There have recently been many warnings about near-term oil shortages stemming from the conflict in Iran. Most analysts assume that shortages mean higher prices. As I will explain, the dynamics of a self-organizing economy suggest the opposite outcome — lower prices, deepening recession, and shortages of goods and services that have little to do with price.
Rather than high prices, my major concerns are recession and the disappearing availability of goods and services that we rely on. This might be similar to the empty shelves that many stores experienced in 2020 and 2021. There may also be new government restrictions, intended to work around the reduced oil supply in a way that will allow essential services to continue to operate normally. Oil prices are likely to fall below $40 per barrel, as they did in 2020 with Covid restrictions.
In this post, I will try to explain why this counterintuitive outcome — shortages leading to lower prices rather than higher — is what the self-organizing economy tends to produce. Along the way, I will look at the current state of oil reserves, why the conflict with Iran is unlikely to be quickly resolved, and what the price behavior of oil since February 28 tells us. I will also step back to consider the broader picture: why war can seem like a solution to struggling economies, and what the 2020 Covid experience might teach us about what lies ahead.
[1] Reserves of already-pumped US oil have dropped to concerningly low levels.
On June 17, President Trump said, “We will run out of reserves in about four weeks without a deal.” According to the article, we are not certain whether Trump intended to apply this statement to US or world emergency reserves.
Also, according to this recent video, the US’s largest tank farm seems to be very close to the minimum level at which crude oil can be withdrawn from its tanks. And, on June 23, MSN said, “America may see actual gasoline shortages by July 4.”
The already-pumped oil in storage is intended to be used as a buffer if there are variations in supply or demand. The reason that these buffers are falling low is because considerable oil from them has already been used to mitigate the shortfall in crude oil supply to date.
The shortfall in the supply of crude oil supply cannot be expected to disappear quickly. There has been considerable damage to infrastructure in Iran and elsewhere. It will take years rather than months for this to be repaired. In countries where oil production has been shut in, some wells are likely to produce less after being reopened following many months of closure. Furthermore, Iran has no incentive to completely reopen the shipping lanes, since keeping them potentially closed has the potential to raise oil prices per barrel. Higher oil prices would help the finances of Iran.
[2] Perhaps because of concern about low buffer supplies, the US has negotiated a deal with Iran that seems unfavorable to the US.
Information keeps coming out that indicates that Trump’s current Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) is very favorable to Iran. It looks as if the MOU has been written as if Iran won the war. We are also seeing that other countries have begun acting as if Iran has indeed won the war. For example, on June 23, a joint statement was issued by Iran and Oman. The two countries seem to be co-operating in setting up the collection of funds from ships passing through the strait to cover insurance and other costs.
If we are dealing with a “done-deal,” and the US is coming out poorly, the level of conflict within the US is likely to rise. Many people will be angry with Trump for getting the US into the war to begin with. Unfortunately, there is likely close to nothing we can do about this situation.
[3] Trump or another leader cannot restart the war against Iran and expect to do any better.
A major problem is that the US has substantially depleted its ammunition supplies, and it will take years to replenish them. While the US could perhaps launch a short attack, it would not be able to carry out a sustained campaign for very long.
Another issue is that the armaments that the US has stocked to date are designed to be used in a different type of war than the one that is being fought today. The US needs drones and close-by locations from which to launch them. Iran damaged most of the US’s bases that are close to Iran in the conflict that began on February 28. Without substantial rebuilding, the US has no functioning bases close to Iran from which to launch such drones.
Restocking armaments will likely take several years, especially if new types are needed. Adding to the difficulties of the US is the fact that China has been the primary source of many critical minerals used in the production of high-tech goods and ammunition. In recent years, China has restricted access to these critical elements. The US is now developing mines for some of these minerals, but setting up entire supply chains will take years.
[4] One motivation for attacking Iran might have been to raise oil prices to a higher level.
Based on their models, economists typically reach the conclusion that inadequate oil supplies will lead to high oil prices. It is likely that President Trump and his advisors believed that inadequate oil supply would lead to high oil prices.
Some analysts, including me, would argue that the models of economists are very inadequate; they give misleading indications by leaving out the complex self-organizing nature of the economy.
Higher oil prices are sometimes desirable because they encourage more oil extraction. For example, higher prices allow marginal wells to continue to be profitable longer. They can also make a new, higher-cost source, such as tight oil from shale, attractive for drilling. Looking ahead, higher oil prices would make it easier to get oil company support for ramping up oil production in Venezuela.
Figures 2 and 3 show the connection that higher oil prices seem to have had in encouraging tight oil extraction from shale. Figure 2 shows historical oil prices, adjusted for inflation. Noted on this figure is my view of whether prices were high enough to encourage extraction from more difficult locations.
Figure 2 indicates that prices started to run up in the 2003 to 2008 era, when China started ramping up its manufacturing, and thus its demand for oil. In this same timeframe, there was also a growing demand for housing in the US, thanks to very liberal underwriting standards for home mortgage loans. Thus, the total demand growth for oil was very high.
Figure 3 shows that production of tight oil started ramping up in 2009, after oil prices had been rising for several years.
Another factor in the growth of tight oil production was the availability of cheap credit after 2008, but this has tended to disappear since 2021. Now, tight oil production seems to be leveling out, leading to rising concerns that tight oil production may soon decline, especially if credit is no longer cheap. Having higher oil prices might help postpone the decline of tight oil.
[5] Oil prices since the war started on February 28 have not bounced very high. Recently, they have tended to fall back, close to their pre-war level.
The first thing to note is the fact that the prices on Figure 4 do not reflect the actual prices to the consumer, which have often been greater. The cost of transporting oil has jumped in many markets, but this higher transport cost is not reflected in the “West Texas Intermediate” price of oil, displayed in this chart. These higher prices at the pump have led some of the more price-sensitive buyers of oil products to cut back on their purchases.
Second, there is a lag issue regarding how soon the impact of missing supply actually hits the market. The slow transit time of oil from the Middle East to markets means that the actual disruption of supplies did not hit until at least 50 days later. If crude oil first needs to be processed by local refineries and then the oil products shipped to customers, the lag would be even greater–perhaps 75 or 100 days in total. Thus, much of the price increase to date may be based on a fear of shortages, rather than on an actual shortage issue.
Third, there have been some changes that impact oil “demand.” Some consumers have been told by their governments to work from home or otherwise restrict their driving to save on oil consumption. Also, some flight schedules have been cut back. Recently, Ukraine has been targeting some of the oil infrastructure of Russia, leading to reduced gasoline and diesel availability within that country. All these issues have tended to reduce the demand for oil. The lower demand acts to hold down oil prices.
A fourth issue has to do with worldwide economic conditions before February 28. Even before the war, much of the world was in close to a recessionary situation. There were very many low wage earners who could not afford much beyond the basic necessities of life. Even a small run-up in oil prices tends to affect food prices because oil is often used in farming operations and food is usually transported to market using oil. With higher food prices, poor consumers were forced to cut back on other purchases. This recessionary dynamic can be expected to get worse if oil prices inch up even a bit.
[6] I expect that oil prices will continue to remain relatively low, or they will only briefly rise to high ($150+) levels, even if there are actual oil supply disruptions.
I expect that the dynamics we have been seeing since February 28 will continue, and may intensify. Governments will add new restrictions that will reduce oil use. Airlines will go bankrupt, or they will reduce flight schedules. Recession will become even more of a problem. These issues will tend to reduce usage without raising prices.
[7] What we may see more of is broken supply chains.
There will be more signs in grocery stores and in home product stores saying, “This product is temporarily unavailable.” Car repair shops may tell us that a required replacement part will not be available for several months. Physicians may tell us that a medicine or chemotherapy drug that they normally use is, at this time, unavailable.
[8] The operation of the economy depends on an adequate supply of many kinds of energy. If oil supply is reduced, an economy needs to shrink to a smaller size to match. This is what leads to recession.
One reason for the above observation is that we know that our own vehicles will not operate without whatever fuel they are designed for. This is clearly also true for all the delivery trucks in the world, and for farm machinery and for ships that transport goods across the ocean. With less fuel, fewer trips of many kinds will be made. Workers will be laid off. This dynamic sounds a lot like recession.
The expected lower world oil supply in the near future is not an issue that can easily be resolved. We are already seeing that even with a supposed settlement, disruption in oil supplies seems likely to continue and even to worsen, as the various limits on buffer supplies are reached. Unfortunately, we cannot expect the situation to be completely fixed for several years.
Furthermore, the economy is facing even more disruptions than I have outlined above. For instance, Ukraine has been disrupting Russia’s oil infrastructure with drone attacks. There have also been disruptions to sulfur exports from the Middle East. Sulfur is used in many ways, including as a fertilizer and in the production of sulfuric acid, which is used in the mining of uranium, among other things. In addition, there have been disruptions to liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports from Qatar. The lack of these important products will tend to further damage supply chains and lead the economy deeper into recession.
[9] We are ultimately dealing with multiple not-enough-to-go-around scenarios. This situation will tend to increase conflict in the world.
The dynamic we are dealing with is similar to that in the game of Musical Chairs.
The game of musical chairs is played in rounds. Players walk around the edge of a circle of chairs while music is played. When the music starts, the number of players is equal to the number of chairs. In each round, one chair is removed. The music plays and then suddenly stops. The players must then scramble to grab a chair. Since the number of chairs is now one fewer than the number of players, small fights can ensue.
The problem is basically, “Not enough to go around.” War often sounds like a reasonable solution to leaders.
[10] War can seem like a solution.
Strangely enough, war has multiple advantages to economies that are suffering from difficulties related to low commodity prices and, indirectly, low wages in related industries. One commodity is food. If food prices are too low, farmers will be unhappy that their earnings are low. They may stop farming and try to make a living from putting their land into a land bank and working elsewhere.
If oil prices are low, the oil industry can experience pockets of low wages. There have recently been reports of lockouts and strikes in the oil industry. I would expect these labor actions to be most prevalent where oil fields are depleted.
If a government announces a war, it looks like the government is “doing something” about the country’s problems. There is suddenly employment, either as a soldier, or in building armaments. GDP tends to rise because the war leads to a larger share of the population working. The war can be used to justify the additional government debt needed to hire the additional workers. What convinced me of this relationship was this chart, showing a huge increase in US GDP during World War II:
Looking closely at the chart, it is also possible to see GDP increases during the Korean War (1950-1953) and between the time the US entered the Vietnam War, deploying up to 549,000 soldiers, and the time the US greatly reduced its forces there (1964-1969).
I think much of Europe is now in a situation in which war looks like a solution. Russia may also be in such a situation. Ukraine, with its problems, is also in such a situation.
[11] There may be lessons to be learned from the 2020 Covid restrictions and the ultra-low oil prices that resulted then.
Back in 2019, many people in the financial world were concerned about the economy. In 2019, the US faced significant financial issues, including a budget deficit that increased by $205.4 billion to $984.4 billion. In addition, in September 2019, there was a spike in the interest rates financial institutions charge each other (repo rates) that concerned those who followed financial markets closely.
What took place in 2020 seemed to some of us to be close to miraculous. The strange actions related to Covid greatly brought down the price of oil. Covid also provided an excuse to give money to households. US government debt was able to increase greatly, and, somehow, the world economic system has held together until now. Financial problems were “kicked down the road” a while longer. Without the pressure of financial problems, the economy could work on ways to mitigate the energy problem a while longer.
Economies are self-organizing systems, just as the human body is a self-organizing system. Both are powered by “energy dissipation.” Human bodies tend to heal wounds, like magic. Economists talk about an “invisible hand” being helpful to economies. In situations where the healing of economies does occur, low oil prices can be part of the magic.
[12] What might be ahead?
We are again in a period when the US and world economies are on shaky ground. Debt levels are high, and conflict levels are high.
As I have discussed in this post, I expect the general trend in oil prices will be down, rather than up. The major reason why oil prices are likely to be low is because, with the damage done in the Middle East, the quantity of oil supply available to the world is starting to shrink. As a result of the low oil quantity, the world will produce fewer goods and services. This is close to the definition of recession! (Also, on Figure 1, this is why we expect Wile E. Coyote to fall down, rather than to float up, when his support disappears.)
I expect as oil product shortages hit, local leaders will figure out ways to mitigate the oil bottleneck that the world now seems to be facing. Local leaders will enact rules that make certain that whatever oil is available is used to maintain essential services. It will not be surprising if local leaders keep people at home, using one excuse or another, to keep oil demand in line with the quantity of oil that is available. This is a big part of why oil prices will tend to be low, in a manner similar to 2020.
With low oil prices, I expect that inflation will be low. Pressure to keep raising interest rates will disappear. The economy will not be doing well, but the issue will not be high interest rates preventing new investment.
In my opinion, the world economy needs to reorganize with shorter supply lines to get through the oil “tight spot” that the economy is in. If supply lines could mostly be kept within the areas marked on Figure 7, it seems like a significant amount of transport fuel could be saved.
The conflict with Iran doesn’t seem to be ending well for the US, but there might be a silver lining. The pain the US is experiencing in Iran will hopefully teach the US to stay out of issues in the Eastern Hemisphere. If a conflict with Iran is to ramp up again in the near future, I expect that it will be a European group that will be getting involved, not the US.
We don’t know quite what is ahead, but the experience in 2020 shows that a strange confluence of events leading to low oil prices can actually be helpful. Let us hope that a similar result will be possible this time.
Larry Johnson, “ex”-CIA officer, said that according to his sources, the USA is moving assets out of the Middle East.
Here, Nima says Iran believes the USA is moving resources *into* the region.
https://youtu.be/dRZIxv24DoA?t=1246
Do we apply a 50% probability to each of these views? How does anyone know that is going on?
Gail , nobody knows what is going on . An excerpt from a comment on Quark’s blog .
” And if peak oil turns out to be correct, which it is, with the global reserve replacement rate at barely 10-15% for the last decade, this ceases to be a fight for the biggest slice of a pie that keeps growing. It becomes a fight to be the last one standing when the music stops.
And what does all this mean for someone in Madrid, Munich, or Marseilles ? Faced with information overload, people—and rightly so—only pay attention to what directly affects their wallets or daily lives. And it will affect them. It will arrive first in the form of the electricity bill and car deposit. It will arrive later in the mortgage payment. And it will arrive, more slowly but with greater force, in the form of the tax bill for European rearmament. ”
As they say ” Nothing bad happens , till it happens to you .”
This is an excellent summary of the situation:
“And if peak oil turns out to be correct, which it is, with the global reserve replacement rate at barely 10-15% for the last decade, this ceases to be a fight for the biggest slice of a pie that keeps growing. It becomes a fight to be the last one standing when the music stops.”
No it’s not. The supply chains are the legs. You can’t be the last man standing by cutting off your own legs. You die a few seconds after the enemy you killed. That’s a murder-suicide, so obviously not what’s going on.
It’s a Misdirection Play just like all the other misdirection plays.
Gail (the Actuary)
The few ships that attempt to run the Straight would no way have any kind of insurance coverage; it seems of no benefit to take risks without indemnity.
Ed said it is possible to strike middle east from Texas.
I agree. Lack of insurance coverage in time of war is a major issue. No one wants to take a boat through the straight. This issue is unlikely to be fixed for a long time.
The toll Iran seems to be asking is fairly low. If it would actually stop the shooting, it would be helpful. But then, every other country next to a straight would want to extract a toll, as well.
I hear you, but the Iranian toll claim is a ~legit one in the sense of needed navigation ( upkeep ) through that bottleneck around those islets, as we have seen recently ships crashing through the ~dangerous southern route instead.
While open sea navigation – proximity to such Straits in general is over-playing the claim of said additional state-parties around. Hence back to argument #1 one, it’s solely upto Iran to claim toll privileges or not; putting aside for now the various int maritime treaties on the thing.
“But then, every other country next to a straight would want to extract a toll, as well”
Take out the word “toll” and try one of the many other descriptives, used by just about every important waterway in the world and it loses all the BS malignancy that has been loaded on to it(take out Gibraltar and Spain will rubbing their hands).
If you don’t pay the toll for AIS no matter where in the world you are, or going, you get labeled part of the mythical shodow fleet and will be impounded if you venture into the corporate controlled part of the world, purely for refusing to give the corporation an unjustified cut.
How about “environmental protection”? Skimming going on all over with that fraudulent toll, but not a peep out corporate media, because guess who takes that toll.
Ignore the corporate gobbledygook, Iran is just joining the club and rewriting some of the unwanted corporate script. Brookings “Which Path to Persian” is becoming “This Path to Palestine” and Clark’s “7 countries in 5 years” looks like “17 bases in 5 months” now.
The people, police and military in Jordan have been thanked openly for their help in revealing movements of the aggressor, with similar happening in Kuwait and Al Tanf has again taken some big hits(Al Tanf is very important to the aggressor).
Regarding possible nuclear war. I don’t think it will happen. I’ll give my reasons here, and I am entirely serious. Previously I’ve mentioned the so called “ultra-terrestrials”, who are posited to live underground and under the oceans. It is a shame that there is not a more down-to-earth name of them, I’ll abbreviate them to the UT’s.
Here are my suppositions from putting together various readings of pertinent ufology books and watching videos by serious investigators. The UT’s are a highly advanced race with technology way in advance of ours. This suggests that they are thousands or even millions of years older than us humans as a species. They live underground (I would gather under mountains and hills) and underwater. Could a technological civilisation exist underwater? Yes, you can build lots of stuff under the oceans. Remember Deepwater Horizon? And there are lots of investigative books and films about them and their vehicles: unidentified submerged objects (USO’s). Some of you will have seen the film put out by the USA in recent years of the so called TicTacs, skimming the sea at fantastic speed unachievable by human technology.
https://www.dailymotion.com/search/ufo%20hunters%20underwater%20ufos/top-results
https://www.dailymotion.com/search/usos%20-%20unidentified%20submerged%20objects/top-results
As for underground bases, well, yes, there are our DUMBs – “deep underground military bases” – but will those UT’s who apparently live underground allow us to co-exist with them? It is even posited that they created us as a first line of defence against invasion by ET’s, as we are violent and would kill any ET’s we happened upon. So we are the Earth’s bouncers, in effect. We are the Barbarians who protect the UT’s. The Bible says, “And God created Eve from Adam’s rib”. What is that but genetic engineering? And what if “Adam” too was created by genetic engineering – from apes, as some seriously suppose? That means us humans, of course. And created by UT’s, I might suggest – a hypothesis only, but a reasonable and logical one, to my mind.
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It is surmised that some non-human technology can switch off our nukes and have done so in the past. I suspect that that will have been the UT’s. If so, of course, why didn’t they do that during World War 2? But it seems that something was monitoring us. You will have heard of the “foo-fighters” that checked out the war planes in flight during that war, and which mystified the Allies and the Axis forces alike. These were small spheres or orbs that circle the planes as if checking them out – possibly a form of drone driven by artificial intelligence, which we humans did not possess back then.
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UFOs and Nukes: Extraordinary Encounters at Nuclear Weapons Sites by Robert L. Hastings
Published in 2008.
The reality of UFO incursions at American nuclear weapons facilities has been convincingly established. Hundreds of U.S. military veterans now openly discuss these ominous incidents, and thousands of declassified government documents substantiate their revelations. Over the past four decades, renowned researcher Robert Hastings has interviewed more than 150 of those veterans regarding their involvement in these astounding cases. On September 27, 2010, CNN live-streamed his UFOs and Nukes press conference in Washington D.C. , during which former U.S. Air Force officers described numerous nuclear missiles mysteriously malfunctioning moments after a disc-shaped craft was observed hovering near their underground launch silos. That shocking episode, in March 1967, was merely the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Documented UFO activity occurred at a plutonium processing plant in Washington State as early as January 1945, months prior to the atomic bombings in Japan. Another incident, in October 2010, involved one missile base in Wyoming being unable to communicate with several of its missile launch control capsules just as a huge cigar-shaped craft slowly flew over them. Significantly, documents smuggled out of Russia in the 1990s confirm that Soviet nukes were also the focus of UFO interest during the Cold War era. On one occasion, in October 1982, a number of missiles temporarily activated for launch, as terrified officers attempted to disrupt the unauthorized count-down. After 15 seconds, the anomaly terminated and the equipment returned to standby status. While this was taking place, an enormous disc silently hovered over the base. In short, the evidence presented in “UFOs and Nukes” makes clear that humans’ deadliest weapons have been, since their development and use during World War II, under intense scrutiny by still-unidentified observers possessing tremendously advanced technology. Given these disclosures, it seems evident that the UFO-Nukes Connection is highly significant and perhaps even the key reason these mysterious aerial craft have appeared in our skies over the past seven decades.
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Recommended reading:
Invisible Residents: The Reality of Underwater UFOS, by Ivan T. Sanderson. Published in 1970.
The Sphere Network, by Patrick Jackson. Published in 2025. (The book even includes a photo of a UT being, triggered by one of his high-speed cameras to his astonishment, he maintains. Jackson was present as the time, but it moved at high-speed and so was invisible to him, he says).
As Charles Fort liked to tell us, “We are property”. I have come to agree with that. I am now convinced that we are not top dogs on this planet. I am entirely serious in this belief.
Maybe:
“U.S. Air Force officers described numerous nuclear missiles mysteriously malfunctioning moments after a disc-shaped craft was observed hovering near their underground launch silos.”
This does sound strange.
A new dominant species giving a rats ass for its predecessors is unprecedented in history. Historically it’s the exact opposite. Not enough chairs for both.
So dominant it’s allergic to the Sun.
Are you an expert on ecological niches, reante? Underground is a good place to be for protection, and against our occasional Earth cataclysms. Do keep an open mind.
Read carefully and you’ll see that it’s suggested that they genetically engineered us brutal humans, perhaps from primates, as guards against invaders.
Andrei Jikh on the AI bubble collapse, starting with what’s already happening in South Korea with leveraged retail investors and moving on to the US, including a couple short clips of the guy who called the Enron collapse. Since I don’t know anything about markets or investing I found it to be a very useful overview for dummies. Suffice it to say, the state of the financial markets is the worst in history, which is why they are at record levels.
https://youtu.be/hy90LdpEUvQ
Great presentation. I havnt owned any stocks for a long time. Back on the day I remember every one learned margin was risky. Useful for moving positions without waiting for sale to clear however. Sad Korean young people had to learn that.
From what the video described the margin given by the broker must have been very high around 4 to 1 to “lose everything”. I never got that kind of margin with a brokerage account. From the numbers given in the video even three to one would not have hit margin call and still been up 150 percent over a year. It also means they bought more stock after the value of the stock went up and their margin went up even more. A 1000 gain means you can buy 4000 more at 4 to 1.
Pain goes along with being young.
It certainly looks like the big one is coming. Gammon has remarked lately even pensions and insurance funds are leveraged 2x. And even he has mentioned no one knows when it’s coming.
Retail always holds the bag. Without retail there would be no profit for HFT.
Your not playing against humans.
This video is an unusually clear about what is going on.
Andrei Jikh ends by making the observation that when the Titanic hit an iceberg, and was already sinking, the president of the company that manufactured the ship made a call, saying that the Titanic was unsinkable, so there could be no problem. This is close to where AI is today.
Now an analyst who specializes in China is saying a popping AI bubble there is adversely affecting Chinese stock markets, prompting a bailout by the Chinese government, if I understood correctly.
Saagar and Crystal at The Hill making like OFW and going full doom on the oil picture lol. Stealing our fire y’all.
https://youtu.be/ICDIeP47zyM
The warning is that oil prices will be too high. I think the warning should be that this kind of situation will lead to more war.
I’d put that blink rate at 90/min. China buying oil again is making me look bad after saying the other week that they stopped cause they’re broke and already stocked up on cheap discount oil. I’m telling myself that they’re only buying three quarters as much so really they’re not spending much more than they were. China, just don’t increase your purchases any further mmmkay? Go to rationing instead mmmkay?
Most likely we have to correct-trim our internal gauges for the inflation (working) inside the system, hence in CHN’s eyes still favorable times to buy some more..
Yeah thanks in the grand scheme of things it’s still ridiculously cheap oil when factoring in the inflation of the last years. Cheap yet still unaffordable at the margins.
There are many forms of ~inflation..
Say manufs are always looking for upgrading their position in the value chain / ladder.
So, in practice, you can’t get 4×4 real econobox SUV anymore, but if you $plash down +30% more ( vs. 2020 ) you get the same but upgraded w. mild hybrid engine and rear awd through electric motor only..
Obviously, this doesn’t mean [ 30% inflation ], this is rather combo of gov policy hiding part of the inflation through emission / better mpg mandates; perhaps 50:50 split, so at least +15% effective inflation charged on your sorry back.
But there is also the hidden utility value, as you can run it in ” limp mode ” ~23mph without gasoline on some diy batt. left-over junk down the road of future ~collapse sequencing.
Yeah so when you factor in the 30pc cumulative inflation of the last 5 years it’s a wash on the ‘upgraded’ hybrid you can convert to solar. Which means that the crowning achievement of globalization — consumer product deflation via low-cost wage arbitrage — is still miraculously hanging on by the skin of its teeth.
Exactly, that’s what irritates me the most, we have to honestly acknowledge how the deflation witches behind the curtain are still in control per the over-all analysis ( up to now ) .. Could be different in next 5-10-15yrs though..
Well it’s definitely gonna be different for your hyperinflating Euro ass over there clawing for every stablecoin you can get your grubby mitts on. 😄
I felt doom just looking at Hedges and his blink rate.
Ha lightweights panic in their trembling voices. Ofw frosty relaxed laughing.
Krystal even said “shit hits the fan”. Pathetic.
Mearsheimer “some indicators Fujairah is closed”
No shit John. What was your first indicator? Iran saying it’s part of the strait like a month ago?
I love seeing the Normies waking up to reality. They’ve been down this path a few months now… really appreciate them for doing this as they have a growing audience that needs to be enlightened about situation ASAP to better weather the storm that’s coming.
The trouble is they think there is a BAU and a return to it and they will accept anything to get to something that remotely resembles it. Active part of the set up. Trump’s supposed antithesis emerges
These are not true doomers. They are pretending doom as part of the game plan. They have not changed
Yeah it’s fun to watch but they are not waking up to reality. They are walking into the next chapter of the Matrix. They are purchasing the latest product line from the Consent Factory. Livestock management is all about keeping the leadersheep — the political vanguard — one step behind you. If they fall two steps behind, you lose control. This means that the fake Progress narrative is always about halving the distance between political ‘reality’ and reality: always keeping the leadersheep one-step behind as you, the shepherd of reality advances into the future present, such that the main flock who are not agents of change — the mainstream — only ever halves the distance to yesterday’s reality in following the leadersheep.
All heritage breed flocks have natural leadersheep emerge within them that makes herding without a dog much easier, so long as there’s something in it for them. Something like a friendly yootoob algorithm.
https://www.amazon.com/Leadersheep-Fable-Successfully-Executing-Change/dp/B0DJHL1XV1
yeah… the human mind is wired for self-delusion.
The human mind has been conditioned by civilizational hierarchy to obey political authority and the mass delusions follow from that obedience because the politics are only ever partial truths because whole truths don’t allow for political hierarchy. The reward for the mass delusion is food, clothing, shelter, and social status. Humans under political rule are not free peoples, so their interests are not whole, their interests are political. Interests based in partial truths are infinitely manipulable by halving the distance between the politics and the whole truth. The history of that halving is called Progress. Even for the few of us here who seek the whole truth, the only reason that we are seeking the whole truth is because we recognize that the failure of the civilization threatens our lives, so the reward for the delusion is fragile which breaks the contract.
https://quoththeraven.substack.com/p/oh-my-fucking-god-theyre-doing-it
Oh My Fucking God, They’re Doing It Again
Wall Street is again using insurance guarantees to turn difficult-to-rate credit exposure into highly rated securities.
Assholes who wear Vineyard Vines all summer on Wall Street have once again put those Wharton PhD’s to good use by again “discovering” that assets so toxic and illiquid they make drinking cement taste like Fiji water apparently become safe when you rearrange them, rename them, and place an insurance company between the losses and the people buying them. Sound familiar?
According to Bloomberg, UBS and other firms have been exploring structures that package stakes in private-credit funds into bonds. Because perpetual private-credit vehicles do not fit neatly into conventional ratings models, bankers are looking to add insurance “wrappers” that allow portions of the deals to inherit the insurer’s stronger credit profile. The resulting paper can then be marketed as investment grade, even though the assets underneath remain opaque, illiquid private-market investments.
. . .
Nothing says “rock-solid asset” quite like needing several lawyers, a ratings agency, an insurance guarantee and a regulatory-capital loophole to explain why it is safe.
The comparison with 2008 is not merely rhetorical. Before the financial crisis, Wall Street packaged mortgages into residential mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations. Those securities were divided into tranches, and ratings agencies assigned extremely high grades to senior portions based on assumptions that nationwide housing losses would remain limited and geographically dispersed.
The end:
AIG did not merely make bad investments. It sold protection so broadly that its own failure threatened to detonate the institutions that believed they were protected. The insurer had become the bomb.
And now, less than two decades later, Wall Street is again using insurance guarantees to turn difficult-to-rate credit exposure into highly rated securities.
What could possibly go wrong besides the exact thing that already went wrong?
They’re inflating assets to prevent deflation and a market crash.
H1B and illegal immigrants are getting 30-year mortgages to inflate demand, assets and debt.
Government programs and grants, all the fraud and whatnot, are to stimulate spending and create monetary inflation.
The economy is in the ICU already, inflation is being fed directly into its veins to prevent deflationary death. Of course, it will only bring so much time, and inflationary death isn’t much different than deflationary, both are death. China decided to deflate everything slowly, and has been also dying for some time now.
You can see that this has been happening at low doses since the 2008 crisis itself, when they decided to use QE to save global economies, and it has only been getting worse, not due to NET Energy, which has been increasing, but due to decreasing EROI, specially from fossil fuels, shale in particular, which is corroding the value of money.
The Hormuz closure is the final nail in the coffin, decreasing NET Energy. If nothing changes, maybe things will go nuclear.
This is an issue I have been concerned with before:
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/indias-uranium-push-further-strains-massive-uranium-supply-gap
This is an image from that article, that I saved to OFW, showing Goldman’s view of the nuclear shortage.
https://ourfiniteworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Goldman-Forcasts-of-Uranium-Supply-annd-Demand.png
It takes many years to build mines. Prices need to rise a lot, for a very long time. Filling the gap seems incredibly iffy to me.
That would eventually further strengthen the case ( $viability ) for the whole [ breeder-reactor ] npp fuel cycle extension as used in RU/CHN/IND(soon-ish)..
Assuming we can keep the whole chain going. It takes fossil fuels for every part of the system.
Yes, correct, but as you are well aware in these countries rail-cargo and other electricity driven domains have assigned priority. So while complexity increases say w. implementing breeders and needed upgrades for the whole industry chain, the offset prize is in lowering ( domestic ) appetite for fossil fuels to some extent.
But obviously, now with this baby-nascent-WWIII ricocheting situation, where RU had to buy fuels from India and so on, all these very-complex hitec systems take further scrutiny.. no doubt.
Substitute oil for love.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zRgWvvkSvfk&pp=ygUTTG92ZWlzIGxpa2Ugb3h5Z2VuIA%3D%3D
Let the games begin .
” BREAKING: Houthis of Yemen announce a a “maritime embargo” against Saudi Arabia, “effective immediately.”
Saudi Arabia has until now exported ~4.5m b/d from Yanbu in the Red Sea, most of it heading South throughout the Bab al-Mandab Strait between Yemen and Djibouti-Eritrea ” ;
https://x.com/JavierBlas/status/2079180122620391798/photo/1
This is a major escalation. If the Houthis cut off exports through the Red Sea, approximately another 4.5 million barrel of oil exports will be cut off.
This is worrying!
But cnbc said there is nothing to worry about Iran is ready to make a deal. Someone said I think might have been on here that a lot of trading is done by AI and by making comments like this it AI reads it and then makes adjustments and doesn’t realize it’s being fed fake information. I don’t know about that but I guess anything is possible. I imagine reserves must be getting really low at this point. It seems to me that a Great Recession is coming up next just after the midterms
Will we have a, TACO Monday? Stupid politicians never seem to understand that countries will not just stand and take it. They can and will dish back. Iran has been fighting an asymmetric war from the beginning. They can and will take down the global economy if TrumpenYahu continue going up the escalation ladder.
My feeling is that we are post-TACO now because rationing is imminent. The Feathering of the Sledgehammer is ovah!
I think
We are moving into a very warlike period.
I remember discovering Martin Armstrong and his predictive Socrates computer a few months ago. He kept making seemingly alarmist predictions about world turmoil ramping up, which I enjoyed as doom scrolling but didn’t take too seriously. Incidentally, I never listen to his videos but always read his posts instead, as I regard him as a sloppy speaker and therefore somewhat irritating.
But look at the world now all of a sudden. He wasn’t wrong. Anyway, what do our finance hounds here think of his credentials and predictive powers, I wonder?
https://www.socratesplatform.com/
Martin Armstrong is a conman, so take anything he says with a grain of salt.
Armstrong is a broken clock like the rest of us. Never really paid any attention to him and his silly machine. Former darling of Zerohedge.
Martin Armstrong has a product he wants to sell.
I’ve seen some complaints/claims online that his software is garbage. If it worked, he would just use it himself and not sell it, I imagine.
Infallible predictions from (the unique) ‘Socrates’, ‘consultant to governments’, etc, spells: ‘mountebank’.
I suppose his target audience is people who long for firm dates, and to have the talisman of inner knowledge but only a fool thinks like that.
All definite prognostications of doom go up in a puff of smoke.
Better to be aware, scan info and developments broadly, and understand the flow of things.
X if you don’t roll doobies you can’t smoke em. And some day you might just roll that pearl and luck had nothing to do with it.
Ok, I’m working way out in this rural valley with a pristene stream running through it. One of the properties on the opoosite bank built a ramp with a golf cart at the end with the front wheels suspended over the stream. There are a a pair of redneck skeletons driving the cart with an “this is ultra maga country” banner proudly on display!!
No kidding! Country art installation featuring MAGA getting run off the cliff. Independent DA theory out on the creative commons. Beyond the imagery, the “ultra” gives it away right? Ain’t no rednecks using that word. Only city boyz gone country for the peak oil.
There is an Akashic field. May it replenish us when we’re feeling weary..
[ Rationing imminent ] meant as [ full spectrum ] rationing we enjoyed lastly through WWII.. here on the continent ?
Or meant as just early [ phase in ] of sorts, starting around some silly edges in energy, transportation, excess / specialty food etc. only ?
Believe me, there is an ocean of difference between those two suggested extreme (poles) and how they tend to ricochet across the pop in practice.
Just fuel rationing for now, but I think we’ll be surprised by how quickly the rest of the rationing arrives. Like I have proposed, the BNS ain’t a BNS unless everyone thinks that they might be dead within a year. And many will be.
Rationing = Collapse
https://un-denial.com/2025/11/30/the-cactus-lens-a-clearer-view/
Summary by Rob Mielcarsky:
1. Modern society depends on many non-renewable resources.
2. New resources must be continuously extracted from the Earth’s crust to replace those lost through combustion or decay, and since 100% recycling is neither economically nor technically feasible for most resources
3. The quality of reserves declines as non-renewable resources are extracted, since they are finite and we consume the best ones first.
4. Therefore, the complexity of the energy, materials, and technologies used for raw material extraction must be increased to compensate for the declining quality of reserves and maintain a certain extraction rate.
5. The increasing scale of civilization accelerates the development of more complex raw material extraction technologies.
6. As the scale of civilization increases, the efficiency of resource use rises.
7. Expanding the scale of civilization requires growth in the extraction of non-renewable resources.
8. Therefore, the expansion of the scale of civilization both enables and requires the development of non-renewable resources as well as their use.
9. Consequently, many complex, interdependent, self-reinforcing positive feedback loops interact to ensure the rapid growth of civilization.
10. Eventually, a physical limit is reached that prevents the further growth of one or more non-renewable resources, triggering a cascade of interdependent, self-reinforcing negative feedback loops that lead to the collapse of the scale and complexity of civilization.
11. Therefore, wherever it arises in the universe, modernity will be a short-lived phenomenon that grows rapidly and collapses just as quickly.
12. We have reached several limits to resource extraction, and the increasingly violent events in the world reflect the tensions in a system on the brink of collapse.
13. Therefore, we have the privilege of witnessing a rare pinnacle of what is possible in the universe.
What is with that guy’s fanatical obsession with the retarded Fermi paradox? He running a cult over there or some sh?
That was ungenerous of me. Maybe he’s just trying to find a way to process his emotions but that is of course the seed of all cults. A leader with structural power overlaying his or her negative emotions onto a false theory of reality and repeatedly insisting on doing so until it becomes community dogma. Dogma being idolatry. The insidious thing about dogma is twofold. Once you get people to agree to something that isn’t true and isn’t up for reexamination, you more or less own them. Secondly, those in the community that don’t buy into the Fermi paradox dogma yet don’t challenge it degrade themselves and implicitly devalue the autonomy of those that devalue their own autonomy in accepting the dogma. It makes for a psychologically weak community all around.
Be generous!
From the book:
“I haven’t lived a good life,” she cried. “I’ve been bad—worse than you could know—but I’m not all bad. Look at me, Mr. Spade. You know I’m not all bad, don’t you? You can see that, can’t you? Then can’t you trust me a little? Oh, I’m so alone and afraid, and I’ve got nobody to help me if you won’t help me. I know I’ve no right to ask you to trust me if I won’t trust you. I do trust you, but I can’t tell you. I can’t tell you now. Later I will, when I can. I’m afraid, Mr. Spade. I’m afraid of trusting you. I don’t mean that. I do trust you, but—I trusted Floyd and—I’ve nobody else, nobody else, Mr. Spade. You can help me. You’ve said you can help me. If I hadn’t believed you could save me I would have run away today instead of sending for you. If I thought anybody else could save me would I be down on my knees like this? I know this isn’t fair of me. But be generous, Mr. Spade, don’t ask me to be fair. You’re strong, you’re resourceful, you’re brave. You can spare me some of that strength and resourcefulness and courage, surely. Help me, Mr. Spade. Help me because I need help so badly, and because if you don’t where will I find anyone who can, no matter how willing? Help me. I’ve no right to ask you to help me blindly, but I do ask you. Be generous, Mr. Spade. You can help me. Help me.”
Spade, who had held his breath through much of this speech, now emptied his lungs with a long sighing exhalation between pursed lips and said: “You won’t need much of anybody’s help. You’re good. You’re very good. It’s chiefly your eyes, I think, and that throb you get into your voice when you say things like ‘Be generous, Mr. Spade.'”
Considerably shortened in the movie:
https://rayonegro.substack.com/p/las-decisiones-suicidas-indican-que/comments
TIME IS RUNNING OUT, THE DOOR OF TEARS.
Today I checked five different watches, and all five are reaching zero almost at the same time.
The SPR clock. According to data circulating this week among analysts with access to intelligence sources, the level of US strategic petroleum is now hovering around 290 million barrels, below the 300 million barrel safety threshold that Amos Hochstein, former White House energy advisor, himself set as the limit before risking irreversible structural damage to the storage caverns. The weekly release rate has slowed from 8-10 million barrels to just 3 million in recent weeks.
The military inventory clock is ticking. THAAD, the most critical defense system, has already consumed nearly 40% of its pre-war inventory in just sixteen days of the first phase of the war. The PRSM is “critically depleted.” Between 2,000 and 3,000 Tomahawk missiles remain globally, distributed among three commands. https://sonar21.com/the-us-faces-a-strategic-crisis-with-iran-the-rapid-depletion-of-us-battlefield-missiles/
The clock ticks on human lives and civilian infrastructure. Two US soldiers killed and a third missing in Jordan, an attack on a nuclear facility under construction in Khuzestan under IAEA investigation, and Kuwait’s power and desalination plant hit for the second time in two days.
The diplomatic clock is ticking. The deadline set by China and Pakistan on Monday to resolve the conflict is now considered virtually lost. The IMF has cut its global growth forecast to a mere 3%, contingent on the war ending by the end of July, which obviously undermines its projection.
Israel’s clock. Formally removed from active combat by Washington at this stage, but with its Defense Minister warning that it “will respond unconditionally.”
And the sixth clock, ticking today: Ansarallah (the Warriors of God) has declared an immediate naval blockade against Saudi Arabia, framed as a “siege upon siege” after nearly twelve years of Saudi blockade of Yemen. The threat is aimed directly at the Saudi East-West pipeline to the Red Sea, Riyadh’s only remaining escape route while Hormuz remains strangled. If implemented, Bab el-Mandeb, literally “the Gate of Tears,” due to its treacherous navigation since antiquity, would join Hormuz as a second active, not merely threatened, strangulation point.
And while these six clocks tick in Washington, Tehran, and now Sana’a, hundreds of people protested in Kyiv this week because their own government dismissed the minister who was doing the best job of managing the country’s defense. And in Beijing, quietly, gold is being bought and US debt is being sold.
If there’s a thread connecting all these clocks, and clearly revealing the role of proxies, it’s Joe Biden’s statement in 1986, when he was a senator: “If Israel didn’t exist, the U.S. would have to invent one to protect its interests in the region.” He didn’t say it as a sentimental gesture; he said it as a strategic investment calculation, and that calculation is a century old. The pattern is always the same: military security in exchange for privileged access to energy. Energy is power. It always has been.
And that calculation, until recently, had a fairly explicit instruction manual. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter’s National Security Advisor, wrote it in 1997 in “The Grand Chessboard”: the objective of US strategy in Eurasia should be to prevent, at all costs, Russia, China, and Iran from aligning with each other. He explicitly warned that such an alliance would only form if the US was “shortsighted enough to antagonize China and Iran simultaneously.”
Economist Jeffrey Sachs has been pointing out for months, in interview after interview, that this is precisely what has happened: on January 29 of this year, Russia, China, and Iran signed a formal trilateral strategic pact. Not an Article 5-type military alliance, but rather a coordinated front regarding sanctions, energy, and defense. https://glenndiesen.substack.com/p/jeffrey-sachs-us-imperial-strategy
Brzezinski built his strategy on two pillars: keeping rivals divided, and maintaining such a wide technological and economic advantage that even united they would not achieve parity.
Today we have seen how both pillars are crumbling at the same time, the three countries are now formally united, and the technological advantage that was considered insurmountable has been reduced to a point where China captures almost half of the use of AI models in US territory and controls 91% of the refining of rare earths on which the entire American military machine depends.
When the premise that supports a strategy ceases to be true, continuing to apply it does not produce the same results but rather the accelerated wear and tear of the one who continues playing with rules that no longer describe the real playing field.
And if peak oil turns out to be correct, which it is, with the global reserve replacement rate at barely 10-15% for the last decade, this ceases to be a fight for the biggest slice of a pie that keeps growing. It becomes a fight to be the last one standing when the music stops.
And what does all this mean for someone in Madrid, Munich, or Marseille? Faced with information overload, people—and rightly so—only pay attention to what directly affects their wallets or daily lives. And it will affect them. It will arrive first in the form of the electricity bill and car deposit. It will arrive later in the mortgage payment. And it will arrive, more slowly but with greater force, in the form of the tax bill for European rearmament.
No one in Yemen voted to live through twelve years of blockade. Nor did anyone in Europe vote to foot the bill for a war now being fought in two straits simultaneously, but they will pay it anyway.
None of these clocks can be stopped separately. And with Bab el-Mandeb joining Hormuz today, the Gate of Tears could very well end up giving its name to this entire phase of the conflict.
” At the same time, a recovery in global oil demand from a low of 97.9 mb/d in May (a decline of 5.3 mb/d year-on-year) is underway. By October, we expect global demand to be up by more than 8 mb/d from the May low point, putting it above 2025 levels for the first time since February. The upswing in fuel use during the peak summer travel season is set to get an additional boost from the release of pent-up demand. Even so, global oil demand is projected to decline by 1 mb/d this year before rebounding by 2 mb/d in 2027.
..
While the global oil market balance looks set to swing back to surplus towards the end of the year, the forecast hinges on the assumption that tanker flows through the Strait will gradually recover, allowing producers to restart fields and refiners in the Middle East and elsewhere to resume product shipments. Renewed exchanges of fire in the Gulf this week highlight the risks of not reaching a lasting peace agreement, which is a must for the normalisation in oil markets.”
https://www.iea.org/reports/oil-market-report-july-2026
—
” Our first look at 2027 balances shows a significant overhang emerging next year. Global oil demand is projected to rise by a relatively modest 2 mb/d to 105.3 mb/d. By contrast, oil supplies look set to surge by around 8 mb/d to 110 mb/d. This may provide a welcome respite to the market and an opportunity to replenish depleted inventories, or to build new strategic reserves, as countries review their energy strategies and policies in response to the crisis. ”
https://www.iea.org/reports/oil-market-report-june-2026/
__
The timing of the impending crude crisis
Robin Brooks and Ben Harris
May 22, 2026
Structural factors>
– Pipeline bypass ..
– Pre-war surplus ..
vs.
Temporary Factors>
– Inventory drawdowns ..
– Floating storage and sanctions waivers ..
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-timing-of-the-impending-crude-crisis/
__
” Rystad: World’s proven oil reserves equal 14 years of production
dieselnet.com › news
26. 8. 2025 · Rystad expects reserve replacements from new conventional oil projects to be less than 30% of production over the next five years .. “
“And if peak oil turns out to be correct, which it is, with the global reserve replacement rate at barely 10-15% for the last decade, this ceases to be a fight for the biggest slice of a pie that keeps growing. It becomes a fight to be the last one standing when the music stops.”
Dude needs to retake complexity theory 101 just like kulm does.
He would rather remove a pillar of peak oil systems theory than accept that the geopolitics are making zero rational sense because that’s what complexity theory makes obvious. Yet he attempts to rationalize it as last man standing strategy even though you cannot get to be the last man standing by destroying your own supply chains.
Duh.
Asia oxygen detour. Europe gets cheaper oxygen. Flows reverse.. with Hormuz open bab el mandab closed the bypass was east to west around the horn. With both closed it out Yanbu Suez than west to east round horn for Asia. Egypt happy.
Is there a poly market for Yanbu flow?
“In ww1 it was called a war of competitive collapse”
The fundamental philosophy of our lifetimes.
The spice must flow!
All behavior sourced from that
The philosophy now.
The spice must not flow.
Changes in behavior ongoing.
https://www.youtube.com/live/djV_-Eq9ISA?si=sYzCgg25cUR3DXuG
Although the journey through the Suez Canal increases the distance, it does not constitute a true blockade.
It’s all still growling and baring teeth. Houthi could shut down tankers picking up at Yanbu outlet but why. Either IRan or Houthis could destroy Yanbu itself.
Yanbu is both very real and symbolic now just as nuclear weapons are both very real and symbolic. That is what mutually assured destruction becomes. Houthis closing bab El mandab is the equivalent to a Russian nuclear preparedness exercise except it has limited real effects. Out suez around the jorn to Asia ain’t exactly a small detour. Suez toll ain’t cheap either.
I imagine that the Hand sees the Yanbu port as pretty important to the civilization.
This apparently only affects Saudi Arabia’s oil exports. Other goods will seem to be able to go through, as usual.
A few days ago I had posted
2026 the year of The Fuel Crisis
2027 the year of The Food Crisis
Now read this by Prof Ugo Bardi .
Modern agriculture, as practiced in most of the world, is energy-intensive and fertiliser dependent. Fossil fuels run machines, heat greenhouses, transport produce across continents and serve as raw materials for agricultural inputs. Synthetic fertilisers, the foundation of industrial yield, are energy-intensive to make.
https://senecaeffect.substack.com/p/famines-ahead-a-warning-we-cannot?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1514235&post_id=207342667&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=26quge&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
That’s all jolly good, Bardi addressed correctly most of the points, we in this regard debate here as well regularly, BUT with the exception and wearing now the Kulm-stylistic hat for a moment – he has not mentioned the crucial thing how the over pop situation to available resource base ( yes which we needlessly waste in many forms and habits ) come about in the first place.. !
To discuss in any shape or form the ” excess pop ” phenomenon is simply a taboo subject for %% of intellectuals out there. In their world-view, it’s perfectly legit and ~humanitarian effort to send y/y ( decade / decade ) UKRo grains by shiploads to ~slums of Africa and not to be appalled from the meaning of it ( the cont. dependency anchor ).
Ugo’s paper is really a position paper of the Club of Rome.
It seems to be a call to begin using natural methods, rather than imported fertilizers, to work around the lack of fertilizer. He says,
Regionalised, diversified, regenerative agriculture that builds the natural capital of healthy soils, functioning watersheds, biodiversity is not only more sustainable in principle, it is more resilient in practice, and once the initial investments are made, more profitable. Its proponents, however, are often the world’s underprivileged. They need to be heard, taken seriously and supported.
The people of Sri Lanka figured out that just going without fertilizer was not a good choice.
The Club of Rome paper asks for:
1. A commitment to end the wars now driving the crisis. [Realistic??]
2. Food systems should favour increased diversity and decentralisation of food producers.
3. We need also to diversify the sources of our calories. [More non-grains]
4. Encourage local trade of food, rather than the Global South’s dependency on the North.
5. Transition the food system away from dependence on fossil fuels.
6. The food system has to regenerate natural capital, not deplete it.
This does sound like a Club of Rome view. Getting rid of the wars sounds rather idealistic.
Instead of learning to code, we should be learning to compost.
Gail… I don’t know if you’ve heard of Simon Michaux… he’s referenced your work on his interviews. He had a good chat a few weeks ago with the youtuber Capitalcosm and mentioned that half of the population uses synthetic fertilizer which surprised me as I thought it was most of the global population?
I don’t know how Simon calculates his numbers. Note that he says “half the population,” not “half of the world’s food supply.” So the share of food produced using commercial fertilizer could be a lot higher than 50%.
I would also expect that composted manure is the source of fertilizer in a significant part of Europe and Russia, and perhaps elsewhere.
I expect that the part of the world that does not use commercial fertilizer disproportionately depends on food imports for its food. For example, Africa imports a lot of its food, as does the Middle East.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1314076/imports-as-a-share-of-calorie-availability-by-world-region/
I expect poor island nations like Cuba and Haiti, plus many that earn their income from tourism import a lot of their food, don’t use commercial fertilizer. They may use manure, however.
I have corresponded with Simon quite a few times, but not recently. I don’t follow his videos. I would rather see written reports.
In terms of manure from AG sector, some %fraction of it is also used as biogas, and then burned in (local)-farm or short haul cargo vehicles or sold to grid as electricity. Mind you this is likely way less than half of it out of total amount assigned for these purposes, most is returned to field as compost in some shape or form ( leaky or solids ) by way of further re-processing on site.
” In 2020, 42% of the biogas and biomethane produced in the EU came from crops, roughly 24% come from animal manure, .. ”
https://www.iatp.org/biomethane-energy-transition-or-false-solution
Thank you Gail. That makes a lot of sense.
“4:58 That’s where we’re heading now. We haven’t uh pulled the trigger on the ground power options yet, but everything we’re doing, the repositioning of the
5:06 forces, the the way the bombing is laid out, this is all tailored to the way the military would describe it is set the
5:14 conditions for the ground options if the president were to uh go forward with those. So, we’re not absolutely there
5:23 yet. Uh we’re kind of 70% of the way there yet now. Um, but this is closer than we have been at any point in the
5:31 war. And this is not then just restarting the war in the way the media’s kind of uh trying to describe
5:38 this as where we’re going back to the war of March. Uh, no, this would be much much much worse. So, we’re we’re heading
5:46 to a very different uh problem. And that’s why this war should never have started. This is not a situation where
5:55 um you can really end this. “?
So, what will the be the temperatures on the ground for the invading forces?
Please, we know the answer…not doable….
My take is this will be an “excuse” to utilize strategic nuclear weapons to neutralize opposing forces in order to ” save” American lives.
Just like what Harry Truman did as an “excuse” back in WWII to bomb Japan with atomic bombs.
I may be wrong, but it looks plausible…
Right now the talk is the troops would be used to take the north side of the strait and move ships through . Temperatures would be .brutal but it’s not saudi. They have moved the fleet into missile range.
The destroyer directly in the strait can be sunk.
IMO it’s ridiculous if that’s the plan
If we lose a bunch of troops or sailers I think nuclear weapon use is probable.
A much better option would be no troops nuke north side of the strait and bury the missile cities with nukes without a troop sacrifice.
Putin will use nukes in Ukraine five minutes after any nuclear weapon use. That almost certainly would lead to general exchange.
The much better and smarter option is to follow the proxy war model. Cut Caspian supply. Get Pakistan fighting Iran in the East. Taliban in the west. Train them up on modern drone warfare and supply them with a shit ton. turkish manufacture maybe. USA special forces doing raids but mostly training. That’s been a huge part of what they have done historically. Train indigenous forces. Blockade continues. Ukran. 10 or 15 years of that and Iran could fall. Boil the frog.. let’s things calm down. Get into the economic pain zone for the world. After Trump goes maybe a deal would be possible.
Trump ain’t gonna walk and the people who follow him ain’t gonna walk
Don just signed yet another exec order for the MIC contractors buying hard to get resources ala rare earths from provable non foreign tangled entities, i.e. support for developing strictly domestic mining, reprocessing etc.
So, in the line of expecting longer war effort as you suggested..
That is what is happening worldwide . Governments signing executive orders and making grand plans for the future , like those 4200 kms pipelines (total) to bypass SoH . Just reading South Korea has contracted 90% of its crude input for September . I am scratching my head . From where and who ?
Link .
https://www.marketscreener.com/news/south-korea-says-90-of-september-crude-oil-needs-secured-ce7f51dbdf8cf124
Who knows, but presumably others are being squeezed out; one would expect high income countries to lose access last, no?
I think we are past income. South Korea makes a lot of war stuff(8th biggest) and most of that is for the US. Then there’s the chip industry(2nd biggest).
Only a few get to decide and those that produce what the few need will get preference. South Korea will get what’s needed, until they aren’t.
The best ( confirmatory ) sign of panic would come when largish %%share of ~upper middle class gets the vibes of collapse-reset to another paradigm and suddenly all the better suited PHEVs/EVs for that task disappear from dealer parking lots and order book delays for these models at factory spike to 2-3yrs waiting and longer..
FF, indeed they are critical. Right now they’re printing money with DRAM price fixing / intentionally restricted supply.
This is all very worrying!
this is all Theatre there will be no mutually assured destruction the plan is to get the oil price higher it is working so unfortunately war is the only proven method to cause oIl prices to move higher otherwise we get a full-blown depression and then everything comes to an end. The Elders are playing a game of tug of war.it is all a balancing act and Trump is the perfect actor for this kind of Charade.
Completely correct: he was nurtured and chosen as the only possible candidate for the theatre production currently running.
Narcissistic, shameless, bombastic, without conscience, and willing to be a passive instrument of the true policy makers.
A little blackmail in the background, no doubt.
All the superficial appearance of a ‘mad Roman emperor’, out of control, but just a puppet.
A little demented? Perhaps, but all the better. (Although generally I’ve observed that people of a certain age tend to loose all restraint anyway, delighting in doing and saying just what they please. )
The perfect distraction from the real Peak Everything issues we know so well here.
There is genius in the casting.
In the end the World Cup was a fairly neutral affair without much conspiracy. In the finals two white teams from outside the Hajnal line (Spain mostly outside, Argentina outside, only one black starting and fairly uninfluential) played. Two teams from inside the line, with 18 black starters out of 22, but possessing oh so precious western passports, played for the third spot one day earlier, what was essentially a basketball game. The referee who was supposed to help Argentina ended up giving a red card that decided the game. The team representing the Western country most opposed to Trump ended up winning.
Spain, of course, was the country that Trump recently singled out a being the country the US should cut off trade with. Others kind of walked back the idea.
The wider ( background ) context is that Spain often-times in waves of interest and especially in recent decades tries to bridge itself to some degree into early 20th century, when socialist-communist forces were almost as strong as to possibly lead the country as a whole ( if not certainly few regions ), the response was fascist-mil take-over then. Simply, this resonates through the public ( and family lineages ) up to this point in time.
For sure, somebody already tried explain this ongoing dynamics to Trump, for him it must be rather incomprehensible, since this is rather exceptional national ethos across whole W./Europe/World..
Moreover, he ( Don ) married two ex-communist/socialist countries origin wives, both of ~W. Slavic subgroup ethnic pedigree, where this dynamics was structurally ( across whole pop ) a bit less present than in the case of Spain ( if hard to believe ), as it was rather more tied with the end of WWII and that Soviet block thing ( and its discontent ).
I won’t need to tell you, but Spain have been getting lots of messages of congratulations, from certain nations and groups.
Amazing the good will that can be garnered, just from saying “no, this is wrong”. They also have a very important naval choke point and are probably taking notes.
I noted that globalist owned italian news papers (all of them) depicted the WC in negative terms, associating it to Trump (and Infantino, but he is just a puppet). I switched off as soon as the game ended, but there were blurbs all over the place about Trump wanting to be in the picture when Spain lifted the cup, and one of the players asking him to leave. Just one more psyop, whose meaning I do not understand, but given the large emotional impact it was unlikely to go unused. The tournament itself was not affected, except for Iran, which they wanted out of the way asap, and Egypt.
How could anybody ever make any sense of another King Lear cameo, randomly inserting himself into billions of eyeballs, a log to Infantino’s mote.
Hand be manipulating the human race like it’s a collective 5 year old. Logical conclusion of the programmatic cultural infantilization of the last 30 years.
I watched it now. He is truly an imbecile.
“They also have a very important naval choke point and are probably taking notes.”
Good point!
Welcome to the DA kulm. It’s the home of the misdirection play. As said many times over, the Hand dutifully follows the number one rule of psychology: humans are strongly inclined to forget hardship if the hardship is unexpectedly relieved. That’s what the anti-imperialist social nationalisms are all about, which we’re probably just a few months away from now.
Not that the world cup was fixed but if the Hand didn’t leave some fingerprints on it, it sure looked like it to 90pc of the commenters on yootoob. Not to mention Trump ruining things by absolutely humiliating himself again on the stage during the award ceremony. The red card comprised of two yellows was obviously justified, to be sure. Spain looked like the world cup champions are supposed to look. A cut above.
If China is such a kind and gentle world power why don’t they just extend Pakistans loans so they don’t have to be obligated to Saudi military obligations? The reality is China is all business. They dont enter into contracts where they don’t get paid. Everything is collateralized. Debt renegotiation is specifically forbidden in the contracts.
So Pakistan becomes military for hire for a whopping 3 b of Chinese notes. The alternative is default and financial stone age.
https://economic-policy.org/75th-economic-policy-panel/chinese-lending/
Yes, but the last decade+ showed them how easy is for the W to not honor funds parked in their respective jurisdictions. So, they ( CHN ) had to re-balance ( ~slowly ) that experience – expectation into their future plans as well..
That being said, all involved parties are now pretty much up to speed to the cruel realization that in times of serious econ crisis ahead, dozens of $T value would simply evaporate in an instant, including ~real deposited funds/money not merely some edgy speculative instruments.
One wonders if the boats will float. Collateral repo might prove interesting. Absantee landlord. I guess a tenant with income is more desirable.
Cayman hedge funds buy 37% of US treasury net issuance.
That’s almost as much as all foreign central banks combined…
But as central banks pivot to gold, hedge funds have stepped in.
The problem is these hedge funds are leveraged, unlike central banks.
Meaning market declines can force them to sell USTs to raise fresh capital.
That pushes yields higher and breaks the hedging characteristics of bonds, as we’ve seen since 2021.
The more leveraged the marginal buyer becomes, the more fragile the Treasury market becomes.
Instead of stabilizing markets during stress, bonds can amplify it.
https://x.com/ekwufinance/status/2078845843382173861/photo/1
I have long said that the US FED is funding via black entities .
Infinite debt takes infinite bond buyers. I guess leveraging makes things more discreet . Who is providing the leveraging tab? Same people. Are they leveraged too? Duh. A $5 book entry becomes infinity and beyond.
Can’t see a bond margin call leveraged or not. You just leverage the leverage for the leverage and buy. Caymens can own it all no problem. The currency however might have a bugaboo or three.
What a mess. Leveraged hedge funds are the ones who are disproportionately buying US treasuries. The US needs so much debt that it needs to depend on these unstable buyers.
Cayman money is Chinese money. Foreign entities are holding record amounts of US treasury debt. TIC data shows this record amount of debt. US banks are also holding record amounts of US treasury debt.
While foreign governments have been selling to provide US dollars to their markets and businesses. Overall a record amount of treasury debt is held by foreigners. No de-dollarization is taking place via treasury market.
The FED doesn’t / can’t print actual useful money that can be used in the global economy.
It’s up to the Eurodollar banks to provide the actual money. Central banks don’t really matter. I know that goes against what the majority think. But the FED and other central banks aren’t at the center of the monetary system. Eurodollar banks are at the center of global money. Heck the US dollar technically isn’t the global reserve currency. It’s the offshore Eurodollar which everyone uses in global trade and finance.
As these Eurodollar banks pullback on lending. There simply aren’t enough dollars. It doesn’t matter if central bank cut interest rates and it doesn’t matter if they do QE or QT for that matter. None of that central bank nonsense matters when it comes to making actual loans into the economy to expand the money supply.
Why are European banks also holding record amounts of government debt? They aren’t expecting inflation just as their US counterparts aren’t expecting inflation. They are expecting the exact opposite of inflation.
Primary collateral in Eurodollar market is US treasury debt. If US government debt doesn’t expand neither will the dollars available in the Eurodollar market. BTW
Ask Japan and India’s central banks if any of the nonsense they are doing actual works. It don’t because they aren’t real central banks that can print actual useful money.
One last thing. Swap lines between the FED and other central banks don’t matter. They aren’t swapping anything that is actually useful.
Reality is actually way worse than people think. There really is no central bank backstop.
Chinese holding companies also heavily use Cayman but the official story is that American Hedge funds are running the basis trade.
You come from the banking industry, don’t you? I can’t claim any special expertise in this area. Do you have references?
This is what AI says about TIC:
TIC in finance stands for Treasury International Capital, which is a system that tracks the flow of capital into and out of the United States, specifically regarding international investments in U.S. securities.
home.treasury.gov
Definition of TIC in Finance
TIC stands for Treasury International Capital. It is a system used to monitor and report the flow of capital into and out of the United States, particularly focusing on international investments in U.S. securities.
Key Functions of TIC
Tracking Capital Flows
International Investments: TIC tracks foreign investments in U.S. securities, which includes stocks, bonds, and other financial instruments.
Monthly Reports: The system provides monthly data on transactions involving long-term securities between U.S. and foreign residents.
Importance of TIC Data
Economic Indicators: TIC data serves as a crucial indicator of the U.S. financial market’s health and its attractiveness to foreign investors.
Policy Making: The information is used by policymakers to make informed decisions regarding economic and financial policies.
TIC Reporting
Types of Reports
Monthly Transactions: Reports on monthly transactions in long-term securities.
Annual and Benchmark Reports: These include comprehensive data on international portfolio investments.
Accessing TIC Data
Press Releases: TIC data is released through press announcements, which are available on official government websites.
Statistical Archives: Historical data can be accessed for analysis and research purposes.
Understanding TIC is essential for grasping how international capital flows impact the U.S. economy and financial markets.
——
This is the link to the page I found where links to the individual TIC reports can be found:
https://home.treasury.gov/data/treasury-international-capital-tic-system
Thank you for your detailed and knowledgeable comment. Everything you say makes sense and is reality based. Except it doesn’t and isn’t at the same time
Once again (probably boring people) its model extension. If a is true b is true. Ecetera. Them your down at Z
It’s well enough if you can confirm in the real world. Since we’re talking failure we can’t.
It’s like saying if I take my Plymouth satellite and get it up to 110 the front driver tire will blow in 6 minutes. I’m not sure we know what will blow
Yes that tire very well might be it.
I’m thinking it might very well be no goods. Why is money desirable then?
What does a equals z mean then?
“If US government debt doesn’t expand neither will the dollars available in the Eurodollar market.”
I think that this is key.
So what is key is figuring out an excuse for more borrowing. War is today a good excuse for borrowing. Covering CLP-1 drugs by Medicare adds another layer of costs to be paid by Medicare, without enough funding.
War uses too much actual real things. The models achilles heel
Hyper expensive intellectual property like drugs much better if they don’t work. If they work it’s counterproductive but in the aggregate productive regardless. Maybe war is actually pretty good. Have to crunch the numbers. How about Trump coin? Wouldn’t that be near perfect?
https://eddowdbeyondthenarrative.substack.com/p/private-credit-the-new-junk-bond
How should private credits be viewed in this context?
el mar,
Private credit just sounds better than shadow banks. These large shadow banks. The BlackRock’s and BlackStone’s of the world.
They relend funds that come from an actual bank. And they lend them to high risk borrowers. Because real banks wont.
Yes it’s going to end in tears. Yes the banks are ultimately still on the hook.
Private credit would have already collapsed if it were not for these funds being gated with limited withdraws.
Ultimately the banks are going to have to take large haircuts. It’s just going to take a very long time because of they way it structured.
Only thing standing in the way of a 40-50% correction in the stock market is the fact these funds are gated.
But when institutional investors can’t get their money out. It creates an environment where new money stops flowing in.
>> Cayman hedge funds buy 37% of US treasury net issuance. […] The problem is these hedge funds are leveraged, unlike central banks.
Who says these are real players and not just the Federal Reserve or approved commercial banks? We are late in the debt game and the geopolitical stakes are very high, so I would expect it is a serious possibility that the Federal Reserve or commercial banks (either of whom can print USD from thin air) buy Treasury debt surreptitiously to hide insolvency.
We talked about this already early this year or late last year. It has nothing to do with the Fed printing and funneling demand through black entities. The nuts and bolts of the system can’t do the clownshow thing like politics can, as it’s a serious business. The Cayman deal just another yen carry trade. Technically it’s a just carry trade for inflationary times because inflationary times means you can consistently short notes and bonds which is one side of the basis trade, so you can just set the damn thing on autopilot. And it helps keep Collapse at bay by maintaining demand for the doomed medium-to-long end of the curve.
Was it all ginned-up to make up for the gold bubble bleeding demand from notes and bonds? No, this trade was humming before the plandemic. Does it matter that it’s going to blow up soon? Of course not. What difference does it make now?
“The Cayman deal just another yen carry trade. Technically it’s a just carry trade for inflationary times because inflationary times means you can consistently short notes and bonds which is one side of the basis trade, so you can just set the damn thing on autopilot.”
You certainly don’t want a switch to deflation, then.
reante.
I’ve long held the belief that when things really start to breakdown. It’s going to be a collateral issue.
Eurodollar banks will look at short term Japanese and Italian debt and refuse to except them as collateral.
Many of loans in the Eurodollar are backed by Japanese and Italian short term debt instruments.
You will either own US treasuries or you won’t get a loan.
Mortgage backed securities were used as collateral prior to GFC crisis. They got absolutely destroyed during GFC.
You know long before all energy imports cease making their way to Japan. All the money in Japan will have left.
These debt instruments or collateral will at some point get rejected. And when they do. Trillions in USD will vanish quickly.
No nobody wants a switch to deflation but the reserve currency money supply has to follow the energy supply off the cliff or money can’t chase energy anymore because it’s no longer a proxy for energy.
This Cayman carry trade is just an end-stage positive feedback loop of inflation and inflationary expectations that has the effect of supporting the secondary market of 2-30yr notes and bonds that is otherwise under pressure as institutions move towards T-bills. 50% issuance is in T-bills now because TS is about to HTF. The Cayman trade blowing up for good will just be part of the reason for the collapse of hedge funds nested within the collapse of finance capitalism.
Yeah HHH, totally agree man. Trillions upon trillions will vanish. T-bills are the universal collateral of Phase 2. Nationalized stablecoins collateralized by T-bills as the Eurodollar 2.0 in order to cushion the blow. The great simplification.
Derivative holders are first in line, even before savings & checking account holders
We live in a strange world!
The Economic Policy article says,
The researchers benchmarked the Chinese contracts against 142 publicly available contracts with other major lenders and they found several unusual features in Chinese contracts:
–China’s contracts contain unusually broad confidentiality clauses, which prevent borrowers from revealing the terms or sometimes even the existence of the loans. The researchers also found that China’s contracts have become more secretive over time, with a confidentiality clause in every contract in the dataset since 2014. These confidentiality restrictions hide loans from the people who are bound to repay them via taxes.
–The contracts also contain provisions that position Chinese state-owned banks as senior creditors whose loans should be repaid on a priority basis. Nearly a third of the contracts required borrowing countries to maintain significant cash balances in bank or escrow accounts. These informal collateral arrangements put Chinese lenders at the front of the repayment line, since banks can simply dip into their borrower’s accounts to collect unpaid debts.
–China’s contracts also give it broad latitude to cancel loans or accelerate repayment if it disagrees with a borrower’s policies. For example, China Development Bank (CDB) treats termination of diplomatic relations with China as an ‘event of default’. Expansive cross-default and cross-cancellation provisions also provide Chinese lenders with more leverage over borrowers and other creditors than was previously understood.
–According to Sebastian Horn, an economist at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, another key finding of the study is that ‘Most Chinese loan contracts contain “No Paris Club” clauses, which prohibit countries from restructuring Chinese loans on equal terms and in coordination with other creditors.’ This approach to foreign lending effectively gives Beijing sole discretion to decide if, when, and how it will grant debt relief.
Christoph Trebesch, also of the Kiel Institute, adds that ‘China’s practices complicate debt relief efforts in countries that are in financial distress due to the Covid-19 pandemic or other factors.’
These policies, if they can get away with them, make China’s lending quite different from other lending.
“Brandon Weichert
@WeTheBrandon
Is the US rushing F-16CJ Wild Weasel jets from Germany to the Middle East?
These are specialized SEAD aircraft designed to suppress enemy air defenses.
This strongly signals a major campaign is coming — likely strikes on protected energy infrastructure or even Pickaxe Mountain in Iran.
Big things are brewing. (None of them good).”?
https://x.com/WeTheBrandon/status/2078610587848942017?s=20
Thanks! Doesn’t sound good.
If the oil infrastructure gets destroyed then OfW will be sitting “on the beach’.
Beginning of a long war? Pakistan comes in as soon as Saudi is hit hard.
So could Taliban with correct motivation. Sunni VS Shia. The new coalition of the willing.
AI
Six major designated road routes connect Pakistan and Iran, all of which pass through the Balochistan province. These corridors link Pakistan’s major maritime gateways (Karachi, Port Qasim, and Gwadar) to two strategic border crossings with Iran: Gabd and Taftan.The specific road routes and border crossings include:Border CrossingsGabd (Rimdan): Located on the southern coast near the Pakistani port of Gwadar, this connects directly into Iran. The Gwadar-to-Gabd corridor is the shortest route, cutting travel time to the border to just 2-3 hours.Taftan (Mirjaveh): Located further north, this connects to Iran’s Road 84. It is a traditional overland border for trade and transit entering from deep inside Pakistan.The Six Designated Road CorridorsGwadar to Gabd: The shortest and most direct overland route, cutting logistics times drastically.Karachi/Port Qasim to Gabd: A coastal route passing through Lyari, Ormara, and Pasni.Karachi/Port Qasim to Taftan: An inland route passing through Khuzdar and Dalbandin.Gwadar to Taftan via Quetta: Runs north from Gwadar through Turbat, Panjgur, Besima, Khuzdar, Quetta (Lak Pass), Dalbandin, and Nok Kundi to Taftan.Gwadar to Taftan via Coastal Highway: Connects Gwadar to Lyari, then routes north through Khuzdar, Quetta/Lak Pass, and Dalbandin to the Taftan crossing.Karachi/Port Qasim to Gabd via Gwadar: A longer logistical lane stretching from the major industrial ports westward along the coastal roads into Iran.
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are both inhabited primarily with people following the Sunni version of Muslim.
Iran, Southern Lebanon, and the Houthis (in Yemen) follow versions of the Shia form of Muslim.
The Houthis are in fact Sunni, but a different philosophy than most other Sunnis. The gulf coast of Arabia, where most oil is, is mostly Shia. Bahrain also, being adjacent. I am sure the West is looking to start religious warfare, but most people in the region are aware of the consequences. So are the chewish rulers.
Mad world around us…
A Korean car with drunken Slovaks hit Japanese Kawasaki motorcycle with a man and a woman on it yesterday in the depopulating Eastern Slovakia.
https://korzar.sme.sk/kosice/c/pri-nehode-sa-zranili-dvaja-motocyklisti-vodic-auta-bol-opity-nafukal-vyse-dve-promile
Gemini AI about food imports:
Japan and South Korea are two of the most import-dependent developed economies in the world. Japan imports roughly 60% of the food its population consumes (by calorie). South Korea relies on imports for about 50% to 55% of its food, with up to 80% of certain staple grains coming from overseas.JapanCaloric Self-Sufficiency: ~38%Food Import Percentage: ~60% (imports six out of every ten calories consumed)Major Suppliers: The United States, China, and Australia are the top sources for agricultural and consumer-oriented food products.South KoreaCaloric Self-Sufficiency: ~32.5%Food Import Percentage: ~45–50% (depending on measurement by production value or overall caloric intake)Major Suppliers: China and the United States are the primary food suppliers, while Brazil, Thailand, and Vietnam also supply significant amounts of foodstuffs and agricultural goods.Because of their reliance on the global market to feed their populations, both countries remain highly sensitive to trade disruptions, supply chain bottlenecks, and currency fluctuations.
The persons on the motorcycle were Hungarians.
A Central European take on the South Asian competition…
A Hungarian killed in his home country at the city of Kassa.
The fact that so much of the food is imported, mostly long distance, would likely keep food costs high. I know that Alaska and Hawaii have this issue.
Birth rates in both Korea and Japan has been very low in recent years. I expect that there is a connection.
Our bodies tend to do well, with fewer calories than we in the US consume. So high food prices may not be all bad.
There is a famous Czechoslovak comedy from the 1970s, Jáchyme, hoď ho do stroje! (“Joachim, Put Him into the Machine”), about a machine that predicts whether a person will have a good or bad day. Remarkably, it touches on many themes that feel strikingly contemporary: Asian economic competitiveness (represented at the time by Japan), a psychiatrist who pursues patients struggling to adapt to an increasingly irrational world, technology gradually taking control over people’s lives, animals having higher value than humans etc.
“František Koudelka, a kind-hearted young man from the countryside, leaves to work in Prague. For the trip, he buys a “conditionogram,” a computer-generated chart that, based on his date of birth, identifies days that will be tricky, unsuccessful, or even crisis-ridden—and, here and there, a successful day as well. František, a clumsy, unlucky fellow, finally has a guide for his life. In Prague, he starts working at a car repair shop and moves in with his widowed Aunt Sýkorová, who, however, clearly favors her beloved dog Gregor. The company psychologist warns František. Mechanics receive large bribes from customers, and it often happens that one of them goes crazy from the influx of money. At the food kiosk by the toast counter, Blanka—the girl of František’s dreams—works as a cashier. Despite the young man’s shyness, they eventually arrange a date and start going out together. Karel, the bartender at the kiosk, doesn’t like what he sees and attacks his romantic rival. The young man joins a judo club. On the 27th—the next lucky day—he plans his revenge on Karel. He goes to the movies repeatedly and practices his moves based on the sheriff in the film. On the 27th, František unexpectedly wins both a judo match and a car race. Dressed in a judo gi, he is forced to open an exhibition. The energetic young man catches the attention of the company psychologist, who sends a psychiatric orderly after him. However, the orderlies always end up catching someone else. In the end, they save František from the vengeful Karel. Years later, František and Blanka are living in the countryside with their children. An apology from the company that had been sending him incorrect fitness reports for years arrives too late. František is happy, and everything is going well for him. Only the new car that the company sent as compensation has slid into a nearby pond.”
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
https://www.filmovyprehled.cz/cs/film/397051/jachyme-hod-ho-do-stroje
https://youtu.be/69Zrc0Q_2rk?si=2q9v0AbdaUba7inC
Score-board today ( after such cumulative blood drawn ) is it ricocheting towards larger involvement still ?
—
Iran war updates: US launches strikes after killing of soldiers in Jordan
“US personnel killed since the start of the war to [ 16 ], with more than [ 400 ] wounded. In a written statement, Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba …”
—
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2026/7/18/iran-war-live-us-and-iran-exchange-attacks-for-7th-consecutive-night
While Iran claims ~only [ 50 ] dead so far.. , perhaps the over-all death toll
on their side incl. all the various ~IRG and other factions would be actually notably higher. Yet, even by that measure still very unfavorable ratio vs. the US active involvement ( and their regional bases regular deployment ) so far..
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/jul/19/middle-east-crisis-live-us-launches-new-round-of-airstrikes-to-swiftly-punish-iran-after-american-troops-killed
Good to keep in mind:
>> Christine Guerrero reposted
Iran News 24
@IRanMediaco
“Percentage of drinking water from desalination:
—Bahrain 100%
—Qatar 99%
—Kuwait 90%
—Saudi Arabia 70%
—UAE 42%
—Iran 3%
If Gulf countries are willing to allow the US to use their territory to attack Iranian desalination plants, then prepare for the consequences..”
Israel is also up quite high on its share of water from desalination plants, but I don’t think it publishes a percentage. It is even planning to add desalinated water to the Sea of Galilee, according to one article I noticed..
If a group of people don’t have existing natural ground or surface water reserves within their lands boarders and natural seasonal cycles to replenish aquifers are they not countries that will fail when energy fails.
Water resources is a natural limiting factor, temporary overcome it seems an overshot death sentence even without wars.
Also, I wonder what the world would be like, if instead of trying to exploit others through the control of energy reserves and supply, humans found ways to use these resources more efficiently without creating another jevon paradox
Bahrain 100%
—Qatar 99%
—Kuwait 90%
—Saudi Arabia 70%
—UAE 42%
—Iran 3%
Bahrain. I don’t see Bahrain’s getting hit, as despite long time attempts to change the population, it’s still the Shia that would control it if the outside influences were removed, so little desire to affect the population too negatively(then again, get the foreigners out and they’d need less than half of what’s operating, but that’s economically devastating).
Qatar. Dicey situation, but I think they will be excused the worst. They’ve shown a willingness and Iran knows the pressure from outside is real and even accepts there is a fair amount of hedging(they do have a rather large shared interest).
Kuwait. Certain load messages have been sent to the Kuwaiti people, about who they are and their obligations(no blame). I think Kuwait might be taken over, so maybe limited strikes, selected very careful, to keep a balance with the people(I’m not that confident about that sentence).
Saudi. Awkward, but extracting the thorn that is Wahhabism* must be tempting. Unfortunately it’s not that simple, so I would guess that they would be the last to get it. Although a hit on a minor plant might happen as a warning.
UAE. Yes, all day long and apart from the squatters, it doesn’t look like anyone in the region would do more than say a few words of commiseration. If Iran decides to do any more than a warning, it looks almost certain to be UAE first. Abu Dhabi is the problem tribe, so specific strike, as the rest of the tribes remember how important Iran was in their rise(Dubai).
Iran. Strangely, more important than the number would suggest, given location. Thankfully the small number and Iran’s ability to improvise quickly, should mitigate the effect(mostly).
The above assumes escalation and Iran keeping the ability to pick and choose it’s pressure points. The pathway to Palestine(the other thorn) is clearing out nicely so far, which will force the aggressor to escalate on demand.
* https://substack.com/@marasaidwhat/p-206386710
Being an insane person means that someone has crossed their physical limits. If the human population crosses the physical limits imposed by energy availability and the ability of humans to manage complexity, it means that there are more and more insane people, in addition to those who are insane due to the accumulation of genetic mutations.
The parable of the Tower of Babel is about this kind of insanity.
You rarely see an insane animal because animals have limited protection from other species. They are usually eaten soon after crossing their limits. Humans, by contrast, even protect insane people simply because they are humans.
And the insane are allowed to vote, which is what the elites want in order to control, and eventually eliminate a substantial portion of the productive and functioning middle class.
https://alt-market.us/election-integrity-is-representative-democracy-a-foolish-fantasy/
“And I’d like to also touch on this idea that well, couldn’t earth be,
1:22:56 you know, much, have a much smaller human population, but high tech, you know, and the question that I would have is. How do you propose a glide path to that?
1:23:07 Because as soon as you have a decline in population, markets fail because growth
1:23:14 isn’t really happening and services fail, and institutions fail and supply chains fail.”?
The issue at hand is that the cat is out of the bag.
Nowadays, half-wit teenager can in dozens minutes to few hrs learn on YT how to get ~3/4 caloric input independent of the industrial / govs / TPTB system.
It has not been done en masse so far merely because of the convenience per ongoing faked free-wheeling props of the legacy system.
For serious depop targeting, if energy outlook hi-point under discussion is sound, you need at least 5-15% deletion of pop per decade, that’s impossible to achieve w.out some beyond-drastic approaches.
It’s a tug of war, as one of the sides must prevail eventually in the concluding phase. If the general pop thrust wins we get some low tech + widespread dense local food everywhere situation. On the other hand if the technoboyz win out it, the terra-forming of this planet (+beyond) would reach unimaginable levels from our today’s vantage point.
Perhaps I’m wrong and we will actually get some ~balanced combo of both worlds not fully matured in their core plans, co-existing side by side; both across ideological and spatial divide.
You bring up an interesting point. Unfortunately the percentage of people falling in the dark Triad (Psychopathy, Narcissism and Machiavellanism) is too high causing a lot of destruction and misery in society. Its likely these personality types were killed off early (or banned) in hunter/gather societies as they pose a threat to group survival.
This was my favorite cartoon as a child.
Thunderbirds!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wLiH4xrCITI&pp=ygUMdGh1bmRlcmJpcmRz
I’m cleaning carpets at the school this afternoon. Two years ago the science teacher was awarded National Teacher of the Year by one Joseph R Biden. She has an electric car and no don’t that fact was included in her award submission. Naturally she charges the car at the school in order to keep her electricity bill down. On the wall of her classroom is a poster.
WHEN YOU ENTER THIS ROOM YOU ARE…
AUTHORS.
LEADERS.
SCHOLARS.
HISTORIANS.
EXPLORERS.
DETECTIVES.
CREATORS.
THINKERS.
IMPORTANT.
Each word in the list is in a different color of the rainbow we mustn”t let that detract from the message.
In a sane world, you would be teaching science, this National Teacher of the Year would be cleaning school carpets, and I would he giving out National Whatever of the Year awards to the people on each field who have most enthusiastically done what I told them to do in the past year.
“How do you spell exosome, class? Altogether now! E-X-O-… Very good! And why do we love exosomes? Altogether now… That’s right, friends – we love exosomes because they spread the healing around. Yes they do. Now let’s begin our coughing exercises. Hands in your laps, deep breath in…and cough. Deep breath in…”
Speaking of following orders enthusiastically, how’s it going with tboc? No, seriously. And I believe that X also has something on your honey-do list.
Ahh exosomes the lovely Trojans of the mRNA delivery system for ( questionably) safe and apparently very effective , (thymus academy shrinking and bone library impeding immuno suppression) therapy…it’s interesting they may be being rebranded as the latest too good to be true… because in a desperate world..rebreathing your own might be a great way to get very,,,challenged.. oh people like a good challenge…alternatively, you could just do the shortcut method..ware something over your respiratory systems exit nodes.. now sneeze and sneeze and sneeze ..sorry, sorry apologies to all ofw’s ..I’m still getting it out of my system
Well, with the classified tumor exosomes vaxx bioweapon, it’s a situation of the yin and the yang, and getting too much of a good thing.
Signaling exosomes production by organisms is always adaptive/healing. But when the Hand’s scientific cohort cultures and concentrates otherwise beneficial tumor exosomes into a tumor exosomes bomb that may overwhelm the homeostasis of the body’s horizontal genetic transfer signaling system — and combine them with the perfect carcinogenic catalyst in the LNPs — the light of love can turn into the darkness of destruction depending on the vaxxed person’s constitution in combination with the what exact level of bombing they received as a result of the intentionally variable quality control of the mass production process due to the fact that the active ingredient obviously isn’t going to be evenly distributed in the saline solution during the decanting process because of physics.
The recent excitement over using specific exosomes to treat cancer is justified from the materialistic perspective of using particular classes of exosomes whose biological functions are to reduce/resolve tumors in various ways, right? The cancer researchers see that exosomal negative feedback loops are built into cancer biology, so like clever monkeys they jump on the opportunity to culture those loops and amplify them so that the cancer shrinks. And they presumably see that as the most enlightened, cutting edge way to go about it whereas I believe that it’s a bad idea rife with unintended consequences due to the establishment’s Orwellian misunderstanding of what cancer is and what its beneficial function is.
Targeted radiation is a far better option than exosomal cancer therapy because we can know from physics that at the same time that the tumor cells are being killed, the ionizing radiation will also break down the dangerously oxygen-reactive, industrial fat-soluble carcinogens overflows that the tumors are helpfully sequestering and stabilizing in the body. The radiation both kills the tumors and detoxifies the carcinogens, and that detoxification relieves the body of the job of having to do that, and that’s a great thing because cancer arises in the first place because the body has gotten to the point where it hasn’t been able to clean (detox) itself properly for a long time.
The reason that immune cells produce both tumor reducing signaling exosomes (genetic messages) as well as tumor reducing bioactive molecules (non-signaling exosomes) is for what the establishment stoopidly calls spontaneous remission, which is one of the few dysphemisms (opposite of euphemism) you’ll ever come across in mainstream culture. They don’t like natural healing — which is what it actually is — so they use a neutral term that connotes randomness. It’s a legacy of Darwinian randomness: anything truly good and free and intelligent must be a random accident that doesn’t require understanding because understanding it might threaten the function of the Establishment. They even know that immune cells communicate directly with tumor cells via signaling exosomes, and vice versa, but they never question why because they regard the tumor cell and the immune cells as mortal enemies.
Natural production of enough tumor reducing exosomes by such that the periphery of the tumor starts to shrink obviously doesn’t happen in a vacuum because biology is a complex system, so the Establishment’s injecting concentrates of these things is foolish because tumor shrinkage is a trailing indicator of the tumor detoxification that drives ‘spontaneous remission’ (healing). Tumors exist to store and stabilize deadly overflows of (mostly) industrial chemicals and so obviously their resolution is dependent on the body’s ability to improve its condition enough to be able to deal with everything it has going on in daily life PLUS have enough nutrients and energy to start working on detoxing these carcinogenic overflows so that the tumors can shrink. And the body does that by communicating to the tumors peripheral cells (the front lines), with negative feedback loop signaling exosomes, that it’s ready to tackle some of that shit, and so those peripheral cells release apoptotic exosomes just like what normal cells do when the circumstances warrant a controlled cell death, and the fat-soluble carcinogens are released for detoxification by the powerful monooxygenases complex including the legendary cytochrome p450s that are powerful enough to strip electrons from those gnarly molecules just like the ionizing radiation therapy does, and such that they get broken down into much milder water-soluble toxins that can then safely re-enter the water-based bloodstream and get sent to the kidneys and liver for final detoxification and excretion.
But with the exosomal cancer therapy, the body’s detoxification process is certainly not going on at a level that justifies the concentrated injection of immune cell signaling exosomes that are instructing peripheral tumor cells to die and release their carcinogens in the process. If the body can’t deal with those released carcinogens then the tumorigenesis process presumably starts all over again in order to do again what it was already doing until the injection came along. And that tumorigenesis would happen elsewhere from the main tumor site and wouldn’t be detectable on visual scans. Anyway, this new approach is still in trials. Certainly it can’t see the forest for the trees
I left out “immune cells” in the first sentence of paragraph 6 which made it unreadable:
“Natural production of enough tumor reducing exosomes by immune cells such that the periphery of the tumor starts to shrink”
Reante> thanks for these explanatory posts – they are getting more refined each round. May I ask you how you categorize severity of carcinogens for yourself in practical terms? Yes, each part of the world uses slightly diff. chemicals and procedures. Lets say lentils or rice as crops are sprayed and fertilized quite differently say between US, CAN, FR, RU, .. each producer then having diff. profile of ~toxins in it..
Some put most of the priority on industrial meat though as the key vehicle of toxin transport, but some say it’s %%more in the veggies..
Hence logically, the low hanging fruit-effort is in curbing down the intake of industrial meat and then turning to regen ag / ” bio ” local producers for veggies or most optimally doing this part on your own to the extent as much possible.
Another vector could be water, in urban setting the basic precaution being let the drinking water stay for a while to release some of the chem. from treatment plants, perhaps using filters. And in rural setting, freq. testing the well for possible inrush of bio elements or heavier metals etc.
And obviously various tidbits for ( me ) as grain either, avoiding these white grain edged-crumbs even on ” artisan ” baked bread, also no-no to industrial white toast bread etc. Selecting for good %%chunk of whole / darker grain varieties instead etc.
Also, if you have to take medicine, the best approach if possible to dial it down to single specific element – as ” multivitamins ” package is a joke.
Perhaps the worst vector is the air pollution as there pre-cautions applied are the most difficult.. hence mostly pursuing lot of anti-oxidant diet regularly as an ongoing 24/365 shield.
Thanks Jr for always taking an interest. Honestly I don’t think much about my pollution exposure. Dust is my main concern. Dust exposure is very bad during hay season because of the walk-behind set-up. My.mucosal elevator is operating in overdrive the whole hay season and for a couple months following. It’s just tailing off now.
Regarding pollution, I’m just able to come at it from a position of strength. Homesteading and supplementing with purchasing organic eliminates most of it, and consistently running the structural nutrient surpluses of a nutrient dense diet centered around raw milk and bone broth and stew meat and raw meat and organ meat and non-starchy root veg and greens. Add all that to plenty of exercise and sunshine and the body should be cranking out plenty of nutrient-intensive monooxygenases and peroxides as necessary, the latter which clean our bodies by chemically airing-out our bodies, as the aerobic organisms that we are.
The inflammation — the aches and the pains, and sluggishness and lack of mental clarity — is the feedback loop that lets us know when we need to step up our game and take better responsibility for our lives.
Reante> on the dust throughout entire haying season ( not only weather forced assuming ) – so you are set towards the more ~dry soil country-regional edge, right ?
In terms of starchy veg, I did settle onto a compromise eating a bit of spuds ( insurance ) during harsh(-er) winter season only, into say goulash soups or baked in layers w. other veg etc.
While, you are entirely right the ~non starchy veggies are surely a bit more work, yet whole lot more health, taste and fun in the end !
Quick overview of %%starch content in various foods, basically Top20 List from 75% to 25% starch content per weight in them ( ooh tortillas are slightly weeping ):
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/high-starch-foods
PS you can scroll through the article even w.out accepting the web-cookies, at least on my machine..
Sorry Jr that my reply was a bit self-centered and didn’t address your question about chemical toxin sources. My understanding is like you say, that you guys in Europe have it a lot better than we do. Here they strategically finish wheat with roundup in order to dry it out and harvest it before the next rain comes lol. And more generally with soul applications that stuff does migrate up into the plant. The animal side seems like it’s more complex. Animal fats are for storing both nutrients and toxins, but the storing of toxins in conventional livestock farming also depends on the situation. Factory pork and chicken seems like they would be the worst choice. All Grain fed and sedentary. Grain finished feedlot beef after that. Goats and sheep are usually always grass fed and lean besides, and pastures and hayfields are never blanket sprayed (unless they’re first year plantings) because that’s to expensive. They just get spot sprayed with an ATV.
Yeah it’s dry country by late spring here these days. Moreso than it used to be. Since the hay implements a front-mounted, I’m walking into my work so that means pollen clouds and dust clouds from mowing over gopher and mole mounds. Rock dust too gets kicked up because my main hayfield is surrounded by gravel road on two sides and the dust from it settles on grass, the plus side of which is it grows better because of it. Plenty of exhaust from the engine too. Pay to play system.
Oh yeah we grow plenty of potatoes too. Nothing wrong with that if we’re in good running order; starchy root veg concentrates way better for you than grain concentrates. Potatoes are great because you always get a ton of volunteers the next year so long as you make sure they stay warm enough in the winter. Gift that keeps on giving.
Reante, thanks for taking the time for filling further details.
In terms of sedentary-stationary dairy cattle, my ” strategy ” has been to call out few (semi-)major establishment’s which at %%probability operate in the high country and also sat maps showing at least some sort of sporadic pasturing nearby in order to confirm my assumption, about not buying from strictly low land – valleys operator – major brands, which often pursue to worst practices.
So, they sort of confirmed their milk operation is sourcing from suppliers all-around from various ~highland milk producers and at least some portion is indeed pastured x mechanized derived. Perhaps a compromise, but one which I can afford, as ” bio grade / animal well-fare stamped ” dairy is truly luxury priced item.
For some reason even since childhood, I always felt dizzy / over-blown w. summer months potatoes dish intake. Simply felt as too heavy diet for that part of year ( and there were ~cool summers w. lot of energy to blow out back then ). Hence the fall-winter consumption restricted window from now only, somehow initially based just on a strange call-feeling, but it worked in the end.
Don’t know – this urge – it’s perhaps the calling of the nature – specific micro nutrient needs per given personal tuned gut system – similarly I have to gorge on tons of spinach ( frozen ) in early spring time or that cash ( previous season’s ) nuts in the beginning of summer when they after post harvest ripening turn into yet another phase anyway conveniently starting to degrade down rapidly in quality..
On veggie/fruit detox:
Decades ago, gf working in a state lab confirmed to me that especially table grapes ( import from ClubMed / ME / S America ) have the highest concentrations of toxicity deposited on their ” poles ” – look at grape spheres as globe and chop slightly on both opposite ends..
–
The full mont(h)y approach:
Not pursuing that ( bordering on crazy ), but general recommendation is to bath everything ( fruits and veggies ) ~10-15min in water mixed 5-6% Vinegar solution, then rinse w. water, the ~basic white/lite color sort of vinegar is good enough.. although there are some more detox potent sub-variants..
Plus especially apricots, peaches and nectarines should be de-pealed first and then de-tox bathed or at least not eaten w.out prior de-pealing [ at all ! ]..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinegar
Speaking of following orders enthusiastically, how’s it going with tboc? No, seriously.
Seriously, I try my best never get involved in other people’s disputes or vendettas. I am far too old for that kind of thing.
How I rationalize my cowardice is I tell myself that If people want to act like wankers or worse, they will eventually cop a visit from Kama or Nemesis or the Old Bill, or possibly the Spanish Inquisition.
Look how it’s working out for Nicola Sturgeon.
Sorry Tim that was as unserious “no, weseriously,” which is an unfair deadpanning to do in writing. But what about X’s honey-do item? No, seriously.
You know tboc’s already here lurking anyway. Need to quit that lurking.
Raul will always be a wanker to me because he ran off the living legend, El Gallinazo, from TAE when the commentariat was in its prime and El G (LG) was blazing trails and making discoveries and thinking at the highest level. The elephant in the room at TAE was always the awareness that the blog was great in spite of Raul’s weak abilities. Raul got envious of LG’s electric, magnetic journey into a systems theory inclusive of conspiracy. TAE wasn’t place of conspiracy theories and LG wasn’t one either, until he started putting it all together, which is the way it should be. Coming to it yourself. Raul was a square and he was insecure. Nicole didn’t give a shit even though she was a square too. As I recall Raul started censoring some of LG’s posts and LG did what any real man would do which is leave. And that was the beginning of the end of TAE, and the capper on the whole affair was how years later Raul turned into the Hand’s bitch by becoming a card carrying limp noodle controlled opposition conspiracy theorist.
And his writing, Tim. Raul’s. Have you ever seen worse writing than that man’s? It’s got nothing to do with the language barrier either.
Let’s move on lol.
Thanks for letting us know where you are coming from on Raul. It is understandable given the way he treated you that you are not a fan.
I read TAE as it’s a good aggregator of articles I might otherwise not get to read. You wouldn’t want me to have to rely on Matt Drudge for my news fix, now would you? 😉
And some of the comments at TAE are informative. I don’t comment there myself. I prefer to remain a spectator.
It is quite possible that someone is paying Raul to slant his coverage in certain ways. I have no idea about that. I hear that some influencers and podcasters can make millions , but I very much doubt he’s in that league.
Re. deadpanning; I never thought Ricky Gervais in The Office was funny. I could never quite get his brand of humor, which included a lot of deadpan sarcasm. It could be because I’d been out of the country for too many years by the time I saw that show.
In a similar vein, I had an American friend who loved British comedy, but when I showed him an episode of Till Death Us Do Part in the 1990s, he said it was not funny at all, but offensive and obnoxious–which was my reaction to the Office.
Let’s move on, by all means.
Thanks Tim. I certainly wasn’t suggesting that Raul is on the take. That would be slanderous. Just as often as not when I call someone controlled opposition it just means that their wholesale regurgitation of manufactured consent politics makes them mind controlled in service of Problem Reaction Solution.
He destroyed TAE because he couldn’t handle true dissidence and then when the Biden era clownshow psyop came along he bought it hook line and sinker and became a zombie conspiracy theorist. It was the worst selfish crash and burn in peak oil community history. I assume at least partly it’s because he was always hustling for donations first and foremost.
Ironically enough, the other year me and John Day bumped into LG on substack and John lobbied for LG to go back to TAE because Raul’s a conspiracy theorist now and I was like, John, WTF?! You can’t be serious.
As I’ve grown older I’ve learned that people are happy with their accomplishments. If I have judgement about those I keep it to myself. Otherwise I end up in conflict that really isn’t important to me. After all my judgement is only opinion. The sole exception is when feedback is solicited. Then I strictly follow the principle of genuine and honest focusing on the positive.Positive reinforcement is very important especially for teachers.
I studied this quite a bit. Read books of Olympic champions. Of pro sports superstars. They all emphasize the positive. It’s how you create excellence.
This was hard for me as a technician. Techs are always looking for problems. Analyzing trying to prevent failures prior to when they occur. Six sigma statistical process control. Unfortunately it took me most of my life to realize the truth that accenting the negative does not work to create excellence.
The most destructive practice is fake positive reinforcement. Humans are very good at detecting dishonesty in this matter. Positive reinforcement has to be genuine and come from the heart. That meant I had to temper my tendency and love of critical analysis if I wanted to create excellence in myself and help others. The reality is that critical feedback is only helpful if much more genuine positive feedback is present. This can be very difficult if you have judgements that are overall negative about a individual. But if you have agreed to serve in a role to create growth and excellence you must put those judgement s aside. If you can do this genuinely it has a tremendous side benefit. You learn how to accent the positive in your own desires for growth and excellence.
Whenever a attempt at genuine positive reinforcement is witnessed it must be given credit for that even if we judge it to be inappropriate. It doesn’t matter what we think. What’s important is it’s genuine to them.
It’s very hard for me. I have a very strong core that loves to judge. That wants to say that’s the stupidest thing I have ever heard. Since I believe people are responsible for their actions I have to address that core. It has to be genuine. Suppressing is counterproductive. Indulging is not however the solution to suppressing. What I have found to be useful is the understanding you become what you practice.
Appreciate it dog but my enthusiasm for your intermittent god mode isn’t fake positive reinforcement. It’s genuine enthusiasm. If it seems overblown to you to the point of fakeness or condescension it might only be because you aren’t comfortable with direct conflict and so you much prefer polite society indirect nonviolent communication of the Buddhist influence that became so popular in the 21st century to the point of becoming a cultural dogma. I get that it’s graceful and whatever but consider that I’m a Holden Caulfield soul and that nonviolent communication might just have its own phony dogma that seeks to suppress all valid negative judgement. “Don’t judge me” being the ultimate 21st-century cop-out mastered by teenage girls and adults alike.
Now I’m not saying that’s you, I’m just framing the cultural subjectivism that enables a pervasive cultural lack of personal accountability. It’s all emotional personality and no character.
If my positive reinforcement of your intermittent greatness seems fake and overblown and manipulative, maybe it’s because you don’t let yourself directly engage with me on the ideas and so I’m trying to make up for that anyway I can. I ask you challenging questions and you don’t answer. You don’t have to answer of course, but it does mean that you’re not up for the challenge.
Positive reinforcement isn’t enough dog. That’s the definition of polarization. It’s like wanting to live in a world in which touching the burner doesn’t hurt.
This is a Flintstone cartoon. It was closer to my childhood.
Televisions had black and white screens back then.
Lol. Fritz the cat cartoon liked Winston too. 😊
To maintain civilization, a totalitarian society with no freedom whatsoever allowed , which will make Ayn Rand’s societies look like bastions of debauchery, is inevitable.
I do not see any other way.
The days where the poor could drive muscular trucks will end with a bang
Good morning sunshine.
Being poor is hard enough.
Having you looking down on them just because they are poor must be intolerable.
In my revised version of Animal Farm, the commies will be lead by a tough old bird named Joe Starling, and the fascists will be lead by a puffed-up rodent called Mouse Olini. When Joe asks Mouse why he loves pasta so much, Mouse replies “Because I’m a Total Italian!”
Tell me you didn’t just make that up.
I’ve had Joe Starling in mind for some years now. And the Farm’s Minister of Propaganda will be another rodent named Joseph Gerbils.
But Mouse Olini and the pasta joke just came to me in a fit of inspiration after reading Kulm’s comment.
They obviously want to impoverish everyone in America via the healthcare cartels by allowing to charge outrageous prices.
Then they can frame it like it’s YOUR fault for not being healthy or able to afford it.
And if we got universal healthcare it would likely be even worse. They would make you wait five years for a surgery and tell you to call # or talk to an AI agent.
actually that is quite smart
It is like killing everyone who cannot afford the health cost without firing a shot
I have not seen a dr in the last 10 years , No need to so I do not feel anything about those who failed to maintain themselves.
Yes, and much easier than just taking everyone’s wealth.
And you never know Kulm. You could be in car accident, slip on the ice, cut yourself with tablesaw, etc.
You may have lower chances then most but doesn’t mean you’re not immune to danger.
It’s been that way for a long time and part of it is true. Why should we have to subsidize everyone unhealthy habits.? I work with people that don’t exercise and make fun of me for eating healthy; yet they have bad teeth and need all kinds of surgeries.
Gee and I thought America was just tariffing their allies and destroying the world energy supply (SoH via open war and a Russian oil via zerolinskey) to drive up the prices for their own candy floss oil ,..so they could be grateful again, I mean grate cheese..once more, I mean be grate again. Silly me of-course sorry everyone I just took some Vicks formula 44 , but realised later tge bottle was labelled ‘truth serum’
“This is the first of two essays. It deals with the reasons why civil war is likely to dominate the military and strategic affairs of the West in the coming years, contrary to the typical expectations of the future war literature, and generally the strategic logic which shall underpin such wars. “?
https://www.militarystrategymagazine.com/article/civil-war-comes-to-the-west/
This was written by someone who understands how civil wars arose in the past, but doesn’t understand the energy problem giving rise to the general trend toward more conflict. I would say that rural areas will need a higher share of the output of the economy; they will be reluctant to give as much support to the cities as they have in the past. The conflict will tend to be urban/rural.
One summary section:
. . . it can be said that a generation ago all Western countries could still be described as to a large degree cohesive nations, each with a greater or lesser sense of common identity and heritage. By contrast, all now are incohesive political entities, jigsaw puzzles of competing identity-based tribes, living in large part in virtually segregated ‘communities’ competing over diminishing societal resources increasingly obviously and violently. Moreover, their economies are mired in a structural malaise leading, inevitably in the view of several knowledgeable observers to systemic collapse.
Another summary section:
we may observe that the civil wars for which the West is in store will be demarcated along ethnic lines, which on account of the relative distribution of population groups strongly suggests that they will have a distinctive rural vs. urban character. Its strategic logic will be to cause the destruction of metropolitan centres through infrastructural attacks with a view to causing cascading systemic failure leading to uncontrollable civil disorder generating further rapid decline. The tactics employed are plausible on account of the tenuous stability of modern cities at the best of times, a fact observed by reputable scholars that incipient revolutionaries have simply recognised.
In the conclusion section:
it is not simply that the conditions are present in the West; it is, rather, that the conditions are nearing the ideal. The relative wealth, social stability and related lack of demographic factionalism, plus the perception of the ability of normal politics to solve problems that once made the West seem immune to civil war are now no longer valid. In fact, in each of these categories the direction of pull is towards civil conflict. Increasingly, people perceive this to be the case and their levels of confidence in government would seem to be declining even more in the face of the apparent unwillingness or inability of leaders to confront the situation honestly.
It’s called Rabbit starvation , the west will start eating itself to exist, either no soft extrinsic targets/ resources or beneficial trade thus internal exploitation of internal resources including human, welfare and pension systems will cease, therefore the civil unrest/ upheaval , the system will no longer function, the world won’t make sense.. it doesn’t now anyway, so perhaps it’s already happening we’re having the first symptoms
“24:06 because the United States is no longer in a position today given the changes in technology, changes in economics,
24:13 changes in the global supply chains, changes everywhere on this planet to
24:21 show up at a moment’s notice and provide anybody with protection.”?
There’s no panic in Israel.
Oil prices go up and more money goes into Israel owned banks.
News ratings go up and more money goes into Israel owned media.
Quite early this morning had for a breakfast 1/2 L of ice-cream + fresh forest fruits. Now, suddenly I caught myself w. the wide imbecilic grin on my face not dissimilar to ” conqueror of the world ” as the various bln. fund managers often use to sport in public when realizing they as single individual are at this very moment truly separat-ed/-ing themselves from another 100k – 1M ordinary public just next to them out there..
In summary, such [ uber-hedonistic ] pleasures ( of ~same intensity ) clearly can be had for just a few silly EURos as well as dozens/hundreds of bln. of money. That’s the true paradox and heavenly curse of this human-oid species of ours in our times.
A strange time indeed: we know the foundations are crumbling, but can still enjoy every luxury, even if not at all rich by Western standards – and it’s all the sweeter for knowing the dire times ahead.
Did I say strange? Surreal might be more apt.
In his novels, Evelyn Waugh often shows his characters looking back with intense nostalgia to their privileged pre-war days, above all the exquisite food. Find a suitable clip from ‘Brideshead’, please Tim…..
He didn’t write about common soldiers, of course, (cue Kulm!) and one doubts they looked back to the tripe and onions and weak tea of their civilian days in the 1930s with any longing – in fact, army rations were a big step up for many of them!
Yes, there are several ( quality ) nostalgia exposures into these upper classes or shall we say caste.
What is always fascinating in these depictions ( especially the latter one ), the excess of supporting work-force on these estates: gardeners, chauffeurs, servants, ..
They are always very busy in the background plane at the real job – assignment as the key story protagonists move to the center stage pursuing their ~frivolous activities.
Apart from yours mentioned Brideshead Revisited (1981) by Waugh / ~ G. Green / .. et. al.
There is for example also Les liaisons dangereuses ( early 2000 ), while this takes place say ~15yrs later, tail-end of 1950s instead. Obviously there are many more adaptations of this old Valmont plot, set into various time-epochs, each focusing on different aspects.
__
Brideshead Revisited:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083390/
Les liaisons dangereuses
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0317875/
Sorry, I couldn’t find any suitable excerpts on YouTube, but I can present the next best thing; Mira Zhao, an inveterate bookworm, shares some of her thoughts on the novel, and particularly how Catholicism reeled in the main characters after their respective lapses from the religion and periods of hedonism and debauchery.
Even the main protagonist, Charles, a lifelong agnostic, ends up embracing the one true faith and finding amazing grace.
If you can overlook her sometimes difficult to make out pronunciation, this is quite enlightening and makes me want to read the novel.
Waugh himself converted to Catholicism in his late 20s after getting divorced. He was a traditionalist who was much aggrieved at the changes that were being introduced following the Second Vatican Council, and quite grumpy about it at times. he died on the toilet after coming home from attending a Latin mass on Easter morning in 1966.
He was only 62 years old, and officially, he died of a massive heart attack. But this was far from unusual in those days when coronary heart disease was the single biggest killer of men in the UK.
Good idea. Ice cream for breakfast everyday until collapse. Except id weigh. 500 lb as long as I have been expecting it. So I will continue my health focus on food consumption. Kefir is my guilty compromise and often my sole reason to travel to town whether I admit it to myself or not.
The context of the whole post ( and situation ) was exceptional(-ity), I don’t eat like that daily, lol.
Besides, you can’t get fat from few gallons of ice-cream per year anywayz, perhaps unless meant as some GMO US wonder, hah.
PS kefir – yes [ sour ] for the win !
About two years ago I got a propane stove with a oven.
That enabled….
Pizza for breakfast!
Unintended consequences resulted.
Return to rice and kale fixed things.
The trick w. pizza is to make it at home so exceptionally good-tasty, that it’s like Christmas or other big festivities special only, thus prepared few times per year ( main evening dish ! ) as to preserve that unique-special moment, plus in my case I have to wait for some specific ClubMed sourced veg species only avail. few months per year, so I’m motivated ( mind-games perseverance ) not to spoil it w. pseudo-substitution or using frozen parts instead etc.
Furthermore, not sure about your local winter temps, but propane stove is chiefly #1 great for simple fruit~cake baking as well.. In northern hemi – people bake almost nonstop say late Oct to Feb.. that’s how you deal with the previous season crop of small bush-berries or excess compote material.
PS when using sane ingredients input-setup then pizzas are not such toll on organisms as perhaps claimed anyway.. in fact they heal your body&soul ( guaranteed ), certainly way healthier say vs. pounds of grounded beef or sausages and what have you.. ( considered normal diet by some freaks ) ..
These days I ignore all these ‘former CIA/ Marines’, etc, pundits.
All after views and Patreon subscribers, some with political ambitions like MacGregor, and so on.
I put the in the same bin as Pablo Escobar, the Chinese ‘Professor’ and their ilk. And the ‘former NASA experts’ alien reveal gang…….
Jiang is a teacher, not professor
And he stole this guy’s ideas
I know, but he usually gets billed as a ‘professor’.
At least he passed complexity theory 101 unlike yourself kulm who thinks that the Elites can parlay energy collapse into another totalitarian layer of complexity. You’re still swimming in the kiddie pool with nothing to offer.
I have been thinking like you, Reante, on this issue, but I will have to admit that China has been able to be very controlling with its people. The WEF would like to do as much, and more.
Thanks for not telling me to tone it down.
Sure, the plandemic was super controlling in China. I imagine the fear of the submicroscopic terrorists without boxcutters that according to the Chinese government came from Ft. Detrick went a fair ways towards the normally self-masking Chinese people controlling themselves. But that was still during BAU and really all it was was the inhibition of freedom of movement, and that will be the same with the rationing. The WEF needs a fourth industrial revolution for its totalitarianism which obviously isn’t in the cards which means that the Great Reset was just a misdirection play by the Hand in service of a herded reaction towards cheap libertarian bare bones government.
This is Prof. Jeffrey Sachs view of the situation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XU5dFZvuHCg
The title on this video is totally misleading. Sachs doesn’t talk about the cities of Israel exploding, except to say that there are now protests against Netanyahu. In fact, quite a lot of them are concerned about Israel not doing enough to win the war against Iran. They feel that someone should be more for expanding the war than Netanyahu.
He says that most of Israel is very much pro-war. Even the young people.
He says that Israel has normalized genocide, in its actions against Gaza. Its focus now is on creating a “Greater Israel,” which includes much of the Middle East.
“quite a lot of them are concerned about Israel not doing enough to win the war against Iran. They feel that someone should be more for expanding the war than Netanyahu. He says that most of Israel is very much pro-war. Even the young people.”
That is not surprising. It is normal behaviour in war time. The population feels threatened and rallies to its government. When they read of or hear of or experience their fellow countrymen getting injured or killed, they become bloodthirsty and seek vengeance. They grow to despise the enemy and regard them as subhuman, as animals unworthy of being treated with human dignity. They believe that the harder they hit the enemy, the quicker the war – and their own nation’s suffering – will end. Moral restraints are dropped, and escalation follows. The population may have been initially reluctant about their leaders starting the war, but once in the war, it becomes a paramount matter of survival.
Furthermore, many Israelis have long suffered from siege mentality. They are surrounded by Arabs, whose land they stole within living memory, so they are always on their guard and become paranoid and always feel at risk. That is why they have no compunction in lashing out at those they regard as their enemies.
Hermann Goering said that dragging people into war is easy. Leaders only need to tell citizens that they are being attacked, and then attack anyone who wants peace for not being patriotic. It works every time.
I am afraid you are right:
“Leaders only need to tell citizens that they are being attacked, and then attack anyone who wants peace for not being patriotic. It works every time.”
Spot on… its unbelievable how easy it is to control human populations. I was convinced on this after reading two books – 1) “Self-Deception, False Beliefs and the Origins of the Human Mind” by Ajit Varki & Danny Brower 2) The “Worm at the Core” by S. Solomon, J. Greenberg and T. Pyszczynski
Hidden famine
Japan Imports 60% Of Its Food: Why A Weak Yen Is Triggering A Crisis | Insight
https://youtu.be/6FHxKdzAkWs?si=zkbT8KbJBdx4WPhN
The movie talks about how most of the food items that Japan eats are imported from other countries. For example, Japan only produces 7% of the soybeans it eats, even though the Japanese eat more soybeans, often as natto, than any other country. Japan prefers small soybeans for making natto.
In terms of calories, it says that 60% of calories are imported. With higher costs of importing food and a falling yen, costs for consumers are increasing rapidly.
With a falling yen, the only good thing is that Japan’s exports become more attractive to other countries.
Yes, lot of depopulated agricultural villages in JAP.
Some people from W. already answered that challenging opportunity and moved there, it would be next to impossible to get such acreage say in BC ( for that ~little* money and unsaturated market – clientele ). If you are young-ish and compatible with climate & culture – I’d seriously explore that opportunity..
__
* from local JAP perspective 2nd /3rd rate properties, as they usually consider prime land in the valleys only
Soybeans take a buttload of energy to cook.
Japans currency/ bond crisis is not going away
All paths lead to lower standard of living Japan just got a head start
Yes, JAP is taking it hard in terms of falling quickly from grace, basically CHN, Korea took large/most of their former industrial biz decades ago. Plus the Malaysia, India, Philippines factor etc.
Again, it’s about the over-all structure “on offer” – you can’t get ~un-spoiled RE anywhere near coastal areas in Europe or US, similarly to some extent in mountains. It’s usually spoiled by atrocious uglistic-turistic infrastructure or posh private estates there or the weather is un-cooperating.
Some of the infrastructure in JAP like grid, HV lines and roads will last few decades extra, at least in ~ SW areas not so prone to earthquakes.
JAP ( countryside ) is great place to move to. If say fresh grapefruits and other orchards apart from veg plots is your thing. The prevailing sandy soilz could be amended/upgraded ~quickly by the ” new methods ” etc.
James Clavell’s Shogun re-lived NOT – yet still better than other outcast type of scenarios dropping on your shoulders ( and head ) in other parts of the world though.
My friend Pete insists that Trump is withdrawing to the western hemisphere and leaving the rest of the world to fend for itself. An idea I love but is there any news to back this up?
Larry Johnson keeps saying flights have been moving stuff away from the Iranian war theatre, but it doesn’t seem to be backed up by operations. I wonder whether it’s disinformation (“one never leaves the CIA”).
And that is the problem. People like Johnson, who has sucked on the government teat his entire career, have now moved onto a fresh teat by promoting himself as an “expert” in geopolitical-military affairs as he basks in his Hawaiian shirts and with a cigar in his face, making the rounds on all the talk talk shows. The reality is, all these “content providers” want the chaos to continue because they make money reporting it. The internet is no longer about information. It is a platform for opportunists and snake oil salesmen.
I wish that that were the case. I found this article today:
https://www.military.com/as-us-strikes-bridges-in-iran-it-targets-a-water-desalination-plant-in-kuwait
As US Strikes Bridges in Iran, It Targets a Water Desalination Plant in Kuwait
The interim ceasefire agreed to last month has collapsed, and the region has endured days of back-and-forth attacks by the U.S. and Iran.
The goal must be to reduce population. If there are workers from foreign countries, perhaps they will go home.
look at the all price it is skyrocketing that is the goal if the oil price stays High then people can be encouraged to invest in electric cars.it is all about making the transition work.for all we know this could all be fake.AI has the capability to fool everyone.
Iran strike damages Kuwait power, desalination plant: What to know
Kuwait, the world’s most water-stressed country, urged residents to reduce electricity and water use following the attack.
https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2026/07/iran-strike-damages-kuwait-power-desalination-plant-what-know
I’m just arguing that the Gulf countries are especially vulnerable in this chain of escalation, and they have basically no backup if their desalination plants are taken out.
Kuwait for instance only has 8 desalination plants. Just one of those plants produces 20% of drinking water.
Bahrain only has 5 desalination plants, one produces 75% of their drinking water!
The UAE has 90 desalination plants, but one supplies up to 50% of their drinking water.
Saudi Arabia has a single plant that produces 20% of their daily drinking water supply.
Qatar has one plant producing up to 40% of their daily drinking water.
Sorry I misplaced an Al Jazeera clip that Kuwait’s 50% water supply is offline .
If you ask any knowledgeable prepper how a novice should start preparations, he’ll say. “Start with water.” Do have a secure potable water supply? Not food, not guns, not gold, not even shelter. Water.
The precedent on water was set months ago and no need to guess which side done the deed. The below is from March.
“You cannot drink a sovereign wealth fund. You cannot eat a treasury holding. When the desalination plants go dark, when the pipes run dry, when thirty villages become three hundred, when Jubail becomes Qeshm—every single one of those financial constructs becomes meaningless.”
https://substack.com/@futurearly/p-190387308
Hitting desalination plants brings the level of the conflict way up. It invites retaliation. We started this practice back in March.
It seems that the Gulf countries are very unsustainable… These regions were nomadic in the past because of extreme water scarcity and lack of permanent rivers. For example the Bedouin were always moving across the desert with their livestock to find seasonal grazing lands and new underground wells.
I would agree with you. With rising oil extraction in the Middle East, the population has just exploded. Middle Eastern countries have built tourism industries and financial markets, so as to have something to sell besides oil. The Middle East tends to import a large share of their skilled workers. Governments tend to subsidize food and energy costs for local residents. This is all unsustainable.
Everywhere is unsustainable. The West is far more profligate/wasteful with its unsustainability in absolute terms. Let’s be careful not to assign structural validity to what the Hand is about to do to the ME populations in order to carry out its DA. It’s a pegmatic choice but it’s not because the ME is more unsustainable than anywhere else. Take the fossil fuels away and everywhere is essentially an agricultural desert relative to what exists now.
The Hand is not emptying out the ME because it’s unsustainable. It’s emptying out because the oil there is the best on the planet and so it needs to be ringfenced like it’s the crown jewels. How do you get the global population to accept that gargantuan ethnic cleansing or, perhaps, genocide? Largely by making them extremely relieved that the crown jewels weren’t destroyed like they thought was going to happen, and that means they still get to line up for sacks of food rations. Same psyop as the Ukraine deal: make the Europeans fear a Russian invasion so that when it’s just Ukraine that Russia takes, everyone be like Phew!
Have you considered the possibility that the oil in the Middle East could perhaps be saved for later, to allow some use later? We really do not know how much is left–it depends a whole lot on how much our extraction techniques are improved. Allowing the current extraction mechanisms to stay in place may not be the best idea for very old wells.
No I hadn’t considered that and probably because for me I fits into the category of a separate Elite city state or regional civilization fallback option for the Elites which I don’t feel is possible. I think that momentum is everything in an industrial civilization. In a human life, momentum counts for an awful lot but not everything; for an industrial civilization it’s everything.
There may not be much affordable oil left for Phase 2, even in the ME, but Phase 2 in my WAG view is only good for about 5 years tops anyway. Stablecoins got some heavy, heavy lifting to do.
I think that if any Elite-planned next civilization is in the works it would be based on a deep underground military base that resurfaces when the coast is clear, with its electricity baseload powered by the Hand’s Beam’s positron electron annihilation gammavoltaic technology platform, or perhaps mini-nuclear technology of one kind or another, like repurposing nuclear submarines’ small modular reactors or just having some already sitting on the shelf. But such a city state would be very small.
So I guess that kinda contradicts my position as recently stated to ks but I think it’s because I don’t consider such scenarios as having anything to do with this civilization. Those would be other, exclusive civilizations and so not relevant to us. That would be along the lines of Catherine Austin Fitts’ “breakaway civilization” term, though I think she actually uses that term to refer to the global Elites as having currently broken away from the interests of this civilization. And I’m sure there’s something to that but it’s not for us, and Collapse theory for me is the Collapse systems analysis that applies to us common folk.
Gail… you had a recent post about Spain separating itself from the US. If I were Spain I would probably do the same. It seems the US has lost the war with Iran and Iran will becoming the new regional power in the Middle East. And I think Spain wants to ensure it can break-away and start relations with Iran particularly for energy. One of the reasons why Hezbollah is an important proxy for Iran is to ensure access to the Mediterranean. Spain has also stood with the Palestinian cause and against the Gazan genocide. I believe this is the case with the Italians as well?
Reante… I appreciate your comments… I’ve learned a lot from you. When it comes to Elite plans, its hard for me to go there…. I can only think step by step… Gail really helped me understand the concept of losing complexity as we run out of cheap energy… and the reason they have become so powerful is because of complexity and lots of cheap energy… so as we lose complexity, most will lose power and will likely kill each other off. New elites will form but based on a world of less complexity.
Thanks ks, I understand, and thanks for not taking any of it personally. Ultimately we’re all just vehicles for the ideas, and my ideas are at constant war with the dominant culture’s ideas because I see that the dominant culture’s ideas are 99% the product of manufactured consent. It’s to the point at which, if we’re not organically coming up with the ideas ourselves, they’re false, and demonstrably so. DIY is all we got left come Collapse so we better get started on it yesterday.
No problem Reante… I find your comments very interesting and enlightening…yes… right now I’m learning to compost…I’ve been such a city person… moving from S. Cal to Oregon has helped…
Reante… I tried to answer your question about nuclear winters but my reply failed… Nuclear winters bring coolness for at least 10 years… Also interesting your comment about Scahill… Always suspicious of him and Naomi Klein…
ks
Good for you on the composting. I was also a city person who moved to Portland.
very cool… Portland, OR… we’re neighbors
We left Ptown for greener pastures in 2011. I’m about an hour and a half away. Spent my 11 years there on Belmont between 28th and 39th.
That’s an interesting question edpell3….Could there be an additional war in the background between the globalists and nationalists (not just in the US but also in China and Russia)? Ultimately Iran wants all US military bases out of the region. The US only import 10% of its heavier crude from the Middle East. Most of it we import from Canada. It would seem that the US hegemony in the Middle East mostly serves the interest of the Globalist. I wonder if Trump has to “play along with these dangerous Globalist Elite forces” to get to his ultimate plan of retreating to regional power in the Americas? It’s my understanding this happened with figures in the dying Roman Empire who had to play along to help the empire transition…(Rome to Byzantium – New Rome – Constantinople).
Jeffrey Sachs (in a video I linked to elsewhere) makes the point that the leaders in both the Republican and Democratic Parties are very pro war and pro Israel. This is what propels the US toward war. It is the population of the US that is not very pro war. He would advocate for the US to get out of the Middle East conflict.
Yup hence the ping pong exchange. Since the vast majority of Americans want no wars in far away lands for abstract reasons any candidate with a chance of winning must appear to appose the same. The solution is to have separate wars that way one can be apposed publicly and supported covertly and the other supported overtly. And of course a politician lies. “No more wars”. A politician who lies. Shocking. In reality they must lie about EVERYTHING to get elected. Except their meme “gingivitis” issue.
IMO Hillary lost the 2016 election when she advocated the Syrian war financing to create “leverage” during the Debate. American people were displeased to see “moderates” who hold up severed heads called leverage. Hillary flipped when she should have flopped. Pre dementia Trump very much on top of his game made no such mistake. Yet about a decade later Hillary got her “leverage” and Trump welcomed the “moderate” into the white house. A Sunni moderate. Don’t want to get too Tiger Mann here.
Johnson and Nance are merely preparing for the flip flop where Iran becomes pretend unfortunate victim of the soon to be deposed Trump. After the spice flow ends of course. The moderate will go from overt to covert. No white house for a bit.
The theme all along is that the ABC agency’s authority to tell POTUS and Congress when to create overt or covert mayhem is necessary and moral and it is only a POTUS choice that is not moral. Hilarious because POTUS really have no choice. Just like there is no realistic choice for the voter to choose not creating endless war. Not even a extremely intelligent and lovely commy like Stein. Less than 1 percent of the vote. But now we will see a ping pong war commy get a landslide. Not a fan of communism (fake idea too) but I voted for Stein because I thought there was a remote chance she was not a war ping pong player. Like it matters. Lol.
Johnson and Nance are actors demonstrating the valorous nature of Tiger Mann fighting the forces of evil.
The ABCs are autonomous organisms looking after their own survival and using MPP to do so same as any ABC anywhere in the world at any point in history. The tools they wield are over the top in effectiveness and sophistication drawing on the work of prior visionaries and soon AI.
the big dog of god mode is… BACK!!!
that sunni moderate line is solid gold.
Realize that you are unwittingly amplifying the mainstreamed version of the QAnon psyop that manufactured consent for the MAGA victory.
As I said previously to you, you are mistaking globalists for multinationalists/transnationalists/internationalists. Globalists are supranationalists. They are what defeated all nationalisms, in order to create globalization, by privatizing their currencies into a unified, supranational global banking systems of central banks.
There are no structural nationalists in existence because there is no structural nationalism in existence with the exception of Iran and maybe a couple others. But even Iranian nationalism can be brought to heel because Iranian nationalism isn’t suicidal.
The only way that nationalisms can return is by supranationalism reverse engineering it out of itself, which is what the DA is all about in political terms.
https://www.ericpetersautos.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Trump-bibi-3.jpg
“marco orio
** GENERAL “ARMAGEDDON” IS BACK – AND THE NEW STRATEGY IS ALREADY WORKING** General Sergey Surovikin – the man they call “Armageddon” – has returned. And his strategy is already being implemented on the battlefield. No more grinding infantry assaults. No more costly frontal attacks. **Total destruction from the air, the ground, and the logistics chain.** —
**1/** What are we seeing in Ukraine right now? – **Massive use of FAB glide bombs** – 3-ton bombs devastating Ukrainian positions – **Relentless aviation strikes** – constant pressure from the air – **Systematic artillery bombardment** – pounding defensive lines day and night – **Targeted strikes on fuel depots and civilian gas stations** – paralizing Ukrainian logistics —
**2/** The strategy is brutally simple: **Cut the supply lines. Starve the army. Break the will to fight.** Ukraine cannot move troops. Cannot fuel vehicles. Cannot supply ammunition. Every gas station on the roads is a target. Every fuel depot is a target. Every logistics hub is a target. **They are being starved into submission.** —
**3/** This is classic Surovikin. He doesn’t waste soldiers on frontal assaults. He uses overwhelming firepower to systematically destroy everything the enemy needs to survive. – Syria: he destroyed infrastructure to break the opposition. – Ukraine 2023: he built the “Surovikin Line” that stopped the counteroffensive. – Ukraine 2026: he is destroying the country’s ability to fight. —
**4/** The results are already visible: – Ukrainian troops are running out of fuel. – Ammunition supplies are drying up. – Morale is collapsing. – Entire units are being isolated. **Surovikin is not fighting a war of attrition. He is fighting a war of annihilation.** —
**5/** His words were clear: *”I will no longer sacrifice Russian soldiers in a guerrilla war against hordes of fanatics armed by NATO. We have enough power and technical means to bring Ukraine to total capitulation.”* He is doing exactly that. —
**6/** The West pretends Ukraine can still win. But on the ground, the reality is different: – Odessa is paralyzed. – Lyman has fallen. – Kostiantynivka has fallen. – Kramatorsk is surrounded. – Logistics are being systematically destroyed. **The Ukrainian army is being suffocated.** — **7/** This is the new face of the war. Not a battle of maneuver. Not a battle of tactics. **A battle of logistics. A battle of supply. A battle of destruction.** And Surovikin is winning. — **FINAL VERDICT** Surovikin’s return has changed everything. The war is no longer about holding territory. It is about **destroying the enemy’s ability to fight**. Ukraine is being systematically dismantled – not just its military, but its logistics, its infrastructure, its will. **The West can send all the weapons it wants.** **But if there is no fuel to move them, no roads to transport them, no depots to store them – they are useless.** **Armageddon is here. And he is winning.**”?
https://x.com/Marcorio61O/status/2078030136272646258?s=20
Glad to see someone is doing their job well.
This is a sad situation.
I am afraid the reason why leaders get to this approach is because the world is badly overpopulated. Somehow, the population needs to be reduced. Even if in the past, there has been a tendency to bomb infrastructure that could be replaced, now the approach will lead to the loss of human life.
Classic modern warfare. If you have air superiority just bomb them back to the stone age. No fuel, no water, no roads, no building to live in, no food, no electric, no sewage removal, no communications, no ports, no airports, no heat, no light, no factories, no TV, no radio, no internet, no livestock.
Tokyo firebombing, Dresden firebombing, Kiev firebombing, …
We’ve been told that Russia is about to steamroller Ukraine for years now. Let’s see…….
Since our chief delusionist is here agThe delu
First of all, there is no reference whatsoever in the rich literature of old Egypt about some stranger who came from Palestine to become a minister.
So it is very unlikely that the 7 year famine took place at all.
Second, when the Septuagint was being compiled by Ptolemy II of Egypt, who only spoke Greek (the only ruler of Egypt from the Greek rule who spoke ancient Egyptian was Cleopatra), the Hebrew scholars assembled to write Genesis did NOT know that Potiphar was an eunuch, as well as the servants Joseph met in the prison.
So they wrote that Joseph was married and had 2 children , while most likely Joseph was castrated on the day he was arrested, probably by Potiphar herself , which is why Joseph was hanging around the eunuchs who took care of the Pharaoh’s bread and wine.
Joseph’s ‘wife’ married the eunuch Joseph for the same reason Potiphar’s ‘wife’ married , for political reason and power. Basically the whole story of Joseph was written by people who did not know anything about ancient Egypt, including Ptolemy II.
The delusionist might say ‘whatever’ a hundred times, but whatever he believes or not, that is the true story of Joseph.
The Oil Price “Mystery”
Why high oil prices are a mythical red dragon – and what to focus on instead
https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/the-oil-price-mystery?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1498475&post_id=207124393&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=216vfx&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
B says that the real issue is not the price of oil; it is the price of refined products. He think that the crack spread, and all of the costs besides oil, are what is driving up the price at the pump.
He also says
“. Thinking that demand could not possibly destroyed by $80 oil was probably right a year ago, but dangerously wrong in a world stripped of refining capacity and where multiple wars are being waged over energy. Basing economic, let alone military decisions on what to do next based on crude prices alone has thus become not only a bad idea, but an outright civilizational risk.”
I have been thinking this too. He put words to my thoughts. We are now seeing escalation in Iran and Ukraine almost to the tipping point. I am surprised that more people are not paying attention.
If $80 barrels wasn’t destroying demand a year ago then the price wouldn’t have been in the $50s.
There’s a reason I set the Hormooz ceiling at $125 which was basically bang on the money.
Even back in March they were moving to gravity bombs. These can also be retrofitted with JDAM if we didn’t give it all away. The focus moves to soft infrastructure but not oil infrastructure where AD is less dense. No more launching stand off munitions from outside of Iranian airspace. Risk to aircraft dramatically increases. Iran will move AD to where the aircraft are.
The pilot that was shot down reported it was a drone. This is the new approach. Loitering drones directed in two stages first thermal imaging then thermal targeting. It needs radar to know to get drones in the air. It doesn’t work if all the radar has been destroyed. This goes for the monarchs too using their Ukrainian anti shahed loitering drone AD.
The USA has a immense stockpile of gravity bombs. Enough to flatten Irans critical infrastructure many times over. Moving targeting to soft infrastructure was inevitable once precision munitions were depleted. Iran responds against the only targets they have the gulf monarchs. They hit all seven monarchs last night. Without nuclear weapons USA can not destroy this capability. They could suppress the missile cities with nuclear by burying the entrances so a significant amount of time would be needed to remove the dirt. A problem arises. Do they have enough space inside the missile cities to place all the dirt they must move from the inside? Additionally radiation levels may be too high for a significant amount of time to enable operators to remove the dirt for the missile cities further participation in the conflict.
This would avoid the world war 2 model of creating nuclear events in areas of civilian habitation and thus might have less hesitation for nuclear weapon deployment.
It appears the possibility exists the region is about to have its critical infrastructure destroyed. The alternative is nuclear weapons use on the missile cities entrances to save the monarchs critical infrastructure. This would allow destruction of Iranian infrastructure without the monarch infrastructure.
The humanitarian effects of loss of critical infrastructure in the region during the summer can not be overemphasized. It’s scale might well equal or exceed nuclear weapon deployment in areas of civilian habitation. I can not see how such a event would not radically increase the probability of world war and possibly a large thermonuclear exchange. Even if that does not occur IMO there is zero possibility that there would not be political financial and economic consequences of a enormous scale. It’s unthinkable but the indicators that is the path can not be denied.
Back in March I showed that the claims of gravity bombing looked false and I haven’t seen anything to suggest otherwise up to now. Is there any evidence, rather than claims, that this is the case. Lots of reports from Iran talk about missile strikes, mainly on civilians. I don’t doubt that they have put wings on their bombs, but are they really bombing from straight overhead?
Surprised no one has mentioned Al-Tanf. That was a very important place for the child murderers and their volunteers.
https://en.mehrnews.com/news/246266/IRGC-says-hit-US-command-center-in-Syria-s-Al-Tanf
You could be right. Every single aircraft including f35 does however have sophisticated capacity to deploy gravity bombs.
Trump thinks enough pain and Iran will capitulate.
Iran thinks USA is not crazy enough to destroy the world economy.
I’m thinking they are both wrong.
I think it is a matter of range. How far can gravity bombs can be dropped from? Even with the gliding kits developed by Russia (which I assume have been copied by all) the range is no more than 100 km.
I don’t think the glide bombs have been copied. That was a solution borne out of need. The question is one we don’t know. Can USA stealth aircraft technology roam the Iranian skys with reasonable risk? My guess is sort of. .Patches where risk is reasonable and patches where it is not. As we have seen Iran moves its AD where there are targets.
IMO if USA wants Irans infrastructure destroyed it will be destroyed. There may be aircraft losses. The main deterent is destruction of the monarchs infrastructure and the world economy. If that is not a deterrent there is no real deterrent. From my perspective the legacy and consequences of radical acts of destruction can not be escaped. I understand very well authority by nature excludes that perspective. I consider that exclusion a fundamental flaw.in MPP. Diplomacy is borne from survival behavior that is superior to MPP.
“My guess is sort of. .Patches where risk is reasonable and patches where it is not”
That, from what we have seen, looks were we where and I guess, still are.
I asked the question because unless there’s been a change, I feel the wheel going for another spin and the talking heads love spin. I also feel it will escalate, so I don’t really see the point of running the same script again.
The language in Iran has changed and that’s from both sides(deal, or fight), although lesser from the “deal” brigade and with western media now trying to put Minab to bed(lots of tut tutting, but ultimately human error. “Mistakes have been made, lessons will be learnt”, which sadly most will happily lap up, even though it’s an obvious lie), their time may be short and getting shorter with every hit on Iran.
We also have the squatters saying that they are just waiting for US approval, to bomb Iran and receive yet another kicking in return. They should consider their hideously precarious position first. They have a couple of large population areas, a couple of power plants, a couple of water desalination plants, a couple of refineries, a couple of ports and so on, which means that they are only ever a couple of well placed attacks away from havoc. Might be a busy weekend.
then gravity bombs are not in use.
Time for B52s and fire bombs. Destruction of monarchs will allow us to practice post oil world.
I can find no documented use of gravity bombs in Iran during this war. You are correct that glide bombs have been copied. Both USA and Iran. Extensively by Iran.
You’ve again flip flopped back to armchair quarterbacking the situation controlled opposition style, as if peak oil dynamics don’t exist and all parties aren’t well aware of them.
In that light it is fascinating how CHN pushed RU with their back against the proverbial wall.
Rumors have it these long term energy dealz are worth only ~25-40% of the ( current ) market price levels, which is far from top reaching level anyway.
Obviously, we are not privy to these agreements, they could involve some accel. price mechanism surcharges – compensations to some extent etc.
But most likely the key argument was likely the vision of CHN concentric full spectrum world/section domination of the future, where one wants to be at the table as well, no matter how relatively disadvantaged.
Yes. For two reasons. One we don’t know. We can strongly suspect but we don’t know. Two I’m intrigued by the events. It could very well be they are mere flurry’s in the stream. It’s my choice to be drawn into the drama or not. The reality is we are watching events that have enormous consequences.
What does it matter what I think? We are expressing opinions. You have expressed many times you think I am a fool. Maybe you are right. I’m not here to influence and never have been. I’m here because there is a degree of commonality. I value that commonality including it’s diversity. Even Norman. That’s why I supported Norman when he was attacked here with vicious non objective derogatory comments even though I disagree 100 percent with his opinions in that particular matter. He was still part of the comanality. I value that comanality and I value this blog
I appreciate your civility and respect for freedom of expression in this blog. Mostly it’s the commonality I come for. As various pundits have come and gone I was never upset by their opinions and antics. I enjoyed them.
I don’t come here for ultimate authority only perspectives. I certainly don’t think I am a ultimate authority. Nor do I bore even Gail as a ultimate authority not that she would want that
The only thing that has ever upset me here is when people are so sure that their opinion is correct they have disrespected the eternal tolerance of our host, the space she has created, and the analysis she has gifted us with that has allowed greater understanding. At times I even did that. Perhaps do that. It’s a risk as we express ourselves. What makes it tolerable is respect for freedom of expression. Certainly Gail has exhibited a robust tolerance for egocentric individuals over the decades. I try to incorporate that into my paradigm.
People have egos. When you enter the training space you bow to the master. You bow to the space. You don’t harm participants intentionally. You cultivate humbleness actively. These practices allow tolerance for ego. These practices allow the space to be.
Oh dog come on brother, you know the martyr complex-guilt tripping one-two ain’t gonna break reante’s stride. reante on a mish of rational objectivism because that’s the only thing that builds upon itself. reante don’t believe in recreation. All I ask of you is that you at least attempt to make it make sense holistically, which you are more than capable of doing because you’re as talented as anybody here. It’s just discipline.
Welcome to the Big Leagues. It’s not AYSO in the 90s when every warm body in a uniform started getting a trophy for just showing up.
Little Johnny in Topeka, Kansas getting 2M in his stablecoin account from Maersk for getting his quadcopter above the roof line. You gotta actually hit a ship or two out in the Pacific before you get a ping from Tether that the dough has risen.
My criticism of your comment wasn’t about the DA per se, or me trying to browbeat you into the DA. My criticism was about your framing:
“Trump thinks enough pain and Iran will capitulate.
Iran thinks USA is not crazy enough to destroy the world economy.
I’m thinking they are both wrong.”
Do you or do you not think that the controlling powers in the US know about the current peak oil dynamics at least as well as we do?
Do you or do you not think that the controlling powers in Iran know the same?
If not, why not?
If so, now do you agree with my criticism of your framing of your comment? Capitulate how? To opening the strait that was open before this started? If so, then I have a story about 19 arabs with box cutters to sell you and a 47story building that came down from an office furniture fire.
Do you think Socrates was just an egotistical asshole or am I just an easier target because I’m not Socrates?
EIA has an article on what are ” tank bottoms” .
For the USA SPR the tank bottoms are
300 million for the financial markets
250 million for the military
200 million for physical delivery
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67866
El Niño is becoming a serious threat to India’s oilseed harvest.
A strengthening El Niño, combined with forecasts of below-normal rainfall over the next two weeks, is raising concerns for soybean, groundnut, and cotton crops—especially in rain-fed regions that depend almost entirely on the monsoon.
📊 Key facts:
• Kharif sowing has reached 53.13 million hectares
• The sowing gap vs. the 5-year average has narrowed to 1.81 million hectares
• But the IMD expects below-normal rainfall in the coming weeks.
🌧️ Good sowing doesn’t guarantee a good harvest. If rains continue to disappoint, crop stress during critical growth stages could cut yields, tighten edible oil supplies, increase import demand, and add fresh volatility to global vegetable oil markets.
Weather is now becoming the biggest variable for India’s 2026 oilseed crop.
https://x.com/gaurav_kochar/status/2077801629517337070/photo/1
Hungary
https://x.com/gaurav_kochar/status/2077315857915801823/photo/1
EU
https://x.com/gaurav_kochar/status/2076882531673424260/photo/1
2026 — The Fuel Crisis
2027 — The Food Crisis
Weather has always been variable. The world’s population is now so high that providing adequate food, especially for all of the poor people of the world, becomes a problem.
Guess on food production: There is no real need for corn to EtOH except to provide a “stockpile” in case of very unfavorable weather events. Genesis 41, “Seven years of great abundance.. followed by seven years of famine.” This could also explain the many farm programs in existence to keep the farmer in business. To be sure many(some) farmers are not good at anticipating crop values, but perhaps the powers that be appreciate that “approximately correct with an error on the excess production side is good enough.”
SpaceX is down, below IPO price, time to buy? The sky is the limit.
Dennis L.
Ad Genesis quote, presumably in these time crop rotation was NOT a thing or done in inadequate time-frames, say sooner than 4-6yrs rotation schedules per ~plot. And even that to function properly assume super dialed-in ~permaculture setup in the first place, hah.
Starting in ancient times, people always stored up some extra crops for lean times. It is not surprising that we do it now. Weather is always variable.
We simply don’t know for sure to what specific situation that Genesis quote refers to. Most likely, it’s a combined-complex situation summarized as ” bad harvest ” based on the following forcing vectors:
– no proper crop rotation on plots
( those 7yrs are close to 4-6yrs “good practice” but could be un-related though )
– non cooperating weather
( + they not adjusted properly to it )
– from above possible disease of the crop
– crop storage issues / problems / war ( civil ) govs-mil. confiscation campaign
..
.
PS just went by neighbors orchard, the Chestnuts are swollen after the heat waves and rainfalls ( still July ) – it’s a bumper crop UNSEEN in decades, interestingly must be linked w. same stellar concurrent performance of abundance everywhere in acorns ( in woods ), and also walnuts and hazels..
That in turn will likely have effect on the wild game down the road ( time – line ) as they would gorge on it for sure to the max.. and a strong litter appearing after-wards..
And in ultimo effect also full freezers of the hunters and ~drop in price for wild-game meat in restaurants for 2027+
The anomaly, historically, is that most people today don’t realise that they should be storing some food and other essentials, even if still prosperous enough to do so.
They assume – if they even consider the possibility of shortages at all – that the Govt. is doing so, or the supermarkets are!
The sky is the limit for SpaceX, but not in the way you meant. They just can’t get those Starships into orbit.
Surely the orbital data centers will be there any day now though, right?
The upper level of oceans are 1.5F warmer than they used to be, presumably supercharging this el nino. Anthropogenic climate forcing lapping at the Hand’s heels. Relativity being what it is, that lapping might turn to snapping come Phase 2 huh ks? Phase 2 is gonna be operating on much less margin for error.
As the planet gets warmer there’s more ocean stratification with lighter, warmer, and fresher water floating on top of denser, colder, and saltier water. This is a problem became warmer water is not moving down its staying on top. If I understood right this is where Hansen disagrees with the IPCC (mainstream science) models. He thinks the models are showing more intake of heat deeper into the oceans than what’s actually happening. And that the IPCC is underestimating the aerosols in there models (which is a negative climate forcing). Hansen doesn’t talk about peak oil etc… only about the scrubbers removing the white aerosols… but if we look at the collapse of civilization, it looks like we will be loosing those aerosols which are currently keeping the planet cooler than it should be.
Whatever happens, there is absolutely nothing we can do about the situation to make it better, as far as I can see. So-called renewables are not a solution. Huge population reduction might be helpful, but hopefully, people will not be using potential climate change to advocate the killing off of many of the world’s current inhabitants.
I agree Gail. And geo-engineering a nuclear winter in response is an insane proposition. The Einsteinian definition of insanity. It’s a far worse proposition than the species having to face the consequences of its actions in accordance with natural law.
I totally agree Gail. Just like peak oil, I want to understand what is happening to the climate as well. Green technology is NO fix and I’m not trying to find any solutions. We are dealing with some massive changes going on and at this point, we can only watch and prepare. Its hard to find groups that discuss both… I have removed myself from the climate group chats as they fixate their world views exclusively on climate. (very narrow).
totally agree Reante… there are so many bad things that could happen… feeling pre-collapse anxiety… so glad there’s a group of us that can discuss all of this.
We’re glad you’re here ks. All we can do is our best during Collapse. There’s no shame in failing if we’ve tried, and an honorable death is of no consequence as it’s the natural order of events.
I agree with you that there are different tank bottoms for different markets, and that financial markets, and that financial markets are affected first. But I didn’t notice the different amounts in the above link.
fitting friday music
Since my childhood, I have watched complexity increase while available energy has become more constrained. In the 1980s, oil from Russia became more expensive, gas prices rose, and simple jobs paid less and less.
Now, even complex jobs are paying less and less.
No Boss, No Money: The Raw Reality of China’s Gen-Z Freelancers
https://youtu.be/eJZFUEQebbI?si=Cj2OXO5eari4uEOA
And people in the West need to compete with this low income way of living. Working as a low paid AI trainer during the day, and a delivery person by night, to barely make ends meet.
This only works if workers have a lower cost of living. The complexity of many parts of the West makes this impossible. High taxes on middle income workers, debt from education, mandatory insurance priced at a premium are all costs that prevents the West from being able to compete. The flyover parts of America have a slightly lower cost of living but politics prevents places like Detroit from ever becoming a place where businesses can thrive. The first complaint would be about “slave wages”. The structure of the West is hostile to any change. Current policies only tinker around the edges.
One work-around was to bring in immigrants who have little to no expectations and are therefore more flexible but that is a very short term fix.
” I have watched complexity increase while available energy has become more constrained.” The elite has denied that energy has become constrained. Rather, they emphasized that workers simply needed to “work harder” to gain access to a growing supply of energy. The Gen Z free-lancers in question remind me of artists who lived in slums in the second half of the 20th century. They could only do it because they had day jobs, that were not too demanding and had a lower cost of living. Now, the only people who can do that, in the West, have trust funds or parents who quietly subsidize these folks to make it look they they are being scrappy young go-getters making it on their own. I think the “Gen Z” in China have help, less help than their Western counterparts, but help nonetheless.
Why we can’t have universal basic income and single payer health insurance
https://greyenlightenment.com/2026/07/04/why-we-cannot-have-nice-things/
tl . dr . USA cannot have them because
1 Americans are too individualistic
2 The more successful groups are NOT going to sacrifice their comforts for groups who tend to have lower income.
====
Before the transvestite Gabby Princip thought her, stupid country , Serbia, was worth existing (it does not), and Morons like Joe Gallieni (an Italian who wanted to fk the French, just like another Italian a century ago) and Chucky Fitzclarence (a descendant of a bastard of William IV) did ‘their duty’ (translation – screw up),
the social contract was such that only those with status deserved good things, and turnips and tenements for the rest.
I have said numerous times that the poor should live poor, not allowed to consume more than bare survival, and never strive to rise more than what they were allotted.
Thanks to Princip, Gallieni and Chucky, the three criminals against Civilization whose proper place in hell is the same place Dante assigned to the three most famous traitors of history (Marcus Brutus, Judas iscariot, and the guy who betrayed Dante when the latter was in Florence) ,
peoples who had no business being comfortable began to have a higher standard of living (read; more resource consumption).
The current mess in Iran might be a huge blessing in disguise as regions who contribute nothing to the world progress will brutally, and quietly, be dropped out of the supply chain and will be forced to deal with whatever they have now, and peoples who cannot afford higher prices will simply fall off the radar, forever.
It might even preserve some resources for the future, since 7 billion plus unnecessariats won’t be able to consume them.
Before the actions of the three criminals I mentioned above world pop was about 1.6 billion, about 1.4 bil of them unnecessariats.
Now the world has 7.2 billion unnecessariats, but hopefully that will be rectified somewhat in the near future.
A single payer healthcare system for the US would expose the disaster that the current health care system is:
The US healthcare system is absurdly expensive for the supposed benefits it provides. With the wage disparity that exists, there is no way ordinary people can pay for it. The insurance mechanism tends to shield the high cost from citizens, encouraging them to overuse the system. A single payer system would likely need to cut the number of providers of many kinds, and greatly reduce the pay scales of physicians.
A major issue is that the US health care system is not built around keeping people well. It is built around making money for the healthcare system. Doctors are incentivized to over-prescribe, operate too often, and use too many vaccines. Every effort is made to keep alive people who cannot possibly be productive for the long term. I don’t know whether this can be changed.
Also, in the US, health tends to be very bad because of the wide prevalence of over processed foods. Also, people have gotten the idea that eating lots of meat (“protein”) is essential to being big and strong. Furthermore, restaurant food tends to be served in huge portions, getting people to eat far more than they need. The widespread availability of automobiles leads to little exercise. All these things lead to terrible health, starting early.
“Also, people have gotten the idea that eating lots of meat (“protein”) is essential to being big and strong. ”
Since, very few men are naturally muscular, they are told to bulk up. And that means eating lots of meat or else they won’t be real men and will die alone, you know the rest.
” Furthermore, restaurant food tends to be served in huge portions” This hasn’t been true for a long time. Restaurants are charging more for smaller, highly processed portions . This is how they are increasing their efficiency.
People who eat more than they need to usually have some mental issues or are suffering from malnutrition.
I don’t care about single payer schemes, but I do have a single prayer: that our friend Kulm never gets to inflict his sadistic and psychopathic fantasies of domination on any poor person. Karma Kulm, karma……
The proper place for the poor is the Rookery of zvictorian days
Bravo! Vintage Kulm. You never disappoint. As predictable as Norman’s ‘eye rolls’ and ‘lols’.
You can take one for the team, like Jesus did.
Kulm will be satisfied…and you’ll gain a high degree peace of mind knowing that you spared the poor of the world a cruel fate.
“I have said numerous times that the poor should live poor”
Just how many poor people are living rich in your location, kulim? What are their names and addresses? Please investigate them and find out whether they have won the lottery.
“Now let me state up front that I believe the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump, but it was not because of foreign influence. It was good old fashioned ballot stuffing. In fact, Trump’s own DOJ and the FBI have been gathering evidence in Georgia that is likely to confirm that Georgia defrauded Trump.”?
https://larrycjohnson.substack.com/p/why-is-trump-trying-to-start-a-new
Better get digital ID to keep us SAFE from the LIBURLZ!!
Old fashioned ballot stuffing limited hangout misdirection play lol. Come on now, payroll Larry, this is Radio Freedom saying nevermind the Dominion glitch in the Matrix, huh Larry?
Sample city through Trancentral
Basic face kick elemental
Swings brings new technology
The ‘K’ the ‘L’ the ‘F’ and the ology
Da Force coming down with mayhem
Looking at my watch time 3 A.M.
The home version Mr House:
https://youtu.be/uKEkrGBFk_A
I think Trump’s numbers were inflated as much as Biden’s. I’ve been told that voter turnout as a percentage of the total voting eligible population has been stagnant for 100 years. We know that the GOP’s base makes up a shrinking percentage of the voting population and that poor democrats , who make up a growing percentage of general population don’t vote as much as affluent democrats (not a rapidly growing group of people). I don’t know how records are being broken every election.
I take it you mean that Trump’s ’24 numbers (and Harris’ also) were inflated like Biden’s ’20 numbers (and presumably Trump’s also). I’ve heard that and it may well be, I don’t know. In ’24 though Trump won because the Hand’s manufactured consent tacked MAHA and many other independents, besides, onto MAGA, which is usually what I’m referring to when I say that there’s more than one way to steal an election. If it’s not a Dominion job like 2020 and 2000, it’s a propaganda job. Throughout the ’24 campaign I did play by play and color commentary here at OFW in real time month after month about how the globalist Hand was socially engineering the election under the ludicrous guise of a ‘nationalists’ vs globalists counterrevolution.
So the England football team hired a manager from the country of their greatest football rivals: Germany. England was doing fine in its match against Argentina, until their German manager told them to change tactics. So England lost – as is traditional these days, anyway. Then the Argentinian players banished a banner saying in Spanish “The Malvinas are Argentinian”. The Malvinas of course is the Argentinian name for the Falkland Islands, which they lost of Britain in 1833.
So will England’s manager have received a payment for his devious work, do you think? And why was the England team such a collective doofus? Will Argentina now make a final and successful attempt to regain “Las Malvinas” ? 😉
I wonder what you would think about Bellingham.
I write only in jest, because I’m not invested in the ‘ beautiful game’… it might create an emotional bubble.
For instance, do you know Stars spells Rats backwards and manager spells reganam, and that’s not a word … but because we’re talking about playing a game; If you treat “reg-anamorphic” as a playful, hypothetical word combo, it would mean “regularly changing shape” or a “standard, everyday optical illusion.”
Le succès du football argentin reflète son déclin économique :
Le football comme voie d’évasion : les difficultés économiques extrêmes font du football l’une des rares voies viables d’ascension sociale, créant un vaste vivier de joueurs très motivés et mentalement résilients.
Exportation précoce des talents : La situation économique nationale difficile oblige les jeunes joueurs à partir très tôt en Europe, où leur talent brut est perfectionné par des infrastructures, des technologies et un entraînement tactique de haut niveau.
Exutoire psychologique : face à des institutions défaillantes et à l’inflation, le football représente la source ultime de fierté nationale, canalisant la frustration de toute une nation en une immense énergie émotionnelle sur le terrain.
Gestion méritocratique : en net contraste avec l’instabilité politique et économique du pays, l’équipe nationale fonctionne comme une méritocratie rare, très pragmatique et bien gérée.
https://share.gemini.google/5fD7emVMF0Ik
Hopefully Spain will put an end to this because Argentina has no business being in the final. Franc Spain was presumably the “true final”. But already in the first half England was trying the long ball a bit too much, being apparently afraid to cross midfield using short passes. England teams also have long displayed character shortcomings which matter in a grueling tournament with Formentera beckoning.
In regards to the Malvinas, geography is destiny.
Sen: “Do you believe the covid jab is safe and effective?”
CDC Dir: ” I do believe”
Well then it’s settled. Safe and effective it is!
https://x.com/AzadehKhatibiMD/status/2077807692106883382
They obviously want everyone to stay home.
Work from home.
Housewife shows being popular.
Wildfire smoke during peak outdoor vacation times.
Canceling outdoor events due to weather threats.
Amusement park rides malfunctions.
Stories and shows about shark attacks around beaches.
TSA and airport madness.
High prices bad service at restaurants/bars.
Flock camera’s spying on you for driving around.
Let me know if I missed anything?
Here’s one you missed:
The fashion industry encouraging people to wear truly ghastly summer clothes. Tattoos.
Scraggy – or obese – men going about, unshaved but not truly bearded, in nasty t-shirts (often dingy grey!) and baggy shorts, etc.
Women exposing body shapes which should be matter for concealment, not display. And did I mention tattoos?
My dears I can barely look, it’s so offensive.
So I stay in the woods. So much nicer.
won’t be any woman soon. That’s why they’re pushing “trans” ie alternative woman.
I think that ship has departed, though: a few years ago, maybe 4 or 5, I observed quite a few Trans students here, but they have almost disappeared now. Just a passing fashion.
The most horrifying was 6ft 3, heavily built, with bright pink hair, and wore a kilt, short white socks, and in the summer the shortest of flowery dresses……
There is one female-only College, and the lesbians there are either more numerous, or bolder at going about hand-in-hand, but I see them very regularly.
Being with any woman is preferable to being with an unappealing man.
It’s a fade but it will come back guaranteed.
Its gonna be like prison soon. People will be a get a pass.
One big open air f*** prison.
The fashion industry encouraging people to wear truly ghastly clothing is nothing new. They have been doing that for as long as there has been a fashion industry.
Tattoos are a signal for a well-lived life ( slaying many dragons, being able to compete) . The people who have lots of them may or may not live up to what they are suppose to signal.
Beards are in so many men are going to try to grow one. Genetics, as always, gets in the way. Your complaint seems to be aimed at men who you think of as low status trying to grow them.
CTG says strange isn’t it. Well not to Miles Mathis.
Is he the inspiration for FE?
He has many articles on fake events and he does impressive sleuthing.
https://mileswmathis.com/fakephoto.pdf
You do realize this is exactly like Orwell’s1984, with fake foreign wars being used to divert attention and sell various storylines, moving you on from the vaccine genocide and the current rape of worldwide treasuries, justifying rising military budgets, and explaining gas and food price gouging.
And the way the “leaders” in Iran are playing along is a delight to watch in itself. They should get award nominations from the Academy. Claiming they will continue to control the Strait of Hormuz. . .
though Iran never did control it. Claiming they have nuclear weapons when Trump has admitted they don’t even have a Navy. In a real war Iran wouldn’t last two days against Turkey, much less against the US and Europe and our fleet of aircraft carriers.
I am partially responsible, since I introduced Mathis to this blog.
“Is the Brotherhood even real?
That Winston, you will never know..”
– 1984, Orwell
“Claiming they will continue to control the Strait of Hormuz. . .
though Iran never did control it”
Miles is, for want of a better term, a fucking idiot(or more likely, on the payroll). Someone read him some history(you might want to point out that history goes back a lot further than the corporate colonies).
“Claiming they have nuclear weapons when Trump has admitted they don’t even have a Navy”
Only white corporate morons(like Miles) have made this claim and the fact that he feels the need to use pres pedo’s obvious lies, should make that clear. That non existent Navy keeps smacking the child murderers about, an impressive feat from something that doesn’t exist(because a sad lying pedo says so and then promptly changes his mind).
“In a real war Iran wouldn’t last two days against Turkey, much less against the US and Europe and our fleet of aircraft carriers”
That’s surely the dumbest thing he’s ever written and I don’t doubt for a second he’s written more dumb shit than your average msm “journalist”.
Turkey in two days(what a loon) and those brave Europeans. Are those the same Europeans that ran away from AnsarAllah before they even got there, during the embarrassment that was “Prosperity Guardian” and refused point blank to join the sad attempt at taking other people’s waters. Those Europeans?
The same aircraft carriers, from the last millenium, that can’t get within a thousand kilometres and need to travel thousands of miles to re-arm, when Iran can deplete those arms in mere hours. How are the “laundry fires” getting on?
Someone tell Miles and all those that nod along, we don’t live in the last millenium(stasis) and hollywood, like pres pedo, tells nothing but fiction. Miles should travel a bit, maybe visit reality, where he might then understand that people aren’t actors in the fiction that rules his head and believe it or not Miles, people don’t willing agree to be murdered, or watch their children(and loads of other children) being murdered. How far gone do you have to be, to need that explained and why is it only non white people that this happens to(happy victims, just like all those Palestinian children?).
I haven’t read it, but kulm linked some story of his years ago, it was pure drivel and so I’m not inclined to waste my time again.
Would Miles be bleating if the US had won(3-5 days according to the pedo that Miles is happy to quote) and would he be mentioning Zamyatin/Orwell/Huxley(no one ever mentions Skinner(Walden Two) and he has real pedigree when it comes to this subject)? Of course he wouldn’t.
Your already there, have been for quite some time and Miles helps to keeps you there(hollywood stasis).
I’d dispute* that US/Turkey/EU vs Iran war – claim of capability discrepancy of several orders of magnitude..
What is more likely is the ~standard run explanation, simply, anti-aircraft defense / +various related suppression schemes matured quicker at way lower co$st vs. legacy US over-priced tech. In simple terms, yes ~full scale attack on Iran was indeed possible, now the toll though: several US battlegroup ( ships ) in the region incapacitated in the sense needed to be towed away if not sunken, large loss of attacking aircraft; plus at such scale also ricocheting effect from Iran going full scale ablaze Gulfies domestic destruction ( oil fields, ports, cities ).
So, it total this recent action: US -> Iran ( and their response ) was indeed a very strange macabre dance making not much sense but for a host of reasons ( pre-limitations ) mentioned above.
__
* also we can’t completely discount the possibility that bombing previous
Iranian leadership was ~just internal coup w. foreign help or manufactured
psy-op as these individuals merely retired into non public space..
( %probability really low though )
So few people can’t seem to grasp that if the parties to a conflict are not waging Total War, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the whole thing is fake.
There is quite a lot of theatre, too, perhaps more so than in any previous wars. This does foster an impression of unreality.
I wonder if the goal on the parts of conspiracy theorists is just to promote confusion and isolation because that’s the only outcome I see of these things since, as they admit, collective action is impossible. Telling me that I’m powerless and will be eliminated or marginalized doesn’t change the anything. The powerful will always be powerful regardless of what I think about them, actions I take against them, etc.
https://archive.ph/KzrcF
FROM THE TELEGRAPHLying Nicola Sturgeon destroyed Salmond to save her own skin, says David Davis.
But Sturgeon accuses Tory grandee of ‘telling lies… like a coward behind the legal privilege of Westminster’
Speaking in the House of Commons, Sir David Davis said that Ms Sturgeon “knew full well” that [her then husband] Peter Murrell was stealing money from the party and using it to fund “luxury purchases”. But the senior Tory MP said that “her most evil act was stitching up Alex Salmond to hide the truth” about Murrell’s crimes.
Sir David said that Ms Sturgeon and her fellow “conspirators” moved against Salmond when he considered joining the SNP’s ruling national executive committee (NEC), fearing he would reveal Murrell’s crimes.
He said that Salmond was a “numerate man who could not be silenced” and the risk he posed to them by uncovering the embezzlement was “clear”.
“There was a malicious and concerted attempt to remove him from public life with sexual misconduct allegations,” Sir David said.
Salmond faced multiple allegations of sexual misconduct in 2018 but was acquitted of all charges in 2020.
Sir David also noted that Salmond had warned Ms Sturgeon it would be “deeply unwise” to keep Murrell as party chief executive when she became leader in November 2014.
A video showed her telling a March 2021 meeting of the NEC that the party’s finances had never been stronger.
Three senior officials had just said they intended to resign from the party’s finance and audit committee after being denied sight of the accounts.
But the recording, which was leaked two years later, showed Ms Sturgeon warning of the effect on future donations to the SNP if anyone went public with their concerns.
Sir David said the three members had quit “blaming chaotic and incompetent financial management” and they had claimed to be “on the receiving end of a hostile backlash driven by Sturgeon’s toxic culture”.
He also said she had ignored the resignation of Douglas Chapman, the former MP, as party treasurer. He stepped down after complaining he had not been given enough information about SNP finances to do the job.
“Sturgeon was part of the cover-up, using her position to suppress justice. She behaved dishonourably and dishonestly,” Sir David told the Commons. “But her most evil act was stitching up Alex Salmond to hide the truth. When he was considering going on the [SNP’s ruling] national executive himself, the risk to the conspirators was clear.”
Sir David alleged that the Scottish Government had “created a procedure for dealing with sexual harassment allegations that deliberately targeted Salmond”.
Salmond won a judicial review in 2019 after a court found that the Scottish Government investigation was handled unlawfully and “tainted with apparent bias”. He was cleared of 14 sexual assault charges in a separate criminal trial in 2020. He alleged at the time that there was a conspiracy among senior SNP figures around Ms Sturgeon to imprison him.
After alleging that Salmond had been targeted to cover up Murrell’s crimes, Sir David highlighted around £60,000-worth of items that were removed from the indictment as part of the plea deal. He said these included “the hairstylers, the lingerie, the books by Sturgeon’s favourite authors”, adding: “Murrell was clearly protecting Sturgeon by removing items that incriminated her.
“In the investigation, the police had further questions to Sturgeon, but prosecutors stopped them from putting them. And those prosecutors worked for the Lord Advocate, the principal legal advisor to the Scottish Government, a clear conflict of interest.”
Ms Sturgeon gave no comment to detectives’ questions during a seven-hour interview that followed her arrest in June 2023. She later provided police with a written statement, but it is understood that it did not answer all of the questions they wanted to pose.
But Sir David concluded: “There’s a clear pattern of secrecy, obstruction, and power used to protect power – a pattern started by Sturgeon. Scotland needs a fresh start. That starts with a judicial inquiry into this entire sordid scandal, because it’s a scandal that cost Alex Salmond his life.”
The Crown Office said that it decided to accept Murrell’s guilty plea offer, as the £58,735 reduction in items on the indictment would make no difference to the prison sentence that he would serve. However, rejecting Murrell’s offer would have cost a large amount of public money, used to pay for a six-week trial, with the outcome delayed by up to a year.
Police Scotland declined to comment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDYbB4LkjHk
Nicola Sturgeon branded ‘liar who tried to put Alex Salmond in jail to hide Peter Murrell’s crimes
David Davis and the accusations against Nicola Sturgeon that he has made in the UK parliament, using parliamentary privilege to avoid prosecution.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_qqi6NLGJs
Bombshell SNP Whistleblowers: Nicola Sturgeon ‘BULLIED’ Us After We Sounded Peter Murrell Fraud Alarm
TWO whistleblowers have said they were bullied by Nicola Sturgeon and SNP (Scottish National Party) chiefs after sounding the alarm on her crooked hubby and the party’s fraud-hit finances
Allison Graham and Cynthia Guthrie quit as Nats finance watchdogs in 2021 after being obstructed by £400,000 embezzler boss Peter Murrell (the husband of Nicola Sturgeon at that time) and others. Speaking about a “toxic” meeting where Ms Sturgeon warned her not to question SNP finances, Allison Graham said: “It was like being bullied in the playground.“
The pair last night blamed Ms Sturgeon and John Swinney for for “enabling” Peter Murrell’s £400,000 SNP fraud.
I always thought there was something fishy about the Salmond and Sturgeon story.
A terrible injustice was done to Alex Salmond, and although he was eventually cleared, the ordeal took a toll on his health.
I am happy to learn that Nicola Sturgeon is finallly suffering some reputational damage of her own.
For the US to bomb the power grid of Iran would be going too far!
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/iran-tells-houthis-close-red-sea-energy-chokepoint-if-trump-bombs-power-grid
Yemen’s Houthis have long warned of their ability to close the Red Sea oil route, but have by and large stayed on the sidelines of the expanding Gulf regional conflict which is focused on Iran since Operation Epic Fury began.
Things began changing dramatically this month, however, after Saudi warplane incursions into Yemen – which bombed Sanaa International Airport on July 13 – in an effort to prevent an Iranian commercial jet from landing there.
“We are going to likely have ground operations on the coast of Iran.
0:12 I would say this is 70% likely.”?
But the US cannot win in ground operations.
What ground operations can do is help ramp up US GDP, since we will be spending more on munitions and on soldier pay and related things. Cutting off war altogether would be a horrible loss, in terms of added US GDP. War is the “service” that the Department of War provides.
War can take people’s minds off other difficulties, such as too much wage and wealth disparity. In particular, too many people making very little money. Overseas war helps availability of jobs for young people, so tends to hold down internal conflict.
There have been many wars that the US has not won, starting with the Vietnam War. What they have done is ramped up GDP and provided jobs for young people. Wars, even if unsuccessful, help with the US’s financial hegemony. Long-term wars are even better than short term wars in this respect.
IF USA decides to destroy every single village of Iran and slaughter all of its pop, it can do that.
Not a bright idea, however.
Don’t think we have enough of what that would take . Big country with 93 million people. That would take a lot of bombs and missiles and manpower . . More than we have.
I say go to plan B. Quit bombing them and being the military forces home.
Do you have a olan C to propose?
Hydrogen bombs to Iran’s holiest sites?
That’s another idea.
But not a good one.
For one thing, radiation snd fallout from nukes are hard to control or predict, depending in weather conditions and other factors.
Any other ideas?
That’s not plan A. Plan A is kill the buffalo. Oil is buffalo. Dense energy source.
Twenty fusion bombs and 50% of all Iranians will be dead and 50% of all human made things in Iran will be destroyed. All launched from the corn fields of the US northwest.
That is the only way.
Gammon on hyperscaler death spiral
Need mo money
(10t next 3 years)
Got no mo money
Borrow mo money
Lenders got no mo money
Create stock for mo money
Stock dilution
Asset prices fall
Wealth pocket illusion disassembly.
Adjustment to organic economy from financial economy. : 😄
https://youtu.be/paLy21TVecw?si=sX2-gqfjllkxocm3
Your link is to “It’s Official, The AI Bubble Just Popped (Here’s Why)” by George Gammon”
Gammon shows that the companies underlying the AI bubble are publishing financial results that make them wildly profitable, at the same time that the cash flow has become negative, leading to a need to either borrow more and more, or sell more shares of stock, to raise money.
If companies choose the bond route for raising funds, interest rates have to keep rising higher and higher. Or, if debt cannot be raised because of the impact on stock prices, more stock needs to be issued by these companies, potentially diluting the value of shares, and bringing stock prices down.
In Gammon’s view, the group of companies indirectly involved in the AI bubble are working to become “too big to fail.” They are hoping that the government will bail themselves out from the mess they got themselves into.
The thing I would point out is that the government already has way too much debt. As I see it, if the government takes over all of the companies underlying AI, and the results are anything similar to now, the likely outcome would be that the government would collapse.
AI and all of the companies involved in this whole process are what is now propping up the economy. Gammon offers to provide personal investment advice. I’m not looking for his advice in this situation.
——
By the way, today’s markets do not look good today, either.
https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-today-dow-sp-500-nasdaq-07-16-2026
Headlines:
Stock Market Today: Nasdaq Slips as Chip Stocks Come Under Pressure
SpaceX IPO Trails Largest 2026 Debuts
Mortgage Rates Climb to Highest Level in Nearly a Year
Fed’s Logan Says Rates Should Rise to Fight Inflation
I am afraid we are hitting a major downdraft on the economy, right now.
His plug at the end was in bad taste. I apologize.
He needs to earn some money somehow. I like his videos.
If the content is good enough, one should be able to use it to formulate one’s own strategy.
Although I suggest that , these days, hiding in a cave is looking increasingly attractive……
Yes, cave + nearby ~green house and your are set for ~90yrs life expectancy no matter what..
PS although as we know from our own life and hist. lessons – to achieve ~solitude ( from other human-oids ) on this very planet is futile exercise..
Some of our problems are related to society acting more a more like the mice in the John Calhoun’s Mouse Experiments on Mouse Utopia of the 1960s. This is a link to a write up of some of the results of those experiments:
https://www.sciencehistory.org/stories/magazine/mouse-heaven-or-mouse-hell/
Officially, the colony was called the Mortality-Inhibiting Environment for Mice. Unofficially, it was called mouse heaven.
Biologist John Calhoun built the colony at the National Institute of Mental Health in Maryland in 1968. It was a large pen—a 4½-foot cube—with everything a mouse could ever desire: plenty of food and water; a perfect climate; reams of paper to make cozy nests; and 256 separate apartments, accessible via mesh tubes bolted to the walls. Calhoun also screened the mice to eliminate disease. Free from predators and other worries, a mouse could theoretically live to an extraordinarily old age there, without a single worry.
But the thing is, this wasn’t Calhoun’s first rodent utopia. This was the 25th iteration. And by this point he knew how quickly mouse heaven could deteriorate into mouse hell.
In the perfect pen:
That robust growth masked some serious problems, however. In the wild, infant mortality among mice is high, as most juveniles get eaten by predators or perish of disease or cold. In mouse utopia, juveniles rarely died. As a result, there were far more youngsters than normal, which introduced several difficulties.
Rodents have social hierarchies, with dominant alpha males controlling harems of females. Alphas establish dominance by fighting—wrestling and biting any challengers. Normally a mouse that loses a fight will scurry off to some distant nook to start over elsewhere.
But in mouse utopia, the losing mice couldn’t escape. Calhoun called them “dropouts.” And because so few juveniles died, huge hordes of dropouts would gather in the center of the pen. They were full of cuts and ugly scars, and every so often huge brawls would break out—vicious free-for-alls of biting and clawing that served no obvious purpose. It was just senseless violence. (In earlier utopias involving rats, some dropouts turned to cannibalism.)
. . .
Eventually other deviant behavior emerged. Mice who had been raised improperly or kicked out of the nest early often failed to develop healthy social bonds, and therefore struggled in adulthood with social interactions. Maladjusted females began isolating themselves like hermits in empty apartments—unusual behavior among mice. Maladjusted males, meanwhile, took to grooming all day—preening and licking themselves hour after hour. Calhoun called them “the beautiful ones.” And yet, even while obsessing over their appearance, these males had zero interest in courting females, zero interest in sex.
Intriguingly, Calhoun had noticed in earlier utopias that such maladjusted behavior could spread like a contagion from mouse to mouse. He dubbed this phenomenon “the behavioral sink.”
The article also talks about various interpretations of how this relates to society today. We also have a society where dominance is important, especially among males. Adding fossil fuels has made our society increasing like the “mouse heaven.”
I encountered the comparison of modern society to Calhoun’s Mouse Utopia somewhere about a decade ago. It still rings true if not even more try with each passing day.
In today’s world, the ease of living as manifested by the “exhorbitant priviledge” bestowed upon IC through a one-off endowment of easily accessible fossil fuels, fertile top soil, abundant fish in the oceans, unpolluted environment, etc has result in men and women growing up with no purpose and no motivation. How can we parasites live off the producers? This was the question Bastiat around 1850 posted.
Men, why work when you can sit at a computer and financialize and /or vote (for socialism) for a living? Or worse, become lying thieving lawyers, politicians, or bankers with the priviledge of loaning money into existance, with no useful or productive skills or services to offer society. Women, what’s your justification for your existance after you have reproduced, especially now that we have 8 billion on this planet?
No, I can see the 1st world we live in is a variation of a mousetopia, and if I recall this experiment has been repeated with rats and other rodents. The whole world is totally F’d up.
And here was my post on You Tube re: med students yesterday. Translation: No one wants to work. I am stressed because my daughter wants to go to med school. Yikes! I am deeply conflicted. At least she doesn’t want to go into law.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zewCWqx28ik
@hzilla5550
17 hours ago (edited)
There’s a trend here. I am absolutely against 60% of medical schools’ acceptances to women, most who simply don’t want to work and never intended to work! Exhibit “A” is my ex-wife, a board-certified, double fellowship-trained anesthesiologist (open heart and OB-GYN) whose premarital medical school loans I paid off during our short 7-year marriage, 5 of those in residency in Albany NY. I had my MD degree and no debt before the marriage. Once she had lured me back near her hometown in KY by convincing me she had plenty of job offers there, she suddenly refused to work. She refused to take care of the kids who were activitied out to third party care, including her mother! I had to pay temporary support during a long, bitter divorce which my own lawyers (4) had deliberately botched to keep their meters running through a protracted divorce and appeals while she ran around on the 10K running circuit, literally and figuratively chasing men and driving from E-town KY to Nashville to get makeovers/hair appointments for her dates. She wound up with the ENTIRE marital estate, full custody, paid-for house, and my obligation to pay nearly double extrapolated child support. She even tried to get alimony! Wound up in a cushy job at U of L anesthesiology department where she eventually got tenure as a full Professor. And you can’t sue your lawyers, even when the specially appointed judge has flat-out opined legal malpractice. Your losses will be “speculative” and your case thrown out. All this and a whole lot in my memoirs, My Medical-Legal Back Pages. Archway publisher. Bryce Sterling, pen name. Based entirely on true events in KY and then in NC.
Sorry for the digression, but I am easily triggered.
Brother. Pre nup up or get punked. It should be taught in grade school. Fair is fair. Market value no more. Fair for her. Fair for you. Decided before hand or no deal. Or learn to like top ramen.
Were a competitive species. Have you noticed?
It’s unfair that no one educated you that you were stepping in the ring but certainly this world is not fair. Yes basic self defense should be universally taught. It is only sought after learning experiences.
You were a valuable target of opportunity. Of course you got hit. Soft target. Yum
https://youtu.be/6vwNcNOTVzY?si=DnuAxmcMVOQN-gnV
Life is beautiful because commitments are beautiful, and prenups are beauty killers. A prenup is never a good life choice. Any man who thinks that a prenup is a good life choice has already sold their soul and just fears someone else coming along and stealing the money that they sold their soul for. LOL. And any woman who agrees to sign a prenup gets the pathetic little man she deserves.
I disagree. Fair agreements are essential to relationships. Agreement about money is essential to relationships. Honesty is beautiful. Deception is ugly.
I know several very fit very wealthy women. If we were to get involved I would never dream of taking their considerable assets.
IMO sometimes women value men who protect themselves value themselves and them too. Yes relationships are about sharing. If somehow a woman has gotten the idea she is getting half the faster we openly discuss it the faster we can stop wasting time. What I will provide and what I will not. Honesty.The response to honest money discussions can be quite revealing whether there is compatibly. If not both can go on their path no hard feelings. If there is a bunch of drama around the discussion that’s a flag too. Best wishes.
What you bring to the table is part of the attraction. It needs to be defined. It’s not hard to figure out if someone is mostly interested in you for material things but you have to respect yourself. If you don’t respect yourself they can’t either. Nor can they truly respect themselves. Relationships based on material things are miserable.
Then just don’t marry them playa. Problem solved.
That’s a solution if you do what it takes to avoid a common law marriage. That’s the same as a marriage without a pre nup. It doesn’t solve the problem of what’s fair. People want to try and plan for the future. It would be stupid not to. All of the women I have been in a long term relationship with have ended up in a much much better situation financially. I wouldn’t want it any other way. I didn’t have to eat top ramen for rest of my life.
The alternative is often exactly what you mention. It’s undefined. The dude doesn’t care.. Someone gets bored. Years spent with shared time but no shared financial for the woman. See it all the time. That’s preferable to actually discussing what’s fair?
Your married 6 months she gets half. That’s fair? No it’s not. Better to have discussion about what’s fair. Not hard ig mutual respect and self respect is present all the way around. If that’s not present there is no point anyway..
Why would anyone want to be in a relationship with someone that wants a unfair outcome? Team with a adversary? Like I said the discussion itself can be very valuable determining the basis of the relationship. Fair endings are healthy. Unfair endings are unhealthy.
If your common law marriage claim was true then I’d be inclined to agree with you but it didn’t sound at all true to me because that would be insane and totalitarian if it was true.
I don’t believe in marriage because I don’t believe in the State but after 10 years together with my now-wife we agreed to get married because it was very important to her parents. She didn’t care either way herself. So we invited them up for a stay and went to the courthouse and got married, took photos, went out to dinner, and a photo now collage hangs on the wall because her dad owned a picture framing business and he framed some of the pictures on matte and sent it to us. We could have gone through life perfectly happy as boyfriend and girlfriend with both of our names on the property titles even though it was my dad who bought the place for me because his second wife had left him and said she was going to divorce him and he wanted to separate off some assets from the divorce as well as come and live with us a couple years later when he retired. Then she said she wanted to come back to him and he took her back and that was the end of him coming to live with us and we got lucky to have a property because we’ve never made good money. He also bought it because I had warned him about Cyprus’ exposure to the Greek banking crisis and told him he needed to move his money out of the Bank of Cyprus and he understandably ignored me but then got caught up in the capital controls. A year or so later his Cyprus money was finally freed but he was pretty shook up about it and for a time was buying in somewhat to my Collapse narrative and so his buying a prepper property after she left and threatened divorce had a fair bit of appeal to him.
Here’s what the AI says about the criteria for common law marriage. I figured you should know, what with that trifecta of attractive, wealthy lady friends that have their eyes on you 🤩
“A common law marriage is a legally binding union established without a marriage license or a formal ceremony. To establish one, couples must be legally free to marry, live together (cohabitate) for a significant period, and mutually agree to act as spouses by “holding themselves out” to the public as married.The Key RequirementsSimply living together is not enough. To prove a common law marriage, courts typically look for four elements:Legal Capacity: Both individuals must be of legal age (usually 18) and mentally capable of consenting to marriage. They cannot already be married to someone else.Present Intent: Both parties must mutually agree that they are married right now. A promise to get married in the future does not count.Cohabitation: The couple must live together in the same home.Holding Out to the Public: The couple must actively present themselves to friends, family, and the community as a married couple. Examples include using the same last name, filing joint tax returns, introducing each other as “my husband” or “my wife,” or sharing joint bank accounts.Where is it Legal?Only a few U.S. states and the District of Columbia currently allow couples to enter into a new common law marriage. States that currently allow this include:ColoradoDistrict of ColumbiaIowaKansasMontanaNew Hampshire (only for inheritance/probate purposes)Rhode IslandSouth CarolinaTexasUtah”
Chances are you never had to pay an alimony
While I don’t believe in the State and I have never had to pay alimony, has it ever occurred to you kulm why the State legislated alimony? Grow up dude.
Alimony is a relic of a time when women were not allowed to financially support themselves and when they were full time homemakers/mothers for most of their time in their marriages. This makes little sense in modern times when women are willing to give up a lot less for marriage/motherhood. Women want compensation, in the form of alimony, for something they aren’t willing to do in large numbers anymore.
As a practical matter, women usually make a lot less than men, however. Fairly often, money problems lie behind the divorce. If the two cannot afford their standard of living, when both are together, it is very likely that they cannot afford two separate residences. It is only because of generous government benefits that a lot of divorced women with families get along. And there always seem to be fights about alimony.
nobody, alimony has most fundamentally been legislated since the time of Hammurabi because men are evolved to spread their seed until the day they die — huh Norm? — and women age out. In civilization, that means wifes getting kicked to the curb, and maybe with her children, is a structural feature of sociopathic civilization, especially among wealthy men, and that structural feature is a negative feedback loop for State stability.
I discovered in China there are a fair number of successful men who have one child by their first wife. They then divorce and marry a younger wife, and have a child by her. (Based on a very small sample.)
Pick up the pieces that make up your life
Maybe someday you’ll have a wife and then alimony
Oh, can’t you see?
Beautifully expressed Reante!
This is not the time of Hammurabi. Today, women do not make less than men, even the married ones. Married women who work full time and are educated make just about as much as men. The only way they can make significantly less money than men is if they don’t work full time stay at home to take care of the children or family members. The birth rate is low precisely because they are working and making as much as men. If a woman decides to get pregnant by a man who doesn’t make enough to take care of her and her children, that is not a problem that is society’s responsibility to fix. She should have thought of that before intercourse. Historically, women couldn’t make that kind of decision and it was her family who decided what kind of man was financially capable of supporting her and her children. If she didn’t know who the father was or the father couldn’t support her, the family had to step up and do the providing Yah, it can make for unstable societies , but even societies with state enforced alimony were unstable until modern, fossil-fuel burning times. Alimony doesn’t create resources and it doesn’t motivate a man to develop an six -seven digit income that seems to be required to support a wife and two+ children these days.
nobody if a wife isn’t making less than her husband then she’s not getting any alimony is she?
And harkening back to my conversation with dog, if an unmarried stay at home mom leaves her boyfriend and father of her child she’s highly unlikely to get any alimony unless maybe she’s in California or somewhere like that.
You, your parents and your grandparents voted for and supported all of this since 1920.
Things might have had taken much worse turn for you, though:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y35ikdJS0AI
(couldn’t care less about CNN and/or TV in general, but too busy to look for better documentary now).
Group consciousness within a species is a reality. Consciousness of the sphere is not that much harder. The language model tool only designates what it defines as tangible as reality. Weighting it has allowed industrial civilization to the detriment of other things. As evolution adopts to dense energy sources other qualities are lost. Evolution begins it’s slow weighting adaptation as high density energy sources are reduced abruptly and permanently. Historically this discrepancy between evolutions ability to adapt within a finite time period and rapid changes in energy sources creates possibility even probability for extinction especially if workarounds for other critical resources are diminished. The typical solution is war and it may remain so if nations can forgo nuclear weapon deployment. Eventually the sphere will adapt to even the effects of a nuclear war but it is not permanent either.
Great points.
The flow of history seems uni-directional.
We have been ALREADY tainted by previous concentrated civilization attempts going back to wider ME / ClubMed areas. This altered ecosystems ( to much less yield ) profoundly as well. So, today that’s not our [ first doom-collapse ] rodeo by any stretch..
To change direction now after this oil+ bonanza period seems almost impossible. Yet, the ~best approach would be keeping some of the achieved ~mid complexity tech level a bit longer at the expense of non needed excess infrastructure to be abandoned. Basically, model replacing megacities ala distributed land where 3-5x nucleus families can share up some agri-gadgets is enough for posh – livelihood at minuscule resource / fuel consumption inside slightly modified-nudged natural envelope.
Obviously, this is most likely not in our cards, instead fighting for the last concentrated-energy-scraps in whip-vertically organized societies to the bitter end seems as the remaining option aka the one-way bumpy road ahead.
There was no eugenics in Calhoun’s experiment. no natural selection.
Of course the dumbest, most aggressive will overbreed and destroy everything.
Not much today. Just DEI.
Modern civilization has no natural selection either.
The movie Idiocracy was largely about the dumbest, most aggressive humans overbreeding.
What the movie doesn’t tell you is that these people were probably not a threat to the few non-dumb people remaining who actually kept the complex technology operating.
I think another analogy is humans are living like wild animals in captivity.
On the surface, some animals appear healthier in captivity, they have access to regular meals, and live longer but psychologically they are not healthier.
Other animals do poorly in captivity. Civilization has made many humans think they can “improve” everything they see. But somethings cannot be “improved”. Can a tiger’s life really be improved by a human? Throwing food at it is not going to make the tiger “happy” because the tiger has many and shifting needs.
Indeed, this is one of the most important ” optics ” to look at ourselves w. critical eye.
In simplification, we as ~species apparently underwent several waves within ” domestication process ” – always adding some new extra kinky mal-adaptive feature to our core profile. Shortly, we evolved into and are beyond-psychos at his stage, shaped by the previous grave mistakes along that ” development ” path.
Here come the more edgy %probability and discussion scenarios still. For one thing, we could be (pre-)selected or even groomed species for terra-forming this planet for specific future set of parameters be it climate – temperature / pressure, precipitations values etc. Hence, the late comers will enjoy the new settings to their liking. Another possibility, the [ observed reality ] is beyond-AI matrix, simply to occupy ourselves ( eternal souls ), hence material world, it’s all a game-day-dream of sorts.
In retrospect becoming a refugee never seems to work out even though it might seem preferable in the moment.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BEJg81ntjTU
The title of this video is, “Assyrian Genocide: A Fate Worse Than Death”.
This genocide took place during WWI. The killing of the Jews in Germany took place between WWI and WWII. Both times were times of not enough food to go around. We had the Witch Trials in Salem Massachusetts, earlier. I think some of the same dynamics were in place all of those times.
The feeling was that if these people were somehow eliminated, the rest of the population would be better off. It was disproportionately rich people who were killed off. (Like tax the rich now.) The idea was that if these folks were gone, the rest would be better off.
I don’t know if the Assyrians were particularly rich, but this issue tends to happen over and over again, when there is not enough to go around.
Yeah, it’s called scapegoating and it still exists. When recessions begin, people are blamed for the recession and are eliminated from the company payrolls. At Microsoft, for example, if the company starts losing money, people are assigned responsibility for the lack of profit and are summarily fired. Accountability in the workplace means accepting blame for when things go wrong.
[ Tracking the progress of W. downfall ]:
(they sold it to CHN in Q1 2020 so bought then a little time extra..)
British Steel taken into public ownership to protect ‘vital’ UK supply
http://www.bbc.com › news › articles
(Previously): Chinese firm Jingye Group takes over British Steel and pledges to invest in the sites at Scunthorpe and Teesside. …
—
Britain Nationalizes Its Last Major Steel Mill – NY times
http://www.nytimes.com › 2026/07/16 › business › britain-…
The government first intervened in British Steel last year to prevent its then-owner, the Chinese company Jingye Group, from shutting it down.
—
Jingye Steel demands full compensation for British Steel takeover
http://www.reuters.com › world › jingye-steel-demands-ful…
Jingye completed its buyout of British Steel in 2020 and has since made substantial investments in “equipment upgrades, safeguarding jobs,
—
..
.
A company is nationalized when it is impossible for a private company to make money at it.
“All media exist to invest our lives with artificial perceptions and arbitrary values.”
— Marshall McLuhan
tboc posted this quote and this beautiful song on the Automatic Earth yesterday. If you are searching for something really mellow to listen to in the dark, this could be it. The sax solo really does it for me.
Interesting point!
I prefer this:
“what do you want”
“I want change”
Be careful what you wish for
Friend, i’ve known this was inevitable since 2008. The waiting is the hardest part.
Me too! Got laid off on 2008 and started looking at structure of things. Big mistake? 🙂 Went back to work in 2009 when they printed and everything launched again on steroids.
Great song. A favorite back in the day.
Tim I think it’s your duty to request tboc’s presence over here. Remind him that Raul is a wanker and that that place is TAE in name only. Tell him to follow Mr. House’s lead.
“Iran, on the other hand, has a completely different tactical and
10:50 strategic situation in front of it, one that favors it and to the detriment of the United States. It only has to attack 10 targets and those targets don’t move. . . .
All Iran has
11:18 to do is hit those day after day after day after day. cluster munitions, ballistic missiles, drones, and at some
11:28 point those bases become uninhabitable and the ability of the United States to continue attacking Iran will cease.”?
“MFS: “We Told You So” Is Something We Refrain From Saying; Yet, Here We Are.
THE LOSSES WALL STREET IS NOT READY FOR; THE UPCOMING BAILOUT WILL MAKE 2008 LOOK LIKE A CHUMP CHANGE.”?
https://contrarianunicus.substack.com/p/mfs-we-told-you-so-is-something-we
Sorry! Somehow I missed this comment earlier. Yes, we likely are near the edge of credit failures, in many place. And the necessary bailouts will be huge.