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The war with Iran is not going well. It is difficult to supply US troops with adequate food and other necessities. With summer arriving soon, the region will soon be an even more inhospitable place for ground troops to fight. An underlying problem is that the world economy was reaching resource limits even before the Iran War began, adding to the difficulties.
The most pressing resource limit is distillate fuel oil–an industry term for what we think of as diesel and jet fuel. This fuel is heavily used in transportation. It is also used extensively in agriculture and industry. Somehow, the system needs to cut back on these fuels for international trade so that more fuel is available for agriculture and industry.
President Trump of the US and President Xi of China will be meeting in Beijing on May 14-15. This meeting would seem to be the perfect time to start reorganizing the world with shorter trade routes, so that the world economy uses less fuel for transportation. China and the US are the two great powers in the world. Keeping trade mostly within the two areas shown in Figure 1 would be a way of using fuel oil more sparingly.
An advantage of such a plan, besides saving on fuel, is that it could stop the Iran War without clearly declaring one side the winner or loser. In this post, I will attempt to explain the situation further.
[1] Based on the ideas of Dr. Mohammed Marandi, I believe that China might be able to mediate a settlement between the US and Iran.
Dr. Marandi was born in the United States of Iranian parents. He currently lives in Iran, where he is a professor at the University of Tehran. In the video, One Country Quietly Won this War, he points out that, often, when two countries battle each other, neither one emerges as the clear winner. Both of them are damaged by the war. The actual winner may be a country that does not seem to be directly involved in the war.
In the video referenced above, Dr. Marandi discusses three historical situations in which a nation not directly involved in a conflict gained stature by being the “adult in the room,” when two other nations battled each other. In this case, Dr. Marandi believes that China could very well be the country that can exert enough pressure on both sides to get them to accept a proposed solution. He says that China has acted behind the scenes to bring about the ceasefire, and that Trump has acknowledged China’s role.
Dr. Marandi suggests the idea that the upcoming meeting of the two presidents might be an opportune moment to make major steps toward a mutually agreed settlement. I believe that the underlying problem is that there isn’t enough energy (particularly oil) to support a world population of over eight billion. Dividing up markets in the way I have suggested would at least somewhat alleviate the shortage. Of course, there may be other terms of a settlement, as well. In addition, not all the terms may be determined precisely at this time.
[2] The world doesn’t have enough diesel and jet fuel to maintain the current level of trade across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
Figure 2 shows that per capita diesel and jet fuel started to drop at the time of the Great Financial Crisis in 2007-2009. Their supply took a larger step down in 2020, and it hasn’t completely recovered. In 2026, the Iran War has taken out more crude oil supply, for an unknown period of time.
Diesel and jet fuel are both very important as transportation fuels. Diesel is also important in agriculture because it provides the power needed for heavy machinery to till fields, even under the most adverse conditions. Diesel provides the power needed for large commercial trucks, many trains, and ships. Earth moving equipment is also typically operated by diesel fuel.
If the amount of trade across the Atlantic and Pacific could be greatly reduced, it would help alleviate the shortage of distillates. Of course, the tourist trade would also need to be greatly reduced. With recent spikes in aviation fuel prices, many flights are being cut. Some airlines, including Spirit Airlines in the US, are going bankrupt. The problem is starting to solve itself, but more changes will be needed.
[3] Looking at population and oil supplies, the Americas seems likely to come out somewhat ahead.
[3a] Comparing the populations of the two areas, the World ex Americas is much larger, and its population is growing faster.
President Xi (leading one hemisphere) would get the very large and still rapidly growing part of the world population. President Trump would get a smaller and less rapidly growing share of the world population. Between 2021 and 2024, world population grew an average of 0.6% per year in the Americas, and an average of 0.9% per year in the World ex Americas.
[3b] The Americas seem to have an advantage with respect to crude oil production.
It makes sense to look at energy amounts on a per-capita basis because the quantity needed depends on the number of people requiring the benefits of transportation, agriculture, and industry. On this basis, crude oil production of the Americas has clearly been outshining that of the World ex Americas. It is higher on a per-capita basis. In addition, the amount available has been increasing in recent years.
Figure 5, below, shows total crude oil production (not per capita).
Figure 5 suggests that since 2005, crude oil production for the World ex Americas has hardly increased. In fact, total extraction has decreased since 2019. A person viewing this data might conclude that crude oil production in this area may already be past its peak.
On the other hand, Figure 5 shows that oil production of the Americas has increased by about 65% since 2005. Many people believe that US shale production will soon decline. At the same time, however, increases seem likely in several other countries in the Americas, including Canada, Brazil, Argentina, and Guyana. Thus, while crude oil production for the Americas may decline in the near future, its decline is likely to be gradual.
[3c] Crude oil production by geographical area outside of the Americas shows declining production in all areas.
Figure 6 shows that Europe’s crude oil production started its permanent decline in 2001. Asia-Pacific’s production hit a maximum in 2010, and it has been declining since. Africa’s peak oil production took place in 2008, and it has been mostly declining since.
Russia+, which I use to refer to Russia plus nearby countries that used to be part of the Soviet Union, has an unusual production pattern. Its crude oil production started to decline in 1989, two years before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. (This collapse in crude oil production likely contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union.) Crude oil production for Russia+ rose from 1998 to 2019.
Russia+’s production took a big step down in 2020, and it has not been able to recover since. A person might think that Russia+’s oil production was post peak, even before the 2022 conflict with Ukraine broke out. If an oil exporter doesn’t have enough oil to export, it tends to create financial problems within an economy. Participating in a war can appear to mitigate the country’s problems.
Many people assume that the Middle East has endless inexpensive-to-produce crude oil. I don’t think that this is the case. Crude oil production of the Middle East (Figure 6 above) hit two similar peaks in 2016 and 2018, and it has been lower in years since then. I think that Middle Eastern oil production is likely past peak partly because of depletion issues and partly because most countries in the area require high taxes on oil exports to provide subsidies for their ever-growing populations. This leads OPEC to try to maintain high prices. Lower crude oil production since 2018 is consistent with the hypothesis that oil production for the Middle East is mostly post-peak.
One additional difficulty of the World ex Americas is that it is so heavily populated that it cannot access tight oil that might be available without displacing a large number of residents. Another difficulty is that very old wells, such as those in Saudi Arabia and Iran, are ones that it might not be possible to restart if they are shut in for an extended time.
[4] In terms of mining and manufacturing, the Americas seems to come out behind the World ex Americas.
The World ex Americas has rapidly ramped up mining and manufacturing. Coal has been the preferred industrial fuel, with natural gas consumption also increasing.
Figure 7 shows that the energy consumption of the World ex Americas started increasing more rapidly after China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001. The consumption of coal and natural gas has especially increased.
The economies of the Americas have tended to shift towards service economies. Emphasis has been placed on fuel efficiency. Homes are now better insulated, light bulbs are more efficient, and engines of vehicles are more efficient. As a result, energy consumption within the Americas has tended to stay flat (Figure 8).
I have used the same scale on Figure 8 as on Figure 7 to emphasize how low energy consumption for the Americas is now, relative to the rest of the world. After US oil prices first rose to a high level in 1973, the US started transferring manufacturing to lower-wage countries. Southeast Asian countries began to be favored after 2001. Moving manufacturing abroad helped hold down US energy consumption and helped make the cost of goods to the consumer cheaper.
The problem today is that moving so much manufacturing elsewhere has made it difficult for the Americas to go back to producing its own goods, including clothing, furniture, and transformers for electrical systems. Supply lines for a particular item, such as a refrigerator, often run through many countries around the world.
[5] The full transition to the configuration shown on Figure 1 could take well over 100 years.
Changes, such as new supply lines and the new placement of major population areas, cannot happen very quickly. But I expect that some of the same underlying principles that guided these decisions in the past will continue to guide them in the future.
For example, infrastructure (roads, bridges, pipelines, and (today) long distance electricity transmission lines) seems to be the most difficult part of an economy to maintain because of the huge amount of energy required. Before the days of fossil fuels, I understand that slave labor was often used to build and maintain infrastructure. Similarly, slave labor was sometimes used to staff the mines needed to support the building of such infrastructure. As we lose fossil fuels, we will need to think about reducing our reliance on infrastructure.
One low-infrastructure approach used in the past was to build cities near bodies of water, so that fewer roads would be needed. Boats could be used to transport goods without building roads or bridges. If fish were available, they could be caught and used for food. In Figure 1, I am imagining that we will head back in this direction, with cities especially along navigable bodies of water and the ocean.
Unless we discover ways to replace fossil fuel energy, I would expect that the system will tend to go down in the reverse order of when it was put up. In general, electricity was last to be added, after coal, oil, and gas from coal. Electrification was first built in cities; then electricity transmission lines were added to provide electricity to rural areas. Above-ground lines tend to be damaged in storms, leading to a need for frequent repairs. Because of this issue, I would expect rural electricity to disappear quite quickly, unless it is generated at the location where it is used.
Natural gas shipped as Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) was added very late. Its cost tends to be much higher than that of pipeline gas. I expect it to disappear quite quickly.
A full transition to the two trading zones shown on Figure 1 would require a huge number of changes in supply lines. A 2025 chart by Visual Capitalist shows how much control China has over critical minerals. It states, “China controls key materials such as graphite, rare earths, and gallium–essential for green technologies and defense industries.” While the US has started working on its own production of minerals, it will also need to develop the processing capability for these minerals. Putting all of this in place will likely take many decades. This is a significant factor in the 100-year estimate.
[6] If energy supplies are limited, I would expect population centers closest to fuel sources to be especially favored.
Writers today talk about possibly running short of diesel and jet fuel in a few weeks or months. Clearly, if a population center is at a location where there are both oil wells and refineries for the oil from those wells, the area has a better chance of having fuel than an island in the middle of the Pacific with nothing to sell other than tourism. Thus, Houston, Texas, will likely have fuel, even when models suggest there will be shortfalls in many places.
Often writers concerned about resource shortages talk about the core and the periphery. The core needs to be near whatever source of energy is available that can be used to help grow crops and transport goods. At this point, oil is the fuel that is closest to filling this need. Electricity is a nice-to-have, and it can provide services like refrigeration for food. But it is not good for paving roads or building bridges. So, it can only add to the mix, not substitute completely for oil. Slave labor is the closest substitute for oil that the world has discovered. We would rather not go back to using such an approach.
[7] I am concerned that a major downward economic step will be necessary in the upcoming months and years, but I am hopeful that the meeting between President Trump and President Xi on May 14-15 can help smooth the way.
We are at a point at which it is clear that the current organization of the global economy is not working. I hope that the meeting between Trump and Xi will help put an end to fighting in the Middle East. I also hope it will help pave the way for a new path forward.
I expect that the path ahead will be a difficult one, both for the people in the Americas and the people in the World ex Americas. While the US has considerable energy supplies, it lacks manufacturing capability for many everyday goods. The US is also lacking in many critical minerals, especially those used in making high-tech products. With its high wages, it will need extremely high prices, unless processes can be made very efficient.
The World ex Americas may have an even more difficult step down. Its oil supply was already more stretched before the Iran War. Its overpopulation problem seems to be worse than that of the Americas. The World ex Americas is more directly affected by the damage done in the Middle East and the resulting loss of oil supply. And there seem to be many groups looking for war, even if the US leaves.
Let’s all keep our fingers crossed that the upcoming meeting will have a beneficial effect, both in the short term and in working toward a longer-term solution.
Bolivia riots. Rioters don’t want the government to trade resources for money.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CgbVevLetG8
Alexander gives an important update on what is liable to be a pivotal time in the Ukraine war.
Russia is headed toward completion of its goals in the eastern region, and it is switching to a more aggressive posture toward Kiev.
That posture follows the Ukrainian strike on the school dormitory, and it was liable to happen about now anyway.
I use the YT controls to speed up his well articulated talk a bit.
Russian Fiercest Warning; Kiev Decision Centres Will Be Attacked; Patience Exhausted; West Quit Kiev
“Ukraine, using a missile built by the British and directed by the Americans, just attacked one of the most important defense industrial facilities in Russia. There will be consequences. “?
https://scottritter.substack.com/p/ritters-rant-076-consequences?utm_source=podcast-email&publication_id=6892&post_id=188942570&utm_campaign=email-play-on-substack&utm_content=watch_now_button&r=nm2q&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Thanks! Alexander is fascinating to listen to, but there are only 24 hours in a day, so speeding him up is a good tip.
RT adds blood-curdling context re. strike on the school dormitory:
Staff at drone-hit Russian college added to Ukrainian ‘kill list’
The state-linked Mirotvorets database has targeted staff from the Starobelsk educational facility just days after a UAV strike on a dorm left 21 students dead
Ten employees from the Starobelsk Professional College in Russia’s Lugansk People’s Republic have been added to the ‘kill list’ run by Ukraine’s state-linked Mirotvorets website, just days after a dormitory at the facility was targeted by Kiev in a drone strike that killed 21 students.
According to data from the website, the recent entries include seven women and three men, among them deputy directors and teachers at the college. The database accuses them of publicly supporting Russia, attempting to undermine Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and spreading propaganda among minors.
The Mirotvorets database, which has been linked to the Ukrainian security services, is notorious for publishing the addresses and personal details of anyone critical of the Kiev regime, including journalists, athletes, artists, and politicians, some of whom have subsequently been assassinated.
https://www.rt.com/russia/640586-starobelsk-workers-ukraine-kill-list/
As mentioned bellow in that ” X-space ” post and if understand it correctly, it was an intentional ” double tap ” on the school-dormitory in the first place as the forensic team on the ground at the spot shown wings and engines for 2x indiv drones on the vid/pic..
The borderlines territories of larger regional powers often produce this type of beyond-pervert maladapted-psychology, basically where ever you look on the globe and historically, sometimes it’s abused – fueled from the outside by adversaries. Similarly, the Kiev junta consists – inspired chiefly of outlier W. part regional enclave* of the country, almost nothing in common with avg. Ukrainian or RU-UKR mixed pop.
—
* territory changing hands numerous times between Austro-Hungarian and Czarist empires, and even a bit with Polish and Romanian states.. etc.
J. not happy either ( repeating pattern )..
Key institutions and govs on UKRo boyz latest:
”
Yad Vashem
The reinterment of Andriy Melnyk for a state burial in Ukraine raises serious concerns. Honoring the leader of a movement that supported and collaborated with Nazi Germany during the persecution and murder of millions of Jews undermines the moral integrity essential to Holocaust remembrance. Yad Vashem is deeply troubled by such national commemorations, which come at the expense of historical truth and the memory of Holocaust victims.
1:51 PM · May 25, 2026 163.6K
”
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Jerusalem Post/Diaspora/Antisemitism
Ukraine reburies Nazi collaborator with state honors, drawing Israeli condemnation
Andriy Melnyk led one of the factions of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists during its collaboration with Nazi Germany during World War II.
ByGRACE GILSON/JTA
MAY 27, 2026 00:26
Israel criticized Ukraine on Monday after President Volodymyr Zelensky gave full state honors to a Ukrainian nationalist leader who was part of a movement that collaborated with the Nazis during World War II.
During a reburial ceremony on Sunday, Zelensky described Andriy Melnyk and his wife, Sofia Fedak-Melnyk, as “iconic Ukrainians of the 20th century who are deeply respected,” according to The New York Times.
Melnyk led one of the factions of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists during its collaboration with Nazi Germany during World War II.
Though the Ukrainian organization shared a mutual opposition to Soviet rule with the Nazis, it also promoted antisemitic rhetoric, and some of its members participated in the persecution of Jews during the Holocaust.
Melnyk initially sought cooperation with Nazi Germany but was later detained by the Nazis as relations with Ukrainian nationalist groups deteriorated.
The ceremony marked the latest flashpoint in a longstanding dispute over Ukraine’s commemoration of World War II-era nationalist figures linked to Nazi collaboration.
In 2018, the country designated the birthday of Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera as a holiday, and in 2017, a statue was unveiled honoring a nationalist leader whose regime killed tens of thousands of Jews in pogroms during the Russian Revolution. Melnyk, wife reburied at Kyiv memorial
The remains of Melnyk and his wife were exhumed from Luxembourg last week and then transported to Ukraine for reburial at Kyiv’s National Military Memorial, which opened last year for soldiers killed in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“Glory to every Ukrainian hero! Glory to all our Ukrainian warriors! Glory to our people!” Zelensky, who is Jewish, wrote in a post on X/Twitter marking the ceremony, adding that he was “grateful to everyone who has worked to make such returns of great Ukrainian figures possible and to give the Ukrainian People their own pantheon of heroes.”
Yad Vashem criticizes reburial
The reburial was quickly decried by Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, which wrote in a post on X that it was “deeply troubled by such national commemorations, which come at the expense of historical truth and the memory of Holocaust victims.”
“Honoring the leader of a movement that supported and collaborated with Nazi Germany during the persecution and murder of millions of Jews undermines the moral integrity essential to Holocaust remembrance,” the post read.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry wrote on X that there is “no place for ignoring historical truth and the memory of the victims murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators.”
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Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky (L) attends the reburial ceremony of Andriy Melnyk at the National Military Memorial Cemetery near Kyiv on May 25, 2026.
(photo credit: Genya SAVILOV / AFP)
https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-897400
Surplus people revived the [ Ehrlich vs. Tverberg wager ]
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2026/05/22/324-the-looming-crash/#comment-51886
Thanks for pointing this out. This is about the fact that oil prices don’t necessarily rise when supply is low. I had forgotten about it.
Dr. Tim Morgan responded:
Energy is fundamentally unlike any other commodity or product. If we have less energy, we are poorer. What this means is that energy shortage makes the consumer poorer, reducing the amount that he or she can pay for it. This holds true in real terms, even if economic problems trigger runaway money creation as, arguably, it already has.
Given the economic hierarchy, Morgan needs to include the word marginal before the word consumer. And it is not at all arguable that runaway money creation has been triggered. That’s ridiculous. It hasn’t been triggered or we’d all be talking about it.
Tim
A Canadian Doctor met a mentally ill man with bowl problems at fast food (Tim Hortons cafe’). Then drove him personally to be put down via MAID.
https://x.com/nationalpost/status/2059039437565071789
Do they get paid per MAID? Because this type of behavior is consistent with having a financial incentive.
They do get paid on a case by case basis. The payments seem fairly modest. I expect they are big enough to incentives to turn some doctors into ghouls, but small enough for most to not want to get involved in the process.
According to this article:
It takes deep digging to find out what Canada’s permissive euthanasia regime is costing B.C. taxpayers, but the figures are there, buried in the 514-page Medical Services Commission Payment Schedule.
Pages 118-120 of the 2025 document detail how much doctors are paid, every step of the way toward killing their patients. What the numbers show is that British Columbia’s health system pays doctors much more to euthanize a patient than the $327.48 listed in its public fee schedule.
That amount has increased 64 per cent from the $200 paid in 2017, when the government established ts first permanent fee structure for medical assistance in dying.
But the total cost of euthanizing a single patient can be as much as eight times greater — about $2,600 per patient, including assessment for and prescribing MAiD, a mandatory second assessment, euthanasia drugs, explanation of the MAiD waiver form and day-of “preparation and procedure.”
All told, it means the B.C. government could spend up to $8.6 million enabling the estimated 3,300 MAiD deaths the province is on track to record this year. The cost could also rise a further $600 per patient for rarer and more complex “MAiD Track 2” cases in which the patient’s death is not reasonably foreseeable.
“These figures aren’t trivial,” said Dr. Will Johnston, a Vancouver family physician who heads the Euthanasia Resistance Coalition in B.C. “Some doctors are being really well paid to do this. They are very well paid to just ask people if they want to die, and then to kill them.”
https://www.catholicregister.org/item/2812-hidden-figures-show-m-ai-d-s-path-to-riches-for-b-c-doctors
Kevorkian provided services gratis and was convicted and served 8 years. A model that did not encourage other like-minded physicians to follow.
on OFW, I’ve noticed that people believe the version of BS that fits as closely as possible to their own version of BS.
been observing that for years—interesting social study—as ive pointed out before, when the ukrainian war started—they were just ”crisis actors”…same with school shooters…or all those CIA operatives who snuck into the WTC building with packs of explosives. over months, posing as ”maintenance men””’or the millions of dead people lying in the streets during covid…then there’s the 6 faked moon landings (why stop at 6?)
all presented as ‘truth’ here—all sadly amusing. Stupidity in others, particularly in those of obvious high intellect, never makes me happy.
as i said—people choose their personal thread of bs—and stick with it, no matter what, or what reality is offered
Norman, I’ve noticed over the years that you seem “to believe the version of BS that fits as closely as possible to your own version of BS.” And that when you accuse others of this sin, you are quite literally projecting (in a Freudian psychological sense) your subconscious disapprobation of your own cognitive biases onto others.
You seem to be the proud owner of a complete barnyard full of BS that you never seem to question or examine, let alone clean up.
Notice I used the words “seem to”. This is because I am aware that my knowledge of the world and of the inner worlds of other people is limited, incomplete, and may be erroneous or biased.
Also, continually comparing yourself favorably with Fast Eddy is entirely missing the point. FE is like a cabaret act. On good days, he is like Ricky Gervais. He isn’t meant to be taken seriously. He likes nothing better than to get other people’s goat—which means to provoke them to show irritation annoyance.
Did you notice when you see FE on Substack threads that the image he has chosen as his symbol is a cartoonish caricature of Marty Feldman? That should tell you everything you need to know about his act.
It is amazing to me how successful FE has been in your case. You seem to be still upset with him after all these years. Please, fret no longer. Understand that he was only trying to wind you up like a cuckoo clock in the hope of getting you to chime on the hour.
So where are you now on your travels, Gail? Have you managed to confiscate any enriched uranium along the way, and is it small enough to fit in your handbag?
I am on my way to Belfast, North Ireland. I was in a small town today on the north end of Scotland called Ullapool. It used to be mostly a fishing town, but now it is mostly a place for tourists to visit. I wonder how long the tourist trade will last.
Prior to visiting Ullapool, we visited the Shetland Islands, the Orkney Islands, Aberdeen, and Edinburgh. We saw lots of sheep and cattle in the fields. The sheep do all right in cold weather. The cattle need to be kept in barns in winter (partly because their hooves wreck the vegetation, leading to a muddy mess). I would guess that the keeping of sheep is more sustainable than the keeping of cattle in this part of the world, if there is not enough oil.
Homes now are heated with electricity. There are lots of wind turbines in this general area. Otherwise, on the islands, diesel is used to produce electricity. Peat moss was burned before electricity became available.
So I keep looking at what is happening, and how sustainable it looks to be (or not).
I have never been to Northern Ireland, despite it being just across the sea from England. All those years of “The Troubles” has coloured my view of it.
At one time, there were both ship building industries and linen making industries in the Belfast area, but these are pretty much gone. In terms of farming, Northern Ireland has had a history of potato famines, one of them lasting for four years. The only new businesses relate to “things that you can’t buy from Amazon”–services of one sort or another. So the area has gone from one collapse to another.
There seems to be extreme wage and wealth disparity in Northern Ireland. Government buildings are incredibly large and opulent, for a country of only 2 million people. The wealth is in the hands of the protestants. Over half of the population is Catholic and poorer, however.
Unrest broke out in Belfast in 1969 (or before) between the Protestants and the Catholics. (I remember unrest in the US at that time also. Various US universities were shut down for days at a time because of rioting. The Viet Nam war was going on, and there were many protests against the draft, among other things.)
To solve the problem, in 1969 the UK built a long, high wall between two areas, and encouraged the movement of protestants to one side of the wall, and Catholics to the other side of the wall. There are also gates that are closed at night, and at any sign of possible violence.
Art work is posted on the wall, supporting whichever side it is on. Today, the artwork is divided between Pro-Israel (Protestants) and Pro-Gaza (Catholics).
Schools, which are based on geography, are segregated between Protestants and Catholics. The job situation is likely still pretty bad, with respect to reasonably paying jobs.
We will be going to Dublin tomorrow. Dublin is a tax haven. International companies have moved there to get a tax break. In fact, my former employer, Willis Wyatt Watson is there. Thus, I expect that area will be better off financially.
Also, from the point of view of farming, North Ireland is far enough north that some years the crops tend to fail. This is an added difficulty.
at this time of year, , being so close to midsummer–if you get the weather with a clear sky just right where you are, it doesnt get dark for very long…the sky mountains and sea at night become a place of magic…i know it very well…
I just returned from Budapest.The river cruise boats are thick on the Danube. Spoke to a young guy in Slovakia. He looked like he was trying to break into the tour guide business, but seems it is not so easy. I don’t get the impression there is much else. A tour guide in Budapest was a young highly educated women. She explained that medical and eduction are free, so everyone gets degrees, but in many cases there are no jobs. So there she is with a PHD and leading tours as a guide.
I couldn’t get away from the feeling that these governments must be scrambling to figure out where future jobs are going to come from. They are all very socialist so true innovation might be scarce.
In Hungary….beautiful place BTW, a woman can get stipends for up to 3 years when she has a child., ,,,,a pretty good policy I think to produce young people, but I would think it adds up to heavy costs for the woman’s employer.
Fun fact if true, mucho gold was mined and refined in Hungary during the Hapsburg empire.
Got home safely….and could not see much limitations on air travel due to jet fuel scarcity.
So the truth is that all of Europe is turning into nothing more than a museum…a very beautiful one at that. The beauty of St Stephens in both Vienna and Budapest is mind blowing.
>> a woman can get stipends for up to 3 years when she has a child
The employer pays, or the government? This would provide a strong incentive not to hire child-bearing-age women. Incidentally, early in her pregnancy with me, my mom started a new job and didn’t tell them she was pregnant – later on they admitted they wouldn’t have hired her if they knew she was.
Update – AI says the government pays. Still getting used to this idea that information is so readily available without having to scan a bunch of google search results.
Do you recall her PHD area? If ” cultural-euro studies ” domain that would help explain it perhaps.
Are you US ( 5x -0-0- ) based.. ?, maternity leave has been mostly paid by the state ( tax revenue re-allocation ) in Europe and industrialized Asia, although sometimes it even involves securing the working position for the return hence there could be add. expense on the (private) employer as well.
Hungary in particular went the troubled route of ~no immigration boosting fertility rate a bit vs its peers and quite significantly vs other countries now in total brake down of ~similar rank / econ pull.
Simply, it’s a priority question, some could similarly point at UK other places with very mixed pop after just few decades .. as corresponding or perhaps even bigger horror show.. it depends on your outlook..
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When a child is born, mothers are eligible for 24 weeks of maternity leave in Hungary. During and after their leave, they may receive maternity benefits from the state. At the same time, both parents become eligible for extra days of PTO and other forms of leave and benefits.
+
Female employees in Hungary receive the Pregnancy and Confinement Benefit (CDED) for the first 24 weeks of maternity leave. This is equivalent to 70% of their daily average earnings. If they choose to take additional leave, they can then get the Child Care Fee for the 18 months up to the child’s second birthday.
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I do not know her PHD area. I assume it was not STEM.
The child benefits reduce after a period of time and in some fashion can be extended over 3 yrs. The comments are correct but the employer must promise a job on the mother’s return to work.
I did have the impression of many young people everywhere in Hungary.
yes I am US based so I am not familiar with European socialized policies.
Perhaps most importantly, how are the women, there? 😉
Well, economically speaking – most importantly, their recent moderate success was based on over-all arbitrage from [ oil & natgas imported at discount ] from RU. The war just ended it for the most part..
The HU economy leveraged this advantage in various sectors: regional network of petrol stations in several countries, petrochemical industry in general, int flights, or just domestically based assembly-factories for various global OEMs, not mentioning the large agricultural sector for exports ( cheap diesel, NPKs, packaging, .. ).
Aka small scale ~PO like forcing right there..
Chinese imports of crude are down by 5mbpd .
” China’s steep pullback in crude imports has thrown a major bone to the rest of Asia, throwing a blanket over the region’s feedstock shortage.
Other Asian buyers swooped in on May-arrival barrels left on the table by China, giving regional refinery runs a bit of bounce.
Make no mistake, runs across the board is still severely depressed compared to baseline levels. But if Chinese refining runs and import prints stay in the gutter, rest of Asia will keep reaping the rewards.
Intentionally or not, Beijing just played savior to Asia’s sourcing needs. However the macro picture says this won’t last forever—China’s import drop is vastly outpacing its run cuts right now, which means this divergence is running on borrowed time. ”
https://x.com/CRUDEOIL231/status/2059231765492076821
This bubble seems unlikely to end well!
https://www.zerohedge.com/the-market-ear/semiconductor-boom-starting-look-dutch-disease
The Semiconductor Boom Is Starting To Look Like Dutch Disease
The AI boom is no longer just reshaping markets. Taiwan and Korea are increasingly becoming leveraged macro expressions of the global semiconductor cycle, with chips driving everything from trade balances to growth and equity markets.
The more the AI boom accelerates, the more Taiwan and Korea effectively become giant leveraged bets on semiconductors.
The semiconductor economy
1. Taiwan and Korea are increasingly showing elements of “Dutch disease,” where one dominant sector starts overwhelming the broader economy writes TS Lombard. . . .
4. The chip boom is becoming so dominant that the semiconductor sector now consumes roughly 25% of all electricity on the island.
Taiwan’s equity market is increasingly starting to trade like a parabolic AI proxy. . .
Foreign selling has accelerated, yet retail investors continue aggressively chasing Korean semis higher. The divergence between foreign institutional flows and retail momentum is becoming increasingly extreme.
To us old farts, most of us seem wary of war because we see what it can do.
We also can’t fight efficiently.
To those who are young and restless, a good quarter or something may
see war as something exciting. I think one of the reasons human societies
with a lower median age are more violent is because young men are more likely to see violence as something exciting. They also can fight, so war is like
the lottery for them.
I can’t find much data to back this up so don’t crucify me. It’s just a hypothesis.
Howe&Strauss 1997th “Fourth Turning” book – same, as it ever was. Lying, Satanic Mormons, together with lying, Satanic Muslims are doing the same – sending their young and violent males, satan-knows-where – to “proselytize” 😅
P.S. You must be a regular, run-of-the-mill Boomer, right?
Too young to be a boomer. But I’m not too far behind them.
Suppose that’s the reason the military has a “draft” for 18 year old males nearing their peak of optimistic eternal youth of nothing can hurt me.
I remember a middle school teacher of mine expressing similar that still is etched in my mind during the Vietnam war saga. Yes, I’m an old boomer
Perhaps it is the man women thing. Something like 20% of the men get all of the women; this is reflected in the genes I believe.
Dennis L.
Genghis Khan approved…
Whether they like it or not…so you ,at just as well like it.
I don’t know if this is appropriate or true or not but I has once listening to Howard Stern radio decades ago and he made a comment that pregnancy tend to occur when it is “forced”.
Nature always finds a way….
I don’t think we’ll ever know how much of human reproduction in the past was non-consensual. We know that when women are given a choice they only prefer a small percentage of available men to get pregnant by at any time. The result is low birth rates, which is not a problem now but could be a problem in the future if technology and modern medicine disappear. If technology and modern medicine disappear in the future, women and men will lose a lot of freedom and a lot more decisions will be made for them.
it was always thus in the past—full emancipation of women has only happened during the last century….
in physical terms, most men are scared of women—thats why they were always suppressed by primitive belief systems…—and still are.
a man’s ”physical capacity”, shall we say, is very limited, while a woman’s is the exact opposite, unlimited— if she is so inclined…this the root of man’s fear of woman—the man who demeans woman is always aware of that, because he has had it demonstrated personally—one to one. (naming no names of course)….
it reads like an open book…..
that is where his terror comes from…
The more limited [ time horizon ] as per child bearing age ( vs male ) and the over-all set up for mother-hood in physical sense and co-dependency on male partner as provider / protection must have also very deep – profound psychological and social effects on women as being pre-hardwired by nature-evolution itself.
That was logical ( nature observable ) and scientific consensus not ~long ago, obviously completely fake-deconstructed and even ridiculed in few recent decades as per wider top-down controlling agenda by specific elitist circles.
As clearly such [ full emancipation ] at least as performed in many ( mostly ) W-influenced parts of the world did not bring about long lasting happiness to the better half of the human population sadly. Not mentioning the kids and family in over-all context.
Men and women are made for each other and are well made for each other, as has been understood since time immemorial. If it were not so, none of us would be here today, now would we?
In his above comment, I sense that Norman is projecting his own fear of the opposite sex and his own feelings of inadequacy on mankind in general and on the unnamed Fast Eddy in particular.
Not in the genes but in a fantasy of a 1840s Romanian Engineer
Impress the young women by going and fighting in a war!
Maybe war actually selects for men that decide to stay home and sleep around while other men go die and fail to reproduce. I suppose it all depends on the particulars.
War doesn’t seem to select for much. Both attractive men and unattractive men perish. The men who are turned away by the military , draft dodgers or are conscientious objectors don’t seem to be above average in terms of appeal to women so even if they had less competition, they aren’t going to necessarily reproduce. There are also numerous anecdotes out there of women leaving men who have served or have cheated on them. Make of that what you will.
A military veteran is on average more “fit” but that doesn’t make him more appealing to women if he isn’t also above average in appeal.
Yup. More likely to beat women
I have known military wives that were 100 percent faithful. But som of them like the military husband because it’s playtime during deployment. They get the stability of a military family life with play time periods. Often this is learned behavior from growing up in military families. BAU. It’s similar to career criminal families where the husband goes to jail. The wife provides emotional support for the husband while deployed or incarcerated with Uncle Bob by her side. Uncle Bob knows the deal too and disappears when bad ass gets out or comes home. The guy deployed knows often but doesn’t know because the situation is so intense he can’t refuse the emotional support. No one mentions it. It can be quite shocking if you don’t know the drill and Uncle Bob shows up at the neighbors house three days after he deploys and stays there until deployment ends. The barbecues become somewhat strained then for me then but I know how to keep my mouth shut. None of my business.
there is a correlation between war and hunting….
when you went hunting, and consistently and reliably returned with ‘meat’, then the local totty would obviosly want your offspring, because you could be relied upon to sustain them.
Men are basically show-offs in this respect, and ‘going to war’ would demonstrate ‘manliness’ to females—war posters often showed pretty girls encouraging their men to go off to the current war.
You couldnt hunt big game—but you could ‘hunt’ the enemy, and come home with medals to show off.
There are a lot of trigger happy old people
Send them to war
Wait a minute I think that maybe Trump lied to us? Is that possible? Looks like war is back on!
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/iran-says-us-peace-talks-hit-consensus-many-issues-no-final-deal-yet
Bibi needs the 90 million Iranians killed for the safety of Greater Israel. Trump carpet bombing Iran with 60 fusion bombs ought to do the job.
Well wait a minute I guess they were self defence strikes so those don’t count!
Health alert after two suspected Ebola cases detected in Italy – as WHO warns epidemic in DR Congo ‘extremely serious
https://www.the-sun.com/health/16409499/ebola-alert-italy-dr-congo-epidemic-serious/
When the blood comes out your eyes like a big pizza pie.
That’s EBOLA!
I suppose we can have these events/scares whenever we need to reduce jet fuel consumption due to scarcity.
I’m glad to see that all that vaccine research is paying off.
“However, we also modeled what could happen if major environmental crises abruptly imposed severe carrying-capacity limits on Earth, through climate collapse, pandemics, conflict, or resource shortages.
Under a deliberately conservative worst-case assumption that Earth’s sustainable carrying capacity suddenly dropped to around 2 billion people, our model predicts a rapid global population decline, with humanity potentially halving by around the year 2064.”
https://phys.org/news/2026-05-mathematical-global-population.html
This paper ends:
“We emphasize that the current trajectory remains relatively stable and does not imply imminent collapse.”
Stay away from anything frightening!
Peter Murrell, Nicola Sturgeon’s estranged husband, is in custody after pleading guilty to embezzling £400,000 from the Scottish National Party
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/peter-murrell-snp-court-nicola-sturgeon-b2983061.html
Peter Murrell, the Scottish National Part’s former chief executive, pleaded guilty to the charges when he appeared in the High Court in Edinburgh on Monday morning.
Assistant Chief Constable Stuart Houston said, “This was a lengthy and extremely complex case due to the scale of criminality over a 12-year period and the lengths Peter Murrell went to try and cover his tracks. From 2010 to 2022, he spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on luxury goods while carefully trying to hide his criminality with false receipts and accounting. He must now face the consequences of his actions.”
Until he stood down in 2023 during the leadership race to succeed Ms Sturgeon, Mr Murrell had been chief executive of the SNP for more than 20 years.
Scottish Labour deputy leader Jackie Baillie insisted the plea “does not put the issue to bed. It is inconceivable that Nicola Sturgeon knew nothing about the large-scale fraud, which she benefited from, taking place under her nose in both her party and her home. It was Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP party machine that attempted to close ranks and shut down scrutiny when questions about the finances started to emerge, and we need to know why.”
Mr Murrell’s conviction is the result of a police investigation launched in 2021 that investigated the SNP’s funding and finances and involved several high-profile arrests. The policing cost of the long-running investigation reached more than 2 million pounds.
Sentencing is due to take place on 23 June, and Mr Murrell has been remanded in custody until then.
Strange!
This was of course known about long since in the UK. We wondered why it was taking so long.
“The policing cost of the long-running investigation reached more than 2 million pounds.”
That is disgraceful. No doubt is the taxpayers of England who will have to pay most of those costs. I was already annoyed enough when I discovered that the Scots get 10 public holidays while we English only get nine. I think the Scots should be forced to pay reparations to the English for that. Or else we could privatise Scotland and sell it to Trump for a trillion pounds. The USA could easily print that amount, and Trump is tasteless enough that he admires that dreary little country. 🙁
“is ai being pushed as a response to a “talent shortage” in general? if workers won’t accept lower pay they are replaced with machines?”
Copilot
Short answer:
Yes — across multiple industries, AI is being pushed as a response to a perceived or manufactured “talent shortage,” and in many cases it functions as a tool to discipline labor, suppress wages, or replace workers who refuse worse conditions. This isn’t unique to Hollywood; it’s a broad economic pattern.
But the twist is exactly what you said:
AI can replace labor, but it cannot replace talent.
And industries that confuse the two eventually hollow themselves out.
—————————————————————————————-
This era of automation is different from the previous eras . The ability to build and maintain A.I. itself is at risk if there are too few workers to replace the aging workforce that built the a.i.
Gail missed this observation or speculation, but the companies investing in A.I. may not expect to lose any money. If they get into trouble they might expect to be bailed out because many of them are too big to fail
At some point, there are likely to be too many companies (including banks and pension funds) to bail out. The total quantity of goods available will not be very high. If all organizations are bailed out, the quantity of money required will lead to hyperinflation.
Debate between Simon Dixon and Simon Michaux …
https://www.simondixon.com/blog/are-the-elite-trying-to-destroy-the-world-simon-dixon-simon-michaux
Going off the summary provided, Simon Michaux making use of the term “Committee of 300,” which is the atavistic analog to the Hand. Michaux makes the argument that the Committee is in civil war with itself. I do not know what his perceived evidence for this is but I do know that no such evidence exists. Didn’t know that he was such a big-time conspiracy theorist, though, that he would be publicly discussing a Hand analog.
“I do not know what his perceived evidence for this is but I do know that no such evidence exists.”
Got that?
This is a long audio debate, with a summary, which is mostly AI, it appears.
This document synthesizes the key insights, arguments, and data points from the April 29, 2026, conversation between Simon Dixon and Simon Michaux on the Capital Cosm program. The discussion focused on structural models of geopolitics, the transition of global financial systems, and the potential for an engineered collapse of existing industrial models.
High-Level Overview
The interview examines two primary models of global power and systemic change. Simon Michaux presents a model based on industrial structures, energy signatures, and a “Technofeudalist” transition, while Simon Dixon offers a model centered on transnational capital flows, the “Financial Industrial Complex,” and the technological takeover of money. Both participants agree that the current global system is being intentionally dismantled to make way for a new, technocratic surveillance state characterized by programmable money and social credit systems. The framing suggests that whether through elite infighting or a unified “Grand Bargain,” the outcome is a move toward a multipolar world governed by algorithms rather than traditional capital.
Later:
Points of Agreement
-Intentional Systemic Transition: Both agree the current system is being destroyed on purpose to facilitate a “Great Reset.”
-The Technocratic End State: Agreement on the implementation of a global surveillance state, programmable money, social credit scores, and the end of private ownership (“You will own nothing and be happy”).
-The Worthlessness of Politics: Both participants agree that voting does not matter and there is no political solution to the current trajectory.
-Failure of the WEF: They suggest the World Economic Forum (WEF) may be “sacrificed” or disbanded as a branding exercise, while the system they promoted is implemented under a different name.
-The Move to Multipolarity: Both see a shift away from a US-centric world toward a multipolar world where nodes like the UAE, Singapore, and Hong Kong play central roles.
Points of Disagreement
-Origin of Conflict: Michaux toys with the idea of a “Committee of 300” or a deep-seated civil war between specific elite factions. Dixon views it more as a shifting struggle between different “industrial complexes” (Military vs. Financial vs. Technical) and transnational capital vs. nationalistic interests.
-The Nature of Trump: While Michaux views the Trump vs. Establishment feud as a potential sign of a genuine elite civil war, Dixon views the MAGA movement as a “psy-op” that facilitates the technocratic surveillance state while appearing to fight it.
-Human Consciousness: Michaux questions if a shift in human consciousness or a refusal to “play along” is the only real way to defeat the system, whereas Dixon focuses on the need for the “new elites” to use capital to change it from within.
google says
Five nations—the United States, Russia, China, France, and the United Kingdom—are confirmed to possess and have successfully tested staged thermonuclear (fusion or “hydrogen”) bombs.
Other nations with acknowledged nuclear capabilities include India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea. However, their arsenals are generally believed to consist primarily of smaller, fission-based atomic bombs.
My view: Ever-lower interest rates and ever-higher debt hides not enough finished goods to go around. The result is increasing wage and wealth disparity.
https://quoththeraven.substack.com/p/the-devil-neither-political-party
The Devil Neither Political Party Will Name
The hidden wealth transfer system buried beneath modern central banking and market bailouts.
The widening wealth inequality gap is the political third rail nobody in power truly ever wants to touch. . .
Republicans and Democrats may pretend to be existential enemies on television, but when it comes to flooding the financial system with dollars, both parties reliably fall into line. And that support is precisely why this topic is politically radioactive: once people understand how the system works, the illusion of two competing economic ideologies starts to collapse. Republicans want less spending, Democrats want higher taxes…but both parties want the Fed to keep printing dollars.
It was always so. these people invented the left and the right 237 years ago to distract the masses from money generation. And here we still are doing the same.
Inflation benefits those with “first access” to money – namely, the already wealthy.
The one thing the Federal Reserve has been very good at throughout its entire existence is creating inflation.
Because money is the market proxy for energy throughput, during energy growth the creation of inflation is politically very easy because its simply following the engineered demand for those increasing energy flows. Cheap debt money following cheap energy equals MPP. And as HHH reminds us, that’s a commercial bank driven phenomenon rather than a central bank phenomenon as central bank rate setting is always a trailing indicator of energy supply dynamics in (dis)equilibrium with debt(load) dynamics. That structural inflation during energy growth is the virtuous nominal type of inflation that yields cheaper goods and services in real terms: generally speaking, a rising tide floats all boats.
However, inflation is politically difficult to create during energy contraction because structurally it represents the devaluation of money in real terms. Some people like to call that devaluation debasement, but that’s merely the politicization of devaluation. If devaluation isn’t the market based monetary policy during the early stage of energy collapse that we might call contraction, then the only other option is amore painful deflationary spiral. Deflation is only chosen for a reserve currency at the point when when more controlled inflation triggers uncontrolled inflation, which is the point we are now reaching. Uncontrolled inflation of the reserve currency causes the civilization to lose control of the real value of the monetary proxy that chases energy and, thus, lost MPP. Lost MPP equals chaotic collapse. Lost MPP is like a loaded log truck having already lost its brakes then losing its engine braking ability. Deflation is the Machine’s engine braking because reserve currency deflation increases engine compression by increasing the real value of the reserve currency proxy that purchases energy.
Stagflation only happens during severely disequilibrious interregna of secular growth phases such as was the 1970s transition from pre-globalized US post-peak conventional oil production to the ultimate intensification of industrial civilization we know as globalization.
Fantastic summary thanks.
That in tangent also explains-predicts why some of the ( cored edifice pillars ) during inflationary MPP build up must be mercilessly dumped at ( near ) the peak, notably megalopolis-city RE, various tech-infrastructure sink holes linked to aggregate demand and similar. Basically, and exactly what ~97% of economists won’t ever admit to ( or recommend to do ) in the public space.. Obviously don’t consult me on timing, that’s the hard pill to swallow and better to just front run it in “blind” mode haphazardly..
Thanks yeah cycling is the first fundamental of the universe. Cyclical momentum. Entrepreneurial scheming. Hustling. Pistons in the engine of the log truck are just energetic pump and dump schemes.
Some guesses for next three years, US $:
Potash will go down in price.
Corn, beans will go down in price.
Oil will be flat at best, more likely down in price.
Manufactures of agricultural machines will see significant declines in stock prices.
Farmland in the US will be at best flat, probably decline in price.
There is no economics without biology and too large a portion of the US population has declining incomes real and nominal. This implies printing money by the government will be overwhelmed by this declining income and the increasing number of people in income stressed lives.
A guess, AI is a net energy loser. I.e. it produces few real benefits, energy in > energy out.
I use Copilot and like it, but it is not a wonder drug; it takes time to get a good result but it is much faster than a shelf of reference books for syntax on a given language. For operating system questions it can take some trial and error. Given many hours on some problems, it seems to be learning on the fly. It is a wonderful reference source but it is not uncommon to go to links for syntax and find a slightly different version of a driver is needed, again, trial and error. Confession: I am an amateur, perhaps I am not using it as well as I could.
Something different to talk about.
Dennis L.
I am afraid you are right. But for right now, the AI bubble is holding up the stock market and the economy. It is not clear when this bubble will break: later this year, early 2027 perhaps. But when it does break, it seems like the bubble may break in the way you say.
The system needs armies of workers earning enough money to keep the prices of commodities up. When this stops happening, the problem can be hidden for a while beneath a debt bubble. At some point, things need to start going wrong.
Had the price of oil stayed very low in the last 4 years and interest rates stayed low too with the world being not at war with each other the bubble would have burst by now and things would be a lot different. Do you think the world would be populated by eight billion people plus conducting themselves in an orderly manner with no food available, no power available and at the mercy of natural forces. Perhaps a new world order would arise and people would share everything and a new belief system would replace the current “dog eat dog” belief system.
The Elders did not want to “throw that dice” and embarked on a different plan which is our current reality meaning the bubble has not burst and war and high oil prices with the accompanying high inflation and high interest rates.
In summary we done a deal with the “Devil” better the devil that we know than the one that we don’t.
“Should The Government Stop Dumping Money Into A Giant Hole?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1488-N_bqUg
I say don’t don’t go fixing what is not broken.
People’s livelihoods–retirements– hinge on this tradition.
Taking it away is condemning the majority of hard working
Americans to an untimely demise.
This video is from “The Onion,” a satirical source. Of course, it can accidentally coincide with what is actually happen.
Apparently the 200 Boeing aircraft to purchase by China is more as a letter of intent, not a firm legal commitment. Response to AI prompting by me, searching the news / primary sources:
The original Chinese wording (from Ministry of Commerce’s Department of American and Oceanian Affairs) of the key sentence is:
按照中美元首达成的重要共识，中国航空根据自身航空运输发展需要，将按照商业化原则引进200架波音飞机。同时，美方将为中方提供充足的发动机、零部件供应保障。
A close translation: “In accordance with the important consensus reached by the Chinese and U.S. heads of state, China’s aviation [sector], based on its own air-transport development needs, will introduce 200 Boeing aircraft according to commercial principles. At the same time, the U.S. side will provide China with adequate supply guarantees of engines and components.”
Chinese commentary has picked up on exactly this distinction. Boeing’s own confirmation described it as a preliminary commitment / letter of intent for 200 aircraft (意向订单初步承诺), not a finalized firm order. So “committed to buy” overstates it on two counts: the Chinese side framed it as a needs-based introduction under commercial principles, and even the order itself is characterized as an intent/preliminary commitment rather than a signed firm purchase.
It is necessary to have something favorable to talk about. So a little stretching of the truth seems to take place.
Pseudologia fantastica is fairly common. Especially in politicians.
While just after that ( on another state visit occasion ) CHN committing to buy jet turbines from ” elsewhere ” hah.
They do not have a choice. They are unable to make turbines themselves. Ivan mentioned that recently. But surely they can soon produce their own avionics.
Yes, I did not want to post the whole long agreement, they basically acknowledged each others lead ( or soon approaching ) in given specialized sectors and try to complement each other.
Duran surmised that China finally understands that USA/EU will not approve China’s planes to fly in those regions, that engine and plane servicing by the West are subject to cancellation in the event of hostilities or sanctions, so China may have finally decided that they should focus on supplying Asian markets, ignore the West, and see about dealing with Russia again after the failed COMAC venture.
Presumably two can play this game. if the various iliyushkin and tupolev coming out are banned, perhaps a titanium blockade is in order.
Putin wouldn’t dare. My present understanding of his response to 17 college girls (21 total civilians) being killed is to bomb empty buildings.
Not sure about that, at least one of the strikes on video evidently struck some deep underground facility, the shape of the elongate explosion provided etc.
There is FR ambassador on TV all smiles among some of the city center freshly smoldering ruins saying he is going nowhere, just staying there defiant.. as RU issued warning to all embassies to evacuate the capital because of planned further strikes.
It’s all evidently gore – macabre theater between all sides – each issued different roles.
Besides, the war itself is not about striking respective capitals, but about d/d effort in chiseling off the respective armies, and UKRo boyz are evidently very close to terminal exhaustion.
JR, we really don’t know if said bunker exists, whether it was in use, or whether Russia provided warning to their “Western partners”. We will know Russia is finally serious if Z is introduced to a Kinzhal and maybe some Baltics or European defense headquarters are made an example of without time to evacuate. Until then, it’s theater in my book.
They used an impressive selection of weapons, so I would guess that they were not playing.
“The official Russian Defense Ministry announcement, issued late on Sunday afternoon (May 24), identified the missiles used as Oreshnik, Kinzhal, Iskander, and Zircon.”
A possible answer to the little green dwarf question and an end in sight(potentially). Even a first mention from Putin of the squat(in relation).
https://johnhelmer.org/this-is-how-president-vladimir-putin-answers-the-questions-on-every-russian-voters-mind-in-the-election-campaign-why-count-on-trump-bribes-to-finish-the-war-when-zelensky-bribes-keep-the-w/
On your latest point.
The RU govs treated the whole affair as sort of quasi internal civil war, although with foreign instigation and continuous support in many forms be it economic sanctions hurting eventually more EU than RU.
The RU’s goal was to save as much souls from their perceived world as possible, that has been largely achieved by now as (?dozens) millions escaped the scene to both W/E directions. That’s largely why they intentionally framed it as Specialized op. not War, which would in effect authorize the strikes on NATO’s H.Q. and various factories there of.
Imagine if say ~5yrs ago then the RU performed even very lite-potency n. test strike say in Northern Sea. This would have not been seen as serious warning, and even CHN would openly object / condemn it etc.
Instead they have chosen the protracted and more painful route. They correctly evaluated the whole affair as a bait to exactly nudge such quick – end game and becoming global pariah for many decades or longer.
Now, just look around today, the master plan failed, the global pariah nexus is clearly solidified in the US-IZ-EU.. characters and policies.
Yes, to play the ” long game ” as the only adult in room is most of the time maddening self-restraint but clearly a more wiser approach.
I certainly don’t envy their decision-making struggles over the past years.
China is allergic to legally enforceable written language as our adorable Hormoozmoron found out long ago. Back then he called them on it. Now he takes the “win”. Media win that never happens.
China is the big winner in everything. (strangely enough)
like, this oil crisis will work out as huge win for renewables/EV’s and such (most of which they produce).
We in the US keep making questionable moves, Russia too, Europe and UK for others reasons too. I mean look at our politics in each country (a mess).
China just keeps on trucking.
Love em or hate they really are just humming along. At least, so far.
Let’s get real. The president is third in line in Iran. First is supreme leader. Second is IRGC commander.
Supreme leader issued directive on 21rst.
Under no circumstances should the enriched uranium leave Iran.
Moving the dust to Russia was the only path to peace. Supreme leader just said that is not going to happen. There is no authority to overrule him. The buck stops there.
They are not holding on to the dust to make glow in the dark paint.
Your going to unfreeze 25 billion for R&D and a peace time setting with Iran sitting on a half ton of 60 percent? Say 6 months to get it above 90. Delivery systems could be developed at the same time. We are not talking two stage thermonuclear with plutonium. Just simple single stage uranium a bomb. They already have the missiles damn good ones. A year? Two years?.
All the party’s with veto power are going to be ok with this?
The “deal” being discussed is a memorandum to allow oil to transit for 60 days. Not a treaty. Not a agreement. A memorandum.
They screwed the pooch on this one. Royally. They had JCPOA. The dust would not exist is T had not unilaterally tore JCPOA up apparently because he hates all things Obama. Now they have to pull a rabbit out of a hat. If the memorandum is signed it’s only to get ducks in a row nothing more. Iran knows this.
Does anyone think they are stop at anything to get that rabbit out of the hat?
Peace agreement is BS. They are trying to keep people calm.
The delivery systems exist. 235U bombs are relatively small cylinders and surely it can be delivered via drone, not just rocket. The enrichment from 60 to 95 takes a single pass through the centrifuges, so if there is any centrifuge room viable, perhaps 2 weeks to process it all? But you can make a bomb as soon as you have 10% of the material processed, and keep going. surely there is a machine shop near the centrifuges.
USA must negotiate . Prof Theodore Postol . I had loaded this video earlier also .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1q_sp-FY6ZM
“MIT Professor and Pentagon advisor Ted Postol explains that Iran can build 10-20 nuclear weapons immediately, and why this is a reason to negotiate with Iran rather than threatening its existence with more attacks.”
The thing about this whole existential threat thing written into every nuclear doctrine on the planet. When does it become “he looked at me funny so I had to”. If a Iran with nukes becomes reality than Turkiye won’t be too far behind. Shades of reservoir dogs ending. Mutually assured destruction failure as a deterent seems increasingly likely.
Wouldn’t some proactive behavior be appropriate rather than enter a never ending mutually assured destruction period?
If mutually assured destruction based on existential threat is legitimate is not I had to nuke them to prevent a existential threat and mutually assured destruction also legitimate? Isn’t anyone with nukes justified in using them to prevent a enemy from acquiring them using the very doctrine that justify nuclear weapons in the first place? If mutually assured destruction is so reliable to avoid a nuclear weapon exchange why not make sure every nation has them? If mutually assured destruction is not reliable why not eliminate all nuclear weapons?
Humanity is stuck in a existential threat created not by any nation but advancing weapon technology where both participation and non participation is a existential threat. Mutually assured destruction increasingly does not mitigate the existential threat of both nations having nuclear arsenals.
The supreme leader we killed in the first days of the war actually understood the dilemma. The deceased supreme leader of Iran didn’t believe Iran should have nuclear weapons either and we killed him. Not believing in nuclear weapons didn’t work out so well so perhaps his son has a different philosophy? The first shitty choice didn’t pan out so why not the second shitty choice?
Has not our adorable Hormoozmoron made this clear to every nation in the world?
Yep, as the drones are part of larger pre-existing techno-sphere layers out there. Recently, RU took foreign press corps through that massacre scene at the girls boarding school – and there was huge foil layered on the ground for the forensic team, placing there all left over debris from these drones, showing large SpaceX logo signed antenna.. among the burned cables, wings and engines..
Another karmic [-]delete points for Elon..
I was wondering… No way to keep operator control without space base assets. Russia is losing dominance of low altitude air security in its nation and has no dominance in space security above its nation which actually is key to low altitude air dominance. It will be a interesting battlefield when ww3 progresses. Not that we will know what is happening.
USA considers satellite surveillance part of its strategic surveillance.. fingers in eyes might well be considered the start of a nuclear decapitation strike. It’s a huge advantage. USA sees all launches in real time. USA sees all mobile launcher locations in real time. Russia strategic threat detection is radar based. Apparently they get a handicap because of missile capabilities. The Russian over the horizon radar is no slouch. Especially over the pole. Satellites still way better. I assume this is one of the many things that ai will be let loose on.
I didn’t like Russia giving north Korea Topol m one bit but now realize it creates more time for decisions. It means assets out of Japan need to be dedicated there. Ohio class and tridents will be needed elsewhere in Russia. North Korea is gonna get vaped. It’s Chinas state of the art missile facilities out east in the desert that are a problem on that side of the world. 100 brand new ICBM a year. Adds up after a while. Tridents are stretched thin.
The weak point of both systems is sub launches. No one can respond in five or eight minutes. Although Russia almost did to non attacks at least once that they thought was a trident launch off Norway targeting Saint Petersburg. You don’t have time for a full ballistic trajectory evaluation. Protocol said they should drop the hammer but they didn’t. Now?
Tridents are solid but old. Minutemen are ancient. The reality is the USA has no capability to match Chinas 100 new land based ICBM a year let alone Russias incredible land based nuclear ICBM firepower. I’m sure a few bombers will get over target. Some F35 . IMO Tridents are meat and potatoes. Tridents are pretty puny relative to Russias land based. If you can call the hellfire they will create puny. Not that it matters if they are right. Mostly nuclear winter depends on lighting Russias forests in a big way. Season will matter. Nukes are one hell of a match. A winter exchange might lessen nuclear winter. A exchange in summer and the world will burn. All that beautiful life and habitat. Then the world goes cold. We go from hot to cold. Too fast. Species will not adapt.plant species. Animal species. Human species. Life. The cold more devastating than the fire.
How could we sin like that? I truly can not understand and I can understand a lot. I can understand a lot of how war works. Sometimes you fight. These weapons go too far. Even in war you don’t sin like that. War is embracing lethality. You prove you are serious. Winning does not matter. Proving you are serious matters. I don’t have a problem with it. It’s not for everybody. It must be tempered by justice. But you don’t sin like that. Who would kill the world? What is the word for someone who would kill the world? Can there be such a word? That’s not what military people are. That is not justice. It is the opposite of justice.
I think that’s what they are counting on. Capitulation will be chosen over sin. I think that’s what the psych profiles say. That’s what my psych profile would say. Maybe. 😊
That’s why they boil the frog. Give them time to think. Don’t let reflex decide
This is what manipulators do. It’s win win. If you capitulate it’s a win for them. If you sin it’s a win for them. Only winning matters to them. They do not value seriousness. They do not value justice.
The Russians have been in plenty of existential fights. They have no problem getting serious.This is different and they know it.
Time will tell. I think soon.
If truth is the first casualty mutually assured destruction deterrence appears to be the second. It was a stupid idea. It is a stupid idea. No one agreed to it. War technology created the idea not humans. We are a creative species. Creativity without insight is worthless
Running out of energy will not be fun. It will not kill the world. We have to stop creating new things to kill the world. We have to disassemble the ones we have already created. This is not our purpose.
There is a difference between war and sin. Saying they are the same is the lie that will destroy everything we could be.
I’m ok with swords. Swords are serious. Spears are serious. Bows are serious. What would we be without tools? What would we be without skill? Why should brawn prevail?
Technology should be for life. Technology should not be a sin.
Always
Always
Always
With insight.
Always
Always
Always
For justice
Always
Always
Always
For life
Let us have a choice in the future. That would be a great gift to our species. In that decision we choose our legacy. There is no greater privilege.
Btw. Iran claims Hormuz traffic is now <50ships daily, incl. some tankers.
All based on pre-negotiated terms with given parties interested in passage..
( At continued ~400x ships backlog.. )
If things may terribly bad, very quickly, as Art Berman and others say, there might be a reason to learn alternate food sources. This article talks about seed saving and also about eating some weeds, such as kudzu, that we don’t think of as food sources.
By the way, I am not convinced that growing plants from patented seeds as big a problem as this author does, especially if a person grows food for his own use. Even patented seeds can yield reasonable crops the next year (and thereafter). It seems like people talked about the issue back when I was involved with TheOilDrum.com. I don’t follow Resilience, but I presume it also covers this issue.
This is the recent Substack article I noticed:
https://markashryock.substack.com/p/the-window-is-closing?utm_source=multiple-personal-recommendations-email&utm_medium=email&triedRedirect=true
I have been saying for more than a year that by this summer the window would begin to close. That June and July may represent the last real opportunity to prepare before things break down very fast. I believe this summer is that window. But even if I am wrong about the timeline, what is happening right now with fertilizer supply should be reason enough to take the actions I am about to describe.
Supply chains are buckling in real time.
He then talks a long time about criminal penalties for seed savings. These are being required, even in poor countries around the world. These are of concern for full time farmers, but I wonder about others. What should we do?
Do not plant anything this summer that you cannot save seeds from. If you are growing food, grow heirlooms. Learn to harvest and store the seeds. Put them back. This summer is your practice run while conditions are still recoverable.
Buy soil amendments now. Greensand, azomite, biochar inputs — the materials that build soil fertility without an ongoing supply chain — get them this summer. They move through the same supply chains that are beginning to fail. After those chains break, you work with the soil you have.
Learn fermentation. Japanese and Korean fermentation traditions allow you to preserve, extend, and enhance food without refrigeration, without electricity, without a supply chain. This knowledge is available. Recover it now.
Build small-scale protein production. Quail, snails, mushrooms, heritage chickens. Protein sources that do not depend on corporate feed supply chains.
THE PLANTS THAT WILL KEEP YOU ALIVE
Nature has already provided the backup. You are probably looking at it right now and calling it a weed.
He then gives some foods that might be helpful:
lamb’s quarters
purslane
amaranth
kudzu
But get a good guide for your area, so you can tell safe weeds from unsafe ones.
Snails?
As in French cuisine?
They’ll be recommending frogs next.
Some of us would rather go vegan.
Frogs have outstanding meat. Whereas the snails are rubbery and, if not properly purged, sometimes toxic. To Gail: the main problem is calories, not vitamins or minerals. No one will thrive on a wild greens diet. I used to eat large amounts of wild and garden greens, but now in Russia I discovered that milk and potatoes largely cover those nutritional needs (farmers in the West 200 years ago or less largely survived on milk and potatoes in winter too see link below starting at 6:30). I can not even be bothered to pick dandelion greens, even though they are plentiful now.
It’s a bit complex equation though.
Assuming comparing apples-to-apples and speaking about the northern – hemi, as people there have/had to compensate for that huge energy drain through winter season, while obviously outside activities were dialed down to needed minimum and dwellings were set up as one heated up room only etc.
So, even that being translated to diet formula, there are/were limits on potato storage and so on, apart from other rooting/preserved vegs.
For example people used to consume and pickle a lot more lard ( and from various animal species ) than is now common usage per person or just imaginable d/d cooking practice .. Obviously, one tends to be partial to the ~high end quality angle stuff like geese / turkey or small woolly piglets derived lard apart from the mundane yard chicken broth or gross rooting pig lard.
Plus fish ( both coastal and pond-landlocked ) is whole another chapter – could be stored by ~primitive means as well.
Potatoes were stored in a cellar (in a specially dug out hole in the ground – dug out by younger father and grandpa). Temperature in the locked up (against honest, socialist neighbors) cellar was low but never below freezing, darkness helped too – stored potatoes were eatable till, probably, April of the next year (especially in fried and or mashed form, otherwise those tubers frequently looked disgusting with young sprouts and scaringly goo liquified fungi (Pythium sp?), destroying them…) by the end of their storage…
Pig lard was used for everything, grandma used to bake sweet cookies with pig lard mixed in (and baked on) – reasonably tasty, very filling, but – pig lard in everything damaged my mother’s and mine gall bladders (I’m blaming it on pig lard, but the lack of other nutrients might had been the reason too).
Life will become objectively shorter, palpably more discomfortable/painful, while small pleasures (alcohol, tobacco, any other traditional low-budget vices) will become way more enjoyable again…
Yes, that’s why such differentiated description among the various pig options, the large rooting pig in confined conditions eating spoiled scraps can’t produce healthy meat or lard in the end. Obviously mileage may vary, but sometime people ran this into extreme.
Your health story kind of rhymes with some of my wider family circle. One of my uncles was driven to premature death ( ~60yrs old ) by his over ambitious spouse, they ate very sub standard diet just to ” save-up ” in order to impress who knows whom.. on frivolities like stupid carz, second homes etc. while he taking ~three jobs at the same time and so on.
Drb, thank you very much for the vid again.
I’m glad to be on the same ( near ) page as Gleason’s family at least structurally in dietary terms, not in the volumes exactly though, hah 1L milk per day nor 4x sour creams per week as in theirs routine.
I guess it’s a family upbringing – lucky pathway as well at this historical stage. I doubt even mere 1/5th of the current general pop eats these kind of vegs, fruits, nuts ( the needed spectrum ) regularly at least weekly / monthly ..
There was a smorgasborg with frogs legs way back in the day. Quite tasty. Spendy event.
I don’t see it getting that bad that fast. Who knows. The gulf inputs can change things. Look what Saudi pumping in 86 did to prices. Shot itself in foot.
A doubling in food prices from here would not be popular.
Lots of fascinating details.
For example the Gleason’s family (NY 1942) made for their own consumption ~600x Quarts (Liters) of pickled veg and fruits; oddly enough even 4x diff. varieties of juices: grapes, tomato, currants, rhubarb – BUT not plum jam at all only in prunes dried form – perhaps plums not that much regionally suited there ( cold springs – early summers ) or deemed not taste-preferable to them..
note: plums ~= staple-crop for many human-oids
Yeah the Gleasons were pretty interesting. In warm regions you have more choice of course (in both fruit and starches), but in temperate to cold regions that is what you can eat. Here it is pretty much the same, except there are no squash and people put away a lot less fruits (though they are briefly around if interested in doing it). The one plus here is kvass, which is a B vitamin bomb and excellent in spring (emergence diet if you watch the whole video).
The author of the video goes into many tangents and ~blind alley experiment in other videos. He struggles with self described lite-obesity problem so he is trying everything possible and fine tuning glycemic index concerns with proper nutrition which is not easy balancing act..
But, perhaps his second best video so far is about [ collagen ] – where he reveals quite shockingly the US FDA banned collagen to many and often precisely the most eaten products like sausages etc. Which is unheard of practice say in Asia or Europe.
Perhaps this argument could be brought further, as lack of collagen has been known for ages as very detrimental to many health aspects incl. longevity.
So, the bottom line being – isn’t it simply a case of [ planned obsolescence ] here targeted for the American worker-pensioner(client) ? Which statistically vs RoW is for real!
Some of us remember Eull Gibbons. Back when books were a thing. Ate some weird stuff that summer.
I lived in Charlotte North Carolina for about 8 years and Kudzu was growing everywhere among some tree stands…In some cases owners would hire a herd of goats, yes goats to be placed on the property to clear it out.
There was an article on the person that had the goats. It can be uncontrollable when climbing on electric lines and such. Like bamboo, can be a “monster” plant. Heard bamboo, which has many varieties, can crack through concrete and is very invasive…
Imagine the goat droppings could be used as fertilizer…haha
Also listen to a NPR program the next food source will be INSECTS… mealworms are delicious when roasted, yum yum…
In Japan, kudzu root (kuzu) is most commonly prepared as a premium, refined starch (kuzuko), added to soups and traditional sweets as a thickening agent—a bit like cornflour in the west. The above-ground part of the plant is a real pain to deal with. The vines go everywhere. Some people poison the roots with a chemical you can get from the garden center, but apart from that you have to use the machete or the bush cutter. It was a terrible idea for the Americans to import this weed.
Also in Japan, we have a big problem with moso, a giant bamboo from China. It was imported around 4 or 500 years ago and produces bamboo poles up to 14 meters tall, which came in handy as a material for construction, scaffolding, basket-making and a hundred other things. It also produces large edible bamboo shoots that are a seasonal dish in the springtime. At one time, every farming family had a thicket or two.
There are many small species of native Japanese bamboo, but the moso is the big problem.
These days, with the Japanese countryside increasing abandoned and untended, these moso thickets are expanding apace, colonizing the woodlands and choking out all but the tallest trees. If they are not cut down, they eventually form a monoculture in which not very much else can survive. I have been battling a huge thicket on my property for over 20 years, and hoping to eliminate it before I die. I knocked down 1200 new shoots this spring, and in the autumn and winter I cut down several hundred mature stalks. The frontline is moving as slowly as the one in the Donbass, but I’m determined to eventually liberate the entire mountain from this Chinese invader.
In this video below, the guy is managing the forest in order to cultivate edible bamboo shoots. I have a bamboo thicket like this one. But I also have a totally out-of-control thicket that I want to go back to mixed woodland. But the bamboo shown in the video is the same moso type that I’m working with. You see hundreds or thousands of stalks, but it is all one plant. It’s a ginormous tuft of grass.
Art Berman: Coming Oil Shock ‘Worst Thing’ in Modern History, Shortages Inevitable
Art Berman’s base case scenario is that Hormuz traffic never returns to normal.
I agree that it is unlikely that Hormuz traffic will ever return to normal. If nothing else, getting insurance for oil shipments will be very difficult. I also think the consumption of enough minerals around the world is already dropping enough to be a problem, because of depletion, even apart from oil problems.
Near the end of the talk, Art talks about the likely difficulty of restarting a well whose output is 99% water and only 1% oil. Also, why would anyone want to invest money in the Middle East, where violence seems to occur frequently. Given the issues, won’t they invest elsewhere.
I do not know, but what is Art’s history in predictions? Has he been correct over the past twenty years? For the US, simply stop exporting petroleum products, this would make the US more competitive in manufacturing.
The pessimists have lost over the last decades, in the end we all know the worst news, we will pass in due time.
Dennis L.
Yup and time is due now.
“I’ve been driving over that dang burn bridge for 20 years and they say it’s rotten and going to collapse! Well it hasn’t happened so they must be wrong!”
Apt analogy IMO. It has been quite the challenge finding the middle ground between the paradigms. Hormuz is a cutting torch for oxidized bridge steel and requires paradigm balancing adjustment. I have come to appreciate hope. Long live BAU!
Art has always been one to say that low oil supply will lead to high prices. So he has been forecasting high oil prices for a long time, when they didn’t occur.
There is a wide variety of “oil products.” Our largest oil product is natural gas liquids. We export diesel, jet fuel, and gasoline. See this link: https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_exp_dc_NUS-Z00_mbblpd_a.htm
Some countries do not have the refining capability that we do. In fact, Canada is one of those countries. We import oil from the oil sands, and use it to make many of the heavier products we make. I expect that we export products back again to Canada. We do this with Mexico also.
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_impcus_a2_nus_ep00_im0_mbblpd_a.htm
great video I had no idea that America was in big trouble too this can only mean one thing that we have reached the end of the road and the elders trying anything because they don’t know what else to do.
The clinics have launched a new campaign: Well-known Slovak women are having their eggs frozen and bragging about it on social media. However, they don’t mention that the chances of having a child are slim.
https://www.postoj.sk/194443/tvari-sa-ze-ponuka-garanciu-materstva-no-zamlcuje-rizika-aj-fakt-ze-ide-o-neistu-poistku
The life for humans on Earth is becoming more demanding, but some believe, it is not so. Crazy.
There is still 100mbpd (roughly) of oil coming out of the ground. Steel and cement are still being poured. There are trillions and real resources going into AI now. There are IVF embryo screening services for intelligence selection. In other words, there are still huge riches across the earth, and they will continue to be accessible to some for a while yet, at least. I expect it will be the best of times and the worst of times until humanity comes out one side or the other. Many here too readily get stuck in a doom loop.
Don’t forget to mention the trillions of debt; can they make that disappear? Maybe it won’t be so bad.
I didn’t say no one will be affected, I said there will still be massive resource flows and yet at the same time, there will be a global competition to keep one’s head above water.
You keep telling that barren narrative to yourself ivan while the serious systems theory bears fruit day in and day out. People like yourself serve to remind us of the sheer weakness of humans that can’t bring themselves to individuate themselves.
Yes. The thing is true positive thinking must be based on truth. Positive thinking is enormously powerful. If it it is based on emotional and or logical deception it is enormously destructive.
Not surprising our resident fake optimists are upset. Their fear is palatable.
Unpalatable 😁
I dare say you’re developing a mean streak dog. I like it !
Palatable?
That’s more than can be said for the snails.
Palpably unpalatable. Say it five times but not like a snail. Say it fast five times.
Opinions on what is happening now:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wm4HR1tYpyg
Trita Parsi: Trump’s Iran Deal Is America’s Biggest Humiliation in a Generation
and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHGkgd6oruc
Col Doug Macgregor: US-Iran Deal, Israel’s Nightmare
There is no deal . All theater . Let us now see when tank bottoms start . Latest Trump post .
https://x.com/staunovo/status/2058562355286376623/photo/1
Thanks Ravi! So much B.S out there it’s nice to hear from someone that is not parroting mainstream B.S.
What is the situation with Euro jet fuel? I hear them saying no problem as they want the tourists to come but they sound like they don’t believe what they are saying
No idea on jet fuel stock . They have already trimmed many inter European flights . Nobody will admit the reality . SOP — ignore , delay , deny , lie and then pray that it will all go away .
The EU has to keep flights going, as they are using the opportunity to get fingerprints and faces on to the bio-metric ID system.
I find it astonishing that people go along with this: imagine if a govt. agent turned up at one’s door demanding it!
But as part of one’s vacation, it’s all OK.
Calling someone else’s administration “rank amateurs”, that is fighting words, or pot-kettle example extraordinaire. I wonder if it is part of the distraction program as we descend into hell.
A belated welcome to the boil a frog final phase of the brief Age of Gaslighting drb.
Our memoirs. “Thoughts of a frog”.
It’s gettin hot in here so take off all your clothes/ I am gettin so hot I wanna take my clothes off
Price of USO
https://x.com/aeberman12/status/2058560876332933616?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet
“Most quoted “spot” oil prices aren’t spot at all.
They’re front-month futures — effectively a discounted price ~60 days forward.
A holdable proxy like USO says WTI is closer to $144 right now.
The shortage is in the curve.”
That’s the text of Art’s tweet, which I don’t like. The last sentence sounds deep but in reality is meaningless, which makes it a platitude. When he says that the shortage is in the curve he’s referring to the backwardation curve between the higher spot prices and the lower front-month futures price, so he’s saying that the energy shortages are best reflected by the expensive spot prices that unprepared entities have to pay. Well, no shit Sherlock. But what really makes it platitudinous is that he’s implying, like almost everyone else, that front-month isn’t reflective of oil prices, and as I’ve been arguing since the beginning, in times of extreme backwardation like now, all of the purchasers of futures who are actually taking receipt of the oil are getting the oil at the lower futures price, so he’s politicizing the picture and presumably doing so because he expected oil prices to be higher than they are.
Front-month isn’t a “discounted” price like he’s claiming just because extreme backwardation exists. Front -month price is just the price you pay when you’re buying oil in an orderly fashion. I just don’t understand why a guy who knows the oil market way better thane would have to feel the need to put a spin on it. I do understand that he’s trying to communicate to people not to underestimate the crisis but keeping it real comes first.
Currie says tank bottoms in Asia now, Europe in about a month and USA in July:
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/25/oil-prices-iran-war-carlyle-currie.html
They are both speculating.
Just in case you all have missed this .+45°C is the norm .
Amid extreme heatwave, 97 Indian cities recorded among world’s hottest places .
https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/india/amid-extreme-heatwave-97-indian-cities-recorded-among-world-s-hottest-places/ar-AA23P4LX?uxmode=ruby&apiversion=v2&domshim=1&noservercache=1&noservertelemetry=1&batchservertelemetry=1&renderwebcomponents=1&wcseo=1
That sounds very awful.
In NY it is currently 11 degrees Celsius.
Had to turn the furnace back on.
Cherries already turning red in Europe, not edible yet obviously. And dust cloud from Sahara a bit dialing down the hot sun. Many sub-regions deprived of moisture-rain severely..
Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the mid day sun.
Englishmen figure out that it is rarely very warm in the mid-day sun, I am afraid.
That song refers to English behaviour in Imperial times, in hot countries like India. Unwise, and inadvisable!
The field workers are the reality. You hit the field soon after day break. Food and siesta mid day. You hit it again two or three. In bed seven or eight. Anything else and sun chews you like a pit bull. It still chews you. Of course when you play with the great power.
Use your assets. Wind. Sun. Temperature. All assets. Let them do the heavy lifting. They are power. We are nothing.
80k people ordered out of their homes and into shelters!
Evacuation zone expands to 79,000 California residents as temperature rises inside tank containing toxic chemical
https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/22/us/chemical-spill-orange-county-california?cid=android_app
Make it 7,900,000, please?
LOL!
I think this is to break the ice and move people into the cities from the country. It just doesn’t make sense to send resources to rural area’s that could be easily shipped to cities and suburbs.
This is why I suspect they keep pushing “go off the grid” in rural areas. Because they’re won’t be any grid to live with.
Unfortunately they aren’t that smart. The people in power and with wealth are clueless
Coming from you that means their IQs must be below 70.
Wow that’s really productive crazy guy…. Why no abbreviations? Are you slipping or is the drugs and alcohol wearing off?
IQ is an abbreviation.
Interestingly, Lady Gaga is widely reported to have an estimated IQ of 166, placing her in the “exceptionally gifted” or genius category. This figure stems from her reputation as a creative prodigy, her early academic achievements in prestigious programs, and various celebrity intelligence.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s onetime biographer Seth Abramson wrote on X that he would “peg Musk’s IQ as between 100 and 110,” and claimed that there was “zero evidence in his biography for anything higher.” The economics commentator Noah Smith estimated Musk’s I.Q. at more than 130, a number gleaned from his reported SAT score.
I would like to see Gaga and Elon competing on Mastermind, or even doing a competitive crossword puzzle.
On the BBC on Saturday evenings, Mastermind used to look like this:
REDUCTION IN FUEL CONSUMPTION…
May 23, 2026 , Written by Patrick Reymond
A significant drop in May, but less pronounced than in the first 10 days. We were at -30%, and now we’re only at -14% from May 1st to 20th. In April, we were only at 9.1%. Since diesel is the biggest loser, we can easily conclude that freight transport is becoming the adjustment variable. Private gasoline sales, on the other hand, show only a modest -0.9%.
I have two explanations. First, private sector salaries and pensions are paid around the 10th, and second, there are public holidays. Perhaps we’ve reached the peak of possible waiting with these payment dates, and the public holidays and long weekends haven’t been accompanied by the intense, acute-level activity that used to accompany them.
But 14% is still considerable, and clearly indicates an economic collapse, which is no less severe than that of Asia; there, there is physical shortage in many places, here, it is shortage through prices.
The moral of the story is that stocks are running out much less quickly than expected, either because they are already depleted, or because the pressure on prices has done its work.
The problem in France with petroleum products is that for non-transport uses, we are already at the bare minimum, lifestyles have changed, and then even “alternative” modes of transport are not competitive… Look at many places, urban buses, outside of school hours, run, but empty.
On an annual basis, the situation is as follows: “Over the last 12 months (May 2025 – April 2026), emissions have decreased by 2.2% to 54.727 million tons.” In 1973, France consumed 130 million tons of oil, cars often consumed well over 10 liters per 100 kilometers, and oil-fired boilers were inefficient. We’ve done what was easy: we’ve made progress, we’re moving towards the complete elimination of oil-fired boilers, a car that gets 6 liters per 100 kilometers is barely acceptable. We won’t do much better.
A long time ago, in 2017, we were still consuming 80 million tons. A decrease of 25 million tons indicates an accelerated depletion of resources.
The impact of teleworking and carpooling is pure nonsense. It’s completely marginal; what’s really happening is the likely cessation of an equivalent amount of economic activity. If fuel consumption has fallen by 14%, economic activity has undoubtedly decreased by the same amount, and the savings rate has essentially retreated into a cloud of savings. Public debt has changed its meaning, as it did between 1914 and 1945; it ends up absorbing excess circulation.
So, the general vector predictions made on this forum then were proven correct. Months of ~easy adjustments ( mostly in diesel consumption ) followed up by more pressing adjustment / harsher disequilibrium outlook for June-July and beyond, unless the situation gets unlocked ( or effectively bypassed ) in the Hormuz..
https://www.rt.com/news/640392-putin-xi-save-west/
They want continuity, identity, security, tradition, and meaningful sovereignty – the same principles Moscow and Beijing now defend openly on the world stage
Everyone wants enough goods and services to go around. Unfortunately, that cannot happen.
Hurricane Ebola is gathering size, speed & power
Destroying lives & livelihoods in its wake
Faster than ever
At this rate we could have:
———————————–
13,000 cases & 3,000 deaths
by June 30
————————————
😢😢😢
Take shelter
https://x.com/BarryHunt008/status/2058289183806927128
I’m going to guess that it’s going to Peter out and not be a big deal….
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/pentagon-intelligence-community-preparing-renewed-strikes-iran-weekend-cbs
War is over folks!! Again! The fat man has sung!
We will see!!
The British have a grim outlook for Germany. If they don’t stand up to China, their industry faces decline—along with drugs, divorces, and suicides
“The poor state of German industry is largely a result of Beijing’s aggressive economic and trade policies. This is according to a study published this week by the British think tank Center for European Reform, the DPA news agency reported.”
(DeepL Translate)
https://ekonomika.pravda.sk/firmy-a-trhy/clanok/810217-pochmurna-predpoved-britov-pre-nemcov-ak-sa-nevzopru-cine-caka-ich-priemysel-upadok/?utm_source=pravda&utm_medium=hp-box&utm_campaign=shp_9clanok_box#google_vignette
word salad? since when the brits care for the germans? how do they have to stand up to china? should they bomb their underwater data centers? if they bomb the data centers, wil their rate of suicide decrease?
While London is becoming Kolkata-at-the-Thamea
Is it just Germany suffering? What about the rest of the world? Maybe just the axis nations? Germany, Japan, Italy.
What about Canada, Mexico, and Cuba?
Just ignore it/them.
Birth rate collapse seems to have a long history.
Blurb:
We begin with the comfortable explanation you were taught — that birth rates decline because countries get richer, and that this is normal, healthy, and expected. Then we dismantle it. We trace Polybius, a Greek hostage in Rome around 150 BC, documenting the depopulation of his own civilization in real time. We examine Augustus’s pronatalist laws and the Roman elite who found every possible way to evade them. We walk through John B. Calhoun’s Universe 25 experiment at the National Institute of Mental Health, where mice given unlimited resources in a perfect enclosure went extinct — not from scarcity, but from behavioral collapse. We confront the sperm count data from Levine and Swan’s landmark meta-analyses showing a 59% decline in total sperm count across Western men since 1973. We examine J.D. Unwin’s buried 1934 study of 80 societies across 5,000 years. We map Peter Turchin’s secular cycles onto the modern fertility crisis. And we follow the data through South Korea, Japan, China, Russia, Hungary, Singapore, and the United States.
Every claim is grounded in published research, named researchers, specific dates, and verified experiments. The pattern is clear. The data has been sitting there for decades. And the implications for the next fifty years of global power are something that should be front-page news in every country on Earth.
They are not. Until now
“ For instance, another article I wrote is titled, How Bad is Pollution Loading? In that article I detail how we are losing our ability to reproduce, meaning that in about 15 years or so we will be functionally extinct. “?
https://erikmichaels.substack.com/p/newsflash-predicaments-are-not-problems
Majority of the people have become completely decoupled from the food production. Now the food prices are high, they need a lot of subsidies and energy inputs. We built dead houses without any food around them. Keeping the status quo requires more and more energy, so the population collapses. Firstly, the population is ageing than it dies out.
I see my own village and this is the story: we have more drought, less water, more houses, but less local food. Jobs are disappearing because of AI, purchasing power declines with inflation.
Emptiness, the wild plants return, as the soil is depleted. The people have not adapted to severe clmt changes.
Food production is not easy. Jobs are in toxic working environments, bringing little value to the individuals.
You seed degenerated population with handicapped individuals.
Everybody wants more. But there is no more. Just less.
And the energy prices…
The people can not admit it, because it hurts. The narrative is about the growth.
The pensioners do not believe it, because they live in their bubble of pensions provided from the loans that the state takes.
It is very sad.
Nobody sees the true story. They always have some excuse that makes things look nicer, like it is just our country, the situation in other countries is better.
You can not explain to them. They are deaf and blind…
The first summary comes at [ t:19min ] ..
PS on tangential the narrator makes jovial claim about Hungary as western realm country-society, while just few dayz ago we ran the video here of young .no lady discussing horses where she ~seriously and repeatedly talked about Sweden or Netherlands as countries of the East..! hah. Seemingly off-topic, but again stressing the notion that peculiar [ viewpoint-perspective ] could explain everything..
[ Fertility rates ] in OECD 1960-2024 – you can slide the time function:
https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/fertility-rates.html
If the narrator’s claim about Turchin-Nefedov’s observation is correct,
drop below 1.5x rate means after 3x generations (~80yrs) collapse.
That’s roughly ~2070. Some countries seemed to be locked into free-fall more than others, e.g. Italy, Baltics, Korea, Japan, Poland; while Germany stabilized a bit and US/FR performed better all the time ( all three due to immigration ). Obviously not a clockwork but trend reveals lot of the dynamics out there..
How do you say “Egomaniac”…j
InAmerican politics?
The U.S. Commission of Fine Arts on Thursday approved the design for the triumphal arch that President Donald Trump wants built at an entrance to the nation’s capital, a key step in the project’s process.
Commissioners, all appointed by Mr. Trump, acted despite overwhelming public opposition to the 250-foot arch, one of several projects that Trump is pursuing alongside a White House ballroom to leave his imprint on Washington.
My way or the highway…… unfortunately to hell
hit ler tried domination through physical force…
donnie is doing it through economic domination.
same mindset…
Remember the tabletop city the fuhrer used to play with in his bunker?
if the idiots dont approve his idiotic schemes, they lose their jobs and fat salaries.
easy to understand..
AH’s mistake was attacking Russia. Donald’s mistake will be attacking China.
Maybe the mistake was attacking Iran, …
Like Addie Hitter, he thought it would be a push over and not a hard nut to crack
just watching an old history program
about Mussolini attacking Ethiopia
why?
To make italy great again
what other reason could there be???
According to A.J.P. Taylor, Mussolini’s 1935 invasion of Ethiopia was primarily a theatrical stunt designed for domestic distraction and prestige, rather than a necessary strategic move. Taylor, as discussed in analysis of his work, considered the action a fraudulent exercise in posturing to bolster Italian power while attempting to gain diplomatic leverage against European powers.
So your position and AJP’s seem to be fairly well aligned.
However, there could have been other reasons.
Christian Hogsbjerg wrote the following;
Mussolini, in time honoured fashion, declared that his plan for war against the Abyssinian people was a humanitarian intervention. He was embarking on a “civilising mission” to wipe out the barbaric practice of slavery which still existed in Abyssinia.
The British and French governments were hardly in a position to take the moral high ground against Italy, as they had used similar rhetoric to carve up much of Africa between themselves. Mussolini’s plans met with open support from many reactionaries in Britain.
Ward Price, the foreign editor of Lord Rothermere’s Daily Mail, argued that if Britain opposed war on “one of the last and most backward of independent nation states, we should be hindering the progress of civilisation”.
Lord Hardinge said that the Abyssinians were “a savage and barbarous enemy”. Lord Stanhope, under-secretary of state for foreign affairs, told a foreign office official that the British could not sell arms to the poorly equipped Abyssinians as that “would be going back on the white man everywhere”.
However, the attitude of most ordinary people in Britain was quite different. After the bloodshed of the First World War, millions of people, encouraged by the Labour Party and liberal papers, put their faith in the League of Nations and the notion of “collective security” to stop any future war.
After a “Peace Ballot” in June 1935 confirmed this popular mood Baldwin claimed that “collective security” through the League was now “the sheet-anchor of British policy”.
This did not deter Mussolini, who launched his brutal assault on Abyssinia on 3 October 1935.
Many people in Britain reacted in horror, and the London correspondent of the Manchester Guardian could write that in cinemas that week “photographs of Mussolini and his two sons are now the signals for a storm of booing and hissing unknown hitherto in these places of entertainment.
“For the emperor of Abyssinia, who looks pathetically small, there is always a burst of cheering.”
Officially “international opinion” condemned the illegal war of aggression, and the League of Nations eventually got round to imposing economic sanctions on Italy.
he might just be stupid enough to do that
Very unwise of you to say that. DT stupid? People in the USA don’t know that. It’s an official state secret over there. Foreigners risk getting renditioned for revealing it. All I need to do is tell DT that I suspect you of enriching uranium in your garden shed, and writing instruction manuals on how to do it, and you are in deep trouble. 🙁
“The thesis of the book suggests that for 15 years (1919-33), the Anglo-Saxon elites tampered with German politics with the conscious intent to obtain a reactionary movement, which they could then set up as a pawn for their geopolitical intrigues.”?
Conjuring Hitler: How Britain And America Made the Third Reich
https://www.daastol.com/books/Preparata%20(2005)%20Conjuring%20Hitler.%20How%20Britain%20and%20America%20Made%20the%20Third%20Reich.pdf
Most of us have heard of Godwin’s Law, I expect.
The original law, formulated by American attorney Mike Godwin in 1990, states:”As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.”
Over time, this evolved into a popular internet adage often phrased as:”Whoever mentions Hitler or the Nazis first automatically loses the argument.”
The Internet Corollary
In many forums and debate communities, invoking a comparison to Adolf Hitler or the Nazis is viewed as a lazy rhetorical tactic or a logical fallacy. The community consensus dictates that once a user plays “the Hitler card” out of desperation, the discussion is effectively over, and they have lost the debate.
Reductio ad Hitlerum
Philosopher Leo Strauss coined this term in 1953 to describe the specific logical fallacy of trying to invalidate someone’s argument simply because Adolf Hitler or the Nazi Party also happened to support or practice the same idea.
Norman, you keep playing a busted flush with these stupid Hitler comparisons. I can count literally dozens of ways in which Trump and Hitler are diametrical opposites. Would you like me to make a list?
Wonderful stuff big T.
Hm, the reality on the ground is more profane though and so not to your liking.
The interest in [ AH ] comes back in waves, because he/they had a lot followers back then, not that long ago recently, and even nowadays as we speak.
When AH attacked the said dangerous [ RU hordes ] almost every European govs ( and incl. public ) was on board the effort to some extent. Either supplied battalions to the front ( sidekicks ) or factories ( fields ) in their countries supplied the ammo, weapons or food.
Lot of Scandinavian, Baltic or German ( or EU / NATO ) politicians in office are direct descendant of then very high profile active figures pursuing compatible policies.
And speaking of the UK, well these ( ever ) treacherous bastards just started it all in ~1938-9 not keeping prior allied defense agreements to buy for themselves ( the vanishing empire ) a bit more time.
Not mentioning the circles allowing for some of the bank credit supplied to Germany earlier.
PS AH+ boyz have had the interesting cunning plan to go after FR and low countries prior turning on USSR – but to their ultimate fate-detriment they ” as good sports ” have not massacred the escaping forces over the Channel which ricocheted badly in the future for them..
My liking or disliking doesn’t come into it.
I give about as much of a toss about who were the goodies and who were the baddies in the 1930s and 40s as I do about the battles between the ancient Greeks and Persians, or the Romans and Carthaginians, or even the Cowboys and Injuns.
I was born into a certain situation as you were and had to take it from there. Fortunately, I wasn’t required to be nationalistic, or jingoistic, or to do my duty in the way Chucky Fitzclarence’s “scums of the earth” were during The Great War.
I dislike how patriotism—a completely natural identification and sense of attachment to one’s homeland and the community in which one was raised and the desire to improve one’s society—been hijacked by the nationalists and the imperialists who seek to turn the whole world into tribes of antagonistic football hooligans.
And yes, we all know Albion has always been perfidious. No one knows that more than the British do. The more sensitive among us hang our heads in shame over our country’s international policies, it’s Epstein- and Savile-compromised Royal Family, its corrupt and incompetent government, judiciary, and police force, it’s lackluster work ethic, and its spiv culture.
We are humiliated, demoralized, and emasculated, much as the Britons were when the Romans took over, the Celts were when the Anglo Saxons took over, the Anglo Saxons were when Danes half took over, and the Anglo Saxons and Danes were when the Normans took over.
Indeed, we feel a collective sense of déjà vu; it’s 1066 all over again and we await Domesday with trepidation.
Knights of the Green Shield stamp and shout!
I find myself agreeing with Reante: this is simply stage management of the collapse:
‘Tired of megalomaniac Emperor Trump/Nero? Here’s Tulsi, the sane, compassionate Empress -in -Waiting, who prefers to meditate and stuff.’
Poor Tulsi, she is just another pawn, and horrors will be done in her name, too.
Exactly, X, right on.
She’s a tough cookie, she knows exactly what she’s getting into and it’s not like she doesn’t have her own brand of political hawkishness that just so happens’ to be a perfect fit for the times; her virulent anti-Islamist politics is central to mopping up and remaining vigilant over feral young Muslims in the ME and the world over. Traditional fundamentalist religions are the Hand’s greatest challenge come Pase 2 it seems to me because the Hand ain’t their higher power. I think that also has a lot to do with why the Hand is currently humbling the Evangelicals bigly. So Tulsi.is a law and order type simultaneous with her live and light schtick. But like you say, know doubt the Hand will also do what the Hand has to do and that may not always square with her politics, but she’s under no illusion that the President calls the shots, I assume that her self-realized politico-spiritual path is to pragmatically encourage the System to heed its better angels as much as possible by leading by example. And that path complements Phase 2.
yeah, she is WEF. I suggest Sanna Marin as vice.
WEF is a globalist organization and Gabbard is a nationalist. Marin is a Finn with globalist politics.
Yes, but WEF has a way to recycle politicians, like in Georgia and Ukraine. But you say they are fundamentally different. Nationalism in the west seems to me to be globalism when the core has to drop the periphery. anyway, they would just do what they are told, just like trump or biden.
Yes, but pinning it all on WEF is like pinning the tail on the donkey while blindfold, which is precisely why I’ve been using that metaphor lately. Where is dr evil, Klaus Schwab, now? In a nursing home?
Who do you think the laughing donkey is?
Yes, Western neo-nationalisms (both the transitional fascists and the end goal social nationalists) are engineered by the globalists. I’ve been explaining that for seven years now. But the whole idea of enlightenment is not to get hung up on grievances which, in this case, are political grievances, especially seeing as how you wouldn’t be alive without the globalists and you’re daughter would never have been born.
Welcome to your farmed existence.
I want to see Tulsi versus AOC in 2028.
Despite Trump’s love of assembling Taratinos fox force five Tulsi is different. You don’t walk into a DNI position without being agency head to toe forever. Recruited in college my guess. Any other appraisal is as fake as the two hours of makeup her assistants apply. So yes she could be presidential material. If she could create less divisiveness I’d be all for it. What dude doesn’t like fox force five after all
I concur with all of that, Reante.
Giving her the benefit of the doubt, she will probably endeavour to, as you put it, guide policy benignly, invoking the better angels, (like Albert Speer during the German collapse?) and she is no innocent dupe.
When her husband dies, as no doubt he will, she can be cast as Our Lady of Sorrows, manipulating a fundamental archetype.
This is going to be fascinating: if the power stays on and one can follow it!
Here in Europe, all that is on offer is a colourless Totalitarian tyranny directed to war.
More effort is certainly going in to the theatrical side in the US, and one can see the logic.
Senile Biden was used to reduce one half to desperation, and now Nero Trump the other half.
Yeah it’s endlessly fascinating. Can’t seem to avert my gaze. Imperial theater as a long strange trip that drags the world through the American Funhouse, all in order to triangulate, like you say, the social nationalist end of imperialism.
Her husband’s death would have some political utility I suppose. Last year there was utility in her revealing that she and her husband had given up on IVF attempts at conceiving a child. It kinda seemed like an attempt to soften her image when she cried when talking about it on Megan McCain’s video cast. Hopefully he survives it. I harbor a little sentimentality towards his completely unpretentious indie vibes and I thought it would be so nice to see them do some ukulele duets in the oval office.
and those horrors will be good…
35-40% Advocates Are Fake : Bar Council Of India Chairperson LIVELAW NEWS NETWORK 23 May 2026 6:38 AM (3 mins read )
https://www.livelaw.in/top-stories/35-40-advocates-are-fake-bar-council-of-india-chairperson-535382
Let me tell you that 35- 40 % of the medical practitioners are also fake .
You are surprised — I am not .
Ravi, here in US, it does not matter if a lawyer/judge has a “bona fide” JD degree. So many are flat out incompetent, it begs the question; What kind of people are they allowing to graduate from law school? The medical equivalent of law today is a 65 year old man arriving at the emergency room – cold, clammy, ashen face, gasping for air and complaining of chest tightness -all the signs and symptoms of a heart attack, but then being treated by the Medieval practice of bloodletting.
In all of my cases, the most fundamental statutes, even when they have been cited by the judges, are ignored. Meaningless. The lawyers know the incompetent judges can be played for fools. Lawyers and judges are held to no standards of competence and in many cases, ethics. Ever try to sue a lawyer for legal malpractice, even when it was so glaring that the special appointed judge immediately opined its existence? I did. Through abuse of summary judgment your case will be thrown out so your evidence will never see the light of day at a trial.
In Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the phrase “Sentence first—verdict afterwards” is a satirical demand made by the Queen of Hearts during the trial of the Knave of Hearts in Chapter 12, “Alice’s Evidence.”
When the King of Hearts attempts to let the jury consider their verdict, the Queen interrupts, insisting that the punishment be decided before the guilt is determined. Alice rejects this arbitrary judicial process, shouting, “Stuff and nonsense! The idea of having the sentence first!” This confrontation marks a turning point where Alice grows to her full size, refuses to be intimidated by the court’s nonsense, and ultimately dismisses the entire assembly as “nothing but a pack of cards,” causing the trial to collapse.
The phrase has since entered common usage to denounce arbitrariness and the miscarriage of justice, specifically criticizing systems where outcomes are predetermined without fair deliberation.
And being a retired surgeon, let’s just say that I have ZERO physician or lawyer friends. In fact I won’t go to my 50th college reunion in Massachusetts next month because it will be crawling with lawyers and doctors.
Thanks Hubbs . We are bozos on the same bus . 😁
From my layman’s point of view, most people in law and medicine and make good money come from wealthy families and are good at academics.
The hard part is getting through school. Once they start practicing they expect to make easy money the same way grade inflation pervades institutions like Harvard. Grades don’t really matter at Harvard because getting into Harvard is suppose to be proof enough that someone is exceptionally talented or something.
“systems where outcomes are predetermined without fair deliberation.” I think you are trying to describe a system of privilege. Privilege never went away and will never go away. because people seek it.
The purpose of a system is what it does.
That may well be in India, but a very good and old friend of mine is a transplant surgeon and Prof of Medicine here in Cambridge, and he assures me that of all the nationalities he has worked with and trained, Indian surgeons stand head and shoulders above all the rest.
They are diligent, trustworthy, punctual and highly skiiled and he’d put himself in their hands any day.
In contrast, he thinks that the current intake of British surgery students – of all races, of course – ‘lazy and entitled’.
So, something to be proud of about India!
Xabier , the doctors who go to the West are thoroughly vetted . I know the process for the USA as my brother-in-law was ( now retired ) a leading Oncologist in Philadelphia . What I am talking about is India . All you have to do is put up a board , get a desk/ chair and some basics ( BP instrument , stethoscope ) etc . You are set . 70% of the population is illiterate . All these doctors do is prescribe basic medicines . A fact , they are used as a conduit to move past expiry date pills or by some companies to test drugs in devolpment . India is just too large to check every degree and credential . Not enough resources . These quacks charge $ 0.50 cents for a consultation . Check 50 patients a day = $ 25 = $ 625 a month in a country where the Income per capita is $ 200 per month . Not bad , is it . Even if you are caught this is a civil offense . No jail time — pay the fine and start all over again .
Yes, I can quite imagine that being the case in India itself.
The very worst candidate he interviewed, for a senior post, was a Nigerian surgeon, trained in Germany: only interested in status and £.
But the interviewing panel of Brits, Iranians and Indians were wary of being accused of racism if they dismissed him in round 1, so it was quite a farce!
>> only interested in status and £
Unfortunately that describes an over-large portion of human motivations in general.
If somebody ( a bloke) is motivated to do something for reasons other than status and £, he’ll be thought of as neurodivergant in the 2020s. Whatever they are interested in will be perceived of as a “special interest”.
We don’t know yet how this will work out.
https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/china-impose-mining-controls-strategic-minerals
China plans to impose mining controls on certain strategic minerals to ensure supply security and protect the finite resources, Beijing revealed in a government notification published by the official Xinhua News Agency.
The new rules will take effect from June 15 and allow Beijing to control total output, restrict mining entities and run security reviews on foreign investments in mining that could pose a risk to national security.
Xinhua didn’t specify which minerals will be impacted. Any adjustment to the list of strategic mineral resources will assess factors like economic importance, national security, domestic requirements and supply chain resilience, according to the regulation.
More ELM trouble it’s all Trump’s fault!
This looks like the New Normal that began with the lockdowns. TWhen demand exceeds supply markets don’t work anymore. Governments and individuals horde supplies ration them or fight over them. Economic models predict that prices will rise and producers will keep producing for a global market but that hasn’t been the case.
The MSM and others say ” we are heading for a recession or we will have a depression ” . I say we are headed for a collapse . You can get out of a recession and a depression but a collapse is a collapse . The Bronze Age and the Roman Empire never came back after they collapsed and so neither Industrial Civilization . 😭
You are calling collapse but the reduction is similar to that experienced in the 1970-1979 time frame. I call depression and famine in specific parts of the world.
Yes indeed, there are detours, different paths ahead for various regions, incl. rapid down-fall periods in standards of living. That’s NOT universal collapse of industrial civ yet.
The issue though – will be (are) facing is some sudden interruption into the complexity per specific item being manuf. only at one place. Meaning, if say US/DE car production or entire segment there of (e.g. econoboxes) goes unobtanium – you can still buy it from elsewhere – yes at add. costs and incl. +hurdles. But if said supply feed-stock stream/item/component is made at some point in time ( due other intervening events such as ~wars ) only at ONE place in the world then it is serious indeed, especially during such future advanced game of no substitution for it. We are NOT there yet generally speaking, but slowly getting such vibes of the future.. What will likely appear first is “just” disappearance of certain brands and low/no “also run” priority products. In other words depressionary vibes for work yet inflationary pulses for the crucial equip/warez instead. And this all inter-mixed as always by govs intervention to increase cluster-f@ck potency even more..
If you watch T/Billionaires they tend to place the same factories ( and supplier chains ) in several countries at the same time to lower said risks exposure.
PS not meant in high-horsy ( still enjoying ~spoiled affluent lifestyle ) attitude..
Jr . Unobtanium is unobtanium . Get me LNG . Get me urea , get me light sweet crude , get me rare earths , get me Helium , get me Sulfuric acid . EU gas storage is 37% when it should be 55% . The LNG price today is less than what it was in 2022 after the Russian SMO .
Yes, I try to look at it from sort of zoomed out macro view: survived Cuban missile crisis, fall of USSR, ME wars, UKRo war ( ~Cuban v2.0 ), now the Iran-Hormuz thing and US retreating from the umpire seat position, EUrope through accelerated downgrade among former peers to 3rd-4th place standing, ..
Dodged the bullet on each step in the end after-all. We could be running out of luck just now or soonish nevertheless..
drb , I was only 15 in 1970 and an economic illiterate . I do have a memory of my mother standing in food ration lines during the famine in 1965 .
Perhaps the problem is that people cannot imagine that collapse can ever happen. They assume that the future will be like the past. That is what advertisers say. It is also what politicians say. They think that all we need is creativity, and we can solve all problems. Unfortunately, that is not what history says. If population outgrows resources, collapse is likely.
I agree Gail . Everyone to whom I have preached or discussed collapse cannot imagine what it will be like . They have known full shelves all their lives . I have to remind people that food rations were the norm in Europe till 1954 after WW II .
Don’t worry about food shortages my friend. I gotta feeling they’re be plenty of “meat” around.
(bad joke)
I mentioned to a friend we’re nearing the end of the age of abundance in human civilization. To my surprise he was like what age of abundance, and proceeded to go on about all the people who lack enough. My response was people who lack resources or are poor are not due to insufficient resources, but lack of access and unequal distribution. This is the peak of resource availability, we have more food, energy, material goods than any point in human history. Yet there are people who still go without.
So, if you think it’s bad now, wait until there’s not enough. Then things will really get ugly. We can’t share when there’s more than enough to go around, how do you think people will react when there isn’t? Oh wait, we saw that with covid where people were fighting in grocery stores.
We may start to see the age of scarcity begin this summer across the west due to Iran and the subsequent impacts from the war. Buckle up!
Those are great points.
I read the book “Sapiens” and the authored argued there were now more people who die from overeating (obesity, heart disease, etc) then people who die from starvation. Which is wild that people are eating themselves to death while others are dying to eat.
Watched prices of Alaskan frozen fish recently in the s.market – basically just given for free or token money exchange.. It’s apparently way cheaper than running the ground/onshore agriculture operation as they use dregs-oilz and near slave labor for these flotillas..
Most people just don’t like ( or never acquired proper skills ) how to eat them, BUT when / if other meat disappears from shops the fish will be the very next in line.. so this being [ phantom affordability ] in these times of plenty. Similarly, to rice, potatoes, pasta, ..
at some point there will be none for trade in many locations.
The effort going into say rising a hog for few yrs and then the whole butchering sequence and following steps of many hours is beyond comprehension of most city / civ dwellers.
Btw. there is a vid of a bloke trying to emulate ( cudos successfully ) the effort of past hard working peoplez – as in single person hay cutting the whole day ~1ha (2.5acre) field manually.
We are very detached from the real effort – cost of food.
Only past ~200yrs of multi-modal mech. equipment in agriculture and mostly deployed of it only in the recent ~100yrs envelope of it.
Yes, there were other less demanding approaches like rice paddies, now there is regen-ag and various higher yield tricks, but it’s not scalable for these billions of pop stuck inside concrete-asphalt structures ( keep them ).
—
” Year 1830
250-300 labor hours are required to produce 5 acres of wheat with a walking plow, harrow, hand broadcast of seed, sickle and flail for harvesting.”
https://www.farm-equipment.com/articles/4269-timeline-of-ag-equipment-firsts
(true mechanized implements coming slowly later that decade)
—
By 1830s first attempts and demonstration of quasi sickle bar action-motion in mowers..
By 1860s basically today’s modern mower.
By mid 1870s first ~combines appeared.
Nice pics:
https://oldirongarage.com/mccormick-harvesting-machine-co-history/
When I talk to people they think it is going to happen in the “poor “ countries but not to them. I have been telling people for so long that they think I am a broken record. Also I think that a lot of people don’t have the bandwidth for it. You are rewarded for being positive and saying things like the future is going to be amazing and AI is going to make our lives so much better. I was raised by my grandparents that suffered during the Great Depression and didn’t waste anything. They always told me it happened once it can happen again. People today will say oh that’s just scarcity thinking.
Have you seen the new SpaceX commercial all over TV?
Has like some professor speaking who says “predicting the future is hard, the only thing we know for sure is “It will be spectacular”. Then has some rockets shotting off into space.
Robert Harward apparently appears on Fox News.
Only it isn’t him.
It looks like a guy wearing a Robert Harward mask!
And sounds like a different voice.
Norman, it’s eye-rolling time for you sir!
And conspiracy theory time for the rest of us!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiaru4Jt6hQ
Of course there’ a perfectly reasonable explanation for all this.
Lead Stories reached out to Fox News, Harward, and the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), where Harward (archived here) is a national security expert, for comment on the mask speculation. In a May 22, 2026, email, a Fox News spokesperson provided this response:
Vice Admiral Robert Harward appeared on FOX News Channel earlier this week via a remote, mobile camera operated by an outside vendor. During the interview, lighting conditions in the van contrasted with the vice admiral’s jacket, which caused a shadow to appear on his neck.
Separately, JINSA Director of Communications Blake Johnson responded in a May 22, 2026, email to Lead Stories. He said:
We appreciate that the Vice Admiral Harward’s interview has been a source of some internet levity these past 24 hours, and we’ve had a good laugh over it, but to burst the bubble, it was not a ‘mask.’
Not a mask?
Then he must one of them shape shiftin’ space lizards.
My own theory is that the foxy makeup ladies at Fox news decided Robert was too crinkly and so they gave him a head spa, a facial, and a course of Botox injections. But I am also open to the idea that he was replaced by an actor because the original wasn’t willing to give a hung ho! endorsement of Trump’s current Iran policy as a resounding success.
Coming at the same time as Tulsi’s resignation, this may be a sign that World War One Hundred and Eleven, sorry, III, is about to live, and neither Tulsi not Robert thought it was a good idea. Or not, but anyway, it’s a sign of something.
“Not a mask?
Then he must one of them shape shiftin’ space lizards.”
I guess that’s why they’ve been investing in all this “artificial intelligence” for., so they can “control the narrative” as they go along.
For years after the pandemic, we were subject to low quality webcam interviews on television. It’s easier to “control the narrative” with lower resolution video. They don’t care if you believe the footage is real. They only care if you start calling into question everything they present to the public, then they sic the Normans of the world on you, to trust the authorities, and to stop questioning their legitimacy.
I assume we all know full well why the Hand chose Fox News for the venue. No one likes a gaslighter.
I love the way you can always add another twist to the story!
Thanks, knives are for twisting. Assuming of course one’s not a cannibal.
2020 it was toilet paper .
2026 Motor oil .
https://x.com/websterdrake/status/2057906064809668929/photo/1
Our vehicles need oil, and changes of oil. This link says:
“80% of US Group III base oil supply gone in < 90 days. Hormuz took Qatar & UAE offline. Pearl GTL attack = will not come back soon. S. Korea, the usual backup, is also constrained as they source crude via Hormuz"
We have a major problem if oil changes cannot be made.
FYI: only the cheap oil changes are conventional. The higher grades are usually “synthetic”.
I thought these problems impacted “synthetic” oil just as much if not more because those use specific feedstocks which only come from specific sources? Even if supplies stay steady there’s likely not much slack in the system to handle panic buying/hoarding if everyone starts buying extra. People will be selling oil out of their garage like hand sanitizer in 2020.
Not sure, most people get the cheap stuff anyways.
Watch people will say “We got all the engine oil we need in the ground right here at home”.
We probably need to import several components to do that and it would be at a much higher cost. The cost of production is hidden from the public by politicians of all political persuasions. Political junkies want you to think that all oil is inexpensive and that greed or taxes is the only thing that could ever make it expensive.
They treat oil like it is a service instead of something with fixed costs depending on the physics of bringing it to market.
reante – your latest interpretation of this most recent Tulsi’s story, please? Would it be Disappearance Act (DA) mixed with MisDirection Play (MdP) or yet something else?
Like, for example, ZH user Nelbev predicts the following (approx. 5h ago):
and cites the following YT video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6CFS4tHf4w
Overall it’s impossible for me to say at this point. Call me naive but even though her resignation has been on everyone’s minds, personally I wouldn’t imagine for a minute that her husband doesn’t have cancer. Which is why I said it looks more like a reality twist. I also wouldn’t have expected that he got vaxxesd either because my assumption is that she didn’t.
Does it mean that if a near term coup is the plan, that she now wouldn’t accept the interim presidency? I would guess she wouldn’t. Obviously the DA doesn’t NEED need her to be. There are always redundancies. But beyond the interim presidency, an emergency presidential election would presumably be held, so that timeframe might work better for her.
Or perhaps such an election wouldn’t be held; it depends on how bad things are. Or perhaps her husband will insist on her serving the nation in its darkest hour.
Regarding that comment at ZH, I’ve been banging on about the coup because I don’t think the civilization can withstand anywhere close to two and a half more years of the BNS and the Age of Gaslighting. But OTOH I also have a consistent record of being early. At any rate that commenter appears to be assuming a cancer psyop that I’m not seeing because such a play just strikes me as a bridge too far. I’m a gonzo conspiracy theorist but I do pride myself on highly rational conspiracy theory. So at this point it just looks like reality has thrown a curve ball and I’ll go from there and see how things play out. Currently I just don’t have any cause for further speculation.
But on the flip side, she will get skewered by the Dems and Repubs as she flip-flopped on several issues regarding and covering for Trump. She should have followed Joe Kent. It would have given her more credibility.
I think many Republicans would see her as a backstabber and that would be disqualifying.
She’s leaving the sinking ship. I used to think she had integrity – her time with Trump has demonstrated she does not .
Different comments on this issue .
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2026/05/tulsi-gabbard-fired-resigned.html#comments
There is a fine line to walk as a nonconformist in any political institution. The choice here seems to be: either resign and have no influence, or stay and at least provide better information to the president, even if he will ultimately do the wrong thing.
She is WEF Ravi.
The self-organizing system works in strange ways. Perhaps we will understand better later.
Gabbard just resigned (effective the end of next month) as DNI, stated reason being that her otherwise fit husband has been diagnosed with bone cancer. Seems more like a reality twist than a plot twist…
Whenever something like this comes up, I always wonder if they got the shot. Surely Eddy will have something on this in the next few days.
I addressed that in my reply to x- which has yet to post because of this shitty platform. My assumption is neither of them got the shots given their apparent beliefs but I could be wrong. Religious exemption would have been easy for her to get and he’s just a private citizen.
Still better, than that atrocious web-interface of MoA or heavily sniffed on ZH comments section (implemented in their own proprietary JS ).
I do miss the old UseNet, though, and cannot find a modern, decentralize equivalent (for a reason, I think).
Yeah I don’t really mind the ghetto functionality, my farm operation is pretty ghetto, for example I don’t have a single concrete slab on the entire farm which sucks ass most of all in the graveled shop. Why haven’t I poured one? There always seem to be other financial priorities and concrete is, frankly, a luxury. I was just expressing a bit of annoyance. Must’ve been the curve ball talking lol.
If Tulsi’s husband, Abraham”s, specific rare bone cancer diagnosis — which is not publicly available info — is fibrosarcoma, then it’s probably a pretty safe bet to say that he was vaxxed after all because the fibro- part is based in fibrotic disease-caused cancer and fibrotic disease is the great underlying mechanism of the vaxxes’ spectrum of mailings and killings because tumor exosomes massively upregulate fibroblast production of fibrin.
Although Hernan Cortez, a figure greater than anyone who was born speaking English (including Newton whose achievement was very overrated), had conquered the Aztec Empire, the population of Nueva Espana around 1540 was perhaps 20 million, less than 50,000 of them whites.
In 1545, something called Cocoliztli, which means “pestilence” in Nahuatl, occurred.
It killed between 25%-75%(nobody kept stats outside of what would later be Mexico City) of natives. It also affected some whites, but since replacements could come from Spain quite easily, that did not matter.
Since it did not fit the narrative of “Native good White bad” it was not really advertised so not too many people know that, but such kind of disease, which might have been Salmonella although nobody is truly sure, did exist in Mesoamerica before the Spanish arrival.
After that was over (it would break time to time till around 1600), the balance between the natives and the whites changed from 400:1 to around 50:1, and Mexico has remained a Spanish speaking country to this day, and 6 US states have Spanish names and only one Nahuatl (and English) name [New Mexico].
Cocoliztli, more than anything else, helped to establish a civilization in Mexico.
Since the ratio of civilized peoples and the rest have become something like 1:10 , instead of about 1:3 around the time of the Great War, an epidemic, which will strike the poorer slums of the world such as the city Holland had called Batavia until US backstabbed Queen Juliana and awarded it to Sukarno, and now the largest city of the world, the most,
it might be Nature finally bringing some balance to barbarism.
So the old joke was a little off.
Not death by ungabunga.
Death by bundibugyo.
Which is sort of death by ungabunga.
25 to 50 percent mortality not zaire variant 90 percent.
That’s good and bad because the virus stays in the body a long time after infection
More survivors mean more infection vectors.
Good thing people are always honest about their STD history.
COVID point whatever percent was a dud.
One might think a 25 to 50 percent chance of mortality might cut down on random sex partners a bit but you never know.
Population reduction?
rare variant
Collector variant
Google bundibugyo
No masks this time.
Cod pieces. 😊
Sorry, they will be quickly cured by a device called the Flamethrower.
Incinerating the victims, merit or not, will be the norm.
I’m thinking, reante would look absolutely astonishing next Halloween as this character:
https://half-life.fandom.com/wiki/Cremator
I’m a zombie taking down civilization by cremating toilets one toilet at a time with my positron gun set on high because porcelain is rather fond of its electrons.
You d man! It’s good work. No hassles.
Appreciate it dog, while that’s true I’m trying my hardest to ignore the fact that this year they stopped giving us our structural return bonuses which will never come back. That’s 12 of my annual wages. I assumed it was because of severe budget issues but I just heard from the principal that they’re expanding and redoing the whole kitchen this year including buying a $12,000 propane oven. SOBs have their priorities all wrong. Together with the sister school 15 miles away they do scratch cooking for both schools which is great. Currently they cook at the other school and cart it down to our school every day but now but he said both schools’ kitchens are too small so they going to expand ours and cart the food in the other direction lol. And what it’s really all about is business marketing. The feel like they need to attract enrollment by offering scratch cooking, but my question is, if there’s a shortage of space in the sister school’s kitchen then why not just use both kitchens and maybe not cart food if possible? Fewer kitchen staff maybe?
Just another example of how the last thing fascism is about stewarding employees. Where’s my syndicalism at?!
Sorry to heae that 12 is a big amount. Still opportunities are always limited somewhat if you live rural..
If you see a floor buffer for cheap in decent shape pick it up. I find that and a LLC the best of both worlds. A single contract would make up that 12 then some. Even a few contracts can be very lucrative while keeping the advantages. Strip wax and buff can make a lot of dough while keeping the no hassle situation. Id keep the School gig. Big money times come and go School gig is reliable. Contract gigs usually keep up well with inflation.
Thanks. Mebbe the kitchen renovation is from grant money I don’t know but I’m not giving them the benefit of the doubt because they have a history of poor performance when it comes to employee considerations. It may be a neat little country charter school that’s into a school version of prepping for the apocalypse (big gardens with a salaried gardener who’s apparently an exceptional grant writer, and obviously a student gardening program and garden-to-cafeteria food sourcing) but businesswise they’re just another bunch of fascists like everyone else.
Thanks much for that idea but I don’t have an entrepreneurial bone in my body. It’s all I can do to sell firewood because I just have too much of it.
If ebola only spreads via bodily fluids as stated and only when symptomatic not sticking your tounge in someone else’s mouth and etcetera when you have a fever should stop it cold. If it ever magically gets another infection vector or spreads asymptomatically that would not be good. Chimera. The virus stays in the body a long time so recovered patients must obstain long after recovery. Not a good look on a tinder profile.
Doctors urge caution, not fear, as Canada rolls out Ebola screening
“TORONTO – Passengers arriving at major ports of entry in Canada will now be asked about their travel history and any symptoms that could be related to Ebola, as the virus continues to spread rapidly in parts of Africa.”
https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/article/canada-rolls-out-ebola-screening-at-major-ports-of-entry-as-virus-spreads-in-africa/
ebola outbreaks were unheard of until the late part of the twentieth century. Some theorize that that was the case because the humans there were living in balance with the environment instead of attempting to transform it.
WHO collaborating center.
Bats and pangolins are back!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_National_pour_la_Recherche_Biomedicale
If ebola escapes Africa …
Too late.
“Kyle Busch’s medical emergency has been partially revealed by 911 audio obtained by TMZ Sports, with a caller saying the NASCAR superstar was struggling to breathe, overheating and coughing up blood. ”
https://x.com/TMZ_Sports/status/2057853797226168338
Ebola?
Ebola is very quick to transmit. It has a heavy hit, but with a very short period where it’s deadly. It does not last long in any population with proper sanitation… running water.
Every so many years, it leave Africa, and quickly fizzles out. Of course, there is probably someone out there trying to make it deadlier for longer.
Experts suspect Ebola virus sometimes spreads by air
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/ebola/experts-suspect-ebola-virus-sometimes-spreads-air
Ebola’s airborne when the year’s an election year.
Vote Blue or get the WHO coming at YOU!
I believe the purpose of hundreds of data centers is take possession of electric and water rights. There is little need for massive compute.
Or maybe all the extra electricity will be to build to ramp up manufacturing in the US, as China and other countries drop out of the supplying mode. AI as actually used will become much more efficient (we can hope).
I keep seeing these boxes in my community they look nondescript but the closer I look they are pretty intense with generators and all kinds of hook ups . I bet you have them in your region. They are about 20 by 30 and look like utility systems. I am going to DC soon and am curious if they are there too
I know you might say I am repeating but understand what a collapse is like . Standing in line for 2 hours in 45 ° C for 10 litres of petrol . Turned on settings to English , both sound and captions .
Next year will be worse
NEW DELHI: India’s cooling appliance industry received a sharp jolt on May 8 2026 when the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade issued a notification capping compressor imports. Air conditioner compressors below 2 tonnes are now limited to 30% of FY25 import volumes. Refrigerator compressors face a 40% cap. The directive links trade policy directly to quality standards through the Bureau of Indian Standards framework making it simultaneously a Make in India push and a non-tariff barrier against Chinese suppliers.”
https://beatsinbrief.com/2026/05/18/india-ac-compressor-imports-cap-price-impact/
No compressors — no refrigerators and air conditioners where the summer temperature is 45°C .
Ravi, I have been around here for a few years and I always knew what the end game was (since 2020). But I do not recall being this pessimistic about the world.
Welcome to the unvarnished reality, DRB. There will be a time where can kicking is not possible and no amount papering over works.
I am fairly sure I am in touch with the unvarnished reality, CTG. It’s just that this is an unusually large step down as we descend the stairs Wiley Coyote style. Also the famine part now in clear view.
India and Turkiye two nations that play both side and have little natural resources. Not looking good for either.
drb , My journey and failed forecasts .
1. Read ” Overshoot ” and LTG in 1985 . Decided to leave India .
2. India goes bankrupt and gets bailed out by IMF . 1990-91 ;
3 .Leave India 1992 . Forecast collapse India 2000 . Failed . Why ? In 1995 started the Y2K scare . The code was written in an old computer language that was being taught in Indian educational institutions only . Codeing work gets offshored from USA . Start of the computer boom in India . Large inflow of dollars from Indians working in USA . Collapse averted .
4 . First peak oil reading in 2005 by Matt Simmons . Hooked totally . Immersed myself and in 2010 forecast collapse by 2015 based on Jeffery Brown’s ELM model . Failed . The GFC of 2008 caught me off guard . 16 trillion printed and enter the shale era . Collapse averted . Changed my forecast from 2015 to the period 2025–2030 based on oil production only .
5 . Covid — got me worried but no change in my forecast of 2025— 2030 period . Again bailed out by the money printer .
6 . I have long been aware that Washington had nightmares when it came to SoH and Taiwan war . So I am surprised they misjudged .
7 . Today . I think that we have now reached the point of return on the road to collapse . What I learnt new in this crisis that it is not only oil but other important items urea , Sulfur , Helium , LNG etc . I had never given a thought to these ever and their importance to IC .
8 . I am not pessimistic because I long passed the “acceptance ” phase in the ” five phases of grief ” .
Que Sera , Que Sera .
Be well .
“So I am surprised they misjudged.”
Ravi Ravi Ravi. Never put yourself above the higher power that created you. Does the sun misjudge on a cloudy day?
👍
The issue is obviously that there is not sufficient electricity to run lots of air conditioning in India. There is no way to fix the situation, other than use less air conditioning, not more.
Gail , it is not an electricity problem . It is a dollar problem . Capital flight has accelerated as Foreign institutional Investors flee the capital market from Mumbai to NY to participate in the AI bubble . Rupee devalued by 10% this year . Foreign exchange reserves under pressure .
Interesting!
Of course, over the long run, keeping all of the air conditioners operating will also be a problem.
Mark Twain wrote the story of the Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.
tl, dr, there was a jumping frog in there, and a gambler picked it and used it for gambling, but one day he lost a big wager because his opponent had fed the from a big piece of metal . (If made into a cartoon, a bunch of heavy stuff unlikely to fit into a frog’s body comes out of it.)
It is a cautionary tale that there is only so much which can be assimilated – at some point a limit is reached.
And he also caught the indifference of the people back then. The narrator , who came to find a clue for a pastor he had met long time ago, refuses to hear more of such cautionary tales and leaves.
twain wrote this story in 1865, just on the wake of the Civil War. Lincoln had packed the Union Army with immigrants, since those with means hired substitutes, precisely the immigrants, to avoid fighting.
Twain was also aware of infiltration from Asia, and knew, even back then, that Asians were, are and will be never compatible to Western Civilization and wrote stories like this
https://americanliterature.com/author/mark-twain/short-story/john-chinaman-in-new-york
And about 70 years before Camus’ Stranger, where a schmuck is guillotined for killing an Arab, Twain wrote this tale of a boy arrested for throwing a stone to a Chinese
https://americanliterature.com/author/mark-twain/short-story/disgraceful-persecution-of-a-boy
It is clear that the American Experiment as we know it has failed. It is not too late to reverse it, but it will be very painful and lots of pain and suffering will follow.
And it is amazing that twain saw all that long, long before any of these came closer.
Some time ago I wrote about Typhoid Mary, who as a cook was responsible fore quite a few deaths in fashionable neighborhoods but she insisted on cooking, fully known the consequences of her actions.
She should have been fried at the Chair , but perhaps fearing an irish uprising, she was put into a secluded area and treated as a royalty for 20 years till she died, surviving the Depression years instead of perishing on the street as an educated, unwed person with no savings.
When I talked about that some people here, presumably coming from same background as her, said it was about some old story.
But they made bad precedents, and instead of incinerating disease carriers they were protected.’
As resources dwindle, they will be treated like the old days; merit or not, they will be incinerated by the health authorities if their very presence is deemed to be a public threat. Some rednecks , aware of this possibility, complain but cannot be helped.
As the current mess leads to a general caloric intake reduction of a large number of population, epidemic will be more widespread, and they will be very severely dealt with by panicked authorities.
Seneca Cliff Kulm which means “every man for himself’ we are in the early stages of death by a thousand cuts to our diseased way of life the oil price will collapse and then our empire will be no more . The Dinosaurs disappeared and so shall we, dont fool yourself there is no happy ever after youre too optimistic thinking that the bubble wont completeley burst to nothing. It is a Seneca Cliff that we are facing which simply means Adios Amigo.
Russia Uncovered 511 Billion Barrels of Oil in Antarctica: A Find That Could Turn the Frozen Continent Into a Flashpoint
Russian ships have mapped oil reserves in Antarctica’s Weddell Sea that nearly double Saudi Arabia’s.
https://dailygalaxy.com/2026/05/russia-oil-reserves-antarctic-treaty-surveys/
Double Saudi Arabia???
Trump will claim Antarctica
Really? I thought resources in very cold areas were mostly gas. Has enough drilling been done to determine what is really there? The quantity seems optimistic too,
Ebola hospital set on fire as protesters demand access to bodies of dead relatives
“Violence has erupted in eastern DR Congo’s Ituri province after tensions linked to the handling of victims of the latest Ebola outbreak.
Protesters in the town of Rwampara wanted to recover the bodies of relatives who died of Ebola in order to bury them. When they were denied, they set the hospital on fire, according to local reports.
https://www.africanews.com/2026/05/21/drc-ebola-hospital-set-on-fire-as-protesters-demand-access-to-bodies-of-dead-relatives/
Guess that’s one way to stop the spread.
(bad joke)
Not a bad joke
Reality
More of all of this, pretty please…🙈☠️
Dead Black Bodies Matter.
Now, THERE’S a bad joke.
I think I might call in sick on that building demo.