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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.
One of the world’s best cardiologist has said what some dismissed.
“BREAKING: First Peer-Reviewed Study Finds Direct Molecular Evidence of mRNA “Vaccine” Genomic Integration”
In a Stage IV cancer patient, a 31-year woman, we identified a vaccine-derived Spike gene sequence chimerically fused into chromosome 19 with perfect 20/20 base-pair identity match with her Moderna mRNA — a 1-in-a-trillion chance of coincidence.
https://x.com/P_McCulloughMD/status/1978238746710638722
Well well well. And this is hilarious. World class dissident doctors flailing about.
Firstly the tweet is misleading. The sequence was incorporated into chromosome 19 of at least one of the tumor cells (it doesn’t say how many) and not one of her normal cells. He is announcing this finding in mixed company – to the general public on X — so he needs to be more professional than that. But what else is new. Extensive gene mutation is a hallmark of cancer cells. Gene mutation is not a hallmark of normal cells. Yet the announcement titling says Genomic Integration! Not so small detail: Genomic integration within at least on tumor genome.
Question: why would the vaxx mRNA predictably (to those in the know) beat the ‘astronomical’ one in a trillion (a totally made up number btw) odds of incorporating into a tumor cell genome but not a normal cell genome?
The answer is that all roads lead to the mRNA being a tumor signaling exosome. And this finding is a timely example of how I’ve been saying this week that Darwin was wrong about random mutation and that the evolutionary truth is fractal/consistent with ecological population dynamics: enough signaling exosomes can change the information ecology (the environment) in a cell to the point where the gene itself can adapt to that new environment and not just the epigenetic regulation. Now that hard mutation is probably never going to happen in a normal cell during one person’s lifetime but clearly, now, it can happen in Stage 4 cancer cell, which isn’t really surprising I don’t think. Cancer is a phenomenally adaptive evolutionary last-resort scramble-mode for triaging a war-torn carcinogenic body.
I’ll take his explanation over yours since he’s one of the world’s best cardiologist and you are not. It must be nice to be a keyboard warrior/judge such as yourself.
You’re free to take other people’s word for things anytime you want Rodster if that’s what floats your boat. And you’re also free to dehumanize the truth by making appeals to authority. You’re also free to completely disrespect the truth by accidentally making an appeal to a non-authority in Peter McCullough who isn’t a credentialed oncologist any more than I am, and who never made any public statements on cancer prior to the plandemic. Nor does he know anything of peak oil so clearly ignorance is a problem for him.
LOL
Wow, credentialism on OFW?
Of course, Rodster, you are welcome to trust anybody’s explanation. It was still a free internet last time I looked.
But riddle me this, Batman; Just how does being “one of the world’s best cardiologists” qualify a person to be an expert on mRNA “vaccine” genomic Integration?
Would Dr. McCullough’s opinion on this topic count more than, say, that of “one of the world’s best acupuncturists” or “one of the world’s best ear, nose, and throat specialists”?
Could you please explain the hierarchy and the mechanics of credentialism that makes Dr. McCullough any more knowledgable than Reante is on mRNA “vaccine” genomic Integration?
Is it something that you acquire upon picking up your graduation certificate on completing medical school? Or is it the result of decades of studying and treating heart disease?
Or is it a bit like credibility chess, where a knight and a bishop are more credible than a pawn, a rook is more credible than knight or bishop, and a queen is more credible than a rook?
Norman says I’m stupid. And Norman is an honorable man. So I might not understand the point you are trying to make. But please humor me, Give me a simple explanation as to why Dr. McCullough any more knowledgable than Reante is on mRNA “vaccine” genomic Integration.
Because if it is simply because McC is good with hearts, then we all might as well close up shop and stop exchanging opinions on OFW. As none of us are experts on the issues, topics and subjects we tend to talk or in some cases pontificate about.
McCullough must know as a cardiologist that, regardless of the cause of the fibrotic disease, myocarditis is only ever the result of fibrotic disease of the heart wall in which catastrophic upregulation of the fibroblast cells in the heart wall produces so much fibrin that it shears apart the muscle cells from each other which weakens the heart wall. If he had any semblance of a decent systems theory of the body, and all of which theories are based on the lateral thinking of pattern recognition, then the obvious link between the tumor exosome vaxx bombs and myocarditis should cause him to see that all the other primary vaxx injuries are also caused by catastrophic fibroblastic upregulation in their locales: chronically detached retinas, uterine cysts and excessive bleeding, sepsis, and the super obvious one which is the insane fibrin clotting in the bloodstream. As I’ve said numerous times before, these vaxx bombs are broad spectrum tumor exosomes because when they culture these exosomal RNA in the bioweapons labs in they can’t separate our classes of exosomes from each other because they can’t even separate out the plasmids and all other crap that their finding in the vaxxes. The sv40 in there is also tumor biology. And they wouldn’t want to focus on just one class of exosomes anyway because together there classes are biologically synergistic, obviously.
The two main classes of tumor exosomes signal for massive local fibroblastic upregulation, because tumors are made of fibrin, and the other for the downregulation of antibodies and white blood cells. A third major class signals for angiogenesis so that the tumor has a constant blood supply for acquiring food as well as cholesterol because fibrin tumors fill themselves with cholesterol because that is the fat that the fat-soluble carcinogens get preserved in for stabilizing their deadly reactivity with oxygen.
So if McCullough noticed the fibrotic common denominator, he might have an eureka moment and then go down that rabbit hole.
And the discovery of the tumor cell mutation is yet another clue. Surprise, surprise – fibrosis has a fundamental role in tumor cell genetic mutation.
Rodster has the luxury of being able to verify all of the factual claims that I make so that he can choose to then decide whether my piercing together of the unsanctioned systems theory hews to Reason. But he chooses not to because that’s the path of least resistance. OTSS to reach intellectual spawning grounds upstream of there.
AI:
“Fibrosis can play a role in cancer by increasing genetic mutation through mechanisms like oxidative stress, but it is not a direct cause of genetic mutations themselves. Fibrosis, which is the excessive accumulation of scar tissue, creates a microenvironment that promotes cancer development and progression by causing high oxidative stress, which can lead to DNA damage and mutations in genes like TP53 and KRAS. Additionally, cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs), which are cells involved in fibrosis, can secrete factors that enhance tumor cell growth, survival, and invasion.
How fibrosis can increase the risk of genetic mutations
Oxidative stress: Fibrosis can generate high levels of oxidative stress. This stress can damage DNA, leading to mutations in genes that regulate cell growth and division, such as the TP53 and KRAS genes.
Inflammation: Chronic inflammation, a common feature of both fibrosis and cancer, contributes to the DNA-damaging effects of oxidative stress.
Cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs): CAFs, which are a key component of the fibrotic process, can contribute to a tumor-promoting environment. They secrete factors like growth factors and cytokines that can promote the growth, survival, and invasiveness of cancer cells, and their presence is often linked to worse cancer outcomes.
Fibrosis as a driver of other cancer-related processes
Promoting malignancy: The dense, stiffened tissue associated with fibrosis can create a physical environment that enhances tumor cell growth, survival, and migration.
Drug resistance: Fibrosis is increasingly recognized as a factor that contributes to drug resistance in cancer, making it more difficult to treat.
Immune evasion: The fibrotic stroma can also protect tumor cells from the immune system, allowing them to evade detection and destruction by the body’s immune cells.
Important distinction
It’s crucial to understand that fibrosis is a condition that can promote or accelerate the development of genetic mutations through secondary effects like oxidative stress, but it is not a direct genetic mutation itself.
The underlying cause of cancer is typically a series of genetic mutations, which fibrosis can exacerbate in a complex interplay with other factors like chronic inflammation and oxidative stress.”
You’ve left out the best news yet.
NewScientist:
By Michael Le Page
19 October 2025
mRNA covid vaccines spark immune response that may aid cancer survival
An analysis of patient records suggests that mRNA covid-19 vaccines boost the immune response to cancerous tumours when given soon after people start a type of immunotherapy, extending their lives
COVID mRNA vaccines may be able to train immune system to attack cancer cells, boost survival
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/covid-mrna-vaccines-may-be-able-train-immune-system-attack-cancer-cells-boost-survival
“mRNA cancer vaccines sensitize tumors to immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) in part by stimulating a surge in inflammatory cytokines,”
I’m not sure how a strong immune response helps target fast-evolving cancer cells but they say it works.
I walked into the house yesterday and my wife was at her spinning wheel and NPR was playing on the radio. It was the last of the news headlines and they said how COVID vaccines have been found to possibly be useful in cancer treatment. I said to her, did I really just hear that? She burst out laughing.
YCMTSU! The Hand is IN THE ZONE with its gaslighting. The religious word evil doesn’t even do it justice. Let’s call it Dark Flow.
AI Overview:
“Tumor cells use exosomes to produce cytokines for both suppressing the immune system and promoting tumor growth. These exosomes are like delivery trucks, carrying pro-inflammatory cytokines that stimulate immune cells to create an environment that favors the tumor, while also containing immunosuppressive molecules that dampen the anti-tumor response. This packaging protects the cytokines from degradation, ensures they reach the right target cells, and facilitates their release to alter the recipient cell’s behavior.
Why tumor cells produce exosomes with cytokines
Immune suppression: Tumor cells use exosomes to deliver immunosuppressive molecules to immune cells, creating an environment that avoids being attacked.
Immune activation: Tumor-derived exosomes can stimulate immune cells, but sometimes they stimulate them to produce pro-inflammatory cytokines that have both pro- and anti-tumorigenic effects. For example, exosomes can trigger the release of cytokines like IL-6, which then activate immune cells to promote tumor growth through a process called autocrine/paracrine signaling.
Promoting tumor growth: By transferring cytokines and other molecules to recipient cells, exosomes can encourage the growth, invasion, and metastasis of the tumor.
Inter-cellular communication: Exosomes serve as a reliable way for tumor cells to communicate with other cells in the tumor microenvironment, including immune cells, stromal cells, and other cancer cells.
Circulating biomarkers: The presence and contents of exosomes, including their cytokines, can serve as valuable biomarkers for detecting cancer, monitoring its progression, and predicting treatment response.
How exosomes help cytokines
Protection from degradation: The lipid bilayer of exosomes shields the cytokines within from degradation in the body’s fluids.
Targeted delivery: Exosomes have specific receptors on their surface, which helps them target and bind to specific recipient cells, ensuring the cytokines are delivered to the correct location.
Controlled release: Once the exosome reaches its target, it can release its cargo, including cytokines, in a controlled manner.
Inter-cellular communication: By carrying and delivering molecules like cytokines, exosomes are a crucial component of intercellular communication within the tumor microenvironment, influencing the behavior of various cells.”
You seem a lot more positive about this than I am.
I’m guessing you and your wife have reserved your shots already.
It looks like the mrna medical technology is not going away. As a therapy tool for cancer it only appears to be marginally less dangerous than other cancer drugs.
What could possibly go wrong? Aren’t they already on the verge of taking down the EU because they are the EU’s largest economy?
“Climate Lunatics In Germany Want Total Deindustrialization In Just 15 Years”
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/climate-lunatics-germany-want-total-deindustrialization-just-15-years
Well, they are certainly on track. Once cars are no longer produced there… that might just do it.
Climate is a more acceptable excuse than “there is not enough fuel for us to by” or “we cannot afford to buy the fuel we need.”
Though it’s a careful what you wish for situation, good for the Germans! It’s (fairly abstract) circumstantial evidence that the German blood memory is more stout-heartedly agrarian than other people’s. Culturally, Germans were last-in, first-out on industrialism. They fought to the death against industrial imperialism. Right Fitz? Fuck industrialism and fuck the new woke eugyppius.
We’re closer than you seem to think Renate on most thtings, so I’ll try to answer some points, starting with your reply about Venezuela(sorry, been busy).
Venezuelan total collapse, is not as imminent as you presume.
Despite the decades of U.S attempts, China is now dictating the pace* and U.S know how will be welcome, as it always has been.
Now go back to the claimed offer and tell me you believe the U.S will get better than that, because if they don’t, that’s not a win. That’s taking less than you claimed was offered for free. No amount of Trump bloviating will change that.
If you don’t like the term corporation, we could call it the mega machine, which fits the criteria and the hollywood title.
“Both phenomena are just for herding geopolitics to its final destination under the HTOE. So says my Hollywood script, anyway, right Fitz?”
Yes, lots of horse trading, which implies multiple players and agendas, but no all controlling, invisible one armed bandit, just a mega machine trying to keep control as it’s power ebbs away.
“Though it’s a careful what you wish for situation, good for the Germans! It’s (fairly abstract) circumstantial evidence that the German blood memory is more stout-heartedly agrarian than other people’s. Culturally, Germans were last-in, first-out on industrialism. They fought to the death against industrial imperialism. Right Fitz?”
Not the blood fantasy again. We did that about the pre WWI U.S population remember(it’s all complete and utter bullshit).
They most certainly didn’t fight to the death against industry(who tried to build a railway to Iraq?), they unwittingly did imperialisms(corporation) bidding and Hitler had all the real agrarians hung or beheaded(unlike the socialists, that were the first to receive a one-way ticket to the concentration camps), because that was the whole point of Hitler.
*Forgot the fact that they control 90% of rare earths, that pales into insignificance when you consider that they control over 99% of heavy rare earths(the military stuff).
Is this mysterious hand Chinese perchance and just turning down the average energy burn of a westerner to the level of a Chinese peasant?
No, Fitz, I do realize that we are close. I used to be you. Homesteading changed all that. If you believed in the DA we’d be tapdancing together. If I didn’t believe in the Hand, we’d be sulking together. Why do people dance and why do people sulk?
The private central banking system funds all nuclear militaries. Every country in the world is existentially dependent on that banking system. That is global governance, Fitz, by any measure. That is the speed governor of your Machine, Fitz. One little device that controls the inline 12 cylinder on the cigarette boat civilization.
You can’t make an argument refuting this structural analysis, so the only conclusion that I can come to about your reluctance is that it relates to ego. Another thing you and me have in common is a well-defined ego. That can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on how accurately the ego wields Reason. Healthy intellectual egos grow out of accuracy. Unhealthy intellectual egos play extend and pretend when growth stagnates. Unhealthy egos believe in mismatched realities because they hold onto beliefs that they had from before they learned about systems theory that weren’t based on systems theory. Upon learning about systems theory, everything has to be reassessed.
I’m not interested in further debate with you. You do your conventional quark-style (the commenter), MOA style, etc, sinophilic geopolitical analysis as of the backseat theater as if no one is driving the bus. It’s both stale and it has extremely poor explanatory power of how events are playing out. You and quark want to say that China is in the driver’s seat via a vis china-US yet the US started the trade war. All that you have to do fall back on, like everyone else, is that the West is a ship of fools. That the pathetic holy grail of anti-imperialist dissidents. It’s classic projection. You are applying your expectations of how politicians should be behaving during the age of growth (constructively) to how they are behaving post- 2018 (deconstructively in function though the behavior looks destructive, see the difference). Why would you do that? Of course they are going to appear foolish, Fitz! Post -growth they have to have the party in power (Western Civilization, the Democrats til 2024, and now MAGA, now Starmer) look foolish relative to the ‘opposition'(the East) in order to necessarily dismantle the globalized system in the direction of the national market economics of the East.
Where were the “multiple players and agendas” during the plandemic when every country decided to trash its finances and coerce people into genetic modification with a military product?
Where were the “multiple players and agendas” when you were expecting the Great Reset to steamroll into the future?
You can’t have it both ways.
Calm down!
My dad used to say that to me. Thanks for bringing him back to life. 🙂
reante is correct in this case, Gail.
There far more cooperation that there’d be if no one was driving the bus.
Cooperation, in human terms, implies there is organization and hierarchies.
Industrial civilization is way too complex to allow large numbers of people within it to “do their own thing.”
Of course, there’s someone driving the bus.
There is a global order and it’s too big and obvious for even the elites to pretend it doesn’t exist. U.S. hegemony means that America drives the bus. American citizens don’t drive the bus. An elite group of people based in America drive the bus.
A world where no “group people in charge would have no internet, no system of international trade, and would not have military bases all over the world belonging to one country.
Imagine being in the 19th century and pretending that that large swaths of the world was not under the control of the British empire or that the British Empire would never ever use coercion to maintain its status. Imagine being in the 19th century and being told that India is a British colony because of market forces or the will of the (educated) people,
What we have now is many people claiming that America waging war against numerous countries since 1945, when threats (diplomacy) don’t work is a sign that the world made up of many autonomous actors who behave freely in their own self-interest.
we are a carbon based species, living in a carbon based system, burning carbon to create carbon intensive products to sustain a carbon based economy.
delete the word carbon from the above paragraph…
and what you have left is our future.
Guys…. hope you are all good. Enjoy life as it is. I am still on this blog but never written anything anymore. Enjoying my life.
We are too interconnected. Even mobile phones are now IP phones. Land lines are not copper anymore.
As what Xabier used to say “We move up the technological ladder and we removed all the rungs after we have stepped up”.
Many of us left because there is nothing much to say. Rehashing the same-old same-old. That is why it is called a predicament. Definitions of predicament. noun. a situation from which extrication is difficult especially an unpleasant or trying one
I have said before and I will say it again. If we manage to find an super gigantic oil field that is filled with oil and literally poking a straw in will let the super sweet crude flow out. Will this help ? Not at all. In fact, it will just crash the global economy the next day. We were too much in debts and debts need to be repaid.
Good luck and all the best. Enjoy the sun and everything. Gold at 4200 is not a good sign.
Lots of things all happening at once and nothing seems to indicate that in any way, we are continuing in a stable business atmosphere.
Rumours of a massive liquidity crisis across major banks, and Tomahawk missiles being guided by the US into Russian targets … are a couple of lit fuses at this point.
This is a premium Zerohedge article suggesting the first hints of a liquidity crisis.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/verge-funding-crisis-feds-emergency-liquidity-facility-unexpectedly-soars-most-covid
So, if liquidity is too low, trying to ramp up lending with lower rates won’t work because the reserves to support this lending are lacking (or too high cost).
The article also says:
The most important indicator, as always, remains the SOFR rate: should the recent drift higher continue, the self-fulfilling cascade of a liquidity shortage will almost certainly be activated.
SOFR =Secured Overnight Financing Rate
This is a chart I found. It does have an uptick at the end, but from a low level.
https://ycharts.com/indicators/sofr
Another liquidity crisis that will inevitably be papered over with another massive amount of “money” printing, resulting in a (further) hyper-inflationary event.
IMHO, what we are seeing in the gold and silver markets is a perfectly logical reaction in anticipation of this outcome.
Not necessarily because PM also holds its value better than currency during deflation. So people and institutions are presumably buying for two reasons representing two sides of the same coin: as a hedge against deflation in the US and as a hedge against hyperinflation in ROW.
This seems very important. Conversely, I have to wonder if the system is in anyway functional anymore. By that, I’m asking… are any of the fundamental concepts of the economy actually relevant in an era where derivatives and hypothecation schemes are accepted… and AI everything is up next to level up the complexity of everything yet again.
Everyone involved just seem to keep playing along, and more cash somehow always shows up in the nick of time.
Diesel seems to be the only true life blood.
Either way, Im not optimistic.
I gave the link so people can watch in coming days. I do not follow this kind of thing myself. It seems like a lot of things could go wrong, especially with the government shut down and busy laying off people. There was an interesting WSJ editorial about the layoffs this morning, by an insider to the process.
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/government-shutdown-no-an-efficiency-audit-6dcc4917
Government Shutdown? No, an Efficiency Audit
Based on data from past closings, roughly 25% of the federal workforce could be permanently cut.
“The Easter Islanders, aware that they were almost completely isolated from the rest of the world, must surely have realized that their very existence depended on the limited resources of a small island. After all, it was small enough for them to walk round the entire island in a day or so and see for themselves what was happening to the forests.
Yet they were unable to devise a system that allowed them to find the right balance with their environment.
—Clive Ponting
No matter how exotic those lost civilizations seem, their framers were humans like us. Who is to say we won’t succumb to the same fate? Perhaps someday New York’s skyscrapers will stand derelict and overgrown with vegetation, like the temples at Angkor Wat and Tikal.”
-Easter’s End
by Jared Diamond
“After a few centuries, they began erecting stone statues on platforms, like the ones their Polynesian forebears had carved. With passing years, the statues and platforms became larger and larger, and the statues began sporting ten-ton red crowns–probably in an escalating spiral of one-upmanship, as rival clans tried to surpass each other with shows of wealth and power. (In the same way, successive Egyptian pharaohs built ever-larger pyramids. Today Hollywood movie moguls near my home in Los Angeles are displaying their wealth and power by building ever more ostentatious mansions.”
-Easter’s End
by Jared Diamond
Interesting quote. I hadn’t thought of it that way.
I had a thought at the gym this morning.
What if you could order a car like Uber and it comes to you (driverless) and then you can just drive it wherever you want. And then someone else can order it.
Like the electric scooters.
Wouldn’t that be awesome?
You could literally “own nothing” and be happy.
Youve just invented the Tesla Robotaxi… but someone might have beaten you to it.
It doesn’t really exist of course… and I suspect it never will.
A person can already order a car with driver, whenever needed. I don’t see how a driverless car would be better, unless it was a lot cheaper.
I don’t understand these comments. Several months ago my daughter took a driverless taxi in San Fran. Is it so uncommon that few people know?
Driverless taxis are only available in a very few places.
I don’t think they are cheaper than regular taxis.
There is no need to have driving “automated”.
Its not difficult to drive and actually its quite fun. (minus handicapped or elderly)
Do we need a button to pop open the fridge door too?
Sudden death ‘syndrome’
Probably related to some recent suddent deaths of famous Italian people, Italian Scientist Prof. Bellavite has just published on Telegram an useful recap of some international scientific researches about why people may suddenly die after a Covid vax, even after long time of having received a dose.
His post contains also an explicative technical image.
Here you can find his post if you do not have Telegram:
Sudden death after Covid vaccine
Small bibliography:
https://jkms.org/DOIx.php?id=10.3346/jkms.2021.36.e286
http://www.paolobellavite.it/files/345_2021_ECPharmacologyToxicology-Def_24l1uj3w.pdf
https://www.mdpi.com/2227-9059/11/2/451
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08916934.2023.2259123
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ehf2.14680
https://www.mdpi.com/2227-9059/12/12/2852
https://www.cureus.com/articles/147265-intracranial-hemorrhage-after-pfizer-biontech-bnt162b2-mrna-covid-19-vaccination-a-case-report
https://www.jocn-journal.com/article/S0967-5868(25)00195-X/fulltext
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590136225000397?via%3Dihub
https://www.annalsofvascularsurgery.com/article/S0890-5096(22)00219-9/fulltext
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1568997219300370?via%3Dihub (HPV vax, but equal mechanism)
Original Post: https://t.me/PaoloBellavite/12293
Kind regards
Not sure what to make of this Rystead data. Says Venezuela barely has any oil. The table says from 2023:
https://lyis.ca/pfet/Energy%20Update%202024.pdf
Repeating myself but easy to understand . ” It is not the size of the tank that matters but the size of the tap .” The oil from VZ cannot / will not flow .
QED .
Not available in the mainstream media . The hammer breaks before the anvil .https://jaymartin.substack.com/i/176042123/the-hammer-and-the-anvil
This is an article about what looks like the beginning of a major shift away from trade being in US dollars to being in renminbi, or some other currency.
He says:
This becomes a template China can now take to the rest of the world – any country, any corporation and say: This is how we do business now. It’s good enough for BHP — so it’s good enough for you.
I’ve noted a few times that we have small reactor tech ever since nuclear subs came around. Now it seems the US military is planning for a future that’s been an obvious option all that time:
>> the US Army on Tuesday announced a plan to install nuclear microreactors at bases across the country
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/defending-against-strained-grids-army-power-us-bases-micro-nuke-reactors
Whether we still have the know-how is unknown to me and there’s also the issue of our old tech that uses nuclear fuel with low efficiency, with which we would run out of fuel. But it’s a step in the right direction.
It’s a brilliant plan. the war machine is powered by fuel processed in Russia, and is made of rare earths produced and processed in China.
That is right the communist will sell us the rope we hang them with.
Not that I see any communists.
And the world’s supply of uranium seems to be inadequate. And we do not have the upgrading equipment needed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCUnlPJRGY4
Overview of China business, have seen videos of assembly lines, clean, incredible. The problem will be ability to do tasks, China has that. My guess is the US will not be first on the list to get petroleum, we will get much of what we need. but aircraft carriers might not bring home the bacon. At 7:20 mention made of social darwism; you make it or you go under.
We have spent too much on guns, the narratives regarding society do not work and that is going to be painful and being right will be small comfort.
Have a grandson looking to go to school in my state, MN, He is strong in hockey. I was a housefellow at Madison, had players in the dorm; get the puck out of here.
We have too many people who think being clever with money is everything. Give me an intelligent engineer and we will own them, trivial. Think Elon, probably doesn’t own a bank, can deposit billions trivially.
Think farming will use half the land for solar collectors, half for crop; battery driven farm equipment. China seems to invest heavily in solar, what could go wrong?
Dennis L.
It is difficult to compete with China. Yet, I expect that China is also hitting limits to growth that it will need to deal with. The limits on exports related to some minerals would seem to point in that direction. I sometimes wonder if some of these videos are leaving out the problems China is encountering.
Of course they leave out the problems. The Uyghurs are under exclusion due to religious beliefs for example
I write frequently about the importance of religions as an organizing force, that religions seem to be rules which have been tested over thousands of years. I am thinking they need to be simple and include mutual trust. Without trust perhaps there is only a litigious society which is too expensive to operate in our energy deprived future.
If one is starting a manufacturing business in the US or non China, what would work? Intellectual capital accumulates from a young age, spend time on what does not work and that time is lost forever.
The Amish limit their skill set and it would appear they value trust highly, lie and be shunned. Maintaining trust in a community is a challenge; it seems we have lost much of that trust in the US as well as the skill sets to make things. I wonder if building a factory in the US will work now. It appears electronics at my former CC will close, very difficult to find teachers.
Dennis L.
It is my impression that the Uyghurs live in an area with an inhospitable climate, at a distance from population centers. They seem to also have had a somewhat higher birth rate than areas closer to Beijing. Shipping goods from the area where the Uyghurs live would seem to be high cost. It is not surprising to me that Beijing tends to treat them badly. The big issue seems to be that the population is too high for what the area can produce, so wages are low, and close to slave labor is a problem.
We spend too much on welfare for low IQ, violent diversity that contributes nothing to society.
The last year a syrian Christian from Germany Who had contacts in Damascus told me that the al Qaeda takeover was planned in advance and russia knew It , a deal was made behind the scenes , the supposed russian airstrikes intented to halt the offensive were fake .
He also told me that Israel gonna seize the druze lands in the south and thats why russia let them bomb that part at will .
Today metting with the headchopper in moscow confirms It .
Putin is a chabad c0ck s4cker , maybe prighozin wasnt so wrong after all .
Dont worry the Elders wont have mercy on you like you had with them ..
So dont cry now about misiles being suplied to their proxy colony in eastern Europe
You could have done the same in Syria but you were afraid to offend the polish butcher switching the Air defence off every time they wanted to bomb
Prigozhin must have woken up to the Hand before he made a beeline for Moscow. If he hadn’t been so wrapped up in his political cause he might have lived to see that Jolani is destined to have a short-lived rule as is Israel’s rule of Syrian territory. Both phenomena are just for herding geopolitics to its final destination under the HTOE. So says my Hollywood script, anyway, right Fitz?
LLM’s and the bubble/hype around them is our equivalent of the Ghost Dance, but framed in the classical second coming/ascent to (tech) heaven rhetoric of our culture.
Interesting!
Ghost dance =
Any of several group dances associated with two messianic religious movements among Native American peoples of the Southwest and Great Plains in the late 1800s. Ghost dance prophets foretold the imminent disappearance of whites, the restoration of traditional lands and ways of life, and the resurrection of dead ancestors.
Your article is excellent, Gail; however, I respectfully disagree with the perspective presented in the “Hope for the future” section, which seems to be more optimistic than I expected.
Whether there is hope in our lifetimes is a difficult question. I don’t like to tell people there is no hope. There are a lot of things we don’t know.
So far, things have turned out better than a lot of people were expecting. The fact that past crisis periods took 20 to 50 years says that things don’t go down immediately, necessarily. People do invent new ways of doing things. Some of them may be truly helpful in the years ahead.
However, you are overlooking the energy sources that contributed to this optimistic worldview: fossil fuels. Here’s an article from Erik Michaels that says all that: https://erikmichaels.substack.com/p/how-did-we-get-here
“Gail is overlooking the contribution of fossil fuels”
Lol. Right. It seems you’ve missed decades of her writing.
Big Oil forced to confront some tough choices as ‘monster profits’ fade into memory
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/13/big-oil-to-confront-tough-choices-as-mega-profits-fade-into-memory.html
In the examples given, oil companies are cutting share buybacks! The main reason for these is to boost the stock price. I would think that extra money would go into drilling new wells, if companies really thought the wells would be profitable.
BP in April lowered its share buyback to $750 million, down from $1.75 billion in the prior quarter, after reporting first-quarter profit which fell short of market expectations. TotalEnergies, for its part, said late last month that it had decided to adjust the pace of its share buybacks “in order to face economic and geopolitical uncertainties and to retain room to maneuver.”
AI company worth keeping track of.
https://www.sapient.inc/blog/1
At Sapient Intelligence, we believe the new paradigm of scaling law—enriched by structural insights and evolutionary principles—is both a natural evolution of the “bigger is better” mantra and an essential step toward truly human-like intelligence. Our mission is to build systems that integrate:
•Large capacity (for broad knowledge and emergent abilities),
•Efficient, modular architecture (for robust, adaptive reasoning),
•Lifetime training (for self-reflection, plasticity, and continuous evolution),
•Evolutionary optimization (mirroring nature’s adaptive strategies for further refinement).
Do the models hallucinate?
When a human takes the SAT they are told to guess if they do not know the answer because it adds point from the random luck cases that are correct. The AI training process has to be modified to give zero credit for guess. It has in include “I do not know” as a valid answer so it is not driven to guess.
I don’t think the model structure provides a clear way to quantify uncertainty of the conceptual output. Some sort of confidence metric might require a different paradigm.
Several years ago (maybe 10- 15 years )I read a report by a Russian KGB analyst .
https://en.futuroprossimo.it/2024/08/1998-le-previsioni-usa-dellex-analista-al-kgb-sara-divisa-in-6-parti/
As I watch the news stream from the US , a civil war is in the process . The periphery is fighting the centre . I don’t suffer from TDS and am a political atheist but more and more I am moving into Norm ‘ s assessment on this issue . Some links of interest .https://rogerboyd.substack.com/p/the-us-intra-oligarchy-struggle-intensifies?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=571129&post_id=175772240&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=26quge&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Trump vs Soros is an obvious conflict. Also Trump vs. the liberal press.
The last paragraph says
The dire position of the US government’s finances, together with the need to intensify exploitation and looting at home in the face of increasing opposition and Chinese competition abroad, also support the need to move to the more authoritarian and fascistic approach being taken by Trump. With these ongoing changes in the balance of power within the US oligarchy it can be expected that the culling and disciplining of the courtier class will continue apace. By 2029, even if a Democratic president is elected, the new capitalist class consensus will mean that there will be very little real change in policies from those of the Trump administration.
Obviously that was a bad prediction. Sure there is a civil war but no chance of a break for another 10 years at least. People know which side their toast is buttered on.
Trump is getting the American people used to extra-judicial violence.
military on the streets…
blowing up of boats in international waters.
how long, i wonder, before difficult democrats or judges start falling out of 5th floor hotel windows?
there will be no shortage of people eager to do the necessary dirty work.
Already done by Lincoln in 1861
Nothing new
Yes, Lincoln was a horror.
in the 1860s, the means did not exist to place troops en masse in american cities—which themselves did not exist on the scale they do now.—if they existed at all.
silly
en masse => weasel word
on the scale they do now = weasel phrase
In the 1860s, the means did exist to place troops in American cities, and American cities did exist.
So, your comment was silly—I won’t say moronic because I’ve made a solemn vow not to insult you even when it’s justified—as well as inaccurate, with the weasel word and weasel phrase inserted to make the comment just fuzzy enough for you to be able to avoid criticism by saying, “That’s not what I said”
For anyone who is curious, the five US cities with the largest populations during the 1860s were:
New York: 813,669
Philadelphia: 565,529
Brooklyn: 266,661
Baltimore: 212,418
St. Louis: 160,773
Incidentally, by 1865, there were approximately 35,000 miles of railroad track in the United States that could have been used to transport US troops to cities.
And the soldiers could also march considerable distances or ride in horse-drawn wagons.
Actually, Union General Sherman and approximately 60,000 Union soldiers marched through Georgia in a campaign known as the “March to the Sea”. The march, which took place from November 15 to December 21, 1864, went from Atlanta to Savannah, living off the land, destroying infrastructure from farmhouses and barns to railroads and mills, and confiscating resources to cripple the Confederacy.
As they marched, the soldiers enacted a strategy of “total war,” aimed at demoralizing the Southern civilian population by making them feel the impact of the conflict firsthand. They also confiscated the food, livestock, and other supplies of ordinary people who just wanted to be left alone but happened to be in the way.
But, slavery ‘n’ shit. Trump talking about girls letting you grab ’em by the XXX is worse! And he has orange hair! We know! We know!
That started in 1992 (or 1963, or 1865, depending on how you define it). I agree that there is no shortage of that type of personnel.
The next step . San Francisco .
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-10-15/trump-floats-san-francisco-as-next-target-for-crime-crackdown?cmpid=eveus&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=251015&utm_campaign=eveus
Nah it’s just another misdirection play. The Elites ‘ disappearing Act 2.0, in order to finish triangulating the left libertarianism necessary for averting chaotic nuclear Collapse. A meta-analysis of an industrial collapse due to the Limits to Growth sees that the hierarchical System is intelligent and that a stoopid and unnecessary US civil war would precipitate a potentially extinction level event in the northern hemisphere from nuclear fallout. The civil war headfake is for creating a genuine unity politics.
Basically, whenever you see events driven in one direction towards something scary, realize that the plan is for things to go in the opposite direction. How many times and for how many years do I have to say this lol.
You’re saying that the powers that be all dat, want people to die from preventable diseases. They want human labor to be used more than automation. They want uneducated labor instead educated labor, and want open borders in the United States.
Yeah they be all dat and then some. Yes, the dieoff will be from natural collapse causes. Yes they want human labor because further automation requires maintaining this level of complexity plus the building out of massive new infrastructure. Not gonna happen. Yes they want hard, working class labor. No they don’t want illegal mass migration. The feeble, inconsequential scale of the ICE raids that psychologically reinforce the closing of the borders to illegal immigration is in service of creating the false specter of dictatorship. So some things that may seem to run contrary to what I said only do so because they are nested inside a dynamic consistent with my politics of herding thesis, with a few occasional dynamics being exceptions to the rule. The herding thesis being that 90pc of it is accomplished via the misdirection play (deception), which is the First Art of War (and therefore Statecraft).
There’s some truth to what you’ve said but I don’t think all their activity is misdirection.
They are not anti-anti-financialization.
They are not anti-credentialism. They make too much money from credentialism to be against it.
They do not want women to have more children in wedlock.
They are not secretly-pro Christianity or pro-Islam.
They may be against illegal immigration but they are not in favor of keeping America white and Christian because those workers have become too expensive.
They do not want people to consume more fossil fuels.
They are not secretly friends with North Korea (and hate South Korea), they don’t want BRIC countries to do well. They just want the cheap labor.
They are not pro-labor. Outsourcing and immigration were the ai of the 2010s, things to keep workers from even thinking about asking for raises. The expansion of higher education, in practice, lowered wages for skilled labor.
Now ALS! Fast is hating on the vax again
https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/absolute-proof-the-death-shots-are?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=2633070&post_id=176166451&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=5lyopd&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
300% Increase in ALS(Motor Neuron Disease) Drug sales reveals Singapore’s Hidden Health Horror Story
A big part of my job back in Big Pharma (for those who don’t know, I worked in three of the top 5 pharmaceutical companies, plus one in the top 20) was spinning a good story around sales numbers for the bosses. Nail the narrative, and you’re golden for another year. Botch it, and you’re packing your desk. I’ve been knee-deep in drug sales data for close to 20 years, so I know when something smells off—like a trend that’s too steady to suddenly go haywire.
I would ask, wouldn’t this be happening everywhere, not just Singapore?
The full article details similar numbers for other countries
This is pretty bad.
https://futurocienciaficcionymatrix.blogspot.com/
He thinks we have until 2035 . We will see the same consumption of oil as we had in 2023? Maybe shortages of copper?
I am looking at silver . There is a huge physical deficit . The two major uses are in
1. Solar panels and that is why China is taking delivery and not paper .
2. Water desalination . If there is a problem then goodbye Dubai , Abu Dhabi , Tel Aviv , Jeddah etc .
Silver is used in desalination plants for anti-biofouling, electrochemical desalination, and as a component in piping, primarily through applications like silver nanoparticles on membranes and silver-based electrodes. Silver compounds and nanoparticles help prevent the growth of microorganisms on membranes, while silver-based electrodes are used in electrochemical methods like capacitive deionization to remove salt from water. Silver-based solders are also used for joining copper-nickel pipes in the plants.
Anti-biofouling
Surface modification: Silver nanoparticles are coated onto reverse osmosis (RO) membranes and spacers to prevent the growth of microorganisms, which is a major problem that reduces efficiency.
Enhanced performance: Membranes modified with silver-chitosan particles show reduced biofouling and can maintain higher flux rates compared to unmodified membranes.
Bactericidal properties: Silver compounds and ions have long been recognized for their effective antimicrobial activity, making them useful in water purification to inhibit microbial growth.
Electrochemical desalination
Silver/silver-chloride electrodes: These electrodes are used in electrochemical desalination processes, such as capacitive deionization, because of their high capacity, fast reaction kinetics, and low solubility in saltwater.
Mechanism: In a “rocking-chair” desalination mechanism, silver nanoparticles are converted to silver chloride, which enables the removal of chloride ions from the water at a very low voltage, improving energy efficiency.
Piping
Brazing material: Silver solders are used to join smaller-diameter copper-nickel pipes (below 50mm) in both intake and internal piping systems within desalination plants.
Corrosion resistance: Copper-nickel alloys are widely used in desalination plants because of their resistance to corrosion in seawater, and silver solder provides a strong, corrosion-resistant joint for the piping.
Silver Supply Crisis Deepens as London Inventories Plunge 33%.
https://www.jpost.com/business-and-innovation/precious-metals/article-870113
Today’s quote of the day :
The idea of a “shortage” is an illusion. There is no shortage of silver, only a shortage of silver at certain price levels🤣
I would like to know how things will be kept intact until 2035. I don’t speak Spanish. He must know something which is strong enough to maintain things till 10 years later.
Kulm , I have been following Quark for quite some time so I can confidently say his timeline is 2028 if we are unlucky and 2030 if we are lucky . This is the sum of all his posts over two years ; This article of his should not be taken in isolation ;
Your device should be equipped to translate this. If it is an I phone it will be the icon I. The Lower left of the phone
We are reaching Limits to Growth. This is different from “running short of oil” or “running short of fossil fuels.” There are near term financial problems that we are hitting. Governments are hitting limits because they can’t really pay all of the benefits (such as pensions) that they have promised. This kind of modeling can’t be expected to give the right answer.
Gail , his conclusion is the same The collapse of the financial and fiduciary system before we see lines at the pumps and stores ;
Let’s hope for a warm European winter. Stocks in Germany and Netherlands appear to be particularly low. Amount needed each year is quite variable, so it is hard to say how low is too low.
https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/concerns-mount-over-europes-below-average-natgas-storage-levels-ahead-winter
Concerns Mount Over Europe’s Below-Average NatGas Storage Levels Ahead Of Winter
A report from the European Network for Transmission System Operators for Gas (ENTSOG) shows that while the EU is well-prepared for the 2025–26 winter, natural gas storage levels across the bloc are significantly lower than this time last year and remain well below the 10-year average. Europe relies heavily on stored NatGas to meet winter heating demand. Entering the cold season with reduced reserves could drive prices higher, as consumption is set to rise steadily with colder weather ahead.
Someone says:
-The filling levels of German gas storage facilities are 76%
– Last year, it was 98.3% at this time
winter is a lot milder in europe now. Now 50% of the time it never freezes in winter in bologna, italy. I would not sweat it.
All the stories about some hidden tech , from the aliens or whatever, I have heard out.
There is something called the Breakaway Civilization, in which the usual suspects have tech to launch interstellar travel and all that.
However, let say there is a tech like that. I am not denying it.
Will the purveyors of such tech be inclined to use them so the useless eaters would be able to waste more resources for nothing?
If one is really smart enough to possess such tech, they would know that these kind of tech should only be used by the worthy, not by some senile people fantasizing about stars.
Cyrano de Bergerac, who is now only remembered for his big nose, wrote about Moon Travel during the 17th century. de Bergerac was a well read polymath, although his nose prevented him from gaining any fame. He probably heard some stories not privy to the public and wrote it, with a lot of satire to not make certain people angry.
George Griffith wrote Honeymoon in Space in 1901, where the protagonist’s plane could double as a spacecraft. The title tells the whole story, and the protagonist makes it to Saturn before going home. It is the first story ever to feature spacesuits, and it is also probably the first space opera ever.
Connected people back then knew things ordinary people did not know , but there are no progress after all these time. We did go to the moon, so the big nose guy’s vision was fulfilled, but we have not gotten to the moons of Saturn (at that time they did not know Saturn was not landable; they did know Jupiter was not landable so the protagonist instead goes to a moon of it) despite of all the claims the hedge fund managers masquerading as tech pioneers.
Which is why I have become very, very skeptical. No need to convince me otherwise. Until I see it I won’t really believe it.
Please see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Journey_in_Other_Worlds
A Journey in Other Worlds: A Romance of the Future is a science fiction novel by John Jacob Astor IV, published in 1894.
offers a fictional account of life in the year 2000. It contains abundant speculation about technological invention, including descriptions of a worldwide telephone network, solar power, air travel, space travel to the planets Saturn and Jupiter, and terraforming engineering projects — damming the Arctic Ocean, and an adjustment of the axial tilt of the Earth (Terra) by the Terrestrial Axis Straightening Company.
The future United States is a multi-continental superpower. European nations have been taken over by socialist governments, which have sold most of their African colonies to the U.S., while Canada, Mexico, and the countries of South America have requested annexation.
In 1894 John Jacob Astor wrote A Journey in Other Worlds: A Romance of the Future.
a fictional account of life in the year 2000. It contains abundant speculation about technological invention, including descriptions of a worldwide telephone network, solar power, air travel, space travel to the planets Saturn and Jupiter, and terraforming engineering projects — damming the Arctic Ocean, and an adjustment of the axial tilt of the Earth (Terra) by the Terrestrial Axis Straightening Company.
The future United States is a multi-continental superpower. European nations have been taken over by socialist governments, which have sold most of their African colonies to the U.S., while Canada, Mexico, and the countries of South America have requested annexation.
Astor was ahead of Trump by 150 years!
he divulged the secrets and got to die in Titanic, out of all places
so the titanic was a plot too
tell me kulm—-was the titanic deliberatel rammed into the iceberg—-or was a secret sterring gear fitted to the iceberg so it could be rammed into the titanic??
we need to know these things
Like the Lisbon Quake in 1755 or so, the Titanic was kind of a wake up call signifying the good times were over and bad times were coming.
News traveled slower in 1755 so it took 30 plus years to get stuff going but news traveled faster in 1912 so the stuff happened in 1914.
It was probably not by chance, but since I am not that high in the information pecking order, that is all I know
kulm
so the captain of the titanic was a conspironut
if there is a forthcoming exhibition for bs artists, you will get top billing—no problem.
i still have a faint hope youre on a windup
‘This’ may be ‘useful’ ?
https://web.archive.org/
Way back archive – look for old web pages.
“JP Morgan boss says more ‘cockroaches’ will emerge after private credit sector failures
Jamie Dimon expects further weak links in ‘shadow banking’ sector to be revealed after collapse of two US firms”?
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/oct/14/jp-morgan-jamie-dimon-losses-private-credit-sector
It seems like it is inevitable that we will see more financial failures. Back in 2008, the US ended up bailing out AIG. It seems like many more financial failures will come along.
The cockroaches are getting the sunlight .https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/regional-banks-crash-more-credit-cockroaches-emerge
Yes.
Shares of Zions Bancorp plunged 10% after it disclosed a $50 million charge-off for a loan underwritten by its wholly-owned subsidiary, California Bank & Trust, in San Diego. And Western Alliance Bancorp tumbled as much as 11% after it said it’s dealing with a borrower that failed “to provide collateral loans in first position.” i.e., there was fraud, just like in the First Brands case. . .
As Bloomberg notes, even if each of the credit events are isolated, banks taking losses from bad loans are making headlines more often in the past two months. After the bankruptcy of sub-prime auto lender Tricolor Holdings last month, JPMorgan wrote down $170 million and Fifth Third Bancorp wrote down as much as $200 million.
Meanwhile, the investment bank at the center of the entire First Brands saga, Jefferies, continues to get crushed, and at last check was down over 8%.
Don’t mess with China .
FAFO .
no doubt in the trade war the usa is getting its ass spanked. the situation on minerals is much worse and there is a credible rumor that china wants a lot, like guarantees of future good behavior, which the usa is unable to provide.
If the USA and Europe can no longer buy products from China, and China itself is not a consumer…. then is anyone coming out ahead?
It seems to me that we are all in this together, and we are all watching the consumer dream breaking down.
The degradation of complexity will start ruining crucial supply chains soon. The enshitification of society has already taken hold. Before long, brutal laws will be enforced which will result in the removal of much of the rest of consumerism….
… though, Im sure video entertainment and data connections will remain as a form of SOMA… right up until the bitter end.
China has the internal market and all of BRICS. It is the race to who collapses last, and anyway the russkies are spending. The Brazilians and Arabs too.
I think China is reaching Limits to Growth, just as the US is and Europe is. There certainly isn’t enough of the right kinds of oil to keep transporting all kinds of goods across the major oceans any longer. International vacations need to stop also. The system is starting to come apart.
Wow 😮 that sounds ominous. I don’t think we are there yet. Maybe in 4 years
I suppose these changes are being put in place in recognition that we don’t really have the diesel oil to ship goods back and forth to the extent we have in the past. We have to manufacture closer to home, if we will do it at all.
Most reports coming out of mainstream media is that there is going to be a glut of oil on the market. Is that what you are seeing and is this short lived?
A “glut on the market place” is exactly what happens in collapse. It comes from lack of affordability, or demand. It comes from partial loss of the middle class who cannot afford cars and homes. It comes from too many young people who are not doing very well financially.
People are looking for the wrong signal of shortage.
This is an awfully hard concept to get across.
Yes but is consumption down? I thought emerging markets were consuming?
yes
the ”american dream” was in fact the physical manifestation of (near) universal affordability of goods and services derived from fossil fuel usage….
that dreamworld has now gone.
unfortunately millions of people are frantically voting for its return…
which is why Trump is now president…
Slow and steady wins the race. The US department of Energy designs and maintains the department of war’s nuclear weapons. One of their tools are some the largest super computers in the world. They also use them to study neural networks and how they learn. This is the slow but deep research that glad handing Ashkenazi have no interest in.
Regardless of whether the US Department of Energy is involved, I am not very convinced that the US nuclear weapons are in any shape to be used now. Most of the warheads have been down-blended for use in nuclear power plants. We are talking about very old technology and parts now.
I don’t expect these weapons to be used, except perhaps to give the mis-impression that Russians or Chinese are trying to attack us or Ukraine.
I am afraid reality is a bit different. I agree on the ethnic composition of those running those giant computer programs. But the models are generally poor, the physics output quite small. National laboratories want to keep personnel and resources up and this is a good way to do it. This group lacks people from the steppe because they are relatively low level employees. The steppers are far, far overrepresented in the director’s office.
Someone was asking about the high crime rate from the 1970s-to 1990s.
I think this might be an answer.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/aging-boomer-men-cant-quit-their-violent-murderous-ways/
https://fee.org/articles/baby-boomer-criminals/
There is some evidence that coming from a large family predisposes some people to crime but that seems to also be based the quality of the family. Not all families are created equal.
Not all circumstances are equal.
Is the circumstance the chicken or the egg?
Dennis L.
The circumstances are always the chicken because the cost-benefit analysis under poorer circumstances yields a narrower range between greatest cost and greatest benefit than under fertile circumstances, so the gray areas in complex choices deepen. The reason that liberals have 50 shades of gray dominating their minds is because liberal culture is urban culture and urban ecologies are the poorest of ecological circumstances. And then there’s the ghettos, where the cost-benefit analysis shows no light between the choosing between a sense of honor and a prison cell, because life already looks a lot a prison to a virile young hunter and at a certain point the greater structure afforded by prison life becomes a nested benefit rather than a cost. Republicans are more politically black and white because their psychological landscape is less confined by ecological overshoot. The Christians among them have in a sense zero mental confinement because of their manifest destiny bs. Their relatively open mental spaces yield a wider range of cost-benefit analysis which lends itself to more black and white thinking because distance equals contrast.
If freedom is never absolute — and it isn’t — then choices are constrained in degrees, leading to complex choice dynamics.
It’s axiomatic in cultural anthropology that compacted ecologies lead to more violent societies because violence reduces the effects of overpopulation by both physically discouraging acquisitiveness at others’ expense and reducing population.
So we can see how easy it is for the People Farmers to play politics in setting both natural impulses against each other with the rinse and repeat cycle.
Excellent. More please.
am intrigued to know just how 50 shades of grey got into this thread.
a book laughable in its content.
it was inspired by the ironic men of Shropshire.
There are studies that show the end of the crimewave happened at a time predicted by the spread of abortion. Apparently it was legalized in different states at different times, which then predicts the timing of the decrease in crime accordingly. Don’t quote me – I’m just repeating what I recall – something to investigate since it seems you’re interested in the subject.
By the way – with a headline like that – do you suppose the writer has an axe to grind? Yeesh.
The media documented many serial killers and other criminals over the last forty or so years and it seems like the majority of them were boomers. So, the author consumed media, he or she was most likely trained to fear boomer men if he or she was not the victims of a crime committed by a boomer male. Remember that show America’s Most Wanted? If crime rates remained constant, a show similar to it would still be on the air.
It looks as if America has used a considerable portion of its wealth to discourage aggression among the lower classes.
New York legalized abortion in the 1970s. However, there’s no indication that the legalization of abortion immediately led to a uniform decrease in crime. That did not happen until the 1990s.
Maybe white crime went down with the next generation but crime among blacks substantially higher than that of whites. Mass incarceration is credited for bringing down the black crime rate, which happened in the late 90s or early 2000s.
What I read was that abortion in the 70s led to fewer unwanted babies that would have otherwise have become criminals in the late 80s and 90s, thus the dropoff in the 90s.
And there is the phase out of leaded gasoline.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis
That is interesting. Children in areas with peeling paint were still getting lead for a while after that I believe.
This post covers some failings of modern LLMs and then goes on to talk about the economics of the current AI boom. I thought it was already posted here, but I searched the comments and don’t see it. Perhaps it was on the prior thread.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/10/the-ai-bubble-and-the-u-s-economy-how-long-do-hallucinations-last.html
The AI Bubble and the U.S. Economy: How Long Do “Hallucinations” Last?
Posted on October 3, 2025 by Yves Smith
This paper argues that (i) we have reached “peak GenAI” in terms of current Large Language Models (LLMs); scaling (building more data centers and using more chips) will not take us further to the goal of “Artificial General Intelligence” (AGI); returns are diminishing rapidly; (ii) the AI-LLM industry and the larger U.S. economy are experiencing a speculative bubble, which is about to burst.
This does sound like kind of an obstacle:
The demand for more data and more data-crunching capabilities will require about $3 trillion in capital just by 2028, in the estimation of Morgan Stanley. That would exceed the capacity of the global credit and derivative securities markets.
One let down:
ChatGPT-5 Is a Letdown
The first piece of bad news is that much-hyped ChatGPT-5 turned out to be a dud — incremental improvements wrapped in a routing architecture, nowhere near the breakthrough to AGI that Sam Altman had promised. Users are underwhelmed. As the MIT Technology Review reports: “The much-hyped release makes several enhancements to the ChatGPT user experience. But it’s still far short of AGI.” Worryingly, OpenAI’s internal tests show GPT-5 ‘hallucinates’ in circa one in 10 responses of the time on certain factual tasks, when connected to the internet. However, without web-browsing access, GPT-5 is wrong in almost 1 in 2 responses, which should be troublesome. Even more worrisome, ‘hallucinations’ may also reflect biases buried within datasets. For instance, an LLM might ‘hallucinate’ crime statistics that align with racial or political biases simply because it has learned from biased data.
Of note here is that AI chatbots can be and are actively used to spread misinformation (see here and here). According to recent research, chatbots spread false claims when prompted with questions about controversial news topics 35% of the time — almost double the 18% rate of a year ago (here). AI curates, orders, presents, and censors information, influencing interpretation and debate, while pushing dominant (average or preferred) viewpoints while suppressing alternatives, quietly removing inconvenient facts or making up convenient ones. The key issue is: Who controls the algorithms? Who sets the rules for the tech bros? It is evident that by making it easy to spread “realistic-looking” misinformation and biases and/or suppress critical evidence or argumentation, GenAI does and will have non-negligible societal costs and risks — which have to be counted when assessing its impacts.
It sounds even more clearly than before as if AI is a bubble.
Here’s a short article arguing that the EIA (Energy Information Administration; the U.S. government agency for energy statistics) has been overestimating shale oil production and underestimating demand in an effort to mask the truth about declining production.
https://www.winterwatch.net/2025/10/eia-cooks-the-books-to-obfuscate-the-truth-about-shale-oil-production/
Maybe they add the looted syrian oil to the statistics ?
I am wondering if there is some lag in the Texas RR figures, and the EIA is trying to make up for it. I remember that at one time it was not possible to use the data directly. The other numbers in the column are for prior full years, which are now long past, so that there shouldn’t be a lag issue any more.
It is possible to write to the EIA folks and ask about the difference. They usually are willing to write and give an answer (assuming they are still on the job).
I used to listen to Isaac Arthur. However this time he is not too confident. When I saw “could” in the title that was enough.
Going back to the stone age won’t be something which will be on the vote. It will be forced.
Enough of human ingenuity. it went to the wrong direction. Too late to change course but crash into a hard wall.
As things get more desperate, some people will fall into even more unrealistic and harmful ‘solutions’. I walk past them. Too late to save such souls.
human ingenuity moves in only one direction.
it expand forward, until it can expand no more.
then it will contract—exactly how is unknown, but if the means of expansion is removed, contraction is certain…
Human ingenuity is like the Universe.
For all practical purposes it is infinite in all directions.
It doesn’t expand or contract. It’s a quality, not a quantitative measure, namely the quality of being clever, original, and inventive.
There really are no limits to it. Essentially, we all have the capacity for ingenuity, which is the skill of inventing or solving problems in a creative way. Even stupid people like me can exercise a bit of ingenuity.
For instance, I am building a brick wall and adding a layer of insulating material outside the concrete external wall of our kitchen at the moment. Mixing mortar and piling up the bricks doesn’t require much ingenuity, but I also have an electrical outlet screwed into the concrete. I have to move that and screw it into a timber frame that will be mounted within the brick work. That requires a bit of head scratching and tongue biting to figure out, but ingenuity will get me through.
Necessity is the mother of invention, doncha know? But while the ability to be ingenious is innate, its expression can be limited by factors like access to resources, education, and opportunities.
On the other hand, what comes up usually comes down again eventually. We are living on the surface of a planet, which puts us at the bottom of a gravity well, after all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Vcxotk6u2o
Residents warn of strain on water supply as AI data hubs bloom out west (5:31)
96,206 views Oct 8, 2025
Out west AI data centers are booming, but these structures house thousands of servers and need an enormous amount of water to keep them cool and running smoothly. In drought-prone states like Nevada, the struggle over the big tech boom and precious water has some outraged.
I keep wondering, what does AI do that makes it so valuable? Does it maybe involve some “irrational exuberance”, as in “manias, panics, & crashes”?
I thought it would be a good idea to ask AI that. So I asked ChatGPT, “What does AI do that makes it so valuable?”
It replied:
AI is valuable because it amplifies human capability.
It automates repetitive work, accelerates analysis, enhances decision-making, and enables new forms of creativity and problem-solving that were previously out of reach. In practice, this means AI helps:
Save time and cost by automating tasks and streamlining workflows.
Unlock insights from massive amounts of data that humans couldn’t process alone.
Enhance creativity in fields like design, music, writing, and engineering.
Enable personalization at scale — in healthcare, education, marketing, and more.
Drive innovation by discovering new materials, drugs, and solutions faster than traditional methods.
In short: AI doesn’t replace human intelligence — it extends it, allowing people and organizations to achieve more, faster, and often with better outcomes.
Something very few people have failed to consider is that the mainstream consensus is that our resource problems is “acktually” a structural unemployment/ shortage of smart people.
Before A.I., the mainstream was focused on educational attainment, as if degrees and doctorates would make large swaths of the population smart enough to invent solutions to resource shortages. That didn’t work, so now they are trying to make a.i. “happen”.
I’m not sure if they’re desperate or incompetent. Doing anything in space, would seem to me, as a layman, would require decades of planning and more decades of execution. If they wanted data centers in space now, they’d have to have started 40 years ago.
The tune to go to space was 20 years ago. Instead of going to Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan , they should have gone to space.
If we compare this situation to a game of football, it is like 3 min remaining in the 4th quarter. I do not feel it is necessary to talk more about this.
Few people now remember the Continental System of Napoleon. All of the European continent would not trade with United Kingdom.
UK was hurt, but it had other markets, like India, the Cape Colony or the Dominion of Canada.
Two countries opposed against it. Russia did, and the northern part of USA , mostly New England.
US President James Madison, from Virginia, actually went to war against UK, called the War of 1812. It doesn’t even have a proper name.
While UK was concentrating in Europe, mostly in Spain, the Americans attacked what is now Canada.
however, the New England merchants , even though it was the best chance to annex Canada and unite the North American continent, put their short term profits before the Manifest Destiny of USA.
The New England States actively sabotaged this US effort to seize Canada, and threatened secession, something which was thoroughly erased from US textbooks after 1861.
The merchants of New England were more interested upon their profits than the future of USA, so they helped UK, and USA was defeated in Canada.
On August 24, 1814 (by then Napoleon was in Elba), a British force landed in Washington DC. Madison had to flee to Maryland, and the British commander actually captured the White House (the Capitol was not built yet) and burnt it down, effectively knocking out USA, the last holdout of the Napoleonic War, of the struggle.
Since the intention was to knock US out of the war and not reconquer it, the British left after one day.
Something very few people now would have heard about now.
Trump’s trade war against China is like the Continental system, the entire Western World against one country, the People’s Republic of China. Although China does not have a navy to conquer Washington DC, it has plenty of other cards and has no shortages of other markets to sell to.
Dylan heard about it, and sang about it too, sort of:
I’m gonna walk across the desert ‘til I’m in my right mind
I won’t even think about what I left behind
Nothin’ back there anyway I can call my own
Go back home, leave me alone
It’s a long road, it’s a long and narrow way
If I can’t work up to you
You’ll have to work down to me someday
Ever since the British burned the white house down
There’s a bleeding wound in the heart of town
I saw you drinking from an empty cup
I saw you buried and I saw you dug up
It’s a long road . . .
Look down angel, from the skies
Help my weary soul to rise
I kissed your cheek, I dragged your plow
You broke my heart. I was your friend ‘til now
It’s a long road . . .
In the courtyard of the golden sun
You stand and fight or you break and run
You went and lost your lovely head
For a drink of wine and a crust of bread
It’s a long road . . .
We looted and we plundered on distant shores
Why is my share not equal to yours?
Your father left you, your mother too
Even death has washed his hands of you
It’s a long road . . .
This is hard country to stay alive in
Blades are everywhere and they’re breaking my skin
I’m armed to the hilt and I’m struggling hard
You won’t get out of here unscarred
It’s a long road . . .
You got too many lovers waiting at the wall
If I had a thousand tongues I couldn’t count them all
Yesterday I could have thrown them all in the sea
Today, even one may be too much for me
It’s a long road . . .
Cake walking baby, you can do no wrong
Put your arms around me where they belong
I want to take you on a roller coaster ride
Lay my hands all over you, tie you to my side
It’s a long road . . .
I got a heavy stacked woman with a smile on her face
And she has crowned my soul with grace
I’m still hurting from an arrow that pierced my chest
I’m gonna have to take my head and bury it between your breasts
It’s a long road . . .
Been dark all night, but now it’s dawn
The moving finger is moving on
You can guard me while I sleep
Kiss away the tears I weep
It’s a long road . . .
I love women and she loves men
We’ve been to the West and we going back again
I heard a voice at the dusk of day
Saying, “Be gentle brother, be gentle and pray”
Space, the final frontier, a start.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLNrYwx0th0
Data centers are a problem for the grid, solution is move them off the grid, move them to space. Musk is building a network with increasing capacity, AI in many cases does not require instantaneous communication, only information.
Energy from solar will allow terrestrial powerplants to build other things which can help build out space until space is self replicating. Earth is biology self replication. Industrial production is very hard on earth, it is time to move pollution to space.
What we need next is a space elevator; we can get stuff off earth fairly easily, returning things from space is a problem, meteors come to mind.
Many, most of you will scoff, that is fine. Going back to the stone age is not going to be an easy political sale, could be violent. Less violence on the surface seems good.
Dennis L.
I’m not scoffing. It’s been known for long enough that it’s a highly practical idea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator
There are a lot of similar ideas. Years ago, the rock group Led Zeppelin had the idea of a stairway to heaven, so they started knocking one up in their garden shed. They’d almost built it when President Nixon found out about it, so he complained to the Queen, who ordered them to demolish it, which they did. But they made a song out of what was left of it, and they’ve earned millions from that song. I’ve never rated that song at all, myself, but there you go.
We have AI now, and I’m using Chat GPT at home and am astonished at the joined up answers it gives you. It passes the Turing test and more. This makes me wonder what advances there have been in other areas of technology. Technological inventions are often kept hidden from the public for many years, until TPTB decide to reveal them. What, for instance, is Mr. Musk doing with his trillions, to revolutionise space travel? I’m sure he doesn’t just want to go to Mars to buy the T-shirt and say he’s been there.
It is easy to scoff, Dennis, but I have started thinking about this very seriously recently. That is because of the advent of AI – as presented to the public, that is. I recently started using ChatGPT, and I find that it makes an excellent researcher, secretary and editor. It provides joined up answers. It passes the so called Turing Test and then some. The speed of its responses is also phenomenal. I am convinced now that we are on the cusp of a revolution.
I have started looking again at things that I only vaguely understood. One of these is space travel. I recently re-watched a video from 2018 by Englishman Richard D Hall. He qualified as a mechanical engineer and later spent 12 years programming microprocessors. I first came across his videos several years ago, when he was interviewing Dr. Judy Wood, who is also a mechanical engineer, about 9/11 and what was wrong with official story.
This video of his is about the black and the white space programs – black being hidden, and white the public space programs. You might think that space travel has barely advanced since the 1980s or so, because there is really nothing to advance, but you’d be wrong. In this video, we hear Elon Musk talk about reusable rockets, but Richard Hall says that is just for public consumption. He maintains that rocket technology is archaic and has been long since, and he explains why and what has superseded it. All the more intriguing is that this video was made back in 2018.
Richard Hall mentions American Peter Hyatt in this video, who has nothing to do with space programs. Sadly I understand that he is dying of cancer now, but his speciality was “statement analysis”. He is interested in detecting deception in people’s statements. Richard Hall applies some of his theories to Elon Musk’s utterances in this video. If somebody, in answer to a personal question, is explaining something truthfully, they will say, “I did this”, or “I do this”. If instead they say, “You would do this”, then deception is indicated, because they do not own it. Richard Hall applies this to some of Musk’s utterances in this video. Likewise if you accuse somebody of having done something and they reply, “I would never do that”, then they haven’t actually denied it, and deception is indicated. Another point is “a need to persuade”, when you ask somebody something and they go off and additionally explain things that you haven’t asked about. Deception is indicated. This is in cases where guilty people are trying to avoid blame.
Finally, one person in this video mentions a “trans-medium craft”. Richard Hall admits that he doesn’t know what that means. I do. It is a craft that can travel underwater, then leave the water and fly into the air, then on into space. Some UFO craft have been observed to do this, as I learnt some years ago from one episode of the American documentary series “UFO Hunters”.
Now to Richard D Hall’s video. It deals with different subjects. The first part is about “The face on Mars”, which is examined in serious fashion. For the part that I am talking about, you should start from the 33:27 point. It gets more interesting from the 39 minutes point. It is an entirely serious video, so don’t be put off by the Star-Trekky type title.
https://www.richplanet.net/richp_genre.php?ref=254&part=1&gen=5
Today the Chinese government reacted to the Dutch raid of the Chinese owned company by cutting it off from Chinese technologies and products:
Chipmaker Nexperia, a subsidiary of China’s Wingtech Technology and a major supplier of mature chips for the automotive and consumer electronics sectors, announced on Tuesday that it has been banned by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce from exporting products made in China, including those produced by its subcontractors, after the Dutch government took over the company using a Cold-War-era law to secure Europe’s chip supply.
Nexperia said it is seeking an exemption from the export ban, which could affect Dutch access to its chips. The company operates an 80,000-square-meter assembly site in Guangdong province near Hong Kong, as well as fabrication, assembly, and testing facilities in Germany, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Britain.
If the Dutch government does not retract its decision to practically confiscate Nexperia the company will die. Its business is globalized. Parts of its products are made all over the world. Its products and sales in Europe depend on subcontractor products which are made in China.
The company is important to Europe. It produces some 90 billion bread and butter components per year which flow into other higher value European products. Sure, other Chinese companies will be happy to replace those parts. But where is the win for the Netherlands or Europe in that?
In the trade war between U.S. and China Europe should have stayed neutral. It should not have buckled under pressure from either side but rely on its own substantial trade powers to stay out of the fight. It is a fight in which the U.S. has no chance to win.
It was a huge mistake by the Dutch to submit to U.S. demands and to seize Nexperia. It was a huge mistake for Europe to submit to U.S. demands.
The minions leading Europe who have allowed for this deserve to be fired over their utter strategic stupidity.
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2025/10/china-reacts-after-u-s-pushed-netherlands-to-seize-chinese-owned-company.html
This doesn’t sound good at all. The trade war seems to escalate and draw more entrants in.
If governments can physically seize the assets of businesses locally or internationally located, then do property rights really exist anymore?
Governments can always raise taxes to the point that you cannot pay them, so in some ways this is not different.
Long term, it is certainly not clear that property rights exist. That is why there are so many castles in the world.
Wow! The scale of EU own goal/industrial sabotage just started going up in multitudes. Turns out Nexperia is a CRITICAL supplier of components for major EU industrial corporations. It could potentially take 12 – 18 months to get substitute components for companies.
Looks like a case of shut down or move operations outside the EU for those companies.
The most dependent companies in Europe for components from frozen and sanctioned Nexperia are VW, BMW, Stellantis, Bosch, ASML, Siemens, and Airbus. Germany wasn’t deindustrialising fast enough to please the Trump administration? Substitution of alternatives will take 12-18 months. Just-in-time sourcing means production shut downs in the interim are inevitable.
Nexperia was efficiently delivering more than 90 billion components a year. The scale of Netherlands sabotage of Europe is massive and likely permanent.
“If Europe steals Russian sovereign reserves, while going around stealing Chinese businesses because the Americans told them to, then Europe becomes uninvestible and the euro and sterling become unusable. Not just for China and Russia, but for anybody that is not the US or under US control. Think about what that means for European prosperity.”
https://x.com/Kathleen_Tyson_/status/1978433244103098758
Posted by: unimperator | Oct 15 2025 13:19 utc | 226
It is not clear to me that the world marketplace even has enough extra semiconductor chips of the right kinds that it can supply if needed.
Airbus makes airplanes. Siemens makes a lot of different kinds of high-tech devices. So, the problems are likely to extend outside the automotive industry.
We are moving into an era of nationalization. Obviously this incident is not a genuine example of that if the business is dependent on product coming from the country the business was just stolen from lol. It’s just the Hand deglobalizing under stoopid cover. Somehow, still, engineered ultra stoopid political leadership passes for reality among the dissident masses.
More signs of trouble in the auto-related market:
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/shares-michelin-tank-guidance-cut-after-north-american-auto-market-slumps
Michelin now expects 2025 operating income between 2.6 billion euros and 3 billion euros, down from the previous outlook of 3.4 billion euros, citing softening agriculture, construction, and truck demand. Sales in North America plunged by nearly 10% in the third quarter, with a weaker dollar and tariffs weighing on margins.
Michelin noted that competitiveness across the tire market was “impacted by tariffs” and comes as carmakers from Europe face a slowdown in Europe amid fierce competition from China, as well as the beginning innings of trouble in the U.S. following the recent collapse of subprime auto lender Tricolor Holdings. Separate, but playing into the theme, UBS warned weeks ago that consumer weakness is now spreading from low-income to middle-income.
wood is garbage. you see stick framed houses and buildings now adays? pure trash. you cant get good wood to save your life unless it is engineered which is still not as practical as steel, masonry, light gauge metals and of course concrete. lumber supply today is not grown long enough to mature harvest, demand has eclipsed relatable supply where younger and younger trees are used so younger the tree weaker the wood cellulose fiber in it, thereby worse the wood garnered from a tree is. dare i not use the words, bending, warping, cracking, splitting, splintering….all drawbacks of wood. rotting, water logging, molding, decay, pest infiltration….should i go on?
You are telling us that the quality of the wood used in building homes has deteriorated in recent years.
This article seems to agree with you.
https://battenbuildersllc.com/the-decline-of-wood-quality-in-newer-homes/
In the world of homebuilding, there’s often an assumption that newer is always better. With modern designs, cutting-edge technology, and updated building materials, it’s easy to assume that homes built in recent decades are superior to those constructed in the mid-20th century. However, when it comes to durability, longevity, and quality, homes built before 1980 often outperform their newer counterparts in significant ways.
At Batten Builders, we specialize in both concrete and wood homes, and over the years, we’ve seen firsthand the differences between older homes and newer constructions. One of the most noticeable discrepancies is the quality of the materials used. In particular, the quality of wood used in homebuilding has drastically declined since the 1980s, leaving many modern homes vulnerable to issues that older homes rarely face.
The Decline Of Lumber Quality Since The 1980s
The most notable shift in building materials occurred in the 1980s, when the supply of old-growth timber began to dwindle. Old-growth timber, which had been used for centuries in homebuilding, is now a rarity due to over-harvesting and environmental regulations. This shift marks the beginning of a significant decline in the quality of lumber available for construction purposes.
Wood that was once slow-grown and dense, full of heartwood that added strength and durability, was replaced by fast-growing trees that simply don’t offer the same longevity or resilience. This fast-growing wood is less dense, softer, and lacks the natural oils and resins that made old-growth lumber so incredibly durable. While it may be more abundant and cheaper, it comes with a host of issues that often go unnoticed by homeowners.
The Difference Between Heartwood And Sapwood
To understand why older homes are often better built than newer ones, it’s crucial to understand the difference between heartwood and sapwood. Heartwood is the dense, inner part of the tree that is much harder and more resistant to decay and damage. In contrast, sapwood is the outer, newer layer of the tree, which grows quickly and is far less durable.
Homes built using slow-grown, old-growth timber have more heartwood, making them naturally stronger and longer-lasting. On the other hand, homes constructed with modern lumber primarily contain sapwood, which is far more prone to rotting. The reason for this is simple: sapwood lacks the natural preservatives that heartwood possesses, making it a much easier target for environmental factors like moisture, mold, and pests.
When sapwood begins to rot, it compromises the structural integrity of the entire home. This is why many newer homes experience problems with wood decay and damage much earlier in their lifespans than older homes.
How dare you! Those McMansions thrown up by illegal immigrant labor swinging a hammer for the first time are top quality construction! Those 2×4″s that are long-since actually 1.5×3.5″s are value-added because they’re easier to move! The replacement of hardwood timber with engineered (glued) softwood is another value-add! The Chinese drywall is value-added with its sulfur-compounds and unknown chemicals! You get the chemical inhalation for free, thanks to progress!
Things like that are why I’ve never liked shopping.
“The Dollar Is About to Destroy the Precious Metals Bubble”?
https://themacropulse.substack.com/p/the-dollar-is-about-to-destroy-the
Three quotes:
Gold is rising while real yields are positive and inflation expectations are falling.
That is not sustainable.
And
The next support is between $2,000 and $2,400, a drop of roughly 40-50 percent.
Also:
When gold starts to fall, it will not be a slow grind. It will be a capitulation event.
Norwegians would say, “Uff da!”
I think it should be ” Are precious metals about to destroy the US Dollar ” ? For the first time since WW 2 precious metals are more than the USD in the foreign exchange reserves of the Central banks .
Gold is primarily owned by the wealthy, while most working-class individuals earn their wages in USD and carry debt in the same currency. If any working-class people possess precious metals, they will likely need to sell and convert them into USD during an economic collapse to cover their expenses.
Podcaster Chris Williamson has been ill for the past year and a half. He’s tested positive for liver flukes, roundworm, Lyme disease, and mold. And he’s been trying out a variety of state-of-the-art therapies to little avail.
There was I thinking Chris was super-fit, working out regularly and swallowing all the right foods and supplements, but it seems he’s a wreck. Say’s he can’t sleep, can’t remember things, and his body feels broken.
I feel for the guy, but I am thinking that he is suffering from burnout caused by overwork and too much stress. He’s only 37, and this malady usually strikes busy people in their 40s or 50s, but he is really really active and doing far too much.
I am also thinking that just because you test positive for some pathogen or other, it doesn’t mean that the pathogen is the cause of your symptoms. It could just be your nerves are playing you up and you need to give them a chance to calm down.
Hmm, poor guy, bit unlucky but that’s the sign of the times. Imagine peasants in the Medieval period suffered much of the same. In their case, there was blood letting with leaches and simply wasted away and died
He’s infested with worms.
We have no idea how bad the infection is.
His situation is common among humans who live eco-friendly lives, lives without the conveniences of industrial civilization. It’s hard to believe now but most people were crawling with bugs and pathogens a few centuries ago.
The prevalence of chronic infections among the general population, everywhere, was a major reason why sexual freedom was frowned upon. Somehow, humans understood that sex for reasons other than procreation was bad for the tribe even if germ theory was unknown to them.
The worms should be the least of his concerns. The people he’s listening to probably think one worm is too many. If he does have too many worms and he gets back in good health then the reduced worm population will once again be beneficial. His problem is more likely to be related to being vaxxed and masked and 5G’d and leaky gut/brained antibiotic-ed on top of whatever other playboy rat race lifestyle shortcomings, ageing, and family epigenetic weaknesses, and maybe some mold but I bet that’s just an excuse like with Jordan Peterson. And Lyme’s disease doesn’t exist. And 2×6’s are a perfectly acceptable solution and industry standard for wall studs so that the old growth trees can be left alone.
I like it! I like it! My sediments exactly!
There’s a fair bit of mold in my part of the world. I have to paint over it in the bathroom every other year.
It could be that as a Brit, moving to Texas was a bit much for his microbiome to deal with. But all these dodgy tests sound a bit like some of them may be pretexts for trying out dodgy treatments.
With Chris in chronic distress and Jordan close to death’s door, perhaps now is a good time to show the two of them sharing a podcast a year or so ago.
Do you not have an extractor fan in the bathroom and wood heat getting to it?
Nobody wealthy in America has significant airborne mold problems in their house. Only farmers and poor folk have that problem.
Lean people into looking really lean all the time out of vanity or money concern, like Chris, can be more susceptible to nerve inflammation because that vanity will override the body’s desire to add a couple few pounds of body fat as a flex account for carcinogenic overflow. The body’s desire manifests as increased appetite. The vanity manifests as a mild male form of anorexia. That healthy, adaptive early weight increase adaptive dynamic is the beginning stage of what can progressively tip over into unhealthy un obesity -related metabolic dysfunction. If Chris is vainly neutralizing the adaptive dynamic then fat-soluble toxic overflows only have a few remaining places that they can go: organs, glands, and the nervous system. And especially if he takes NSAIDs whenever his body wants to detox. And if he has a leaky blood brain barrier then, of the organs, the brain is more likely to be where some overflows go, causing chronic inflammation.
Great conversation through 25mins which is enough for me. Funny that JP mentioned how life can go sideways with illness even if you think that you’re doing all the right things, and how the constructive way to deal with that adversity is to reanalyze whether you were doing all the right things after all. That’s true.
I do think JP should’ve let Chris finish his thoughts more often. My one criticism of JP’s conceptual framework is that there can be, and usually is, more than one cycle of naivety and cynicism before wisdom is attained, if it be attained at all. Post-naive cynicism can lead to another level naivety if that return to naivety is again political, even if that politicization takes on a more mature form of the immature first-level naivety of youth. And obviously both these guys are what I would characterize as character-driven national socialists. Which is why they’ve become famous over the last five years. They’re attaching their self-improvement goals to the State while they disclaim the chasing of power, which is, structurally, a state of controlled opposition. And the State desperately needs many high achieving icons of character-driven self-improvement in order to implement the national socialisms. And part of Trump’s job is to provoke a reaction away from lack of character.
I do indeed have an extractor fan in the bathroom, and I have a wood stove burning 24-7 in winter, so the bathroom gets a steady supply of warm dry air and some soot whenever I open the door to feed the stove.
There is no visible mold on the walls apart from in the bathroom, and it takes a year or more to become visible.
In summer, we keep the air condition on most of the time, either cooling or drying. Even so, there is sometimes a buildup of mold on woodwork, and particularly in cupboards within 30-40 cm of the floor on the ground floor, due to drafts of humid air that flow into the house from outside and condense on cooler surfaces. It doesn’t happen on the floor, for some reason.
Japanese houses without air conditioning will go moldy over time. This is one reason why abandoned Japanese houses become uninhabitable within 5 to 10 years if they aren’t opened up to the fresh air periodically in summer.
Back to Chris—the vanity aspect is a possible explanation. If he’s attempting to keep his weight down, the toxins his liver is trying to store away in his fat tissue because they can’t be excreted may be overflowing into places where they are causing health issues.
But I favor the burnout due to stress hypothesis because it is very common among over-busy people with bulging filofaxes (or their electronic equivalents) and too many things to remember to do and places to be and people to meet and bills to pay, etc. And burnout can manifest in all kinds of debilitating physical ailments.
With burnout, or nervous breakdown, the state of emotional, mental, and physical exhaustion caused by chronic stress, the nervous system is a bit like Wile E. Coyote. The hard worker is running along at full tilt with the engine in overdrive, and doesn’t realize they have run off the cliff until they notice the ground is half a mile beneath their feet, and then they are in free-fall.
The case of Thomas Huxley (well known as Darwin’s bulldog) was a case in point. He was a major player in the mid-19th century scientific modernization that installed evolutionary biology as establishment science and cleared out a lot of academic and institutional cobwebs. He would go out and fight in Darwin’s corner while the latter would hide in the country, a victim of his own nerves and probably of some parasitic illness he had picked up while sailing in the Beagle.
Huxley’s supporters were amazed at his intelligence, his industriousness, and his determination. He was said to have done the work of three men.
The Wikipedia entry on his career lists the following:
Following a lecture at the Royal Institution on 30 April 1852 [when he was 27] Huxley indicated that it remained difficult to earn a living as a scientist alone. This was demonstrated in a letter written on 3 May 1852, where he states “Science in England does everything—but PAY. You may earn praise but not pudding”. However, Huxley effectively resigned from the navy by refusing to return to active service, and in July 1854 he became professor of natural history at the Royal School of Mines and naturalist to the British Geological Survey in the following year. In addition, he was Fullerian Professor at the Royal Institution 1855–1858 and 1865–1867; Hunterian Professor at the Royal College of Surgeons 1863–1869; president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science 1869–1870; president of the Quekett Microscopical Club 1878; president of the Royal Society 1883–1885; Inspector of Fisheries 1881–1885; and president of the Marine Biological Association 1884–1890.He was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society in 1869.
The thirty-one years during which Huxley occupied the chair of natural history at the Royal School of Mines included work on vertebrate palaeontology and on many projects to advance the place of science in British life.
The article goes on:
From 1870 onwards, Huxley was to some extent drawn away from scientific research by the claims of public duty. He served on eight Royal Commissions, from 1862 to 1884. From 1871 to 1880 he was a Secretary of the Royal Society and from 1883 to 1885 he was president. He was president of the Geological Society from 1868 to 1870. In 1870, he was president of the British Association at Liverpool and, in the same year was elected a member of the newly constituted London School Board. He was president of the Quekett Microscopical Club from 1877 to 1879. He was the leading person amongst those who reformed the Royal Society, persuaded government about science, and established scientific education in British schools and universities.
As the above indicates, Huxley was even busier than Jordan Peterson.
Then, in 1884, when he was 59, he fell into a deep depression, lost his enthusiasm for life and work, became almost bedridden, and had to give up working and resign many of his posts. Prozac and Paxil not being available at the time, his doctors treated him with a promising wonder drug called cocaine.
After a few months he was sent on a trip to Egypt in the hopes that a complete change of scene would aid his recovery, which on the whole it did.
It’s well established among old fashioned GPs that people suffering from depression, agoraphobia, and other nervous illnesses, find it more difficult to recover if they remain in the environment in which the condition developed.
I would recommend Chris to chill out, take some tranquilizers for as long as it takes—but no longer—and embark on a trip up the Amazon, down the Yangtze, or along the Danube. Forget the worms, forget the tests, stop taking the bodily symptoms so seriously, give his nerves a rest, and just go with the flow.
On the other hand, we know Chris’s podcasting is a lucrative business. Perhaps the whole health scare story is partly a wheeze to get more viewers and advertise some of these amazing new health and wellness treatments to the affluent hypochondriac segment?
As you tell it, summer is your major problem and winter your minor problem. We probably have similar winters, you and me, but my hardcore droughty summers prevent mold in continuation of what the wood heat and fan does in winter. But your humid, year round rainfall just tips the scales. Maybe, then, wealthy people on the Olympic Peninsula rainforest in Washington State have intractable but minor mold problems too with the summer fog.
Yeah rest and relaxation is obviously what Chris’s laid down body is making him do. Unhealthy obsession with a Warholian commercial success is the larger vanity in which the physical fitness commercial vanity is nested. The modern wisdom facade speaks volumes. Instead of strategically switching to monetizing his collapse like you posit lol, if he is going to insist on monetization he should go be another hardcore off-grid dude and buy acreage and R&R by the creek on a water fast until he’s ready to start putting up livestock fencing so he can start making his own bone broth. Working, functional R&R.
Fascinating about Huxley, living legend, burning hot at both ends. I have to say, industrialism would have been pretty damn exciting time for a man such as himself in the biological sciences. He presumably got the nature of evolution wrong though, like Darwin. Couldn’t laterally connect metaconscious intelligence to unconscious intelligence. But it’s not their fault as they didn’t have the benefit of molecular biology and the Spiegelman’s Monster experiments that showed us exactly where and how biology emerged from abiotic mineral life in a Welcome to Animism show of force.
“Lyme’s disease doesn’t exist”
By that logic, malaria doesn’t exist, either.
Substituting low quality wood for high quality wood means wood consumption goes up, overall. That may be good if your job depends on exponential growth, but not good for society at large to have greater maintenance costs with things made from cheap wood.
Lyme’s disease doesn’t exist as such because it falsely pins disease causation on a family of low-oxygen bacteria that can only eat and shit and reproduce in a low oxygen environment of between 1-4%, which means that they are only going to be able to get a foothold in hypoxic (underoxygenated) human tissues that are by definition already diseased. Ditto for ‘malaria.’
Yes wood consumption goes up by volume but industrial sawmills that can handle old growth and second-growth trees are very few and far between. And there are actually probably none sized big enough for truly old growth logs. It makes ecological sense for an industrial civilization to confine lumber production to already razed lands because the biodiversity is already lost. It also is much more energy efficient because the remaining old growth trees are obviously in areas furthest from mills and on difficult terrain (diminishing returns).
Houses are still good for a hundred years if you take care of them. Why build for longer timeframe anyway when civilizational collapse is around the corner? Hm?
I will admit that it’s strange that Plasmodium Falciparum and Borrelia burgdorferi, as microaerophiles, can thrive in human blood. They say they have adaptations that allow them to survive in blood and consume red blood cells but those adaptations would make it closer to a obligate aerobes. This observation isn’t proof diseases linked to them don’t exist, just that the classification of them is inaccurate.
Right on, erik, but it’s not strange. It’s impossible for that family of bacteria to thrive in a healthy human body. 99% of supposed pathogens are microarrophiles, facultative anaerobes, and obligate anaerobes, and they all occupy a different ecological niche from an aerobic, healthy human body. The remaining 1% of supposed pathogens are aerobic microbes that live in our airways but they are all saprophytes, meaning that they only eat dead organic matter. All of the supposed pathogenic bacteria in the anaerobic realm are also saprophytes because bacteria exist at the bottom of the food chain (foodweb). The protozoa you mentioned that get blamed for malaria are above bacteria and fungi in the food chain and therefore they are not saprophytes but do of course also eat dead organic matter.
The family of bacteria that supposedly cause Lyme’s disease cannot be in even a sick person’s blood in an active state because blood oxygen saturation levels are 90+%. They can however be in human blood in a dormant state; all anaerobes and microarrophiles must go dormant in high oxygen levels or they die. In dormancy, they have sealed themselves off in protective protein casings called cysts. They only come out of dormancy when they find themselves in low enough oxygen levels again. This is all fundamental soil microbiology which germ theory fails to incorporate into its systems theory.
The correlation of two physics (bacterial growth and disease dynamics) doesn’t necessarily mean first causation of physics. Welcome to terrain theory.
The microbial pathogenicity theory of germs explicitly (by definition) means first causation of disease. Lyme’s disease diagnosis has nothing physically to do with direct causation and has everything to do with correlation because it tests for related antibodies in the blood. Therefore, it’s not science to equate that correlation with causation.
As for the true nature of the linkage — the correlation — whenever and wherever we become diseased from something other than blunt force trauma, it means that we are experiencing a localized death in our body via mass apoptosis (the intelligent body coordinating mass cell death) and attempted renewal/regrowth of those dying cells. But when that programmed cell death occurs it means that the oxygen levels in those now-dead tissues drop to zero and any dormant anaerobes that are there (and they always are there because they are evolved to be there as our ‘dark’ microbiome), wake up and start eating our dead rancid, toxic, fat-soluble meat and fat cells so that we don’t have to detoxify those carcinogens. By eating them, the produce metabolites (shit) that are only water-soluble toxins that are much easier for us to filter out because now they can enter the water-based bloodstream. This dark microbiome performs the first step in detoxifying the dead tissue. But that also means that they reproduce quickly while they, eat, and the water-soluble metabolites are alcohol chains that are toxic and inflammatory to the surrounding healthy cells, so it is incumbent upon our body to send white blood cells to the area in order to moderate the speed with which the microbes detoxify and reproduce. Our white blood cells hose down the perimeter with peroxides that inhibits growth because peroxides are super saturate the liquid tissues with oxygen gas.
But white blood cells are extremely nutrient intensive to produce and if our body happens, at that particular time, to not be able to reallocate enough of those resources to the site then ‘infection’ occurs, but that’s not the bacteria’s fault obviously. If we’re healthy then the dark microbiome is our friend. And if we’re unhealthy it’s still our friend, but its activity can also have unintended consequences..
“10:48 Larry, when it comes to this fundamental question about Israel, which in my opinion would
10:56 be, can peace be imposed on Israel? Is israel capable of making peace in
11:03 your opinion? No. the you’ve got 800,000
11:09 settlers that are invading the West Bank and and taking property from Palestinians
11:15 uh to stop them would create a civil war
11:22 within Israel. They would they would fight against the Israeli Defense Force.”?
There are too many people in the Israel-Palestine area, and not enough resources including fresh water and inexpensive electricity. There is offshore natural gas, which Israel is claiming but looking at the map, might logically belong to Palestine. This combination seems to be causing the problem, IMO.
These are the figures I’ve seen:
population of Gaza:
1700AD: 10,000
1995: 650,000
2023: 2.3 million
Population of Israel:
1995: 4.5 million
2023: 9 million
In ecological terms that is not population growth, that is population explosion. It will not end well for either party.
Birth rates in both Israel and Palestine are both high. One story I heard was that part of the reason for this was a need for Israel’s population to stay higher than that of the Palestines, so that the Palestinians would not outnumber the population in Israel.
My impression is that when in 1945 – ’46 we decided to move thousands of European Jews, whose origin was mainly from Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine and others European Countries and we also decided to give them weapons and munitions left from WWII to be used by them freely, the purpose of that was actually and mainly to free Europe from inconvenient people and also establish in Middle East a Western Colony.
I don’t consider the justification of giving them a land, as written in a sacred book, because it was mainly a superficial cover to be told ourselves.
Well, the problem is that this idea is blowing back in our faces, because we think that this situation is going to turn in our favour, but it is on the contrary actually going in the opposite direction.
How is giving them what they wanted, their own country, blowing up in “our” faces? They have wanted to go back ever since Roman times. The Crusades were mostly about that.
Erik, very sad to see how much you don’t know history.
European Jews from Lithuania, Estonia, Ukraine, Poland and so on, the ones that they were ‘authorized’ to go to Palestine in thousands of quantities after WWII, they had no genetic ancestry in Palestine or only very few of them, being them descendants of people converted in the medieval times, in vast majority of quantity among them, not all of course.
It is a incovenient truth for most European Jews, difficult to accept.
But not considering this point for a moment, if there was no problem to give them ‘green light’ to go to Palestine in 1945 – 1946 with weapons and ammunitions to kill Palestinians, it is like if we in Europe hosted for a couple of centuries the descendants of the native Americans actually killed during the years of European conquest of current US.
Let’s say about 80 billion people.
These descendants now are allowed to come to US, to kill you or put you in concentration camps, expropriate your properties or buy them with you inside like slaves and we are all fine like that, with no repercussions.
You cannot even claim a part of US as a partial State.
Good luck to understand this argument.
I skip the one about crusades, because we should need a website apart.
“The most profound revelation that fewest people would know is that the Khazarian mass conversion to Judaism in the 8th century created the modern banking elite who have no genetic connection to the Middle East whatsoever. The entire narrative of Jewish persecution, expulsions, and eventual “return” to Israel is built on a fundamental deception – 98% of those claiming to be Jewish descendants returning to their homeland are actually descendants of Khazar converts from the Caucasus region who adopted Judaism for political reasons around 740 AD under King Bulan.” ?
https://constitutionwatch.com.au/wp-content/uploads/A-History-of-Central-Banking-and-the-Enslavement-of-Mankind-Stephen-Mitford-Goodson.pdf
“The Khazar hypothesis of Ashkenazi ancestry, often called the Khazar myth by its critics,[1][2] is a largely abandoned historical hypothesis that postulated that Ashkenazi Jews were primarily, or to a large extent, descended from converts to Judaism among the Khazars, a multi-ethnic conglomerate of mostly Turkic peoples “ ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khazar_hypothesis_of_Ashkenazi_ancestry
‘By “nobody” of course we mean poor, because poor people in America don’t matter. But what happens when almost everyone becomes poor? The government abandons the whole of society: welcome to 2025. The vast majority of Americans don’t even matter to the economy anymore, as 50% of all consumer goods sold are now purchased by the 10% super-rich. There is nothing out there for the average American to afford, and this includes healthcare. ‘?
https://georgetsakraklides.substack.com/p/american-deathcare-the-short-story
GoFundMe CEO says the economy is so bad that more of his customers are crowdfunding just to pay for their groceries
https://fortune.com/2025/10/13/gofundme-ceo-economy-inflation-crowdfunding-groceries/
From post article
“Death has become the most profitable commodity simply because people will invest anything and everything they have into avoiding their death: they will empty their bank accounts, remortgage their house, sell everything they have. No other industry besides deathcare can push the consumer to spend so much. Health insurance and pharmaceuticals long ago became industries of extortion. America’s “scarecare” healthcare became the cruellest, most inhuman, loudest example of how unchecked capitalism is a force of dehumanisation and an agent of societal collapse. “
I agree. It is ridiculous.
most of us try to avoid death, if we are in reasonable health.
thats why i swim 3 times a week, hoping that the grim reaper doesnt want to get his feet wet.
but if i had something nasty—would i put myself through unpleasant treatment for the sake of another year or two??—i like to think i wouldnt—but if it came to it—one can never be certain..
What does ‘swimming’ mean to a ninety year old? What’s the water temp?
I agree on the unpleasant treatment, I saw my father go down hard that way. He was tough blue collar still opted for the hope cure. Maybe for himself, maybe for his wife and kids….
first—i outrun most of my contemporaries, and quite a few youngsters.
water removes the worst effects of gravity….you should try it.
eternal life though??—will let you know.
hopefully i wont need invasive treatments—i’ve given instructions that if i’m found on the bottom of the pool, leave me30 mins before they call a doctor (there’s usually a retired one there somewhere.)
seems the perfect way to go somehow.
That’s nothing to boast about! I expect even I could outrun most of your contemporaries, Norman.
Although at my age, I prefer walking or biking, both of which are a lot easier on the joints.
By the way, I think your regime of swimming and weight training is an excellent way to hang onto your health.
The article also says,
” Survival of the richest means extinction of the middle class.”
This is a huge problem now, and part of the reason the government cannot collect enough taxes to pay for healthcare for everyone.
A separate issue is the fact that, in the US, the amount spent on the care of people who are likely going to die anyhow is absurd. The fact that regular Medicare will pay for practically anything and everything to keep people alive is at least part of the problem.
Also, people who feel guilty about not taking care of “Mom” or “Dad” well enough in past years are happy to take the Medicare benefits to care for people who are clearly dying, regardless of what is done. Or a spouse may not want to be left alone, so will insist on a ridiculous amount of care. “Medical standards” seem to have drifted in this direction as well. Some religions seem to point this direction, as well.
Similar to what CHS wrote recently: https://charleshughsmith.substack.com/p/for-many-this-recession-will-feel
EXXON WARNINGS SIGNAL U.S. SHALE GROWTH PLATEAU
Exxon CEO Darren Woods cautioned that U.S. shale oil growth may soon plateau due to declining prime drilling locations in the Permian Basin.
https://x.com/OilHeadlineNews/status/1977801952399691922
And ? Your arab sunni milking cows slavedogs have the all the oil you need and more … The oily middle east except the persians is an american military colony .
Syria was the last true arab man standing but your Al Qaeda /HTS / ISIS etc trained puppets funded with al saud filthy money have taken care of that ….
https://i.postimg.cc/bYC0yZR0/Screenshot-2025-10-14-08-41-44-305-org-telegram-messenger-2.jpg
There seems to be a chorus saying the same thing. If oil prices were a lot higher than today’s WTI = $58.33, it would help drilling prospects a lot.
CTG , who lives in Malaysia, says there is no need to recount spilled water.
Malaysia is an oil producing country which could count on Chinese help . Singapore, which was actually kicked out from Malaysia, is dependent on food and water from Malaysia, same thing which had happened to Hong Kong whose food and water came from the mainland – when the mainland refused to renew the ‘lease’ on the New Territories the ‘concessions in Victoria and Kowloon became untenable.
Virtually everything USA did after 1914 was wrong. I will only point out what happened after 1945.
1. The independence of Indonesia, which was a totally preventable disaster
2. The screwup in Korea. North Korea and Manchuria should have received Hydrogen Boms.
3. The Suez crisis, where Eisenhower actually went to kiss the behind of USSR to spite Uk, France and Israel.
4. The Cuban Missile Crisis. USSR had about 65 nukes, USA had 17 times as many of that. Southern USA gets a few nukes, and every single station in the Trans Siberian Railway gets one as well. We never get to hear about Russia, and by corollary, Vietnam.
5. The wastage of resources in Vietnam, which should have never have occurred to begin with. If the OSS agent Paul Hoagland punched the wrong vein, the man best known as Ho Chi Minh would have perished in the jungle, and we would never have heard about Vietnam. Hoagland’s subsequent life is unknown; he should have been shot in front of the Chinese-made Vietnam Memorial.
6. The shoddy way to handle the Iran crisis in 1979
7. Not dismantling Russia in 1992
8. Pandering with the Chinese Communist party during Clinton’s days
9. Mishandling Iraq and Afghanistan
10. Not attacking Russia and North Korea when they were very weak
There can be many more, but that’s what I can come in a fly
Cringe
There should be no other country in this world except Britain because Britain initiated the Industrial Revolution.
Oh, and don’t forget to take an IQ test to assess whether you’re worth living.
It was very important to keep other countries down so they would never rise enough to challenge
It is very important to prevent others from succeeding in a world with limited resources.
This is one reason why some people believe in conspiracy theories. The people at the top KNOW there is not enough to go around so why would they not sabotage people who might be strong enough to challenge them for their spots? They may give lip service, in the United States and in countries that are its allies, about a rising tide lifting all boats, and equality, but behind the public statements, they are ruthless and many are amoral.
If I may venture a broad generalization, In the UK, it used to be the general consensus among the working classes that the nobility, the business elite, and shopkeepers, publicans, and landlords were not necessarily on their side, and many people suspected that the upper crust were conspiring to keep the lower orders in their place.
This wouldn’t have even been considered a conspiracy theory, it would have been accepted as an obvious fact not worthy of debating or examining.
Class consciousness permeated the culture and the society as a whole was in a state of cold war. And at times when members of different classes had to mix, you could have cut the resentment and the disgust with a knife.
Besides the class war, there was also a good deal of regional animosity. Not just the English, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh, but anyone with a different accent could expect to be singled out for prejudice or bullying if they encountered the wrong omnipresent yob element, and treated with caution by everyone else.
A case in point was Uncle “Mac”—a fisherman named Maclean from Stornaway in the Outer Hebrides. He was never full accepted into our working-class East-End family in London, although he was married to my Aunt Nancy for over 40 years. He wasn’t couth enough or sheveled enough for our liking. And he swore like a trooper even in front of the ladies. As a result, you couldn’t take him anywhere.
This is so tragic Kulm. But they were too busy watching porn and doing nasty things to children and they lost their chance.
Exactly. The US elites got lax. Russia, China and India should have been broken up and North Korea and Iran destroyed.
Cities can only exist because of the surpluses of outlying areas. Once they start declining, then we can expect to see an exodus from the city areas to the cheaper areas farther away. This trend seemed to start in 2020.
I hadn’t thought about Hong Kong and Singapore being vulnerable, but I suppose they are. Huge financial problems and a cutback in international shipping could hit them hard.
Look at the first figure here https://www.redfin.com/news/gen-z-millennial-homeownership-rate-home-purchases/
Millenials have it very slightly worse but Gen Z have it better than even boomers
The idea that home ownership was higher and quality of life was better in the 70s and 80s is an obvious myth
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N
The world is getting richer.
Some people dislike progress.
If you look at the graph, Gen Z is only ahead of boomers until age 23 or 24 after which they start falling behind boomers like all other generations.
My point being, this is a 5 year span, too small to draw general conclusions, and it’s also the beginning of their adulthood, so we will have to wait a few years to see if this above-boomer trend continues.
This article was published over 2.5 years ago. It certainly doesn’t take into account all of the debt that these young people are dealing with.
The “real median income” graph going up is a measure of the degree to which inflation is understated – actual real median income is going down.
Physical durable goods like houses and appliances continue getting enshittified while the index considers them hedonically improved (eg. “smart” appliances with added electronics to break down and decreasing quality of the remainder).
If added electronics were so bad, then aerospace and the space industry would not be using them. If areospace and the space industry know what is good for them, they will embedd smart technology , i.e. artificial intelligence, in as much of their workflows as possible. If they listen to you, they’ll all be unemployed and living under bridges.
Thanks to a more prosperous and therefore more educated public, housing quality is at the highest as it has been in human history. We are living an era with the best durable goods ever. You need to uplift your economic situation so you aren’t stuck with stuff at the lowest price point. I suggest you stop consuming disinfo and apply yourself. What you get out of the economy is what you put in.
>> You need to uplift your economic situation so you aren’t stuck with stuff at the lowest price point. I suggest you stop consuming disinfo and apply yourself. What you get out of the economy is what you put in.
Wow, talk about disingenuous ad-hominem nonsense. Your argument boils down to “you must be a basement-dwelling ne’er-do-well if you disagree with me”? Maybe spend a little less time on your investments and a little more considering why your first impulse is to be rude and project assumptions.
Anyway, I don’t want a “smart” refrigerator that falls in love with my “smart” toaster or that stores how many times I open the fridge door in the cloud. I don’t want a subscription service to use my car radio or A-Peel wax coatings on my food and GMO-oranges that appear fresh to trick you into buying what tastes like a sponge. These are not “value-adds”, but they appear as such in CPI indices, is my point.
Investor
Gen z is a tiny generation. 1/3 the size of millennials. (not all generations are equal)
However did I make it with a close to 13% mortgage in the earlier eighties?
Dennis L.
“Following the light of the sun, we left the Old world.”
– Christopher Columbus
This per Art Berman
There’s plenty of oil in the U.S. but we’re at a moment similar to the 1980s and 1990s in which companies need incentives like tax credits and use of the Defense Production Act to encourage new exploration.
I’m not so sure about this. Does anyone have any insight?
Our economy was built for $20 per barrel oil, or oil with an EROI of 50:1 or 100:1. We have been using added debt for a long time (since 1980) to cover up the problem. Now the problem is becoming clear to everyone.
Our household budget would be very different if food costs are several times as high now as when the budget was put together. Governments have been struggling to provide benefits that it no longer can afford to provide.
Hi guys, I have not posted for a while but I do read. What is done is done. No use crying over split milk. We are at the end game. See what happens next. Enjoy everyday of your life. What is different now and last time? I used to say all the time. We are just too interconnected. We have wars between China and Russia in 1969. Because information was slow, nothing happened. If that happened today, what do you think of all the interconnectedness? It will instantly crash the extremely interconnected and very fast information transfer world.
Enjoy the time you have. Like I am doing now. Good luck and all the best. That is why I am not actively posting here anymore. Just enjoying the time that I have on planet Earth.
It is called a predicament for a reason. No point thinking of a solution. There is none. That is why I disappeared. Enjoying life as it is
Hi CTG. Good luck to you too.
Here’s a video that looks at an aspect of Jung’s psychology that may be germane your case and that of Xabier. You might like it, or you might not, but I thought it was pretty good for an AI video.
This is a 10-minute introductory video, but there are also longer 23-minute and 46-minute extended versions for those who want more detail.
“Enjoy the time you have.” This is important.
CTG, same here. Good luck and all the best to you too.
I think that there is an underlying “Not enough to go around problem” with these magnets.
From the WSJ:
https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/gms-rare-earth-gamble-pays-off-as-china-tightens-magnet-exports-b115ef72
GM’s Rare-Earth Gamble Pays Off as China Tightens Magnet Exports
Automaker has quietly seeded the revival of the domestic magnet industry, locking down supply amid trade tensions
“Donald Trump has bigger fish in mind. He
7:55 has a stra egic nuclear treaty. He’s trying to revive with the Russians. She’s trying to come up with, you know,
8:02 profitable uh joint enterprises, joint exploitation, exploration of the Arctic. Uh I think it was Chevron u just
8:11 basically was green lit to go back into the Russian oil business. Um you know,
8:16 Trump said, “Yeah, we’re we’re friendly to that.” That’s, you know, billions of dollars and uh after Chevron will come
8:23 other uh American u energy giants that’ll get back into the Russian market. This is what Donald Trump cares
8:30 about. He doesn’t care about Ukraine. In fact, today or I think yesterday, he said, you know, what did Ukraine expect
8:36 going to war with Russia? They got they got their butts kicked. He recognizes that reality.” ?
The excerpt seems to say “Business deals to get energy are all important.”
I haven’t listened to the video. I presume it has to do with bombing storage areas in the west of Ukraine that Ukraine had been counting on to continue the war.
“For the second time, I finished reading the book ‘The War’ by American investigative journalist Bob Woodward; I had read this book before, but it was a rushed reading; this time, I read it with great deliberation. Anyone who reads the book and the conversations it documents between Blinken and a number of Arab leaders will be shocked to discover that the stance of countries like Egypt, Jordan, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia was not one of silence or abandonment of the people of Gaza, as was previously believed. Instead, the details presented in the book suggest that the governments of these countries are complicit in the destruction of the Palestinians, just like Israel. “
https://conflictsforum.substack.com/p/when-the-resistance-broke-israels
So why do they want to destroy the Palestinians. Is it something to do with religious splits?
I am sure the egyptians do not want to. But the hidden people of the steppe, forming the royal families of a number of monarchies, these royal families handpicked by the brits long ago, may have hidden agendas.
even by your standards drb, this is one weird comment—i should have ignored it, like i usually do, but it intrigued me, as to how to thought it up:
/////I am sure the egyptians do not want to. But the hidden people of the steppe, forming the royal families of a number of monarchies, these royal families handpicked by the brits long ago, may have hidden agendas./////
asa minor student of history, it made no sense whatsoever—yet it must make sense to you—or you wouldnt have written it…..
i woild enjoy reading your rational explanation, of how the people of the steppes, were involved with brit royals—and of course their their hidden agendas.—then theres the ”hidden people of the steppe”—never heard of them.
where would we be without hidden agendas i sometimes wonder—and where would you hide—on the steppe?
you are right. they are just sephardic donmeh chews, not actually people from the steppe. It is possible that the Oman royal family is not, though. everyone else, they were handpicked by Lawrence of arabia’s boss..
lol drb
how did Lawrence of Arabia get into this?
did he have a hidden agenda as well?
Anyone else you would like to be included?
the mental acrobatics of other people never cease to fascinate me
Like we are supposed to believe that the brits would appoint random bedouins as kings after oil was discovered there. you are even more childish than I thought.
they were not random beduoins
do take the troble to brush up on your history
save me the trouble of doing it.
Then you unwittingly agree Norm that they are not random Bedouins.
You’re well aware that imperialism is a conspiracy masked by the Manifest Destiny/Progress narrative.
Of course they were not random bedouins. They had connections. And if you have connections to central bankers then you are of a certain ethnicity. Empire has certain rules, and to be fair central rulers have been burned many times by viceroys starting to do their own thing. Look at how Putin (himself a white from the steppe) is vilified for doing the interests of Russia. The royal family has played by imperial rules and has been allowed to exist for 94 years now. it is normal that they would harm other muslims because they are not muslims.
Norm’s defense of the official narrative of the government of the country he lives in is just loyalty. He is probably a government/intel agent. Mystery solved.
Perhaps Norman was the original James Bond, before that upstart Sean Connery took over?
But they don’t call it the Secret Service for nothing. We will probably never know the truth.
Norm’s jimmy runs deep and puts civilian butts to sleep. One of the job qualifications.
My understanding is (although I stand to be corrected or do more research) that it is not so much that the Egyptians want to “destroy the Palestinians” but within the Arab world there is a class structure, a bit like India’s caste system, and the people of the central Levant are the lowest in that pecking order. So it’s more of a simple case of they don’t care enough, in the same way that are neo-liberal class and aristocratic class here in the UK don’t care about the poorest classes.
{Here one-third of children are being raised in poverty, we’ve had recent cases of 19th century diseases returning, but that is a political choice, not an outcome of overshoot.}
I would argue that if this wasn’t the case, then the collective surplus oil funds of Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia would have long gone into building Palestine, Lebanon and Jordan into wealthy untouchable colonies of the Saudi Kingdom.
Interesting!
I would argue that the US and world are now badly in overshoot. “Political” decisions recognize this dilemma. They also reflect that the US government’s budget has severe difficulty because locked in programs are costing too much (because of too many low wage and no wage people).
Maybe countries everywhere are starting to see the issue of too many people relative to resources. Some of the resources are fossil fuels. Another is fresh water. With today’s high population, there is not enough to go around.
Ecosystems don’t really heal themselves. Ecosystems are in flux all the time but some may reach a climax state that can persist for a long time until something perturbs them, as will inevitably happen. Humans have perturbed probably all ecosystems. Ecosystems adjust to the perturbation but it may take centuries or millennia to reach a new climax state, probably with a few new species either evolved or immigrants.
But why that would give one hope for the future, I don’t know. It depends on what type of future one wants, I suppose. Humans will continue to perturb (some might say degrade) ecosystems for as long as modernity lasts.
I wonder why Gail is tempted to include the higher power idea so often. It would make all of her analysis of little relevance. A higher power with a plan could not fail to have that plan play out, so humans, and what they do, would be just a part of that plan.
I include the higher power because that is the way I see it. The huge amount of complexity in systems of all kinds, including the human body, is mind-boggling to me. If you have a different view, that is OK. But do try to figure out where our current super complex economy, and the Universe, came from.
suppose there is no ”came from”.
”came from” implies some kind of fixed origin—and fixed origin implies a ”motivation” from a force, in the same way that i might pick up a ball and throw it,
we can only speculate on ”came from” in such human terms because we have no other points of reference.
but having no other point of reference does not grant us the right to fix one, with no evidence for there being one, and then, as some people do, insist that their point of reference is the only correct one.
That approach has only led humankind to violence and destruction. History is very clear on that.
In that, our species is unique.
for all we know, the universe itself might be a living entity, on scale beyond our comprehension.—something we will never know of.
after all, each of our human bodies supports billions of micro-organisms, none of which are aware of the nature of the body they inhabit, or the supporting role they play in its well being. Perhaps it is they who are the dominant force of our exustence….we do their bidding maybe?
the world itself is an interconnected web of organisms and forces, us included, all of which contribute to a form of ”awareness” which we have only recently become ”aware of”.
But having the power to think of such things, does not make such things correct.
The origin of the universe is unknowable (if “origin” is the right word) but some people believe it is. That’s up to them but it seems odd that some would seek to understand the machinations of the human constructed economy and society then dump all that to say there is some higher power with a plan. And a commenter below believes that this higher power has no interest in what humans (the things created) are doing.
https://mikerobertsblog.wordpress.com/2025/10/13/a-god-question/
I too include the higher power but I also think that the higher power has no interest in keeping our materialistic ways going. Maybe survival with a lot less goods and services
The fact that there must be a Creator doesn’t mean that the Creator is still participating in tthe Creation. That’s Mike’s valid point. If Creator was still participating then Hugh would have a valid perspective. But he doesn’t, because free will is self-evident. Complexity evolves over time, and this universe is old and was birthed with highly complex dynamics in the first place which allows for an extremely high number of inorganic and organic permutations.
That there is a creator is not a fact. But, yes, if there is one, I can’t think of any reason that this all powerful entity, the embodiment of perfection, would continue tweaking that creation, as though it wasn’t done right to begin with. We can just do the work of figuring out what we’re doing and how changing that might affect our condition without thinking the white knight will come to our rescue at the last minute.
Reason is what births all facts. Reason is the accurate patterning of cause and effect.
That a Creator created Creation is a fact because it’s based in true reason. It’s a corollary of a fact that I’m sure you do agree with, which which is that something can’t come from nothing.
Calling Creator the embodiment of perfection is reaching. Nothing can be known about Creator other than Creator must have existed when Creation began.
which takes us back to ”who begat the creator”
Norm, reason only applies to this universal cause and effect. Everything that lies outside of that is a mystery. The mysterion. Asking that question is perfectly fine — in fact doing so rightly acknowledges the existence of the mysterion — but weaponizing that question in order to ‘refute’ Creator is a logical fallacy.
Having stated that something can’t come from nothing, you state that a “creator” can come from nothing. Facts don’t arise from thinking about something.
No, Mike, like I said to you, nothing can be known about Creator. That statement includes the fact that nothing can be known about the origins of Creator itself. See my latter reply to Norm for a little more exposition on that.
Facts ONLY arise from thinking about something. When you see the sunrise, that is a fact to you because you think sunrise, and thinking sunrise is based on your accurate acceptance of the scientific reasoning behind sunrise theory. Right?
Patterning suchly is the only thing that biology ever really does.
reante
reason cannot create fact…
but fact can establish reason.
You–reante– are ”fact” –you exist…
so we can establish ‘reason’ for you existence, (no need to go into details)
That is always the way of it.
I may have a reason for god-belief, something inside myself that needs it, or something instilled in me by a charismatic priest,…. but that reason cannot establishe god-fact.
Great comment Norm, all true except that I never said reason creates facts. I said (independently existing) facts arise (in us) out of reason. But I can see why you misunderstood.
Before a species evolved that had the power to reason, facts still existed. If this was not true, then there would have been no reality for a reasoning species to arise.
Facts are facts whether any living organism is around to observe them or not.
When you wrote “nothing can be known about Creator” you make the claim, without evidence or reason, that a creator exists. To me, this is unreasonable. You later wrote “nothing can be known about the origins of Creator” thereby possibly negating the supposition of a creator (by definition, a creator can’t itself be created).
We simply can’t state categorically whether the universe was created by some entity (though it seems unlikely).
http://mikerobertsblog.wordpress.com/2025/10/13/a-god-question/
Ecosystems always participate in evolution. Therefore trashed ecosystems also always participate in evolution. Evolutionary ecosystems left to their own devices after a trashing by humans is healing, though how they evolve will be different because the circumstances are different. There’s no replay button, if that’s what you meant by ‘healing.’
I didn’t expect a replay. I grew up on Elmberta Street, which was lined with Elm trees. Dutch elm disease came along, and all of them were lost. The new trees are different. That is the way it always goes.
The only mature Elms standing in our woods (I think) are in close proximity to other species of trees. The majority of stand alone trees have died and shed their bark while there are 2-3 Elms in groups of 2 or more trees and they appear unharmed. A lesson perhaps?
“When elm trees are intertwined with other species of trees, it’s called inosculation, where their trunks, branches, or roots grow together and can share resources, which can help them survive.”
trees certainly think and work together as a group
Good point. That is perhaps the way they are intended to grow.
First Trump takes over part of Intel.
Now the Netherlands takes over total control of chip company in their country.
https://x.com/zerohedge/status/1977556739605311878
Norm, This is what I meant about Trump and Starmer. They’re ALL following the same game plan.
This is better than just giving the companies money as happens in other administrations. I understand wanting a domestic producer to stay in business, at least this way the taxpayer (theoretically) gets something.
I think the problem with that logic is that you need private investors or investor (owner(s)) to put up the funds to grow the operation, since there’s not usually enough profit left over. But if they are playing a “de-growth” model, then maybe that would work.
And that begs the question. “if you’re company no longer wants to grow, how do you hold off the competition?”
The link says:
The game plan seems to be, “We have to keep access to semiconductor chips up, any way we can.”
now you are on the correct wavelength mob.
the only ”plan” is economic survival within a surplus energy enconomic system…there can be no other plan….
which by definition is unsurvivable, because we have no surplus left.
politicians, bent or otherwise, only imagine themselves with choices—they dont.
they are elected on promises they cannot possibly keep, because the energy foundation is cut from under their feet.
the majority cannot accept this, and continue to vote for prosperity, as if it is something you can vote into office.
its not possible, any more than you can vote a tree back to life once youve burned it as firewood.
energy surplus is a one way ride…
Norm you need to be more careful. There’s a reason that the kind-hearted Tim got upset with you yesterday. You’re getting more careless with your writings: there are still plenty of surpluses left, it’s just that those surpluses are in terminal decline. There will only be no surpluses left when there is no civilization left.
We all need to be stepping up our games here because it’s crunch time. Let’s rise to the occasion, otherwise the place devolves into what most other commentariats have already devolved into.
I always regarded tim as an intelligent man….rather than congenitally stupid.
When an intelligent man then makes a choice of stupid, I simply remove myself from even pointless eyerolling—not worth it. the mindrot started when he was eddys disciple. getting upset with me is an irrelevance—just as eddys four number expletives were—tiresome, pointless, nothing more.
you may notice that i dont get ”upset” with anyone—here or elsewhere, not my style.
bit of sarcasm maybe.
My writings are not careless—too many people seem to want to come to listen to my ramblings for that t be so. they would tell me by not showing up. that doesnt happen
I generally write stuff which can be checked elsewhere if i possibly can.
i dont deal in plots or hoaxes and such nonsense.
by surpuses i meant the excess of the 60s, our surpluses now are available to fewer and fewer people—we will never ‘run out’ obviously. When there are not enough surpluses to satisfy all, the have nots begin to fight with the haves.—-that can take many forms, and is happening now.
this is whey the usa is having to get used to troops on the streets—or isnt the reason for that obvious yet?
its close to shtf time—all these silly armed men in the usa will hide their AR15s under the mattress and hope Trumps militia doesnt kick their door in.
Thanks for the clarification Norm I agree that we’re close.I have an extremely hard time seeing Tim as Eddy’s one-time disciple. Can you tell me what ended that discipleship?
maybe disciple was too extreme….camp follower maybe.
the intellect of the 10 yr old writing rude words on the skoolyard wall….no understanding of the words he’s using.
the constant fakeathons are the common factor…everry reported incident is fake, hoax, conspiracy—too tiresome to get involved with…. so i don’t.
Try “cheerleader.” It’s the closest analogue I can come up with. I was merely lending Eddy a little moral support in his ongoing battle with Norman.
We couldn’t have Norman browbeating Eddy day after day without mercy and Eddy floundering on the ropes and bleeding onto the canvas, could we? I had to shout “Go Eddy Go!” and “Give him the old left hook!” It was the only sporting thing to do.
Norman, after loosing the title of Our Finite World Heavyweight Champion to Eddy on number of comments (one point per comment), and having to hand in his Lonsdale Belt, has never forgiven me.
I didn’t “get upset” with Norman yesterday. But I do find his opinions irritating, far more so than I ever found Fast Eddy’s to be, although Eddy could be pretty gross sometimes.
The biggest difference between Eddy and Norman is that Eddy knew full well that he was trolling the whole time, while Norman says what he says in complete seriousness. I commend his honesty on that account, but a lot of what Norman says is regurgitated slop from CNN or the BBC, and he is merely a relay station passing it on.
I am sure that a lot of the commentariat a lot of the time overlook Norman’s opinions when they may strike the reader as uniformed, misinformed, or stream-of-semiconsciousness rants, and being well-meaning people, they ignore the opinions because, they reason, “it’s only Norman; he’s like that.”
Eddy, who is not very well-meaning, would attack not just the opinions, but also the man putting them forth, mercilessly.
I try to steer a middle path, disagreeing with opinions I think should be disagreed with but trying not to insult Norman for holding them. I know that I sometimes fail and the occasional insult emerges notwithstanding. But my main focus is on the opinions, which are often broadcast by Norman confidently as facts.
It seems Norman is in that camp of men who hold their own opinions as a gold standard of wisdom and react to any criticism of their opinions as if it was a personal attack. Or, to use his own preferred adjective, my criticisms of his opinions are examples of me being “stupid.”
Perhaps he’s right. Perhaps it is stupid of me to try to communicate with him. If his mind’s already made up, and if he isn’t open to persuasion, he is never going to learn anything from anything I might say.
But as an intellectual exercise, to point out what seem obvious inaccuracies and contradictions in other people’s ideas and opinions is part of what a site like OFW is about. I certainly don’t mind being told, “You’re wrong there, Tim,” and I am happy to be corrected when I am wrong—as I was once in 2017. 🙂
I don’t even mind being told, “You’re stupid, Tim!” Assertions of that nature alert me to the fact that the person making them knows they are in the wrong, is unable for reasons of pride or embarrassment admit it, and so reaches for a put-down in an effort to ad hom their way out of having to deal with the criticism.
Incidentally, RFK Jr. is facing the same sort of attacks on a much larger and sneakier scale from the entrenched moneyed interests who are very unhappy about his plans to curtail their ability to poison and sicken the US population.
Norman does this sort of thing, not just to me, but to anyone who contradicts Norman’s opinions on anything, as anyone who has follows these comments closely over the months and years will have noticed. The respect he has for his fellow OFWs is awesome! And of course, it’s mutual. Because when people get put down unjustly, they tend to be resentful.
But I think criticizing each other’s opinions, although not each other’s intellectual or psychological failings, is one of the main ways in which we can all learn something new and clarify our understanding. All of us except for Norman, of course, who wears a mask of authoritative omniscience and infallibility when in our company.
Now that’s vintage Groves, most carefully decanted and served in a glittering glass of crystal: splendid sir, splendid!
As King George observed to the guards officer who put down the Gordon Riots ‘You peppered them, sir, what what, you peppered them!’
Will OFW’s self-declared ‘wordsmith’, and outstanding practitioner of what one might term the Vogon School of poetry (it brings tears to the eyes of hearers, apparently), take it to heart? Most unlikely.
WB Xabier
still wrapping the words of others are we?
i never did stumble across those millions of dead bodies lying in the streets that you kept going on about.
Beg your pardon Tim for the mischaracterization.
OK. I promise I stop releasing videos for a while but you ought to listen to him at least while you’re cutting and pressure canning chicken strips. I’ve followed this guy for a while. A confessed reformed recovered alcoholic, divorced, who does his own research and editing. No help. Living in Vancouver. I just love his cynicism. Plus he is more observant and knowledgeable than I.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/pxl7PIMBAjGO
One of its links says “Why the AI billionaires are building bunkers?”
And, Lex Fridman, the purveyor of AI snake oil salesman, interviewed Nate Polson, aka the Canadian Prepper , this week. It will be posted this week. Guess Fridman needs a bunker, too?
Someone used to post Lex Fridman’s show quite often. Well, the host is now getting a bit concerned. Time for bunkers, not hare brained space contraptions,
So much for all these schemes to send data centers to the space. I heard all the bs before in 2015-17. I am not tolerating that again.
Correction
The canadian prepper interviewed someone who appeared in Fridman’s informercial
However hecis not too far behind
Enjoy sleeping under bridges while anticipating that feudalism or the rapture will happen any second now.
Mental illness. Everyone should be screened for it.
Mental health is public health. (patent pending)