population, I wouldn’t be able to spot the discrepancy.
There is also the issue of illegal or undocumented aliens. By their very nature, such people do not appear in the official population statistics, but they do form part of the population. Reports suggest that the number of undocumented immigrants in Japan ranges from around 100,000 to 300,000. However, nobody really knows.
In the years following the Second World War, the Japanese gave birth to lots of babies. During the peak year of 1949 alone there were 2.69 million births, and over the course of the three-year “first baby boom” from 1947 to 49, there were 8 million births.
Now all of these people who are still alive have moved into the over-75 age group where deaths are more frequent. Meanwhile, the number of births in 2024 fell to less than 700,000, and given this low number, for the population to be falling by a million or more people each year is in line with expectations.
‘But if Russia
1:15:47 allowing NATO to install defense industrial capacity in western Ukraine
1:15:52 and to bring weapons in and stockpile them, warehouse them there so they can keep feeding them into the front, you
1:15:58 know, that lends itself to another conclusion. Um, and then the answer came this week and it just blinding flash of
1:16:06 the obvious. Um, what Russia did was create the perception of a safe haven in
1:16:12 western Ukraine. Uh see if Russia had acted decisively early on these
1:16:17 warehouses, these defense industrial facilities would have been built in NATO
1:16:23 um as they were early on. You know, they were doing the rehab facilities, everything was being done in NATO and
1:16:28 that’s untouchable. Uh gives Ukraine the strategic depth, but NATO was seeking to
1:16:34 push this stuff into Ukraine. But in order to do that, you have to create the perception that Western Ukraine is
1:16:39 strategic depth for Ukraine. And then the West deposited hundreds of
1:16:45 billions of dollars worth of resources, weapons, warehouses, facilities,
1:16:51 defense, industrial facilities, uh the whole thing jammed into the west. Um and
1:16:57 now it’s this capability that the British in their keep Ukraine in the fight uh are emphasizing this is now
1:17:05 made it easy. All NATO has to do is provide the money and they can rapidly ship weapons into the holding uh cells
1:17:13 in western Ukraine and this war can go on forever. We can keep Ukraine in the fight. Except last week Russia took them
1:17:19 out. Russia came in and said, “Oh, you guys thought that the Patriots in Western Ukraine had a 60% intercept
1:17:26 rate. Try six.” And they just blew up these facilities and they’re going to continue to blow them up. All that
1:17:32 investment is gone. And now you see the desert. The day that happened, did you see what Zalinski did after saying,
1:17:39 “We’re going to strike Russia deep. We’re doing that.” He said, “I need a ceasefire in the air right now.” Because
1:17:46 he just woke up and said, “I lost everything.” And NATO can’t replicate that. There isn’t a plan B. There’s no
1:17:52 NATO facilities that can replace this. They’re gone. And this is the reality that Europe’s
1:17:58 waking up to right now, that there ain’t nothing they can do about this. Russia just dramatically changed the calculus
1:18:05 of this uh game. Which is why all of a sudden Usku was like, “Yeah, yeah, we’re we’re we’re talking. I think I think
1:18:13 there’s going to be a peace deal.” Well, why? Because Europe doesn’t have any cards left. Trump dumped everything on
1:18:19 Europe. Europe’s plan was predicated on being able to transfer weapons to a
1:18:24 Western Ukrainian safe haven and have defense industry work that up in there. That’s gone. Europe has no plan B.
1:18:32 And they’re all sitting there just swinging in the wind right now. And Russia’s like, “Yeah, oh that pro that
1:18:38 northern picroka offensive you guys did, it’s over. We won. Uh you’re all dead
1:18:43 and we’ve resumed the offensive there. Uh that drone wall you built, all the drone operators that operate, they’re
1:18:49 dead. We killed them all and we’ve reasserted drone dominance.” ‘?
The part you quoted is very interesting. (The rest may be also, but I haven’t had a chance to look.)
NATO was storing materials for war in the Western part of Ukraine, and Russia recently blew them up. It has missiles that can easily take out targets at that distance. Zelensky realizes that without the ability to restock materials from the West, it has no chance of continuing the war. The whole idea of Europe trying to support Ukraine for longer no makes sense.
Can someone please show the quark link again I can’t find it
This seems to be the general link to quark’s writings:
https://futurocienciaficcionymatrix.blogspot.com
His writings are quite ominous. Do you believe he is accurate? Ugh 2030 looks to be tough
Things keep turning out better than we expect.
Back in my Oil Drum days, it was popular to look at known new developments, and add them up. The actual result would always turn out a whole lot better.
The self-organizing system seems to keep things going at least a little better than we expect. There are a lot of things we don’t know.
I know but after reading your articles over the years I have invested in a 401 k for retirement because I always thought it would not be available. Now I am worried that I made a big mistake
You’re crossing the line Sam.
How old are you? In 5 or 10 years things may look very different. I’m guessing within 10 years the dollar significantly devalues and the stock market buys much less in real terms.
The stock market can keep going up until, on net, people try to withdraw their “savings”.
The financial system is one of the things that looks iffy as oil supplies deplete. The ability to save for retirement has been a temporary one. We can’t expect it to continue forever. We should expect to need to work pretty much all of our lives. But at the same time, if it is BAU, then having the 401k seems nice.
To Renate —- not trying to be mean just wondering if I should be throwing more money into the stock market or just buying for a collapse. I’m at least 10 years from retirement
Gail is not thin skinned
Sam it has nothing to do with Gail being thinned skinned or not. (Obviously she’s not thin skinned.) It’s about you implying that Gail bears some responsibility for your finances just because you’re feeling perpetually uncomfortable with your own response to Collapse. How many more times are you going to exercise Gail’s seemingly infinite patience and courtesy by pointlessly asking about timing?
The question about timing is not pointless. I am having difficulty with that myself.
About all you can do is go part way one direction, and part way another. Keep yourself in good physical health, so you can continue to work. At the same time, put aside at least something in the 401k for retirement. You may lose it, but so what? Keep up good relationships with your children, so you can live with them, if that is an option.
How about stopping diagnosing what you think is wrong with other people’s posts? You have a “I know it all and you don’t” attitude.
There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen,” which is commonly attributed to Vladimir Lenin.
The last stages of the collapse are so fast you won’t know what hit you . The Berlin wall fell in Nov 1989 and by 1991 there was no Warsaw Pact . 70 years of communism dissolved in 2 years . This is the Seneca Cliff .
I 100% believe the story that Gail, Kunstler, Martenson, etc are telling. Peak oil is a mathematical certainty. I also lost out on HUGE market growth the entire decade of my 30’s worried about the next crash. I have piles of rice and beans from 2010 that are now half way through their 30 year shelf life. When I took a new job at 39, I cried Uncle and have been maxing out my 401k ever since. I’ve managed to pile up a lot in 6 years. My advice? Keep a foot in both worlds. I have no idea how long the powers that be can keep pulling rabbits out of a hat, but it may be longer than you or I are alive. And as long as the system holds together, you’re gonna need money.
Even if the collapse comes soon, I’m not convinced there is a way to position yourself to still be “Rich” once it happens. We are rich today because of the economy that oil created. Our ancestors were poor because they lacked it. The current population is so big, the crash so unprecedented, that past strategies (land titles, gold, art) are no guarantee. The chaos could be total.
Have some food, have some guns, have all the prepper things. But the biggest thing to do now is make peace with the fact that the world you were born into is going away. And then contribute to your 401k and enjoy life. Take a trip, eat fresh fruit during the winter. Appreciate what you have. Which really should be all of our default positions anyways. Even if peak oil is false and oil is magically created by subterranean gnomes, most of us only have 75 or 80 laps around the sun before we suffer our own personal collapse. Enjoy the ride (prudently).
Randy rather than culturally sitting on the fence with a foot in both worlds I believe that people like us with the advantage of foresight should be transitioning our value system towards that which sets a good example for the younger generations who will have to inhabit a different value system once industrialism is gone. Life isn’t just about our own 80 revolutions around the world. It’s about a lot more than that. And I don’t even have children.
But I’m an all or nothing person. I would never say that I 100% believe in peak oil and then say a couple sentences later that peak oil, which happened almost 7years ago, might not affect us 40-somethings in our lifetime.
Leadership matters.
Leadership can be wrong, unfortunately. We don’t have all the answers. We cannot see around corners. We live in a world where the answers are only very slowly shown to us. We may think we have the answers earlier, but they may be completely wrong.
Gail I don’t mind you running interference on/for me, and for whatever reason. Just know that you don’t need to do it on my account, thanks.
This emerging Venezuelan theater is interesting to see unfold. Do you remember another one of my original horsetrades under the HTOE, that I called here about 5 years ago? It’s the Venezuelan horsetrade that sees Venezuela becoming an oil protectorate of a national socialist US. A ZH article just put a smile on my face. Maybe you’ve seen it already. There is a bombshell NYT excerpt in it that has protectorate written all over it. The stage is being set:
“Venezuelan officials, hoping to end their country’s clash with the United States, offered the Trump administration a dominant stake in Venezuela’s oil and other mineral wealth in discussions that lasted for months, according to multiple people close to the talks.
The far-reaching offer remained on the table as the Trump administration called the government of President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela a “narco-terror cartel,” amassed warships in the Caribbean and began blowing up boats that American officials say were carrying drugs from Venezuela.
Under a deal discussed between a senior U.S. official and Mr. Maduro’s top aides, the Venezuelan strongman offered to open up all existing and future oil and gold projects to American companies, give preferential contracts to American businesses, reverse the flow of Venezuelan oil exports from China to the United States, and slash his country’s energy and mining contracts with Chinese, Iranian and Russian firms.”
I do not have a crystal ball but I can read palms. Welcome to the world of the Hand.
There is a lot of complexity that needs to be figured out to make Venezuela’s oil resources usable. Chevron has been working with very heavy oil for a long time. They have been the ones working most recently on Venezuela’s oil. But the cost per barrel to make this oil economic always seems to be astronomical. It seems like $220 per barrel is the lowest I have heard. Venezuela desperately needs tax revenue from this oil, to try to buy food and other essentials for its people. I am not sure that that has been factored in. Venezuela does have some hydroelectric power, but that is very dependent on the recent rainfall. The electricity transmission lines also tend to start fires.
If a better way of extracting this oil could be figured out, it would help greatly. Venezuelan oil and spent fuel pools from nuclear power plants both look like big resources that could theoretically be tapped more efficiently.
“the Venezuelan strongman offered to open up all existing and future oil and gold projects to American companies, give preferential contracts to American businesses, reverse the flow of Venezuelan oil exports from China to the United States, and slash his country’s energy and mining contracts with Chinese, Iranian and Russian firms.”
You believe that, because ziohedge said so?
The people would string Maduro up for even suggesting it, as it’s against their socialist policy and it’s a strong socialist country, which would place him as a 100% fraud and sell out(much like the Trump loving idiot).
You do realise it would return the people back to where they were before Chavez. You only need to witness the willingness to join the militia, to understand they will never accept that.
What next, AnsarAllah do a deal with the kiddie killers, to murder more Palestinian children, on the condition that only white people get to drink their fabulous coffee.
“This history combined with Machado’s far-right party policy proposals to privatize everything — as Argentina did and poverty exploded to 53% — makes their far-right platform highly unpopular in Venezuela. Support for Maduro in Venezuela is far too great to pretend it doesn’t exist as U.S. news media so often does”
https://extremearturo.substack.com/p/venezuela-is-about-to-be-back-in
It’s more corporate BS(like the fake Iranian one), selling the disney dream to the faithful. It will happen, if only you all believe, honest.
The article:
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/maduro-offered-us-vast-resources-avoid-war-nobel-winner-maria-corina-vows-go-bigger
“transitioning our value system towards that which sets a good example for the younger generations who will have to inhabit a different value system once industrialism is gone.”
LOL, do you work in corporate HR?
“I would never say that I 100% believe in peak oil and then say a couple sentences later that peak oil, which happened almost 7years ago, might not affect us 40-somethings in our lifetime.”
And yet, I’ve made 7 years of mortgage payments, taken 7 years of vacations, watched half of my children’s childhoods pass, generally lived 7 years of BAU. And nary a warlord in sight.
What values should I teach my children? To waste their lives cowering in fear in a doomstead? For what purpose? They need friends, education, meaning. In short order they will need access to other people so they can find mates. I’m not going to deprive them of that because of fear about the future. They have traveled from our midwestern home to Mexico, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, Texas. We spent this summer in Zion, Bryce, Grand Canyon National Parks. Seeing things they may not have a chance to see in the future. And yes, I’ve shown them how to make a fire using flint and steel, and how to grow a small vegetable garden.
I stand by my recommendation of making some preparations and then getting on with the business of life.
I agree with you. You have to live in this world too.
Thanks Gail yeah it does seem for all the problems with the Venezuelan asphaltenes gumming up the works and generally not being able to be refined down to diesel that production is expensive. Maybe this is where US Treasury Tethered MMT comes into play.
Just because we are going to be taking a huge step down as a global civilization when the private banking system deleverages — a step down in which does indeed prevent civilization from further overall complexity and energy intensification — that stair-step collapse into Phase 2 of the DA doesn’t mean that there can’t still be regional (focused) intensifications of energy production for a period of years. All the technology exists, along with the hardware infrastructure. It just requires a coordinated restructuring of resources. If global GDP drops by 70pc but they can maintain an adequate bare minimum rationing system as, logistically, they’ve probably just shown themselves that they can with Gaza, then they can theoretically afford to do things in Phase 2 like maxing out what is actually possible in Venezuela, and engaging in other massive coordinated essentials like decommissioning the nuclear power industry.
I’m open to this latest Russian floating of closing the nuclear fuel cycle if scaling that up seems feasible but at the moment for me it has to remain in the ‘i’ll believe it when I see it ‘ category because really at this point it seems like nothing more than hearsay and there are many other concerns, besides, about trying to maintain the aging industry during Collapse. It’s just very obvious to me that on a fundamental level Collapse and nuclear don’t mix, and the Elites can afford to take any chances if they’re not certain that they can manage the industry. Still, I remain open to it even though it threatens the whole reason for being for the DA lol.
Thanks for the reply Randy but there’s no need to strawman my view on the matter by darkly lampooning dedicated homesteading as if it can only be born of a fear response rather than a genuine alteration in values that also happens to be the timeless civilized response to cataclysmic war or Collapse. Gail herself recommends it along with maintaining a paid job. But it’s a lotta work. And a lotta fun and deep satisfaction, and good health. If you’re kids are only halfway through their childhoods then there’s a good chance that you are going to still be responsible for them during the early part of Collapse, and who knows how mating and marriage will play out after that.
Best of luck to you and yours brother.
My ability to grow crops has not been very good. I have been trying to do it without the things that wouldn’t be available without fossil fuels. That approach doesn’t work well at all. You need netting to keep critters away, for example.
Yeah Gail it’s an all or nothing venture in my experience. But that’s life in my experience. It’s why I hog this comments section with your good grace. Farm and comment. Clean toilets. Farm and comment. Clean toilets. It’s a humble life. You need a deer fence or a dog in the yard. Some gopher traps. You need livestock for garden fertilizer. You basically have to replicate an entire ecology. That said Creation takes care of the vast majority of that and once you get your part dialed in it all comes together, but it always depends – our Tim just got himself a motorized lawn mower for the first time, what a hero. Like Jan says it takes about 7 years to get over the hump. Seeds will be a part of the hard rationing aid packages. The original money.
Fitz sometimes your comments get misplaced higher up in the thread than chronologically they should be. It happened with your WW2 comment I never replied to because I didn’t see its placement until I was kind of over the conversation, and wasn’t impressed with the reply besides.
This Venezuela excerpt was from the NYT, not ZH. Could the intel-controlled NYT be running interference on this, meaning that Maduro’s reps offered no such thing? Sure it’s possible. But even if so it raises the specter of a protectorate, whether voluntary or involuntary, one way or the other. Doesn’t it?
As in the WW2 discussion, you don’t recognize the exegencies of existential situations. You play your boxed-in Leftist politics because that’s what you know, even though on another level you’re a peak oil big picture structuralist. If you are to take the next step in political analysis, you need to approach politics from the big picture structuralism. That’s not even realpolitik – it’s beyond politics.
As we’ve talked about many times, politics always seems MPP. Venezuela is facing total Collapse. With MPP in mind, what do the Venezuelan political Elite prefer? Total Collapse or letting the more qualified US petrostate Elites maximize Venezuelan resources such that Venezuela doesn’t have to face total collapse sooner than it needs to? You tell me Fitz.
You can’t keep going on with a pre-peak oil political analysis 7 years post-peak. The lay of the land changes, gets more dire, with every passing year, and so the Venezuelan political calculations must change. If Russia and China back off from Venezuela because globalization needs to regionalize because of peak oil, and Venezuela desperately needs in on the USD stablecoins in order to help manage its inflation problems, and if an anti-imperialist like Gabbard takes power, THAT is a best case scenario for global collapse that Venezuela would jump at. So it shouldn’t be so difficult to see that Maduro might even offer that to Trump given the military buildup off his coastline.
If, of course, you could accept the existence of the Non-Public Degrowth Agenda, then seeing this whole situation for what it is would be a whole lot easier.
Venezuela WILL become a protectorate, and I hope that that will happen under Maduro and not the Nobel prize chick, so that you get a big dose of cognitive dissonance that might help you take a step forward. Peace brother.
NYT, ziohedge, guardian and such like are all corporate propaganda tools, so anything they write about nations that refuse to kneel, should be flushed down the toilet with any other feces.
A desire for control, isn’t control, so given recent and historic failures, it would be wise not to jump the gun.
Id advise broadening your reading before claiming others don’t understand (your WWII knowledge is lopsided to say the least).
What’s a leftist reante?
Is anyone that you don’t see as a leftist, a rightist?
Why do you need to put everyone in corporate explained pigeonholes?
You need to break free from the corporate gameshow(and unsubscribe from Stormtrooper).
Why do you believe Venezuela is facing “total collapse”?
The same people telling you this, told you 3½ years ago that the Russian army was going to totally collapse in 2 months and
5 decades ago(and every decade since) that Iran was about to collapse. Why do you posist with such fantasy.
Corporate media have been saying that for decades, but the Venezuelan people still refuse to bend. A people that had nothing before they expelled corporate rule, don’t live in the world of fear that enslaves the minds of sad westerners.
Your next paragraph reads like a wishlist of what might be(but you ignore the might not).
Again, I must accept your convoluted take and then apparently it will all fall into place(you really should write hollywood scripts).
I won’t get a dose of anything, because unlike you I understand that the situation is fluid, I also understand that it is isn’t hollywood and so the hollywood script, as before(so many times) may not come to pass.
Try going back to the beginning and read the claimed offer as what it really was, a list of demands, from a flailing bully(how many times now).
The Venezuelans have always been open to deal(ask Chevron), they just refuse to be raped anymore.
As with Hitler, you need to read more than corporate fiction.
Much like our place people in Ukraine, our place people In Venezuela were well known for burning the opposition alive(or anyone that even looked like the opposition. Not white enough basically).
Here’s a reminder that I doubt ziohedge ever reported.
https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/13270/
If you want to understand the people and how they will act, start with the people themselves. They have an uncanny ability to elucidate themselves far better than corporate fiction stenographers and if all you know is corporate fiction, the old adage of staying silent and letting people think what they will, is excellent advice.
They will fight if needed and Venezuela isn’t Iraq(which you needed outside help for, before you could go in, even after the 8 year war). 4.5m trained and armed militia, spread over a land that is the opposite of flat open desert and they’re all divided up into cells that can operate independently(have you even considered how they view your murder of their fishermen in their own waters?). Remember, resistance only need to raise the cost for the aggressor and they’ve won, but the aggressor must thoroughly destroy resistance or lose.
Good luck trying keep all that complexity operational at an acceptable cost.
I look forward to a deal and hope there is one, as when we look past the bluster, we may see the true collapsing economy and it’s desperate, vain attempts to stall that collapse. Resource constraints will always burn those that burn through the most, hardest. Drop the boxed in political view and see that there is more than one potential outcome(and who really desperately needs a deal, any deal).
You have lots of interesting thoughts, but you’ve allowed the corporate blinkers to completely obscure your peripheral vision, to the point that you see only a single path and can’t contemplate there being other paths.
Why do rightists(🤣 god, like leftist, what a childish name calling game) refuse to look at things from all angles, but insist that they and only they can give a complete description?
That takes true faith.
“Resource constraints will always burn those that burn through the most, hardest.”
Great insight.
Also, there isn’t a single right analytical answer to what has happened in the past, or will happen in the future. It is all fluid. Anyone being dogmatic about their “correct” views is not helpful.
Fitz, touche. Enjoyed that comment. But I think we’re at an impasse lol. Odd that you think I’m corporate. Venezuela is facing total collapse because of peak oil, like everywhere else. Not because of anything political. Again, you look through the political lense in assuming I’m being political when I’m being structural. As I said, the only way for Venezuela to collapse later rather than sooner is to have US companies take over production.
The US is not going to attempt regime change. The US WILL take over production with Venezuelan consent, because it will be a fair enough deal for Venezuela.
You have your position and I have mine, and we’ll see who is right.
If I’m right then it is yet more circumstantial evidence of the existence of the Hand because I don’t have a crystal ball which can only mean that I can read it’s palm, which isn’t that difficult because it’s just seeing the lay of the land and following reason. Horse sense.
Randy> “lost out on markets” one has to realistically observe that fin gains in the overall economic casino could be touched only by very few people in the end. Similarly, there was/is even tinier minority of people who understood both PO/resource depletion paradigm as well as the ponzi economics well enough. In this fashion they were able for example to use the leveraged tech stocks and or bitcoins to quickly earn enough for build up their doomsday property on time prior the big events.. Basically,it’s like wining at lotto successively several times around, only very few managed to get through this dungeon-labyrinth of chance.
Now, I recall from the 1990s the Balkan wars era, there was a chopper crew at social event discussing the humanitarian situation in terms of this ever happening back home in the opulent West/North. I overheard the bit where they mentioned should similar signs of disruption natural or man made reach elevated danger, the solution is to simply hire a “twin garage” at half way route to pre selected secure destination. And in that garage parked trailer w. tank for refueling – I gather they stressed the twin-garage as perhaps able to fit some specifically sized trailed with enough gallons of fuel. Mind you at that time IBC containers (not sure it can store jet/turbine fuel anyway) and such were not yet a big thing etc.
So, the pilot/crew proposed very simple “solution” in taking the proverbial “last chopper out of the city rooftop” and land it at some already developed property..
I must assume this kind of thinking could be somehow widespread or at least presents a possible line of logical evaluation among these professional circles everywhere..
My point is that even the people who scored big recently could eventually run out of their serial lucky sequence in that uncanny fashion. And one day the chopper be it former mil or rescue guyz will just land and the unsolicited “change of ownership” occurs.
Right. I am afraid that without fossil fuels, we could end up in a situation where “might makes right.” There are too many of us to feed, long-term.
Such a plan also depends on where/whether one can establish a “secure” secondary living arrangement. During the Balkan wars, the rest of the world was mostly functioning normally, but we shouldn’t assume that will be the case for us in the future.
What are “enough” gallons of fuel? Let’s say local distributors simply stop receiving fuel one day. What do you do with your IBC tote (~300 gallons) of gasoline? Drive to pick up family? Sell to panicked individuals for cans of food? Burn it up in generators (to power what)? It can’t be stored forever, so… how to dose it out, and to what end?
We ‘need’ gasoline in the world as it now is. Its use may well be limited in the world to come.
liquid fuels cannot be stored long term domestically—-so even the best prepared prepper will at some point run out.
same applies to food.
so basically we are screwed—just postponing the inevitable
Lidia> yes you are correct in general..
That fuel-gallons I mentioned related directly to that old story of mine (UN/RedCross chopper crew talking at party) pre-planning to have ad hoc re-supply point set up for their helicopter, just hiring twin/double garage somewhere in suburbia en route to the countryside property. In that particular scenario they would be consciously pre-hording that special fuel ahead of time.. at their place of employment/service point, heliport etc..
liquid fuels cannot be stored long term domestically—-so even the best prepared prepper will at some point run out.
While this is true—diesel and gasoline deteriorate over time—farm equipment is a lot more tolerant of old fuel than high-performance automobiles are.
I personally, have used 5-year-old gasoline mixed with engine oil to run chainsaws and bush-cutters and 30-year old diesel to run a combine harvester. This is not recommended, but as long as the fuel is free from visible contaminants, it seems to work.
You can also adulterate new fuel by adding a percentage of older fuel to it. After all, you are not going to drink it!
Proper farmers will know more about this than I do. But I can’t see them throwing away good fuel just because it is past its “use by” date.
Also, kerosene should last practically forever as a heating oil.
And some cars are designed run on old cooking oil. A friend of my has an old Volkswagen diesel car that does this. The exhaust smells like the extractor vent of a fish ‘n’ chip shop.
Totally, Tim. Diesel and 2-stroke mix lasts a long time. You can also polish old fuel.
My thoughts on the US invading VZ . Nothing is impossible but still the logistics are not in favour . If you are an attacking force the ratio has to be 3:1 in your favour in a land war . Putin made this error and the SMO got stalled in the initial stage . For an amphibious landing the ratio is 5 : 1 .
My understanding is that in the current US flotilla the active soldiers are 4400 . How can they make a landing ? At the max the US could get 10,000 in two waves . Land invasion is not going to happen via Colombia or Brazil so only Guyana . It took 8 months to prepare for Desert Storm . Even if an amphibious landing is made there is still the future supplies problem . Only an X amount of MRE rations can a soldier carry . FF is correct when he says ”They will fight if needed and Venezuela isn’t Iraq(which you needed outside help for, before you could go in, even after the 8 year war). 4.5m trained and armed militia, spread over a land that is the opposite of flat open desert and they’re all divided up into cells that can operate independently(have you even considered how they view your murder of their fishermen in their own waters?). Remember, resistance only need to raise the cost for the aggressor and they’ve won, but the aggressor must thoroughly destroy resistance or lose. ”
The last successful amphibious landing was Normandy and even in that the initial casualties were sky high . The American army was fresh and had air cover while the German army was exhausted after its defeat on the Eastern front and no air cover as the Luftwaffe was short on jet fuel . History is full of failed amphibious landing like the Battle of Gallipoli .
Interesting analysis by Francois Vadrot:
https://francoisvadrot.substack.com/p/the-week-china-struck-without-firing
“From October 8 to 11, 2025, a series of seemingly unconnected events unfolded at unprecedented speed. The United States seemed ready to attack Venezuela; the Nobel Peace Prize, awarded to an opponent of President Maduro, offered a moral justification for intervention; however, China, against all odds, struck first, not with weapons, but by closing its strategic export valves. Trump responded on Truth Social with a barrage of threats, while a brief “war” between Pakistan and Afghanistan, both close allies of Beijing, flooded social media. Behind this kaleidoscope of crises lies a common pattern: China seized control of the global rhythm, and Washington simply followed .
Copy /paste from Quark .
To stress the point made by Kulm the Nobel peace prize was given to the leader of the venezuelan opposition. I can’t recall if she is the one who won the elections without participating but clearly the war on venezuela is on. Just a little surprised Kulm did not list the economy prize along with literature and peace. they are used the exact same way, and he is smart enough to know.
There does get to be a pattern.
“I can’t recall if she is the one who won the elections without participating”
That was Juan Guaidó, but it’s possible we’ve named more than one without the populations involvement. We have, after all, already named the new ruler of Iran and he doesn’t even live in Iran. Then there’s the new ruler of Gaza, a British war criminal who can’t even speak the language.
If you like, we will name you the new ruler of Russia. Can’t make it happen, but give us a few weeks and we’ll have everyone in the west believing it.
Elders handpicked stooges like the CIA Qaeda diversity friendly ” jihadist” in Syria.
But what I do now ? Im just a Fast Eddy Fanboy with a tinfoil hat in my head …..
”Maria Corina Machado was groomed by the US deep state for regime change ops. She was a handful of people selected from around the world for the Yale World Fellows program in 2009. It’s the same program that chose Russian opposition loony Alexey Navalny. ‘ she was giving Dubya a handshake and big mouth smile in the Oval Office back in 2005!! yeah … probably way old for Dirty Don , used Bush Babe … he ain’t going to bite. Desperate desperado move by the global robber shopeshifter wankers. Not going to stop the RF strategic partnership missiles from sinking a few of the suicidal sitting ducks in the Caribbean bath tub nor the Gulf of Drumpfftonia. Probably an Analeasy 360 degree pivot. Clowns ”
”Maybe she and Trump made a background deal where she gives him the prize in exchange for invading Venezuela. ”
Posted by: Donbass Lives Matter | Oct 10 2025 12:39 utc | 21
Moon Of Alabama
She has asked the U.S, Argentina and the kiddie killers to invade, whilst advocating for the deliberate starving of Venezuelans, because that is what any champion of peace would do, when the plebs get uppity and refuse to hand it all over.
“Excitingly, Machado is a massive Thatcherite who wants to sell her country’s assets faster than you can say “Javier Milei”. Every smart person knows the Argentine model would be way better for Venezuela. The Venezuelan economy is so bad, the US has to wage economic war to ensure it fails, whereas the Argentine economy is so strong, it needs a $20 billion US bailout to stay afloat.
Machado’s party is generously funded by USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy (a group that kindly installs new leaders when electorates make the wrong choice). Just know that it doesn’t count as foreign interference when our side does it.”
https://www.normalisland.co.uk/p/venezuelan-woman-who-begged-trump
Sam, forget about 2030 and think about October.
https://fountainbridge.substack.com/p/unholy-trinity
Invest in living now.
You link to a great article:
Unholy Trinity: Shadow Banks, AI Stocks, and Stablecoins
Systemic propagation in an age of unregulated finance
The question though is who stashes stablecoins. No one I know does. we discussed on these pages that every USDT changes hands every day. If the total yearly volume (30T) vastly exceeds the Treasury base (110B) the risk of trading with USDT is inherently low. H must be talking about new stablecoins.
I did list economy. I mentioned somepne from St Lucia, in the caribbean, whose specialty were, not sirprisingly, carinnean 3rd world economics.
I do not count peace and literature because they are politial. Who remembers such winners in, say, 1930?
My point though is that even the supposed good ones in economy are bad. Just like in peace or literature.
”This year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, has dedicated her award to the people of her country and to President Trump for his “decisive support” for democracy in Venezuela. ”https://thehill.com/homenews/5549522-trump-machado-nobel-peace-prize/
https://thehill.com/homenews/5549522-trump-machado-nobel-peace-prize/
https://youtu.be/psG01NtbeOc?si=LqGv6d_IWCMhSNCb
It’s amazing the U.S economy is still standing. I Think without the massive AI spending, it would definitely be in a huge contraction. How much longer can this go on?
This fellow argues that the spending collapse has begun. He says the for the last few months, credit card spending has been essentially flat. He also talks about rising electricity costs.
At some point, more parts of the economy look likely to break.
California’s ‘impossible’ dream of ending fossil fuels isn’t working, and now it’s looking at price spikes and shortages
https://fortune.com/2025/10/09/california-gasoline-dire-phillips-66-refinery-closure-chevron-fire/
California is just leading the way for the rest of the Nation, as it always does.
Just a matter of years before the gas runs dry for all of us.
😢 BooHoo 😭…don’t cry for me , I remember a gallon of gas for 25cents and bought my first operatational car for cash money $50.00 back in the 1970s.
Don’t cry for me Argentina ..I lived a charmed life
It will be interesting to see how this works out. If the price is high enough, theoretically jet fuel and diesel can be trucked in from elsewhere to solve the problem. My impression is that the outage is especially in these categories. These categories don’t affect gasoline prices, and ordinary drivers, as much.
Biology: Age of the father.
“However, newer studies supported Crow’s claims. A study in 2006 of 132,000 Israeli adolescents discovered men in their 30s are 1.6 times as likely to have a child with autism as men under 30, with men in their 40s having a sixfold increase in risk [15] Further studies in Sweden (2.6 million children),[16] Denmark (2.98 million),[17] and an international dataset of 5.7 million children [18] showed a definite link between increased paternal age and autism risk. A widely-referenced Icelandic whole-genome sequencing effort led by Kári Stefánsson of DEcode Genetics and published in Nature also concluded similarly.[19]” This is from Wikipedia.
We are meant to have children early in life, children are very active and as we age this can be a challenge as well. We are self replicating, should we chose to not replicate or replicate until later in life, the results will not on average be as favorable. So, early replicators have a genetic advantage and will gain on late replicators. But, people will have their careers; hard choices.
Thanks to kul for causing me to go back and review a professor of mine many decades ago.
Interesting! Part of our higher autism rate could be aging fathers.
The correlation with mens’s ages has more to do with the correlation between (older) men’s ages and the (correspondingly older) ages of their female partners. LOL. And whether the autistic child is the firstborn, above all, because as I’ve said before, firstborns these days bear the brunt of the late-industrially-supercharged structural/evolutionary female late-pregnancy detox that dumps toxins into the placenta for evacuation. (As highlighted by Natasha Campbell McBride.) Subsequent children only have the accumulated toxins from the time between the two births whereas the firstborn receives the lifetime accumulation. Sacrificial lamb. As for the men’s’ ages, the best sperm are the ones that make it to the ovum first, and the very best are the ones that break into the ovum first. A man in his 30s may just have fewer premium sperm.
humankind is meant to reproduce itself in the very late teens, early 20s.
males on average are strongest then, and most able to provide for the offspring…
they will reach the optimum age of late 30s, by which time their offspring are most likey to be self supporting themselves…
this is obviously a broad spectrum, but humankind is in trouble if it gets out of step with it by very much…….
For once I agree with you, nice job, you are getting it.
Dennis L.
You are just making that up Norm and not in the good sense. You don’t get to cherry pick a 5-year window out of a 50 year reproductive lifespan and say that that is when men were ‘meant’ to procreate. That’s absurd. And males are strongest during that age window. That’s total bs dude. They may be at peak raw athleticism in terms of fast twitch muscle firing and stuff like that but their performance peak is mid 20s to early 30s. Not that peak athleticism even has much bearing on sperm quality – it doesn’t. What matters is health as manifested in the cumulative epigenetic condition of the person on the day that they grow that sperm because that epigenetic state is transferred into the sperm (vertical gene transfer). As I always say, that epigenetic transfer is the single biggest evolutionary event of a person’s life but it’s still only 1pc of evolution. The other 99pc is building that healthy epigenetic foundation via healthy exosomal horizontal gene transfer such that the ovum has a high-functioning, positive momentum of life patterning to start life out with. A strong hand dealt. McBride says that in this day and age, if you want to have kids both partners need to spend three full years on bodywork first in order to take full responsibility for that child. That true conservatism right there. Modern animism.
reante
i said it was a broad spectrum…
i look at humankind from a historical perspective, not modern day living—-our minds and bodies are ancient organisms, adapted by ancieit needs.
our modern trappings are merely temporary window dressing.
yes–a man can reproduce in his 70 s and 80s, a woman cant….there is a reson for this, the prime age is that 5—maybe 10 year window, in ancient history terms, when you not only produce children, but have the physical strength to nurture them to adulthood to begin the cycle all over again.
at 25 i could do, and did, all the necessary baby stuff at 3 am, and go to work next day without thinking about it—at 60 i couldnt have.
That is the whole point… nature only cares about survival to the point of reproduction—after that you are surplus to requirements…
by male physical strength i mean the ability to catch food to feed them.
by female physical strength i mean the strength to bear them.
go much beyond that window—into your 50s-60s say, and within a very few years, you will be relying on someone else to feed your kids.
in natures terms, that is a very high risk situation, especially as thier mother will likely be dead.
(and you can’t hunt for food while carrying a bawling baby—self defeating.)
Thanks Norm, you’re overlaying the isolated, economic modern nuclear family dynamic onto hunter gatherer ‘it takes a village’ culture, which was little c communist (communalistic). A male tribal elder procreating with a woman likely wouldn’t be wielding the atlatl on the front lines of the hunt but he would be involved in the hunt in a supporting role and the meat would all be shared around as always, so the elder wouldn’t be at a deficit in any way regarding childrearing.
we’ll never really know what stone age village life was really like, but you can bet the best hunter would get the pick of the wimminfolks.
a good chat up line would get you nowhere—a haunch of venison would.
just as well i lived through ”now” time i guess.
you can bet the best hunter would get the pick of the wimminfolks.
Not if he was gay.
For those who are interested in the Russian oil and gas supply situation .https://maratkhairullin.substack.com/p/smart-gas-station-or-how-russia-became
Near the end, the Russian writing this says:
worth reading
Nett surplus is all that matters . Tim Watkins on Thermodynamic drag .
”This will no doubt appear as a monetary problem – central and local government departments will no longer have the funds to employ the engineers, maintain and replace the equipment and purchase the resources. And no doubt the majority of us will blame the opposing political team and find ways of claiming that if our team was in charge, things would be better. But the reality is that as an increasing portion of our available energy has to be used both to secure more energy and to maintain the real wealth that has already been created, less and less is available to such things as economic growth and discretionary consumption.”https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2025/10/07/thermodynamic-drag/
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2025/10/07/thermodynamic-drag/
Why is everything named after the royals?
The prince of wales bridge? WTF?
“A hereditary monarch is as absurd a position as a hereditary doctor or mathematician.”
― Thomas Paine
an heriditary monarch, who is fairly harmless, seems a better bet than electing a president who then decides to become one
Fairly harmless?
There is a reason we speak English and its anything but harmless.
english is the global language of exchange, for a number of coincidental factors, all of which affected our commercial/social modern existence.
The following are some of the main reasons:
1…English monarchs have had no executive power since Charles I was on the throne, merely constitutional.
2….the industrial revolution began in 1709, geology and politics kicked it off in england, if you wanted ironworking skills at industrial level, the english laguage was critical.
3….the french and spanish lost the battle of trafalgar in 1805….from then on, english was the prime language of trade.
4….english speaking colonies were established around the world (Canada, Australia etc) throughout the 1800s
5….in 1807 Napoleon sold Louisiana to the American nation, thus fixing the english language across the continent….
6….. America took up the mantle of bring prime industrial power in the 1900s, again requiring english to absorb that knowledge…
you may have other weird reasons mob, i have no idea what they may be, but the prime ones i have set out above are checkable, and not subject to hysterical opinion.
English monarchs are head of state to prevent some other idiot competing for the job. Oz NZ and Canada keep the british head of state for exactly the same reason–they choose not to become republics, though they could if they wanted to.
There are 56 nations in the British commonwealth, none are there through force, their common language is english.
Our king is their titular head, by common consent. All are free to leave.
doesnt that tell you sometning?
English is the current language of exchange, nothing to do with kings etc.
English has the largest vocabulary, which implies the largest capacity for precise and nuanced communication. One could not found a civilization using a language without precise words for time or quantity.
Interesting! I remember Chinese doesn’t have the equivalent of adding an “s” to change from singular to plural. I am guessing that there are some differences in nuances such a “might have been,” “should have been,” or “have been,” but I don’t know how it really works. My guess is that starting from pictures to make words is not an efficient way to build a language. It would be better to start out with a set of letters that can be moved around.
written language is most likely to have started with accounting.
if you have 100 cattle, say, you need a form of shorthand–eg 100 C, because you cant write 100 separate marks, one for each cow,
you are, in effect, counting your energy resource.–you count how much land you own, not how many rocks you own.
that also provides the basis for arithmetic.
Exactly:
Starship, put capital equipment in space, solar energy direct and photovoltaic, build more capital equipment. Move all heavy manufacturing to space and then the real problem, where does one want the delivery? It is the crater issue.
Always something and of course, there is the cubic mile of Pt for storage of electricity on earth in the form of H. H, the wonder fuel, H made from water and when burned back to water.
When all this comes to pass psychiatrists will have a booming business helping all the doomers recover from their previous doom.
Dennis L.
Move all heavy manufacturing (equipment) and MAINTAIN IT
In outer space you say…I see no difficulty with that at all, sounds eazy peazy…please share whatever giving you this trip
I keep thinking that after Dennis retired, he stashed away a few cylinders of happy gas, and every so often he takes a sniff or two then floats away to that place where asteroid miners go to get their kicks.
makes the rest of us laugh anyway.
Thanks for the kind words, laughing quietly.
Dennis L.
I called another one: Starlink, it is displacing land based cell towers. Starlink works because the cost of launching satellites is cheap now. A positive, think of all the Cu saved by not having to run power to towers. It is solar energy, and it is not intermittent. Had I described this five years, you would have had ten reasons why it could not work including the cost of launching satellites.
A guess is those satellites are made robotically, make them in space with photovoltaics, make the robots to make satellites in space; self replication.
Optimus-3 or -4. Solve tomorrow’s problems with tomorrow’s tools.
A problem with self replication is energy; this is not an issue in space.
We are solving one problem at a time. Landbased cellular may not have much of a future.
The problem with space is not getting up, it is getting stuff down. Meteors have solved this problem but NIMBY please.
Dennis L.
my neighbour borrowed so many tomorrow tools from me i refused to lend him any more
My concern is not whether the cost of terrestrial copper infrastructure vs the satellite launching costs is greater based on the energy pedigree of either method, but which will offer more control over the masses by a centralized authority, especially with digital ID. As stated earlier, keeping COMS and data centers out in space will keep them protected from sabatoge, unless of course by a sovereign entity capable of anti-satellite weaponry.
This is a smiliar concern with these AI centers that are suddenly important enough to launch a whole new arm of dedicated nuclear power supply to run and also require lots of water and electricity to run and fossil fuels to manufacture these chips.
All for our benefit of course!
Serious questions deserve serious answers. Silly questions deserve silly answers.
For all this to happen were going to need 200 oil prices and low interest rates can you afford triple the cost on your expenses
We have an awfully lot of deteriorating stuff, that needs maintenance.
At the same time, the world has a rising population that needs to be fed and transported. It all works together to create a huge problem.
Also, I think of net surplus as “what can the government obtain as taxes.” If it can’t get anything in taxes, there is a good chance the net surplus is zero. The taxes are what distributes the surplus energy to the rest of the system.
My guess is if we manufacture in space with space based materials and space based energy we don’t repair, we make a replacement and send the old one on its way to Jupiter.
Yes, I am serious. Self replication is a geometric process limited by energy and materials. For our purpose, both are limitless in space.
I do think getting stuff to earth is very hard, I have mentioned earlier the meteor problem.
Dennis L.
Just the other day I was talking and I heard what I thought was a tree branch crashing down. Instead, it was a utility pole (wood), actually TWO POLES. One rotted from carpenter ants, the other just old. Two together. I did some research, MA has probably gone from 16,000 double poles to over 20,000. My estimate. This data is buried or no on might really have it. They’re supposed to be fixed to one pole in 60 days. Anyway, what you’re seeing, right out in the open if one cares to look. (I did video on it on my “Depletion Curve” YT channel if anyone wants to see pictures).
I haven’t noticed any of these poles in Georgia, but I don’t do much driving around.
I found this article about them.
https://ikegps.com/ikewire/double-trouble/
Double trouble: The lingering problem of ghost poles on America’s power grid
Hi Max , I subscribed to your channel a week ago . Interesting stuff especially your take down of Paul Sankey .
Russia Announces Closed Energy Cycle Nuclear Power Breakthrough . The Russian President, Vladimir Putin, has announced a global game-changing nuclear power breakthrough, a closed fuel cycle power system to tackle global uranium shortages. This system allows for virtually no nuclear waste. A conventional Nuclear Power Plant uses 0.7% of uranium, leaving 99.3% waste. Russia’s new closed cycle reactor reuses the waste, making uranium fuel last for thousands of years.
Rosatom’s fast reactor BREST-OD-300 will run on uranium-238 and convert it into reusable plutonium-239. It is the world’s only сlosed-cycle nuclear system entering production and able to be used as an industrial energy resource
https://russiaspivottoasia.com/russia-announces-closed-energy-cycle-nuclear-power-breakthrough/
We badly need something like this. The article says:
2030 can easily mean 20300000
Putin is just acting like Musk, giving hopium to the Russians hurting after Ukrainian drone attacks against the refineries
Not going to happen . Already explained .https://ourfiniteworld.com/2025/10/06/what-has-gone-wrong-with-the-economy-can-it-be-fixed/comment-page-1/#comment-492871
Hey I missed the first 360 comments. Living a harmed life because wherever I go I can gas up. It’s like winning the lottery every day. End of season is a b*tch here.
https://www.amazon.com/Conversations-Future-Visions-21st-Century/dp/1542469740/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3PYFR8FEH2P2J&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Quntf1Hh0R71HvwiVhiLwrkhNLSx8qq9_fcUKlQJKBI.Dj2uYUo5xy-mymzfsXjLU3wenfCBLQEpK2PmamZBLfE&dib_tag=se&keywords=nikola+danaylov&qid=1760010093&sprefix=nikola+danaylov%2Caps%2C160&sr=8-1
This book is from 2017
Danaylov had talked with who’s who of future tech in the first half of 2010s and we are no closer to singularity in 2025 than 2016, and as I have said before, he has grown a bit skeptical about the direction the current tech drive is taking on.
All these stories, I already heard in 2015 or so. Which is why I am not too impressed. It is not stagnating; it is just refusing to gamble. I told the story of a certain Mr. Tojo, who decided to gamble in 1941 and did not fare well. Here is how Mr. Tojo’s gamble ended up eventually.
https://youtube.com/shorts/Sx2tExm32kM?si=Zny_0iYJN0AXzY1e
A torrent of whatevers cannot drown the fact that the entire concept is faulty.
I was a future tech hothead back then. I have grown up since. It takes some time to grow up, after all.
Biology is 80/20, it is not deterministic. My bet is on biology, billions of years to get to this point. You are essentially playing the biology game.
Dennis L.
Says someone who ignores the law of genetics and praises inbreeding.
Okay, my genetics professor was James Crow, a visitor to my honors biology seminar was a fellow named Watson. Ring a bell?
Dennis L.
One can study under Jesus and still end up like Judas Iscariot.
No matter who might have taught the genetics, that does not change that the Amish is inbred
https://youtu.be/2VudUDXDzYM?si=qAKqNoonCshIJ7Pv
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eAJDQ_SgDk&pp=ygUMYW1pc2ggaW5icmVk
and have quite a few dark sides which no bias could hide.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu1mpmp-iV8&pp=ygUMYW1pc2ggaW5icmVk
The classic noir story, I married a Dead Man by William Irish in 1948, was made into a Barbara Stanwyck movie in 1950. That movie ends up in a happier note, but not the original. The woman is found to be an imposter, but she points out that the man, the brother of a very wealthy family, had roles when the real father of her child, learning how she and her child ended up in that rich family and trying to blackmail her, was killed so she could destroy him if he tries to destroy her.
So both can never really destroy each other but they also can never trust each other as well.
So the book ends with this sentence, ““We’ve lost. That’s all I know. We’ve lost. And now the game is through”, and her child, the child of a ne’er do well and a murderess, will inherit the family’s fortune.
In a previous post, I used the example of John Denver to show the necessity of inbreeding for such groups to continue their tradition. They could inbreed and keep things in their group and slowly deteriorate, or they could outmarry and the whole group dissolves in 2 generations. There is no in between.
In other words, Amish and inbreeding come in one piece, like a medicine with a side effect, actually ‘unwanted direct effect’.
The Spanish Habsburgs were famous for inbreeding, but like the tale of lily pond, it did not explode until the last generation. Carlos II , the Cursed, is where everything culminated – his father, Felipe IV, was not that bad but generations of inbreeding exploded in the end.
The healthy-looking Amish children are on the way to the final explosion, which will probably take place later in this century if the world does not go to hell (that is another story), so I am not putting my bets on them. And I take “whatever” as “I lose”.
Interesting read.
‘The goal of DemocracyAID is to train those still employed by the Government to engage in escalating acts of adminstrative rebellion within their agencies and to mount a Federal coup, applying the methods of an old CIA pamphlet called “Simple Sabotage Field Manual” ‘.?
https://forbiddennews.substack.com/p/the-banality-of-evil-seditious-fed
Interesting quote from the article:
“SES is a Continuity-of-Government corps that is, in actuality seditious and it drives much of the rogue activity within the US Government, according to Juan O Savin, AIM4Truth.org and others. Last June, Tore wrote a very important article about the most consequential Federal Agency you’ve never heard about, the Senior National Intelligence Service (SNIS), which is the éminence grise behind the SES.
The goal of DemocracyAID is to train those still employed by the Government to engage in escalating acts of adminstrative rebellion within their agencies and to mount a Federal coup, applying the methods of an old CIA pamphlet called “Simple Sabotage Field Manual”.
Much of Ro Tucci’s training appears to be about reinforcing the Zoom call participants’ pre-existing Marxist inculcation, which seems unnecessary, as most have already overthrown governments worldwide while calling it “aid” and overthrown their own nation while calling it “Public Health”.”
This is disturbing. Aid and Public Health sound great, but they can be the opposite. We have seen that before on OurFiniteWorld.com.
We live in a world of rising linguistic complexity.
On one hand, we seek speed and efficiency in communication — we shorten words, compress meaning, and move faster.
On the other hand, the shorter our words become, the broader the spectrum of meanings they must bear — reflecting the growing complexity of the human world itself.
These are the limits of communication.
The Babylonian tower.
Using a single word to mean several things is going backwards in complexity, isn’t it?
I have a sister (Lois) who has written books about the limited Hebrew vocabulary back in Old Testament times. Thus, “fear” could mean several different things, for example.
This is an example.
https://ourrabbijesus.com/books/5-hebrew-words-that-every-christian-should-know/
I like a lot of what quark (linked by ravi) has to say, but I think he’s wrong about the following:
“The price of gold per ounce hasn’t increased in real terms (at least not what the dollar quote indicates). What has happened is that the dollar has depreciated in the same proportion as the rise in gold.”
Oil still hasn’t gone up dramatically. Housing prices aren’t growing any more, in fact they’re falling slightly from elevated levels. Once we see prices for those two categories go up even with low economic activity, at that point I’ll agree that it’s devaluation and not a sector-specific fear-trade. But we shouldn’t use gold alone as a proxy for the general price level, especially when we already have various basket measures.
I just wonder what the timeline is , do we have five years
We will find out. Some people are already having problems with not enough income for their needs. The US government is struggling with too much outgo, relative to income.
Within 5 years we shall know our direction dead or alive. Dead would be a Seneca Cliff collapse of oil prices leading to dog eat dog conditions in a full meltdown of our civilisation where maybe true survivalists might survive for 5 years before dying a horrible death from one of the four horsemen of death or Alive a technological society for a small group of societies chosen “Ones” surrounded by billions of have-nots living in “third world conditions ” competing with each other to earn any money. to eat. Could there be another option available i don’t think so.All you can do now is own your own place outright get some silver coins put away,avoid exposure to shares because the crash in the stock markets will be massive and prioritise food and water. Solar panels and batteries is also a good idea.Avoid activism because shitless is going to get ugly when everyone’s life savings evaporate.
Yeah I kinda feel that like a slow river that starts to pick up speed in the narrow canyons . I think we are getting ready to enter the narrow canyons. The collective used to call me an extremist and doomer for my views now very few people are; they are all starting to recognize big problems
Haven’t gotten to the quark link yet but he’s not wrong. The recent 30pc dollar devaluation and gold price change do proportionally match, even if the gold price change is a lagging indicator. Because of the current match, he can’t be said to be wrong. Devaluation has no political meaning. It is not up for debate. It simply means less valuable in real terms. Debasement is that political term that’s up for debate.
The fact that the barrel price hasn’t gone up in nominal terms is not circumstantial evidence of the dollar maintaining value in real terms, it’s evidence that the petrodollar is still the world’s reserve currency. It’s evidence that oil is becoming less valuable in real terms because fewer people can afford it.
Welcome to the Collapse of a Luxury Civilization wherein oil becomes less valuable as it becomes more precious.
Many great civilisations have gone before us and disappeared leaving limited clues to their demise.
My view is civilisations undergo a natural life and death cycle, just as people do. They start off young and vigorous, then decline into old age, ending up incapable of doing anything much. It’s not bad or wrong, it’s just the way things are.
Declining birth rates say that our (global) civilisation is on its way out, likely because many people don’t believe in it any longer. Much of it has lost its moral foundation and purpose, apart from material consumption.
Within the global whole, each separate country/civilisation has its own dynamic. Some are undergoing a period of renewal and growth, others are well into decline (hello EU). Who knows, those in decline may pull out of their dive into oblivion, which is often caused by deranged ideologies, as opposed to physical constraints.
So that’s why I say relax and enjoy the BAU party folks whilst you still can. I flew to Europe and back from Oz recently and when you look at the technology, logistics and complexity of that trip running close to 100% perfect, it’s a freakin’ miracle.
Make the trip now, while things still work.
With the US government currently shut down, a person worries about air travel.
Mike Adams at Natural News has an AI-oriented view on the shutdown. He thinks it’s been engineered so they can lay off expensive Fed Govt workers and replace them with AI systems.
Anyone who is doing spreadsheets, administrative emails and doing bureaucratic process aka ‘pushing paper’ in all its forms is very vulnerable to imminent AI replacement.
In the case of the Fed Govt it’s not just for cost savings, it’s to get rid of (people with) ideological biases and brickwalls to getting stuff done aka wokism/the Deep State.
It’s worth checking out Mike’s free AI engine “Enoch” at brighteon.ai if you are interested in medical info that’s not biased to Big Pharma.
I think cruises are the way to go they seem safer to me if the shit hits the fan maybe you’ll be able to get back home
Or you could end up sequestered in a ‘Diamond Princess’ situation.
Well put Fred. Very well put.
There is one civilization that never collapsed.
Egypt.
I watched a very old nineleven video with Mike Ruppert at Portland State (Nov ’01) and while he was an early civcollapsnik he claimed that the thirdreich never did, it just changed names.
My fave scifi author suggested the same in The Man in the High Castle (’62). While Phil had more to say regarding previous civ in his IYFTWBYSSSOTO speech (’77 Metz, France; he surmised some continuity of power through every rise and fall.
There is always (usually/often) carry over from one historical epoch (regime) into another. In terms of above posted examples, the US absorbed lot of the nazi spy and wider political sympathizer network around the world, and tried to harmlessly milk it and even upgrade it into fullest potential, this effort backfired on many occasions later. There were some associated players of the milieu in the 1963 Tx thing and other later escapades into the 1970s..
Similarly, various post-ex/soviet crazies infiltrated the US corridors of power, decision-making and tainted sane policy to this very day.
When it comes to timber Canada is the big dog.
Robots coming on strong in mining
https://standardbots.com/blog/mining-robots?srsltid=AfmBOooBWoMGbC3VJ4IXPd6NUqLpmrg-00ohe39i6VYHRddyL9uyFpSy
Could perhaps be used in the US instead of paying children a tiny wage to work on mining (as sometimes seems to happen in Africa).
yes this seems to be the direction we are headed too for this level of complexity to be achieved requires massive depopulation or great poverty for the ‘useless class’ or 99.99% of the world’s population . according to my calculations about 1 million people would be well off, the rest would be living in a third world standard of living. so big adjustments in our financial systems are coming.
Blood draw by AI-robot
https://vitestro.com/
Robotic dentistry !!
robot surgery be at ease the leaders are Han.
https://nyulangone.org/care-services/robotic-surgery-center
Beijing robot certified for surgery in Europe.
https://www.massdevice.com/surgerii-robotics-ce-mark-single-port-robot/
The AI slop doesn’t actually describe anything beyond your statement
Adverse surgical outcomes went way down when doctors switched from making a big incision to making a small incision, and advanced techniques within the small incision. I can see how robotics could possibly be a further step in this direction.
i mean the video is low-content AI slop. i am for automation where it helps.
Where do we get the metal for all of these devices?
I can see why robotics in timber harvesting would be attractive to those doing the harvesting, but weather, mixture of different kinds/ages of trees, and uneven terrain would be a problem.
When will AI-robots pick up trash in NYC? When will AI-robots replace half the workers in Tesla manufacturing plants? When will AI-robot teach high school English?
I have no doubt these will happen within the next 20 years.
Probably 5 years, more like. If man is still alive – if woman can survive.
And assuming that there is enough metal and rubber and plastic. But AI will probably also hasten the creation of new nanomaterials. Then life will be just like in the film “Blade Runner” – which wasn’t actually my cup of tea.
why does the future always have bad lighting?
because man can’t afford the electric bill
bravo
They can’t even drive on roads successfully and now you want them to also interact with their environment?
Maybe more complexity is not as far away as I have been fearing.
More complexity means exponentially more energy usage.
Very few people at the same time, so that per capita usage is high, but total usage isn’t terribly high? Or, is a second coming necessary to solve our problem?
WestJet now charges passengers to recline seats on new Boeing 737 flights
“”The modern cabin experience will offer a bright, airy atmosphere with an upgraded design that features new seats, adjustable headrests and enhanced cushion and back support with a fixed recline design in Economy that helps preserve personal space,” WestJet said in a press release.
Seat classes include premium, extended comfort and economy. Those wanting their seats to recline will need to book premium, and only 12 exist per plane.
https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/westjet-now-charges-passengers-recline-seats-new-boeing-737-flights
I found this article from 2024 about the issue:
https://www.cntraveler.com/story/reclining-seats-disappearing-economy-class
Daughter suspected in an attack on a newly elected mayor in Germany
“Investigators say that the newly elected mayor of a German town who was found at her home with stab wounds apparently was attacked by her teenage daughter, and her life is no longer in danger”
“The attack on Stalzer, which followed violence against other local politicians in Germany in recent years, drew swift condemnation from Chancellor Friedrich Merz and others. But investigators quickly determined Tuesday that there was no sign of a political motive.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/10/08/germany-mayor-elect-herdecke-attack-investigation/ee8350f2-a44f-11f0-a79e-ccb5b1f59130_story.html