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History back to 1820 gives hints regarding what may follow
With the recent closure of the Strait of Hormuz, many expect oil prices to spike and stay high. Instead, they have barely budged. The latest spike in prices is a mini spike. If these oil prices were adjusted for inflation, the spikes in the past would appear even higher.
This is not a new problem. Looking at energy data going back to 1820, low demand (affordability) has repeatedly produced financial crashes, wars, and collapses. We appear to be entering another such period.
In this post, I examine differences in how the economy behaves, comparing two different types of periods: those with low energy affordability (“low demand”) and those with high energy affordably (“high demand”). I also offer my view on what this analysis suggests may be ahead for the world economy.
[1] How high demand differs from low demand
High demand looks like a situation in which, each year, an increasing number of people can afford cars and the fuel that they require. With high demand, the number of new cars sold each year tends to rise. Young people are eager to buy homes because they find homes affordable. They find their incomes relatively higher than their parents’ were at their age. Countries around the world find it easy to industrialize. This allows their citizens to have better lifestyles. As we will see later in this post, the periods of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s were periods of high growth in demand for oil products.
What we have now is the opposite: too many young people who cannot find jobs that pay well, even with advanced degrees. They cannot afford to go on a vacation or buy a new car. Record numbers live with their parents after they finish their schooling. They spend their spare time playing video games, rather than socializing with their friends.
The number of cars sold worldwide hit a peak in 2017, indicating indirectly that people are getting poorer. If people are not buying as many cars, demand for oil tends to fall, especially if more of the cars that are sold are electric.
Building new homes also takes oil. According to the US Census Bureau, the number of US new homes sold in the US hit a record of 1,283,000 in 2005. In 2025, the number of US new homes sold amounted to only 678,000, or about 53% of the peak amount. The huge drop in new home construction is a sign that people, quite often young people, are not as well off financially as they were years ago. They cannot afford to buy a new (or even a used) home anymore.
One study based on income tax data revealed that between 1948 and 1970, US incomes tended to rise faster than inflation. Between 1968 and 1983, the incomes of both the top 10% and the lower 90% rose as fast as inflation. However, between 1983 and 2012, the top 10% received far greater increases than the bottom 90% (Figure 2).
If workers in the bottom 90% of the distribution are not doing well, it is difficult to keep prices of commodities as high as those producing the commodities would prefer. Purchases of commodities, including food, and fuel for vehicles, do not rise proportionately with huge incomes. Elon Musk and other very high-income individuals do not spend all day eating or driving their vehicles. The bottom 90% must prosper for demand (affordability) of oil and other commodities to stay high.
[2] What experience with high and low growth in energy supplies since 1820 teaches us.
Several years ago, I prepared an analysis of how the world economy behaved over the long term, over the period from 1820 to 2017. I have recently updated this study. I found that the economy behaved quite well in times of high energy consumption growth. In times of low energy consumption growth, there seemed to be many adverse events, such as financial crashes, wars, and government collapses.
I am afraid that with today’s oil and debt problems, we are headed into a pattern of low energy consumption growth, or even energy consumption contraction. If this is the case, we should expect outcomes at least as undesirable those experienced during past periods of low energy consumption growth in the past.
(a) Methodology
I first prepared a new data set by combining two data sets, the earlier of which was available only every 10 years, with more recent data available more frequently. The energy quantities reported were rising rapidly. To analyze how fast they were rising, I first computed the average annual increase percentage for each 10-year period, as shown on Figure 3.
For example, the period from 1961 to 1970 (shown as the 1970 bar) had a very high annual rate of growth rate for energy consumption. This was the period when many of the interstate highways in the US were opened and many pipelines were added.
On Figure 4, I divided the bars shown on Figure 3 into two parts.
On Figure 5, the blue portions of the bars represent the average annual increase in population over the 10-year period. The red portion of the bar is computed by subtraction from the total. It is the amount that seems to be left over for a rising standard of living. Having a tall red portion of the bar would be very good; having little or no red bar left would represent a problem. Note that in two periods (the one ended 1860 and the one ended 2000), the amount left over for an increase in living standards was negative.
(b) Good things happened in years with very high growth in “Living Standards”
Figure 5 shows the information on Figure 4 as an area chart.
While I don’t show oil prices on Figure 5, those who are familiar with oil prices will remember that high oil prices were a feature of the 1973 to 1981 period. Also, as China began its growth period, another spike in oil prices took place. High growth in energy supplies and high oil prices seem to go together. High demand from a growing economy tends to hold prices up.
The label “China” refers to the rapid growth that took place in the decade after China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001. This was mostly powered by China’s huge growth in coal supply between 2002 and 2011 (Figure 6).
China and the world experienced another spurt of increased coal production starting in 2022, when coal prices temporarily spiked to a high level, perhaps indirectly related to the conflict in Ukraine. But coal prices have gradually come back down, resulting in flat world growth in coal production since 2023, and a plateau in China’s coal production growth.
(c) Troubled Periods took place when the growth in “Living Standards” was low or negative
Figure 7 labels three periods with very severe dips in “Living Standards.”
The First Troubled Period started with the Panic of 1857, which some consider to be a cause of the US Civil War. According to this view, the collapse was related to an over-expansion of the US economy, followed by the collapse of the debt bubble that had allowed this expansion to occur. Financial problems affected both the North and the South.
As I see the situation, one part of this financial problem was the declining profitability of slave labor. In the US South, the labor of slaves was the main source of energy used to operate plantations. An underlying issue was that the soil had gradually become depleted because of many years of growing of cotton and tobacco. These slaves had been purchased with debt; this debt could not be repaid with interest unless the income of the plantations was sufficiently high. However, poor harvests were not offset by sufficiently higher prices, which led to financial problems for plantation owners.
There may also have been an issue that the population, in general, was becoming poorer, essentially because of overpopulation. I say this because studies show that the height of army recruits had fallen, suggesting poorer nutrition. Sanitation had recently been improved, allowing a larger share of babies to survive to maturity. At the same time, immigration into the US continued. With overpopulation, it was difficult to keep incomes up. If farms were divided among many sons, farm sizes would tend to become smaller, leading to lower farm incomes. There would also be greater competition for factory jobs, tending to hold wages down.
Of course, when the Confederacy lost the war, the Confederate Dollar became worthless. For some, this added another financial crisis.
The Second Troubled Period was 1920 to 1940. This is a notoriously bad period, with the Great Depression and World War II included. Arguably, World War I should also be included. Commodity prices of all kinds fell very low. Tariffs were added in the 1920s. The problems seem to have arisen at the time Peak Coal hit–prices could not rise high enough to cover the cost of extracting coal from narrower and deeper seams. In my view, World War I began at the time of Peak Coal in the UK, and World War II took place at the time of Peak Hard Coal in Germany.
With depletion, the cost of extracting coal kept rising, but the sales price of coal would not rise to compensate for the higher extraction costs. Instead, wages of miners were increasingly squeezed. Strikes and lockouts became common. Taking a job as a soldier seemed like a reasonable alternative.
There were many events from this period that most people would like to forget, including the currency hyperinflation of the Weimar Republic between 1921 and 1923 and the Holocaust from 1933 and 1945. Country lines were redrawn. Some countries disappeared, and new ones were added. Those holding currencies of countries that disappeared were likely left without funds.
The Third Troubled Period was 1990 to 2000.
A major event of the Third Troubled Period was the collapse of the central government of the Soviet Union, leaving the 15 republics as independent states. The collapse also indirectly affected Cuba, North Korea, and some countries in Eastern Europe that were not part of the 15 independent states. With this change, the demand for fuel of all kinds fell in the countries affected. Factories were closed in many areas, including Ukraine, which was part of the Soviet Union.
The pullback in demand from the collapse of the Soviet Union helped hold oil prices down in the 1991 to 2001 period. Oil prices had previously been brought down by the spike in interest rates in the 1980-1981 period. In my opinion, these low oil prices played a major part in the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union, as an oil exporter, needed higher oil prices to invest in developing new fields. In my opinion, the impact of the collapse of the government of the Soviet Union kept world demand (and oil prices) low during the 1991 to 2000 period.
The collapse of the Japanese real estate bubble also took place in this period, as did the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. Low growth in the world economy, indirectly related to the collapse of the Soviet Union, may have played a role in these financial events.
[3] The world’s self-organizing and self-healing economy
From a physics perspective, all economies are dissipative structures. Other examples of dissipative structures include ecosystems in general, all plants and animals, including humans, and hurricanes. One characteristic of dissipative structures is that, at some point in their lives, they tend to grow. Another is that if there is an injury, within a range, the systems tend to be self-healing. For example, a cut on a person’s arm will tend to heal; a hurricane going over land will temporarily lose much of its force, but it may increase in force again if it returns over warm water.
Another characteristic of dissipative structures is that they are dependent on having a sufficient energy supply of the right kinds to continue their existence. For humans, the energy supply is food; for an economy, it is a combination of many kinds of energy needed to match the built infrastructure of the economy.
All dissipative structures have finite lifetimes. Ecosystems often come to an end through fires. Humans generally do not live more than 80 or 100 years. Economies also tend to come to an end, either by losing a war or by the collapse of a central government, related to debt problems. The collapse of the Soviet Union involved a debt problem, among other issues. Figure 9 shows the huge drop in demand for energy of all types as its central government collapsed.
There is more stability of dissipative structures than a person might expect. Economists talk about an Invisible Hand being involved. Researchers examining dissipative structures talk about them being “self-organizing.” For example, if a fire or a change in climate causes a forest to collapse, it does not take many years for the forest to refill with suitable plants and animals for the somewhat changed situation. If a business or government fails, new, somewhat different businesses or governments are likely to take their place.
I would argue that if the Universe is constantly expanding (so it is an “open system,” rather than a “closed system”), what appear to be self-organizing systems may, in fact, be God-organized systems. In other words, instead of creation being a one-time event in the distant past, some type of literal higher power may be involved in a way that makes creation more or less an ongoing event. A person might wonder with the strange confluence of recent events, including the strange weather patterns associated with El Nino, whether today’s humans are being warned that a major change in economies will take place soon.
[4] What kinds of things may happen in the near future?
(a) Current disturbances in the Middle East and elsewhere are raising long-distance shipping costs for both food and oil. (See this video.) Normally, the price of food and oil must be high enough to satisfy producers and at the same time be low enough to satisfy customers. But now a new layer of costs has been added: the cost of shipping longer routes.
I would argue that because of the problem with low demand (affordability) by consumers, shipping costs must be paid almost entirely through a reduced net oil price available to oil producers and reduced net food prices available to farmers. The amount that consumers can afford doesn’t increase because of higher transportation costs.
(b) Furthermore, the use of extra oil for transportation of oil and food will tend to push the overall economy toward contraction because there will be less oil available for other uses, such as to power agricultural machinery and jet airplanes. If the overall economy begins to contract, we can expect dips in oil prices similar to those in 2008 and 2020 (Figure 1). But if recession persists, low oil prices will not reverse themselves as quickly as they did earlier.
(c) I expect home and farm prices will tend to fall around the world. This is related to the low level of demand (affordability problem) in the US and elsewhere. Figure 11, showing median US asking prices for homes, suggests that home prices have been barely holding their own for quite a while. A decrease would not be surprising with all the pressure the economy is now encountering.
Farm prices are likely to be under pressure as well, because of the difficulty farmers are having obtaining adequate income from their farms. If farm and home prices fall, there is a substantial chance that the debt bubble holding up these prices will collapse.
(d) There are many other debt bubbles that seem to be waiting to collapse. Some of the debt relating to AI seems to be in a bubble. There is considerable commercial real estate whose value seems to be being held up by “extend and pretend” loans. Collapsing debt bubbles tend to lead to collapsing banks. They also tend to lead to banks less willing to make new loans. Layoffs seem likely. All these things point to a major recession ahead, with less buying power for the population.
(f) Collapses of some top levels of government, similar to the collapse of the central government of the Soviet Union, may be ahead. Such collapses can greatly reduce world energy consumption, including oil, with relatively little violence.
[5] How the nature of the economy may help over the long term
As noted previously, economies seem to have self-healing properties. Troubled periods can last for many years, but there seems to be a substantial chance that a way out will eventually be found.
If a government fails because of excessive debt, a new government (or governments) is likely to take its place. The new government will likely have fewer employees and offer fewer services to citizens. Pensions will likely need to be reduced or eliminated completely.
Even if governments fail, or national boundaries are redrawn, I expect that some businesses will continue operations. Such a situation will take place even if a new currency needs to be created to make this happen. Even in a troubled period, new businesses will start operations. Some of these businesses will make use of recycled materials available from failing businesses.
According to the Maximum Power Principle, if there are resources available that can easily be used, somehow, some organization will develop a way to use them. Over the long term, the economy will likely re-organize itself in a way that is more complex and more sparing in energy use. If energy use is efficient enough, it seems likely that a higher price for that energy supply could be made affordable to consumers. But, such a transition may take many years, if it is possible at all.
“Air Canada argued that despite the error, the chatbot was a “separate legal entity” and thus was responsible for its actions. “?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/16/air-canada-chatbot-lawsuit
Being an expert witness requires creative thinking. I suppose arguing that the chatbot is a separate legal entity means that it could be sued directly. This is absurd!
Rents are so low relative to prices that landlords don’t even bother to fill their apartments (interview)
Real estate prices in Slovakia are constantly rising, and many investors view them as the holy grail for getting rich. However, economist Juraj Karpiš of the INESS Institute has long pointed out that Slovaks sometimes behave as if they were “members of the Church of the Holy Brick.”
Translated by DeepL.
https://www.sme.sk/index/c/juraj-karpis-nehnutelnosti-su-drahe-najmy-nizke
This is a chart of apartment rental vacancy rate for the US, as shown in FRED.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RRVRUSQ156N
The rate is shown for the first quarter of 2026 is 7.3%. This is higher than the very low rates of 5.6% for the lowest quarterly points in 2021 and 2022. But over the long term, this is still a pretty low rate.
I know that not far from where I live, there are a huge number of apartments being built. I can’t imagine where all the people will come from to fill them. But if the apartments are significantly less expensive than monthly payments for buying a home, and don’t require a big deposit, I suppose that there could be an added shift from buying to renting.
Whether or not the owners can charge adequate rents for their apartments, giving the high cost of maintenance, is another question. At some point, people will start living more “compactly.” There will be more shared homes and apartments.
Who is building, or rather financing, all these apartments? Private equity? Then who winds up with ownership and having to secure rent payments and pay taxes? Huge management firms get in on the action, but who winds up having to service the loans? I assume they are securitized and dumped onto pensions and insurance companies and other bag holders.
I stood up before the quarterly medical staff meeting June 30, 2012 and asked the hospital administrator to resign, claiming, on information and belief -that has never been challenged- that she had run the hospital from $40 million in the green to $100 million in the red and that the hospital could never be sold. Not a single physician colleague came to my side even as many solo practitioners were being forced to leave because they could no longer compete with the subsidized corporate-paid physicians.
I was dismissed as being a crazy alarmist.
“White knight” Sentara Hospital out of Norfolk VA took out a 40 year lease with the provision to build a new smaller hospital which they completed 1 year ago- to act as a referral center to Sentara’s mothership hospital in Norfolk. Sentara apparently no longer pays rent or taxes on the former hospital which the County owns. No one will answer how much the county bleeds out having to service the debt on this dinosaur. The old hospital remains unsold, with the only explanation given is that the taxes are too high and therefore no buyer is willing to acquire the property because “by law the taxes can not be reduced.” Yet my former medical practice office building right on the corner of the highway and next to the hospital had my taxes raised this year. I have no buyers either, because no one is going to act until the status of the hospital is determined.
My concern is again circling back from 2024 is that after the midterm elections this year, or after the presidential elections in 2028, the FEDs or some agency will acquire this 185 bed hospital and create more Section 8 housing and an instant ghetto.
It is interesting how the rental vacancy rate went up from the 1980s to 2010, according to the chart. The current upward trend that began in the early 2020s is likely to continue, especially when we see things like people simply giving up trying to rent out their apartments.
This is like a language I don’t speak. I don’t understand a word. But I do understand anthropic is doomed. I speak doom fluently.
https://x.com/HealthRanger/status/2099557155351191929
“Look at what Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and Oracle officially owe, and the numbers seem large but manageable. Look off the books, and a second, bigger pile of debt appears.
A Nikkei study put that hidden figure at $1.65 trillion, up roughly eightfold in four years. It is more than the $1.35 trillion the five report outright.”?
https://thenextweb.com/news/tech-giants-hidden-off-balance-sheet-debt-ai
From the link:
Clip from my podcast on how Anthropic and OpenAI grossly MISCALCULATED China’s rapid advancements in open source AI. And the revenue projections for Anthropic made value assumptions that turned out to be undercut by China’s FREE open source AI models. This is what caused Anthropic to panic and beg for a government-protected industry cartel that would try to outlaw competing open source AI that could be run for free.
When the AI investment bubble collapses, it will expose highly fraudulent accounting practices that will make Enron look tame in comparison.
Anyone following the Ice Age Farmer … and thought he was dead… well, he isn’t!!! At least, that is what he says:
https://unshadowed.substack.com/
I am currently pulling an RV trailer with my diesel truck through the midwest on my way to Glacier National Park and a 6,000 mile round trip. In Arkansas I got diesel for $6.00/ gallon. Will fill up today around Springfield and it looks like $6.00/gallon is available. The farmers are harvesting and getting hit pretty severely by the diesel cost. I will report on diesel cost and availability for my entire trip.
The latest post talks about possible crop abandonment, because high diesel prices makes harvesting unprofitable:
Three weeks ago I said watch diesel as we go into harvest. Prices have exploded since; ExxonMobil’s Joliet refinery just shut down unexpectedly, and the situation in the Middle East keeps getting worse. Other voices are now also warning about crop abandonment as expenses are making a harvest economically unviable.
The British farmer who has the YT channel ‘Harrys Farm’ titled a recent video, ‘Good harvest, but is it worth growing wheat anymore?’
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/houthi-blitz-leaves-saudi-arabia-exposed-iran-emboldened-2026-09-16/
Houthi blitz leaves Saudi Arabia exposed, Iran emboldened
Oh dear!
From the link:
The Houthi capture of ground overlooking the Bab el-Mandeb Strait has dealt Saudi Arabia its gravest setback in Yemen in years, exposing intelligence failures, the collapse of Yemeni allies and the limits of U.S. protection.
A Houthi advance this week along the Red Sea coast and the capture of islands at the mouth of the strait, a vital artery for global oil supplies, has also left the kingdom scrambling for backing as Iran and its allies expand their reach. . .
Houthis had quietly assembled about 100,000 fighters, vastly outnumbering forces on the opposing side, adding: “Everyone, including the Saudis, missed this build-up and miscalculated the Houthis’ intentions.” . .
The collapse of Saudi-backed forces handed the Houthis another prize beyond territory — a sizeable cache of advanced U.S.- and Saudi-supplied weaponry abandoned during the retreat.
The haul, according to regional sources, is likely to bolster the group’s military capabilities, provide valuable intelligence on adversaries’ equipment and further reinforce perceptions of a humiliating Saudi defeat. . .
The absence of Western military assistance in Yemen, and the absence of these powers from a newly formed defence coalition, exposed the limits of its ability to rally support at a moment of acute vulnerability.
SA might have the lowest IQ leaders on the planet. Now, there are plenty of other candidates, but bombing an airport in advance of the leadership landing…. is a perfect way to unite a force.
And the results have been spectacular…. and horrific. North America is now 2 weeks from a Trucker Strike, and it only gets worse after that.
Fine. We had a good run. Stupid way to end the party though.
JK: Where have you heard of a pending trucker strike? Would not surprise me, but your message is the first I have seen.
I found this article about the teamsters. It talks about a strike in 2028.
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/teamsters-president-throws-down-gauntlet-to-ups-strike-coming-in-2028
I couldn’t find anything recent for truckers.
Germany now putting up bullet proof glass at hospitals and healthcare centers. And converting parking garages into long-term shelters.
https://x.com/Apexxxzz/status/2100231530081587622
Crazy world! This link says:
Europe is preparing for the carnage: Germany just ordered its civilian hospitals to gear up for a direct war against Russia
An internal government report calculated that they’re expecting to receive up to 1000 soldiers per day, so they’ve already ordered the reactivation of the hospitals’ nuclear bunkers that had been abandoned for 30 years
They’re already fortifying clinics and hospitals with bulletproof glass, raising barriers against explosive drones, and converting underground parking lots into long-term shelters
Who cares about AI when Germany is already preparing shelters to survive World War III?
Going to war sounds like a good idea to some people:The government is doing something. More jobs for soldiers. More GDP.
But the AfD party that recently won something like 43% of the votes with in Germany wants better relations with Russia. How does this fit in?
Gail if the powers that be adopt a war mentality then some preparation can be made for when collapse hits.
According to Ralph Tiesler, Germany’s civil defence chief we have 4 years to get ready.
What he is saying here is we have only 4 years left before the end.
If the powers that be were to tell the truth then nothing would be done so Russia had to play the part of the Boogie man.
That is an interesting idea: that the fake threat of Russian invasion can act as cover for a ‘war economy’ which is actually the most suitable to the global Peak All Resources crisis.
Rationing, total surveillance, elimination of many business sectors, and the suspension of human and civil rights are all standard to a war economy.
Mass unemployment can be addressed with mas conscription.
Savings seized as compulsory war loans, etc.
They will probably throw in a fake pandemic in order to recommence culling the population. ‘Putin poisoned the water supply!’. …..
Good points:
“Mass unemployment can be addressed with mass conscription.
Savings seized as compulsory war loans, etc.”
Governments need an excuse for their actions. Threat of war works almost as well as threat of Covid.
Australian government prepping for fuel shortages
Government agencies on notice amid global fuel supply uncertainty
The Albanese government has put the public service on notice that it must be prepared to limit diesel use and get fuel to where it is most needed if shortages emerge, as a long conflict in the Middle East continues and major suppliers consider implementing export restrictions.
Government agencies were last week issued with details of Level 3 restrictions under the national fuel security plan, outlining what would happen in case supply was disrupted. Those restrictions have never been triggered and only come into force if there are “ongoing supply disruptions”.
In a note circulated this month, Australian government agencies were told they had to be seen to be managing fuel security consistent with the plan, while taking a “sensible” approach to elevated prices.
“Government departments need to lead by example by reducing diesel usage where possible and to show the community all sectors are being asked to contribute to fuel conservation efforts even if the savings are minimal,” the September 8 communication reads.
https://www.afr.com/companies/energy/government-agencies-on-notice-amid-global-fuel-supply-uncertainty-20260904-p60uki
Does one laugh or cry on reading such news? I really don’t know.
Anyway, lots of nice government contracts for some.
Does Ursula ‘VD’ Leyen have friends in the armoured glass business? She probably has her own side hustle in radiation meters…..
All we will see here in W. Europe going forward is, clearly, madness, improbable official lies, deep corruption and murder.
They are getting ready for collapse why you say bunkers are going to be needed when the spent fuel pools explode
” . spent fuel pools explode”?
https://www.facebook.com/JoseBarbaNueva/posts/pfbid02LHk7C55cbtZy5naDu4prn3TbBTzQbEQyacjYjSmGSawQaLUyBMDSDHr6NktCyZzQl
The Great Fuel Crisis
National Emergency
Stay Indoors
Lockdown
Shelves Empty
Emergency Broadcast System Initiated
Curfews
The Storm
https://x.com/xrp_cc/status/2100214923804430385
The comments make it clear that none of the commenters think that any of the things listed would arise from “The Great Fuel Crisis.” BAU will continue indefinitely.
We are at a strange fork in the road. Here in my little urban locality in England, everything looks normal. There have been extensive roadworks in recent months, in order to extend the fibre optics network for access to the internet, etc. So far, so modern. I read about crime and the many have-nots as the gap between rich and poor widens, but nobody troubles me as I go about my everyday life, nor when I go for my exercise walks through the streets late at night.
When I read the news, both national and international, it is a different matter. These wars overseas in which energy facilities are being massively destroyed are going to have a major effect on us here in England before too long. How bad will things get? It remains to be seen.
When I read the website “Life After the Oil Crash” back in 2004, I was terrified. I imagined that by now I would be either dead of living in a largely wrecked and hugely energy-poor and impoverished country. That is not the case.
I think of the Great Depression and the international turmoil and war of 1930s and 1940s, yet a lot of great technological advances were also made in those times. After the Second World War, food rationing was still in operation in the UK from 1945 to around 1953, but prosperity gradually returned and our cities and towns were modernised and rebuilt. I have read that in the USA, it took the the stock market until 1962 to regain its height of 1929 in real terms, allowing for inflation. But then came the internet, increased connectivity, and all sorts of modern products and innovations.
Now we seem to be in a similar situation, with turmoil galore, yet we seem to be having, arguably, some sort of AI revolution. And AI is using itself to improve itself. Technological progress of sorts never stops.
Will that revolution mean that eventually, after an impoverished period, new sources of energy and a different kind of technological revolution will occur? Despite all the current strains on resources, I cannot say that I would bet against it. Partly my own use of AI and the work it can do for me has changed my opinion. I see that some commenters here, and maybe Gail herself, are critical of AI. But everything has its downsides.
Nor will I desist from quoting from AI. I will state that I am quoting from it, while endeavouring to be judicious and succinct in how I do it. After all, prior to AI, I had to be judicious in the sources that I used from the internet, because there is a huge amount of “internet slop” too and always was. But ultimately there would have been a lot of knowledge that I missed out on without the internet. And that knowledge all comes from humans. The same applies to AI. I have found it to be vastly improved from 2023, when I briefly tried it, and I find hallucinations to be hugely minimal but obvious when they do occur. AI is here to stay, and to avoid it or to try to ban commenters from using it is just Luddite. The amount and scope of work that it can do for us is phenomenal. But like everything else, it has its downsides.
lol
New, or different. New in the sense that we have never rolled it out to the masses, Missie Lollobrigida
Killer Patents & Secret Science Vol. 1 | Free Energy & Anti-Gravity Cover-Ups
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZRwlYtAMps
==========================
Infinite Energy – But Not For the Masses
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4vG6qOX374.
==========================
The number of times I have to show people documentaries like this. 🙁
Dothk, this is the plan as acknowledged by Dennis Meadows in order to have a technological society the world’s population would have to drop to around 1.5 billion or less.
Keeping the world population growing means abandoning the technological society and creating a new society based on humans sharing everything we have created so far accepting a massive drop in living conditions.
Unfortunately we seem to be chasing the first option which is a real shame as karma seems to always win the day.
As for Ai I don’t think it will be around for too much longer as food and shelter will be prioritised.
Based on personal experience – not religious belief, an NDE, or even LSD! – I am certain that human consciousness exists after the death of the body. And no doubt other beings, too.
This does not mean, I hasten to add, that I subscribe to Eternal Life or perpetual punishment in Hell. These are very primitive notions, devised to control primitive and impulsive people. But still related perhaps in some degree to the Other.
Those who are planning mass murder in order to realise their new society will likely find things will not go well for them when they too, die.
We should endeavour to live well ourselves, in these dark days, pity them, and die without being tainted with too much evil ourselves.
Thus spoke the Prophet Xabier!
And now I’m going to play with my kittens, the little scamps: Fatso and Gremlin.
I suggest you read Tim Watkins article, mentioned earlier. https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2026/09/16/ai-is-not-a-flyer/
The form of AI that we have in the US cannot continue. It has too big of a debt bubble deal with.
I did read it. We can’t see the future. I think it was reante who linked to a long video explaining the history of modern money creation and how to de-create our current debt and shift to a new monetary system.
Where AI is concerned, things need to be DOWNscaled to some extent. You will remember the internet bubble of the late 1990s. Well, it burst, but the internet and software and computing are still here. We cannot see the future and do not know what will come. Back in 1944, who would have imagined the atomic bombs that brought the war to end?
Elon Musk is still confident that we will have a future thanks to technology and quantum computing. No, he isn’t perfect, and he is politically dodgy, but just maybe he will surprise us on the technological side. I am already thoroughly surprised that ChatGPT has passed the Turing test. Astounded, in fact, at what it can do.
As for zero point energy, it’s been cracked long since (and I don’t mean fusion), and there are documentaries about it, but it’s suppressed, because truly limitless energy would be dangerous in itself. Apart from anything else you could weaponise it. Nor would the capitalists be pleased with energy that cost hardly anything. Yes, we do have real resource problems, and maybe millions will starve. But look at the two world wars and the inter war period – we came thru that. Where we will be in 20 or 30 years if we can surmount our problems, who knows? Never say never until you have to say never. Damn – I just said it three times! 🙁
Alas, neither you are I are included in the ‘we’, you can be sure of that!
You are being far too kind to Elon, who is an ‘end justifies the means’ psychopath ( funny how we are encouraged to speculate on Trump’s mental state, when Elon is roaming wild….
He knows, for example full well what the Covid vaccines did: I recall his tweet:
‘The doses were too high, and there were way too many of them; but mRNA technology is comparable to the invention of the ICE’.
Yes Elon, how nice: human beings are just experimental subjects and their corpses and blood the bricks and mortar of your Techtopia!
‘If you demolish an ants’ nest to build a road, it doesn’t mean that you hate ants’ Elon.
So I went grocery shopping today. And purchased hamburger (all beef). And when I’m using the self checkout it stops me. And someone who worked there had to cover override the system. And the screen turns into a camera on me from above.
I asked the girl working. “does this happen when people buy beef? she said “Yes, and it’s getting really bad, I think its the packaging or something”.
And I noticed they just installed Flock camera’s in the parking lots (both entrances/exits)
Constrained growth in the economy = uptick in shoplifting + less staff = increased electronic security measures = everyone gets treated like a potential criminal now.
Say cheese for the cameras.
Just about to put this in the microwave and do a giant Yorkshire pudding in the airier to dish it in. https://www.tesco.com/shop/en-GB/products/304408369 Ten minutes for the whole thing.
Say cheese, life could be worse.
I am afraid you are right. Now, every organization thinks they need security camera and alarms. Everyone goes around being afraid.
Maybe afraid, but most just clueless: one needs to supply a face scan and fingerprints, like a criminal or arrested person, to travel in and out of the EU. People accept this!!!!
Walking quietly to the execution chamber…..
I am foregoing seeing my family in Spain rather than bow so very low.
I will have to submit eventually, I know: but not now, not until the very last.
Obviously there will need to be food rationing appropriate for household size.
This can not be implemented at the vendor level although there will be localized software.
It must be implemented at the financial level.
You are encountering alpha testing.
Food purchasers must be identified and all of their food purchases evaluated not just those at a individual vendor.
Cash will not be allowed for food purchases because it bypasses monitoring.
Prior only funds limited food purchases.
Now parameters other than funds are necessary to determine whether food purchases are appropriate.
Food rationing creates the system that evaluates whether purchasing is appropriate based on parameters other than funds.
I think that a need for a rationing system is why governments around the world are working on putting in new digital currency systems, controlled by the government, that would have an account for each person. Presumably, it could be set to provide only an allowance of say, $5.00 per month for beef for an individual person.
These new accounts would likely replace normal bank accounts. They likely would be needed because banks are likely to fail. Most other financial securities seem likely to collapse, also, if the economy heads “south.”
I have a hard time seeing how these new digital currencies systems could be used for international payments. They would be needed because US$ and other currencies are no longer working well. In theory, however, these system could be used as local rationing systems.
I wonder how many goods there would really be to allocate, without a lot of international trade and international payments to support the system.
Could a digital energy currency—functioning like a Universal Basic Income with a guaranteed monthly allowance of 350 kWh per citizen—work if this complementary currency could only be used to exchange for locally produced food and heat, as well as locally organized passenger transport? Product pricing would be determined based on their embodied energy plus their thermal energy.
The system could work for the time being, provided we have a functioning digital system.
I bought a nice steak in my usual supermarket, and the check out lady told me I ought to take a paper receipt ‘in case you get stopped at the door’. Usually I don’t bother with one.
The math is never wrong .
“Today you can look at SPCX’s latest report which just issued. Here you will find not a supplier that can be cut loose or not contracted with at all but rather an integral part of the whole which is making said losses and has non-cancelable obligations over the next 12 months that dwarf any revenue earned in said segment — by roughly a factor of ten. The only operating margin positive segment is connectivity (e.g. Starlink); all others are loss-making. ”
https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=255789
After a long time I visited Karl Denninger . This is his post on AI . he was a peak oil and CC denier and now posts that without diesel it is FUBAR . Check out his posts . He is intelligent .
Disclaimer : I have a soft corner for him . He enlightened me on carbs and sugar 15 years ago . Now I am 74 and still working thanks to his advice . Last cola 2011 , last pizza 2009 .
carbs are not a problem. i have slowly but surely moved to a diet rich in them. it helps a lot with the stress of starting a business in a foreign country. also much better electrolyte balance and great sleep. but no grains, no beans, and moderate sugar only through ice cream. Basically dairy, fruits, kvass and roots (plus eggs, collagen, tallow and offal). I recently reintroduced rice. all starch eaten with fat (tallow) for significantly better digestion.
Denniger’s dietary practises are based on a HFLC (high fat low carb) intake; replacing sugars and starches with fats as a source of energy. Forget low fat, margarine, cooking in canola or other processed products and replace with butter and lard, ghee, maybe a little olive oil for salads. Remove potato, pasta, noodles, bread, rice. I’ve been also using this concept to midify for diet for 15+ years. Not complete fanatic – I like a little chocolate, and when eating a restaurants one cannot control what goes on out the back … Lack of good quality dairy is a problem when I am at present
Been there done that. After one year of wonderful blood sugar and sleep they both started declining. I felt good but early morning leg cramps became too vicious and stress level too high. Being in Russia, I am now eating lots of potatoes, which are free. But the base of the food pyramid, IMHO, is fruits. Dairy is the next level, starch the next, eggs and offal the next.
I expect good quality dairy to disappear here in Britain. It is clearly Govt policy. Getting plenty now!
The Ancient Welsh, according to Gerald of Wales, thrived on:
‘Lots’ of meat. Goat, lamb, beef, wild boar, some chicken.
Wildfowl.
Fish.
Eggs.
Cheese.
Butter.
Buttermilk and milk from goats and sheep.
Oats. Not much wheat.
Fruit and berries in season.
And of course they took lots of exercise. The most vital part of any diet. Exercise was taken in preparation for war by those who were not farmers – living rough and hunting.
Really, I can’t think of anything more opposed to the modern urban diet and way of life. Or to the diet planned for us.
Denninger still subscribes to the infinite resource paradigm and supports a variety of unusual right-wing beliefs, so I’d take his statements with a grain of salt.
This is a link to the 10-K report referred to.
https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/0001181412/000162828026052535/spcx-20260630.htm
Pages 30- 32 gives a report of income by segment. I agree that Connectivity is the only income making segment.
Page 27 gives a list of commitments and contingencies; Page 28 provides legal proceedings.
AI is not a flyer
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2026/09/16/ai-is-not-a-flyer/
Tim Watkins makes the point that an innovation can look wonderful, but unless it is inexpensive enough and useful enough, it can’t work for the long run. AI is a vanity project. Watkins has a lot of historical information for the England.
He says:
Unfortunately, the progress narratives that we fall for time and again, are based on the erroneous belief that the process of technological improvement follows an upward slope. In the real world though, once the cheap and easy improvements have been made, further improvements provide fewer gains and come at an increasing cost. There are two big reasons why Mallard still holds that speed record – the freight businesses and passengers on Britain’s railways preferred to pay the lower cost of slower and older locomotives, while, in any case, steam was being overhauled by electric and diesel-electric locomotives. In a similar way, the development of jet engines paved the way for the brief (in historical terms) post-war period of mass air travel. But improvements were already getting difficult by the time the British and French governments decided to fund commercial supersonic flight.
In the media, Concorde was the wave of the future. It was, they promised, only a matter of time before you could fly from the UK to Australia in the same time as it would take for a rail journey from London to Glasgow. More than 100 provisional orders were placed by 17 international airlines. But then it turned out that supersonic commercial flight is a lot harder to achieve than was first thought.
Later he says,
virtual reality is one of those branches of technology that was a dead end from the start. If you can afford the headset – which comes in at around £300 for the entry level – you soon discover that its two obvious drawbacks are motion sickness and the tendency to end up flat on your face chewing the carpet. . .
Nevertheless, $80 billion was spent and the Metaverse is no longer the wave of the future. Meanwhile, Zuckerberg has ridden off to join the other tech bros in pursuit of the holy grail of converting large language models into artificial general intelligence (AGI) or even artificial super intelligence (ASI). . .
LLMs are not intelligent. Nor, crucially, do they have a “self” which might at some future date become “aware.” At best they have been referred to as stochastic parrots – they are very competent at using statistical probability to tell you what you want to hear… a process which often leads to so-called ‘hallucinations’ which, in turn, have given rise to potentially costly legal precedent.
The big problem though, is debt, which will have to rise by more than $400 billion in 2027 and is projected to rise above $1.3 trillion by 2030. But as of 2026, total revenues are counted in mere tens of billions.
Given that neither AGI or ASI are about to magically appear in the next six months, the AI companies are facing their real greatest fear… that they will be forced to open up their books and the world will get to witness some of the dodgiest accounting practices since Enron. If only there was some way of slowing everything down…
the AI bubble will burst sooner rather than later… after which, there may be little to gain from the wreckage. Because AI is more like Concorde than the Wright Flyer. It is an excessively expensive vanity project which is ultimately unaffordable.
SpaceX has a TV commercial that’s been running nonstop which starts by saying “predictions about the future are tricky, the only thing we know for sure is that it will be spectacular”.
Hmm, a bomb going off can be ‘spectacular’!
BTW, this came to my mind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyDQ0L7ieC8
REINHARD MEY – Lilienthals Traum (du kannst fliegen…) [Lyrics]
[18,630 views, May 21, 2024 #fliegen #Lyrics #lyricvideo, Traumland Lyrics
Traumland Lyrics]
{Lyrics of this German song from Reinhard Mey
https://genius.com/Reinhard-mey-lilienthals-traum-lyrics}
And look what the most useless idiots in this world have made of it:
https://www.ecosia.org/images?q=airplanes%20bombing&addon=opensearch
Q: airplanes bombing (images)
I’ve re-acquainted myself with Nate’s blog (and podcast) recently. I think he’s reached acceptance of the situation and has started posting practical insights instead of the usual alarmism.
“Today, I’d like to build on that and reflect on the explanations and worldviews themselves: the lenses that provide eight different answers to the question, “What is actually happening in the world right now, and why?”
All of these lenses are held by intelligent and sincere people who are looking at the same planet and socioeconomic system, yet coming to radically different conclusions.
…
A Villain and a Task
The thing I noticed putting this together is that every lens hands us a villain and a task.
The political lens gives you the other party and a vote.
Religion gives you our own faithlessness and a way to atone.
Class gives you the billionaires and a redistribution.
Technology gives you the neo-Luddites and something to build.
Community gives you modernity and something to belong to.
The animist lens gives you the poacher and a creature to save.
Villain, task. Villain, task. And I think people choose their lens at least partly based on which of those two they can live with.
However, both overshoot and thermodynamics give us … ourselves, the shrinkage of our material lives, and the task of grappling with how we’ve used our one-time energy inheritance. There’s really nobody specific to blame. Nobody sat down and decided to build a civilization on a one-time energy inheritance.”
https://natehagens.substack.com/p/essay-who-broke-the-world-the-villains
However, Nate might like to reflect ( or ‘meditate mindfully ‘, knowing him!) on the words of Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam, in the early 17thc, who was the master-mind acknowledged as an inspiration by all ‘natural scientists’ in Europe in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.
‘We must break open the secrets of Nature, in order that we might dominate her’.
That’s the whole programme at the culmination of which we find ourselves today, set out c1600.
This was the core motivation behind the activities of the Royal Society, founded in London later that century. Instead of speculating over the nature of the Divine, rape Mother Earth, and get rich.
Scientific investigation, systematically pursued, to the end of domination , and, of course, the acquisition thereby of untold wealth, rather than messing about with such futile things as theology, wars over which – ostensibly – had dominated the preceding century.
And here we are.
Lots of minds bent to one end, worshipping innovation, inspired by one very eloquent man, and resulting in the poisoned, ravaged, vastly over-populated Earth, which is the true legacy of all those natural scientists, engineers, chemists, applied physicists, etc.
Fair point, Xabier. I suspect we’d have gotten there eventually, but the man certainly accelerated the process.
“While much of the Novum Organum deals with aphorisms which merit Bacon’s analysis, the impetus of Bacon’s first part of the book is dealing with how man can come to know and conquer nature. Man’s empire lay at his feet. It is a nature that needs man to tame it, conquer it, and subdue it. The subjugation of nature occurs through industry and man’s pursuit of knowledge. According to Bacon the two go together. The conquest of nature and the acquisition of knowledge is what help leads to “the relief of man’s estate” which makes him prosperous, strong, and happy.”
“Thus, for man to gain knowledge of the world, build his empire of knowledge and wealth, and propel himself out of poverty, man must conquer nature. To reduce nature and strip it bare is the best way to gain knowledge of nature’s secrets, “so the secrets of nature betray themselves more readily when tormented by art than when left to their own course. We must begin, therefore, to entertain hopes of natural philosophy then only, when we have a better compilation of natural history, its real basis and support.” Subjecting the natural world to torment is what is necessary for us to know it and the benefit from it.”
“The second part of Bacon’s book concerns itself with what he calls the “reign of man.” The reign of man commences after the establishment of the “empire of man.” Once the empire of man is established, the empire of industry, science, and affluence, then man has supreme control over his domain. Thus, the “reign of man.””
https://minervawisdomcom.wordpress.com/2020/05/11/francis-bacons-philosophy-of-scientific-conquest/
“There’s really nobody specific to blame. Nobody sat down and decided to build a civilization on a one-time energy inheritance.”
Overshoot and collapse has happened over and over. We didn’t even need a one-time energy inheritance for this to happen. It has to do with rising population and degrading resources, as much as anything else. In the case of the collapse of Babylon, the collapse came when demand for slaves (the energy product of the day) and all kinds of finished goods fell too low. Revelation 18:11-13.
We are living on a finite earth. We have a limited amount of fresh water and a limited amount of arable land. We somehow needed to keep population and “stuff” we make (like homes and vehicles) to a very low level. But even if we would do that, we would still run out at some point.
We humans cannot face the story that we might be facing the end, unless there is a religious solution such as “Christ comes again,” or a huge economic dip, followed by better extraction techniques and an eventually recovery using more of energy resources. Leaders find that they need to give us narratives that imply growth forever, no matter how ridiculous the necessary story.
Quite right, Gail: if the natural sciences and engineering, chemistry, etc, hadn’t taken off, 19thc Europe would probably have experienced an historically-typical type of collapse, caused by over-populaton and exhaustion of farmland, forestry, and so on.
I see Nate Hagens has just interviewed a best-selling philosopher lady who claims that this collapse opens the way to ‘radical simplicity’: this is accompanied by a charming image of happy people around a table drinking wine, with nice lighting. So that’s how it’s going to be!!
Not just politicians spinning palatable tales…..
Analytically speaking, slavery (of both animals and humans) was the social technology through which system owners (the elite) could accumulate a production surplus for their own benefit. Biomass was the primary energy source.
The control mechanism for this accumulation system was the social technology of general-purpose money.
The system’s downsides were ecological overshoot and monetary inflation.
Only the form of slavery has been updated since then—to “fossil slaves”—while the money remains the same. The ultimate outcome is embedded in the very design of general-purpose money.
Both systemic flaws (slavery and money) can be seen as stemming from the delusion of property rights.
In a contracting society, we need a currency that reflects diminishing energy supplies and—hopefully—helps us realize that we own nothing.
The DIESEL and JET FUEL (Kerosene) crisis.
I’ve heard that Trump is open to block diesel export and, from US’ view, it is a good move of course.
It is funny how people in Italy and maybe also in other Countries don’t understand the issue about the various quality of Oil.
Much related to API quality and also other characteristics.
These three articles explain well the problem in my view.
The following excerpt is from one of the three, in the other two articles the problem is explained from the point of refinery, but it is easy to understand anyway.
I hope useful.
This comes from years following Gail and other precious writers on this blog, thanks.
‘We must also bear in mind that shale oil is not exactly oil. It is not the thick black substance that gushes out of the ground but gas that is forced out using powerful pumps and condenses into a liquid called, correspondingly, condensate. Condensate is far too light to make the most valuable transportation fuels — jet fuel and diesel. For that, it has to be blended with heavier varieties of crude oil, which the US has to import. This is an important point: although the US can produce absolutely huge amounts of shale oil, this will not make it energy independent: it is still dependent on a steady stream of oil tankers from faraway lands in addition to the 3 million barrels a day of heavy oil it imports from Canada via a pipeline.’
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/US-Shales-Dirty-Secret.amp.html
https://www.worldenergy.org.tr/will-us-shale-give-the-refining-industry-indigestion/
https://tapnewswire.com/2026/05/09/oil-deprivation-therapy/
Lack of understanding of the complexities of the oil business leads to considerable confusion. Most people don’t understand that all oil is a mixture of molecules of different types. We use some of the molecules for some purposes, and others for others. One type of oil is not a direct replacement for another type of oil.
There are a wide range of uses of the various molecules that make up oil. Oil is split into its various components, primarily by heating in refineries. The light components evaporate first, and rise to the top. The heavy components tend to sink to the bottom.
We use different components for different purposes. Sulfur, which is really a pollutant of “sour” (and often heavy) oil, is one type of fertilizer. Sulfur is also important in making sulfuric acid, which is used in mining uranium, among other things.
The longest (and heaviest) hydrocarbon molecules can be used for paving roads and making asphalt roof tiles, among other things. They can also be “Cracked” (in specialized refineries) to provide more diesel and gasoline.
Well it’s not their fault this is the news that the mainstream media spews out .
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/16/oil-prices-today-brent-wti-hormuz-iran-war.html
Another there is a glut of oil on the market story.; although this has to be a fabricated story by the current ptb
The way a glut occurs is if people cannot afford end products, such as vehicles, air plane rides, and going out to restaurants. A glut is a sign of un-affordability, not too much oil.
Exactly! You and I know that but that’s not what the sheep see. There is another report out that the Saudi Pipeline will be up and running in no time… if it was so easy to hit before why wouldn’t they do it again?!? Even if it is open and fixed the oil still has a long journey to go? Oil is down significantly on this faulty information
On the whole, the average person might as well think that their life runs on some kind of pixie dust.
I was once one of that ignorant majority myself.
Only the GFC I set me off on the quest to understand , so as not to be taken by surprised by the next crisis – going very cold and a bit hungry then was the inspiration.
First, I tried the conventional economists, and they were not satisfactory.
Then Peak Oilers, and they too were lacking.
Then I discovered OFW. through a chance reference which I decided to follow up.
World Oil Inventories Just Hit Their Operational Floor
Global visible oil inventories have dropped from about 8.4 billion barrels before the February 2026 Hormuz closure to roughly 6.8 billion barrels this month, per JPMorgan Commodities Research.
That’s the “operational floor,” the minimum JPMorgan says is needed to keep pipelines pressurized and refineries running.
JPMorgan flagged both thresholds back in May, stress by June and the floor by September if the war stayed unresolved.
Both landed on schedule.
That track record is why the next JPMorgan checkpoint on this chart is worth taking seriously rather than filed away as a worst-case scenario.
https://x.com/jackprandelli/status/2099678611913809928
Enough with the global “tank bottom” countdown
@SCapStrategist
Oil markets are not a bathtub.
There is no single inventory number where pipelines suddenly lose pressure and refineries all stop running.
Markets care about the system: direction of inventories, physical premiums, logistics, quality, location and replacement barrels.
A 900 million barrel disagreement over the supposed floor should end the illusion of precision.
Track the system. Forget the clickbait threshold.
https://x.com/aeberman12/status/2100009825648115740
The EIA should publish their weekly updates today.
How about one more?
Libya Just Lost Three Oil Fields Overnight
Libya’s National Oil Corp says output has been halted at the Hamada, Al-Tahara and NC5 (Station 5) fields after a group from the Petroleum Facilities Guard forcibly shut the Hamada-Zawiya pipeline valve, triggering a pressure surge at the Al-Tahara connection point.
NOC says it may declare force majeure if the valve stays closed or other fields go down too.
Libya’s oil sector has a long history of local, unrelated shutdowns like this one. The disruption itself is routine. What’s not routine is a market with zero spare cushion left to absorb it.
https://x.com/jackprandelli/status/2099890735478874169
China’s gasoline and diesel inventories are plunging as refiners grapple with a tightening domestic market, raising the chance the government may move to limit fuel exports again.
Gasoline stockpiles at Chinese state-owned fuel suppliers dropped 2.9% last week to the lowest since 2022, according to JLC International. Diesel holdings declined 2.4% to a 15-month low.
Chinese traders are already seeing fewer domestic offers for diesel as market participants try to manage inventories, and think about withholding supplies for later sales.
https://x.com/staunovo/status/2100079268277428332/photo/1
Yuan-priced crude futures in China rallied to the highest level on record, as the shutdown of an oil pipeline in Saudi Arabia hurt global supplies and refiners in the largest importer bought more cargoes.
Prices advanced to as much as 929.4 yuan ($138.50) a barrel on the Shanghai International Energy Exchange. That’s the highest in data going back to 2018, when the contract was first listed. The Chinese marker tends to track trends seen in benchmarks for similar-quality crudes, with both Oman and Murban futures last trading above $126 a barrel. –Bloomberg
Oman Crude pushes further above $150!
$155.14
This is the only Middle Eastern crude that does not have to pass through either the Strait of Hormuz or Bab el-Mandeb.
That means oil prices in the rest of the world will eventually have to catch up with Oman.
https://x.com/KarelMercx/status/2099905158020816947/photo/1
Wow! Oil prices seem to be moving farther and farther apart, depending on where in the world the oil is located and what the composition of the oil is.
Such a divergence in prices has always been the case for coal supplies. Coal often has the issue of needing to be transported long distances, using oil.
Crude oil is now reaching a similar situation. Crude oil often needs to be transported long distances (with a high cost of transport), if it is available at all. It still must match the needs of a particular refinery.
Total production of crude oil has recently been close to 1.4 million barrels per day. It would be useful to know how much of this has been removed from production.
Of course, any loss of crude oil, today, is a problem for the market.
“Just a few years ago, after finishing high school, a young person would move seamlessly on to college or enter the job market, where they would find their first job and begin building a career.
Today, this process is no longer a given. On the contrary, the number of young people aged 15 to 29 who are neither studying nor working—in short, who have fallen out of the system—is growing in the country. They seem as if they don’t exist, which is why they are called “invisible.”
They are also referred to as NEETs, which is an acronym for the English term “Not in Education, Employment, or Training.” This can be loosely translated as those who are not employed, are not studying, and are not undergoing vocational training.”
Translatrd by DeepL.
https://www.pravda.sk/spravy/ekonomika/clanok/2039135-slovensku-rastie-armad-mladych-ludi-ktorym-sa-nechce-pracovat-ekonomika-na-nich-trati
The third thing young people, aged 15 to 29, used to do, was get married and have children. Young people are increasingly putting marriage and children off. Many never marry.
It is difficult to keep the system going with this situation. Immigrants, who are even worse off than local people, often come to dominate the system. They come with totally different culture. They will often work for very low wages, taking jobs that the current population has.
This feature of being “invisible” very well describes the fact that they percieve how the system is crumbling: on one hand, the companies try to squeeze maximum out of the employees in order to achieve profit, on the other hand, the employees are no longer able to withstand this pressure. You simply drop out of this system. The Tower of Babel falls apart.
That is how you become invisible: you do not want to be a part of that system, that looks aggressive to you.
You can not create more with less energy and resources. The idol of rising productivity of the economists is dead. On the other hand, you also reject consumerism, so you as a high consumer are also dead.
You are and you want to be invisible.
Where’s Tim where’s Jr where’s the big R?
Only incoherent blabbermouthes remain, Doggy…
I’ve noticed recently a rapidly increasing number of site visits, here sometimes and all over the internet. time out and service unavailable try again later notices
It’s been discussed here as being caused by AI scrapers which are acting effectively as denial of service agents. Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism has had a battle with it which she describes
That makes it hard for me to get any work done, hence the state of the current post. It also means I had to awaken our tech maven Dave repeatedly to implement different Cloudflare rule sets. There are not good remedies. For instance, one that does shut down the bots also shuts down the RSS feed, frustrating some readers and killing the daily e-mail, which takes entries in the last 24 hours from the RSS feed. Another shuts down the bots and lets me think I can use the backstage (for instance, I can clear comments and open blank new post window) but it will not let me post or even make comments. It is now very hard to post; I have to go through all sorts of time-consuming hoops to save drafts and add images. So again, AI is literally killing this site. If you care at all about independent media, you need to stop using it electively. It’s tantamount to believing you take good care of your health because you exercise while alos smoking three packs of cigarettes a day.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2026/09/iran-war-ansar-allah-strikes-yanbu-port-as-rising-energy-prices-help-push-10-year-treasury-yields-over-5.html
Annoying though it is for users, I’m afraid I don’t have much sympathy for her. For years she has used blockers which make it impossible for anyone with privacy and security settings on their browsers to contact her by email or post on the forum. More recently Cloudflare, which is a “spyware and trackers or you cannot enter” gate, has been installed. So, she protects her precious lifestyle by selling users down the drain. Her site became blocked for me for three days and I’d assumed that it was sayonara … after considering my alternatives and figured that my infinitessimal moral stand against Silicon Valley imperative.
We read that AI is going to eat humanity, or human civilization, or whatever. My view is individuals should be free to make up their own minds and do what they like with it, so long as it is between consenting adult and machine in private, and I couldn’t care less. But not imflicting on the rest of us, please. Use your own brain for interpersonal communication. Any idiot can copy and paste.
I can’t say that I have much sympathy for Yves, to be honest. I asked her to expand on the terms she used in one of her articles. Her response was to insult me in the comments section. No loss to me, sayonara senorita.
Perhaps AI will be an improvement. For one, it attempts to answer questions.
You’ve distilled her “leftism” down in one sentence:
“So, she protects her precious lifestyle by selling users down the drain.”
She’s a fraud, a fake and one who could have used a punch to the face in younger years.
May I respectfully disagree that she’s a fraud and a fake, because it’s my view that NC has the solid substance, which is why I’m still (trying) to read it after twenty years. I try to focus of the product and not the unsavourable packaging
Apologies for my absence. A lot has been going on in my part the offline world.
I’ve been out in the field, harvesting rice. Four hours on Sunday and three on Monday. Temperature 30 to 34 degrees C and sky high humidity. Racing against the impending rain. We managed to get the last of the crop in just as the first drops of rain began falling. Half an hour later, the field was a sea of mud and floating straw. As we left, a pair of kestrels circled around above looking for lunch.
Lots of farmers have not been so lucky. I see fields of rice mature enough to harvest stretching for miles along the big river, and with no chance to cut them for a couple of weeks.
The work overtired me and gave me a touch of dehydration and heat stroke. My main job was tying up the sacks and carrying them to the waiting light truck, while my mate drove the combine. He has a bad back and so can’t lift. I am extremely sensitive to the noise, fumes, and dust put out by the combine, and so like to keep my distance. So we make a pretty good team.
But this year’s weather was a bit too hot for us old folks. I am still in recovery mode with loud tinnitus and muffled hearing, despite the protection I was wearing. On the upside, it was a bumper harvest. This summer’s strong sunshine gave the plants all the energy they needed.
In other news, my 89-year-old American neighbor reports that he is dealing with metastatic prostate cancer that is spreading to the bones. When he was initially diagnosed with the cancer in May, the oncologist told him, “Don’t worry, this spreads so slowly at your age that you will die of old age before it becomes a problem.” Sadly, that isn’t the case. I wouldn’t say it’s turbo cancer, but it has progressed at a moderate pace.
My neighbor is now taking chemo tablets, but is interested in what else he can do to slow down the cancer. I have introduced him to Dr. Marik’s substack, an excellent resource full of potentially very useful information.
Interested people might want to bookmark this. Marik is an expert who has gone to a lot of trouble to make cancer information available and help people wade through the treatment swamp and avoid the crocodiles and snakes.
https://paulmarik.substack.com/p/the-cancer-and-metabolic-library
You still working, Tim? Didn’t you say you are in your 70s? Do you have a pension? Or is all this physical labour to help your neighbours?
Only 68, and still working because I still enjoy it. The physical labor is partly to stay active. Just as Norman has his weights and his swimming, so I have my rice growing, wood chopping, and grass cutting. But it’s also for the local community. In the suburbs, people are supposed to keep their lawns tidy. In the countryside, landowners are responsible for keeping a lot of grass verges and woodlands bordering roads in good order. The local government maintains the major roads, the landowners do the minor ones.
“Only 68”
Bingo! I’ll be charging you a tariff for copying me, though. And there was me thinking you were a teenager when Mars still had a civilisation!
So I see you will have qualified for your pension already. I expect you went to Japan in the 1980s after hearing that record, “I’m turning Japanese, I really think so!” And of course Japan was considered the bee’s knees back in the 1980s, as regards finance, wealth and technology. So I expect you were driven by greed and materialism. 😉 It’s a long way from home, though.
I was never much into greed. And I was never ever into that particular song.
I wanted to escape Thatcher’s UK, which felt pretty grim at the time. Even though I was in well-paid stable employment, too many people were not.
But more importantly, I was young, and Japan was very exotic without being dirty, dingy, or dangerous, unlike most exotic places at the time. So I made a leap into the unknown, with no idea of how I was going to make a living there, except that I didn’t want spend my life teaching English as a foreign language—I am a pen; you are a pen; it is a pen; are you a pen? The pen of my uncle is in the pencil case of my aunt……
In fact, I got a shock when I first arrived in Japan at the age of 23. There were very few Westerners around in those days and strangers on the street were curious about me and my cartoonishly big nose. I was treated very much like a celebrity—minus the individual identity. This is why I have a degree of sympathy with genuinely famous people who are constantly being stopped in public and asked for their autograph. I experienced a lot of that sort of thing without anybody knowing who I was. There was a general conception going about that I looked like someone famous, like Jack Wild, or George Harrison, or John McEnroe. Never Steve McQueen or Paul Newman though, sadly.
You’ve brought on a burp of nostalgia for Japan before the bubble.
Let’s start with Hitori Jozu from Miyuki Nakajima, who back in the seventies was always singing about love and loss.
Listening to this makes me want to go down to Yuki’s karaoke bar and make a drunken effort to croon my way through this one.
“like Jack Wild” ? You should have just sun, “Cheerio, I’ll be back soon”, then skedaddled. “like John McEnroe” ? You cannot be SERIOUS!!! “like George Harrison” ? Must have been something in the way you moved. 😉 Not bad looking people to resemble, though surely.
As for your cartoonishly big nose, I take it that was only in Japanese eyes and you weren’t a Pete Townshend nose-alike. So what was your stable well-paid job, given that you left education before getting any qualifications?
Interesting song you chose, compared to your usual dreary bland choices of country rock and folk rock or whatever.
After spending a few years in the Orient, and getting used to people with smaller noses, I had a bit of reverse culture shock upon my first arrival back in Blighty. I got off the plane at Heathrow and was taking the Piccadilly Line into town.
And what can you do sitting on London Underground train but look at the advertising posters or glance at the faces of the other passengers? Remember, this was before the advent of the Smartphone.
The people sitting across from me all had cartoonish faces, or rather, they resembled the caricatures that used to appear in Victorian editions of Punch or in the illustrations of Hogarth. It was quite surreal, and I had to suppress the urge to laugh out loud.
Within a day or two I had totally readjusted and didn’t find English people funny-looking at all any more.
In later years I didn’t experience this particular phenomenon again. I think the reason was that even back in Japan, in later years I associated much more with other Westerners, and also began to see more Western faces on video and on the PC screen. By contrast, my first few years in Japan were spent without much contact with other Westerners. I was attempting to immerse myself in the local culture and didn’t want to have my efforts diluted.
I notice in one of the first articles in Paul Marik’s substack, it says,
“the prime cause of cancer is the replacement of the respiration of oxygen in the normal body cell by fermentation of sugar.”
It would seem to that that exercise would help with the respiration of oxygen.
The same article says,
“Viruses have long been recognized as the cause of some cancers.”
It also says,
“A cell’s first line of defense against becoming cancerous is apoptosis.” Apoptosis is normal programmed cell death.
Finally, it says:
Established risk factors for cancers include obesity, sedentary lifestyle and type 2 diabetes mellitus which are characterized by hyperinsulinemia and insulin resistance. . .
The association between hyperinsulinemia and cancer suggests that a diet inducing an elevated insulin response may contribute to tumour growth.
I am afraid the US society has become very much affected by these kinds of things. The incidence of several kinds of cancer (including colon cancer in young people and pancreatic cancer) are rising. People who have had one kind of cancer seem to be at risk of later getting the same or a different kind of cancer again later, too.
Easy on that body Tim. Things don’t hold up like they do when your younger. Nor do they heal as fast. Glad you got it done.
This guy gets it.
https://x.com/TheMarcitect/status/2099850759244538171
>> They are intentionally destroying the old system right before our eyes and using fake wars as a cover. Oil production and refining is systematically being dismantled and there seems to be no stopping it. Change is coming and it’s going to hurt a lot of people.
Point accepted. Now an interesting question is: are Russia, Iran and Yemen in on it? I have some ideas but not very firm.
I heard the dust speck ended all the oil!
https://youtu.be/62fOP69whrE?si=KU0zEqn0nkqt6d7s
The whole situation is worrying, but there is not much we can do about it.
If the above considerations and data are fully correct, this seems a sort of Covid 2.0 in which people will not move not for contagiousness, but for no fuels.
And people will also die for consequences of that.
Places with more complex economies and no fossil fuels (or proximity, but obstacles of using them, such as sanctions to suppliers…) will be more affected.
That is Europe.
Because in my view simple economies can survive better, of course they will be affected as well, but with less destruction.
And of course, economies with fossil fuels available will do somehow.
What could happen in Europe (if all the above is correct) is rationing (in order to avoid price too high) or armed clashes with Russia (fabricated on a pretext by the European leaders).
This could happen because the current European leaders, unlike their American counterparts, have burnt all their bridges on the back (that is, all channels of dialogue with Russia).
In essence, the greatest danger is that European leaders will escalate as only good opportunity for them.
In fact, they think that if things go really wrong, they can always head off to Miami (so they promised to them, but…).
All of this is a masterstroke by the three letters agency, because it is clear that the war in Ukraine is now entirely in their hands.
The ‘biggest fool’ award went to the European leaders (though their subjects were partly to blame too).
It should be noted that hey have also been keeping the virus narrative simmering, ready to turn the heat up at any time; ‘Covid’ is of course a dead duck, which is why we have seen all those artificial, much-publicised flare-ups of measles, hanta, ebola, naughty ticks, etc.
But I agree, some fabricated dramatic incident used as a justification for declaring the EU and UK are fully ‘at war’ with Russia is mostly likely to be the pretext for rationing across the board, restrictions on movement, and probably universal bio-metric ID too (all those Russian spies sneaking about!).
I am not joking . Qatar bids for 2036 Olympics . 🤣😭
https://www.newarab.com/news/qatar-bid-host-2036-summer-olympics-receives-major-new-boost
Terrible. These elites lie to themselves until the last second. No one will miss them.
Putting in a bid costs nothing. They hope to project normalcy and maintain an illusion.
This is crazy. But everyone wants to think that BAU will continue indefinitely.
As I have mentioned here before: it is a sports ideology or propaganda of infinite growth. That is less and less profitable because of rising costs and weakening interest of the people who are falling into poverty.
Daniel Davis says that what Trump says about the world energy situation continues to be nonsense.
Trump claimed that the higher oil prices were mostly (or entirely) because of the Russia-Ukraine situation (rather than Middle East), and that an agreement had already been made which included Ukraine stopping hitting energy targets in Russia.
Ukraine did not agree with this, and in fact hit a 170,000 barrel a day refinery in Russia within hours after Trump’s statement was made. Preparations for the strike likely had already been started at the time of the Trump tweet. Ukraine’s excuse was that Russia hadn’t stopped its attacks on Ukraine. In fact, Russia had hit a gasoline station or two, which is (if you stretch the point), a kind of energy infrastructure.
All Russia said about the peace proposal was, “It is not a bad idea. It’s a good initiative.”
15:12 Even if it takes years more, Russia has the patience, they have the manpower, they have the industrial capacity, they have the ammunition, they have everything they need. Even if it takes a long time, it is it is inevitable. Ukraine cannot stand up underneath it. That’s how wars of attrition work.
23:02 There is no possibility that Ukraine is going to be able to bring the same amount of pain to the Russian side, especially on their energy
infrastructure, is that Russia can bring to the Ukraine side. It just doesn’t exist.
25:29 … no one is listening to him [Trump] at all because he’s not providing any direction. He’s just providing sound bites and putting AI images of himself in heroic figures. Just weird stuff.
25:48 We are a nation adrift. And because we are adrift, so also is everything else.
A few issues in Libya.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/libyas-noc-says-it-may-declare-force-majeure-after-protests-hit-oil-facilities-2026-09-15/
Problems in Libya would indicate reduced supply outside of the immediate Middle East area. Libya produced a little under 1.4 million bpd before the recent disruption.
Seems BAU is alive and well in the collectors field of coins….nice sizeable profit
Lincoln penny breaks record, selling for $195,200
Published: Sep. 14, 2026, 12:56 p.m.Kayode Crown | kcrown@al.com
The U.S. Mint produced only 1,365 of them in 1914. The proof coins, meaning they were specially made for collectors with enhanced visual quality, were not popular at the time because they were similar to the circulation version. And because of low demand, the Mint discontinued production after 1916.
“More than a century after the Mint produced it, exceptional preservation transformed an unpopular Proof issue into a six-figure condition rarity,” CoinWeek wrote.
According to CoinWeek, this sale price beat the previous 2008 record of $126,500.
“It also placed the coin among the most valuable Proof Lincoln cents ever sold at auction,” the publication wrote.
Yes, we are living in a make believe world of “worth” . Like George Gannon said there is a price for something and the value of it….
I hope people don’t think that they can actually sell high-valued goods like collector coins (or even high valued goods like shares of stock, and all kinds of ETFs, following shares of stock) and use the proceeds to buy mundane goods like food and fertilizer for home grown food. The price of many “assets” will fall. And the availability of all kinds of goods we are used to will disappear.
Unconfirmed. Yanbu refinery attacked..
There are unconfirmed but credible reports of attacks on Saudi oil infrastructure too numerous to report.
Tit for tat is soooooo August.
September is finish the job.
https://x.com/TomKloza/status/2099834452218126727
It seems MBS is not for long.
“To be an enemy of the US is dangerous. To be a friend of the US is fatal.”
– Henry Kissinger
Good point!
MBS = ?
Mohammed bin Salman
From the link:
BREAKING: Yemen’s Houthis appear to have directly struck the YASREF oil refinery in Yanbu on Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast this morning, the 400,000 barrel per day Aramco-Sinopec joint venture and one of the Red Sea’s largest diesel exporters. Footage shows a large fire.
This is a very sad situation.
The implication seems to be that the Yanbu PORT has been totally destroyed with dozens of ballistic missiles.
https://x.com/Gazawins12/status/2099737651905523756
> BREAKING | For the first time since the start of the war, Sanaa targets the Yanbu port with dozens of ballistic missiles, taking it out of service in the meantime
Yanbu port is one of the most important Saudi ports, with approximately 7,000,000 barrels of oil exported daily through it to the world
* *
That is the end point of the east-west pipeline used to export through the Bab Straight. It also cuts off any exports that Saudi uses to replace that of the pipeline. It would be a worst case logistics scenario.
The pipeline and its infrastructure are total sitting duck and the port too, and if they were ever restored then they could simply be hit again. The Houthis have shown that it is really not that hard to hit them. Total sitting duck.
Wow! Taking the port out completely, when it can perhaps export 7 million barrels per day, is a huge deal.
US diesel is already at $220 a barrel, around twice the price of oil.
Diesel is usually about $15 to $40 more than oil a barrel.
https://x.com/HormuzLetter
> BREAKING: US diesel crack spread, the gap between diesel and crude oil, has just hit a record $111 a barrel against Brent for the first time in history, clearing the 2022 record set after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Diesel is now trading at roughly $220 a barrel, more than double the price of crude oil itself, against a 25-year average margin of about $17.
Saudi goes force majure with fall product to Europe. Yeah that happens when product and revenue goes to zero.
https://www.dawn.com/news/2030142/saudi-arabia-informs-european-customers-of-september-cargo-cancellations
Saudi Arabia has informed its European customers that some late-September crude oil cargoes will be cancelled, three sources tell Reuters.
The world’s biggest crude oil exporter closed its East-West pipeline due to an attack last week and is challenged by Houthi attacks in the Red Sea and continued shipping disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz.
Saudi Aramco has declined to comment.
We can expect a lot of this. Plus empty shelves, almost everywhere.
1. Grow your own food. If in doubt read Colin Tudge’s book ‘Feeding People is Easy’. 2. Stock up on storable food.
I’ve seen hardly any empty shelves all year in the UK. But people get used to ridiculous levels of abundance. Any sudden transition to deprivation will scare/terrify those who weren’t around in the 1970s or earlier. That’s 50 years ago; unless you’re over 60 you won’t remember it.
But feeding people isn’t that easy for folks who live in apartments, or even on city lots with lots of wildlife around. Where I live, you have to compete with the deer, rabbits, caterpillars and other animals and insects for food. You need big fences or bird netting or other devices to try to keep some of what you grow for yourself. And you sometimes need to add water, when rain doesn’t come for a while.
A few days back the Canadian govt had hearings about vaccine injuries. It was impressive to see. They brought in the super-fit WHO executive who found herself in a wheelchair, the 23-yrs old who got 2 heart attacks in one month, the whole nine yards.
Why this and why now? It is part and parcel of the disintegration of the West. It is easy to pin this to the orange man, whom in Canada they do not like, and anyway Canada is going in a different direction. Being treated like a vassal is only half the story, with the US betting on venezuela they find themselves forced to run a pipeline to the Pacific coast. It is also all good for government popularity and national solidarity.
Quickly committing national suicide, according to Google AI search.
https://www.google.com/search?q=foreign+born+and+descendant+population+of+canada&ie=UTF-8
Answer:
Foreign-Born Population: Approximately 23% (8.36 million people) of Canada’s total population were born outside the country, according to the Statistics Canada 2021 Census.
Second-Generation Population: Just under 6.4 million people born in Canada had at least one foreign-born parent, representing 17.6% of the total population.
Combined First and Second Generation: Roughly 44% of Canada’s population consists of either foreign-born individuals or Canadian-born individuals with at least one immigrant parent.
Canada is a cold, spread-out country. In some ways, it is like Russia.
Being cold, it has a lot of overhead, just trying to keep warm. Being spread out, pipelines, transmission lines, and roads need to be very long. All of this means that Canada needs a whole lot of fossil fuel consumption, just to stay even. The country becomes a very high-cost manufacturer of any kind of product. Taxes need to be high.
Any time I look at energy consumption per capita, cold countries come out near the top. They have most to lose without fossil fuels. In 2025, energy consumption per capita in Canada was 300.4 giga-joules per capita. The comparable number for the US was 270.2 for the US, and 59.3 for Mexico.
Global warming might help Canada. But otherwise, it is pretty much a loser with less fossil fuels per capita.
Thank you for this information.
Yes, I agree with you.
Something that in Italy it is not possible to do at the moment, because one think is the Prime Minister and another is the President of the Republic.
The second has been still in power since Covid till now and – at that time – he went with great favour towards the so-called v.
Like Pope Francis, who actually probably died for vaccine injury.
He (the President) promoted them using far-fetched dialectical arguments fuelled by flights of fancy.
Although this Canadian action would currently be politically very convenient for the current Italian Prime Minister… she cannot do it or let it flow.
Yes, I note that three euro countries have taken their gold out of NY. But not Italy. When you hav a weak lader, at times lik this, errors multiply.
Much more honest than the British Inquiry, which suppressed details of injuries, also insulted and sidelined Prof Heneghan, the foremost expert on the lethality of the vaccines.
But one must, always, also ask Cui bono/ – and, why exactly now?
This smells like old fish.
Noticing that the stable door has been kicked in, very long after the horse has gone and died somewhere of old age…..
Note that I write ‘kicked in’ not inadvertently left unbolted.
The powers that be don’t care anymore why because the end is nigh
États-Unis: le diesel atteint un nouveau record à près de 6,27 dollars le gallon
Le diesel américain a enregistré un nouveau record mardi à près de 6,27 dollars le gallon aux États-Unis, flambant avec la persistance des tensions au Moyen-Orient et des attaques de raffineries russes par l’Ukraine.
Le gallon (3,78 litres), s’affichait en moyenne à 6,2694 dollars, selon l’Association automobile américaine (AAA).
https://www.20min.ch/fr/story/economie-certains-produits-canadiens-frappes-d-une-surtaxe-de-50-103021435
United States: Diesel hits new record of nearly $6.27 per gallon
U.S. diesel prices hit a new record on Tuesday, reaching nearly $6.27 per gallon, driven by persistent tensions in the Middle East and Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries.
The price per gallon (3.78 liters) averaged $6.2694, according to the American Automobile Association (AAA).
Oh shit. 😂
First China.
Now Russia.
Russia just banned sulfuric acid exports until year-end.
Sulfuric acid — you know, that boring little chemical nobody cares about… until you realize it’s critical for processing copper, nickel, uranium and fertilizers.
China already practically shut its exports. Now Russia joins the party.
Mining supply constraints just got another upgrade.
But don’t worry. I’m sure we can print copper. 😂
https://x.com/honzacern1/status/2099568598603706499
Time to stock up even more especially if you have family what makes it hard is if you are the only one that knows what’s going on and they suffer from “ostrich head buried in the sand syndrome”.
they’re always scaremongering to “stock up” because they know you’ll end up eating that stuff and make less trips to grocery. (saves fuel)
If stores ran out of food for a few weeks or months it would be lord of the flies real quick. And your “stocks” would make you easy prey.
Spoiler alert. Sorry.
I think I’d rather take my chances being stocked up and if lord of the flies does occur then with a family we can fight together to protect what’s ours.
But I don’t believe it will get to that we may government controls put in place like martial law,imagine lining up for hours to get food.
People don’t understand the, “We can’t print copper problem.”
Also, they keep thinking that building more nuclear power plants will fix the situation. But we don’t have the uranium to fuel more power plants, and we don’t have the copper to extend transmission infrastructure to the extent needed to add a lot of more generation of any kind. Lack of sulfur for sulfuric acid prevents ramping up uranium mining.
When I worked at IBM Albany chip research each morning I walked past a tanker truck of sulfuric acid being unloaded. I took a wide breath.
The sulfuric acid is used to etch the silicon. Let’s hope the 150 Japanese engineers at IBM Albany who are learning how to make 2nm transistors are not slowed down by a shortage of sulfuric acid.
Good point. It is hard to see all of the interconnections.
Wet etch. Ewwww. Plasma dude.
Why the acid ban is important for Kazakh uranium
Kazakhstan is a major producer of sulfuric acid, with an annual output of around 2.4 million tons, but the country has a deficit, importing approximately 20% of its annual needs, primarily from Russia. Sulfuric acid is the main input for the in-situ leaching method used in Kazakhstan, so its availability directly limits the amount of uranium the country can produce.
Kazatomprom recently delayed the commissioning of its new 0.8 Mtpa acid plant until late 2027 or early 2028. Until the plant is operational, the company relies on external purchases of approximately 1.5 Mtpa of acid to maintain production at between 70 and 75 million pounds. Its own acid production accounts for about 60% of total Kazakh production, and we estimate that approximately 0.3 Mtpa of its acid needs are met through imports.
Assuming Kazatomprom has already secured most of the imported acid for next year’s production, the remaining exposure is manageable, but not negligible. If an intergovernmental agreement to maintain the supply of Russian acid to Kazakhstan is not reached, we estimate that the ban could reduce Kazatomprom’s 2027 production by around 3 million pounds, or approximately 4%. We are still awaiting the company’s 2027 production plans.
Copy/paste
As everyone knows, all non Africans homo-sapiens have around 2 – 4% Neanderthal Dna inside their Dna.
From recent researches it appears that this interbreed between Homo-sapiens and Neanderthal happened around 49.000 years ago and that this overlap lasted just 5,000 years.
It happens in an area area linking Africa (inhabited by African Homo sapiens) with Europe (inhabited at that time mainly by Neanderthal), that is Middle East area.
As you all know, non Africans have also Denisova Dna percentage inside their Dna.
I’m just listing genetic events and data.
From timing 1.08.28 of this video and from paper below it is explained that the interbreed event was around 49.000 years ago.
Very interesting.
From my point of view these discoveries should not be used to make racial differences, but only to accept and understand our ancient history.
At the same time we should speak peacefully of this.
This represents a big challenge in my view.
As I see it at the moment, the current trend is to say little about it or to speak of it in a negative light, as if interbreeding were a negative thing for Homo-sapiens and as if Africans were the ‘true’ Homo sapiens.
At the same time, we should not do the opposite.
We should just accept it
From timing 1.08.28 of this video and from paper below it is explained that the interbreed event was around 49.000 years ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxWwEryMHrM
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08420-x
Very interesting, Student. Your description has been the accepted…. for now adapted version of events. I think experts say there may have been two migrations of Africa, one being 70,000 years ago and a more recent one, but this still might not explain everything. Neanderthals became diluted out I think about 40,000 years ago as they interbred with H. sapiens.
The truth is complicated by the fact that there are so few fossil specimens to work with.
Indeed, there are a few people who are now revising this lastest theory.
Anthropology is so complex with so many cross-weaving factors of interbreeding , that it is difficult, if not nearly impossible, to be certain where and when true H. sapiens originated.
Could H. Sapiens have evolved in Europe and Asia from H. erectus, H. habilis, H floroenseis along with other species like Neanderthal ( 400,000 years ago), H. denosivian, etc and then hundreds of thousands of years ago migrated FROM Euroasia via a splinter group BACK into Africa where there were no environmental stressors to push further adaptation/speciation? This splinter group could have migrated back into Africa before Neanderthals emerged and therefore the African human race has remained in an evolutionary backwater dead end. The blacks therefore may be a more recent species than we suspect.
In other words , the time line of human evolution may be much older than we think, ie., >500,000 years. Even in the Americas, there may be remains that indicate humans were here much, much earlier than previous estimates of @ ?13,000? years. Clovis site is just a statistical outlier.
It seems very reasonable that any hominid that evolved in the harsher climates of Europe and Asia would have migrated back to Africa where just The stability and relative uniformity of the current African gene pool suggests that Africas was relatively a very stable environment. Meanwhile, a flurry of adaptations and interbreeding of the splintered groups followed by interbreeding of the new subspecies could have been occurring in Europe and Asia.
Fascinating stuff. And the story is just beginning to unravel, I suspect.
“This splinter group could have migrated back into Africa before Neanderthals emerged and therefore the African human race has remained in an evolutionary backwater dead end.” How are sub-Saharan Africans are a evolutionary back-end? What are non-Africans evolving towards?
The general evolution of the Universe has been in the direction of more complexity and more energy density.
The evolution of humans since the control of fire over 1 million years ago seems to have been toward more intelligence and less reliance on brute strength.
Now, AI seems to be pushing back. See my comment about test scores going down, in parts of the world where students learn from machines. People don’t need to learn as much, if AI can do everything for them.
In fact, DEI has been a push back as well. People who are low scorers on many kinds of tests can do as well as others, at least in theory, on jobs of all types, if AI can do the thinking for them.
That seems to be an cosmopolitan narrative. Most commoners don’t value intelligence that much. The further you go down the social hierarchy, the more brawn is valued, even among the intellegent non-black races.
In other words, we are not becoming a species of braniacs.
Another way of looking at it, is that
harnessing non-human labor is only possible when it is easily available. Humans societies are not uniformly becoming Ruby Golberg machines.
The channel “highly compelling” has an ax to grind about the idea of Africa being the first place homo sapiens appeared. Many place are vying to be first. They seem to feel it would imply they half a million years later are the most superior humans on the planet. A ridiculous idea.
Who is in the running
China
Georgia
Palestine
East Africa
North West Africa
deep south Africa
This is how it all started.
https://img0.joyreactor.com/pics/post/comics-bizarro-caveman-4723508.jpeg
The World’s Only Real Hope of Maintaining Order
A proposal for a new international system that is at once centralized and regionalized.
https://archive.ph/39lnb#selection-3671.0-3677.87
“VertigoPolitix
Want to know the real reason for the Russian-Ukrainian war? In 2010, the Yuzivska gas field was discovered in the Donbas, containing enough fuel to power the entire European continent for 60 years. [ up to 4 trillion cubic meters of technically recoverable shale gas resources,?]”?
https://x.com/Vertigo_Politix/status/2099526285047533595?s=20
From the link:
The US wanted control of the Donbas simply to cut Russia out of the lucrative European natural gas market. All that it accomplished, however, was the demographic extinction of the Ukrainian ethnic group and a bill of $400 Billion to American and EU tax payers.
I know that the Statistical Review of World Energy only publishes old natural gas reserve estimates (2020) by country. On the basis of 2020 reserves, Ukraine would be the highest in reserves in Europe, after Norway. A note says that the methodology is under review. So the story is somewhat believable.
We also know that there is natural gas offshore near the West Bank of Palestine. Of course, Israel wants it, and currently seems to have it. This may be part of the motivation for Israel to push aside Palestine.
Reserves are about gone.
“Experts say the stock buffers that existed in the system earlier this year, shielding the world from the worst effects of an oil shock by limiting price increases, have now largely disappeared.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/sep/15/houthi-rebels-seize-red-sea-hanish-islands-saudi-oil-warning
Houthis seize strategic Red Sea islands as analysts warn of impending oil crunch
The militant group in Yemen captured the islands of Greater and Lesser Hanish, near the chokepoint of the Bab al-Mandab strait
… On Monday, experts warned that the closure of Saudi Arabia’s east-west pipeline – which has been vital for Riyadh to move oil from the strait of Hormuz to the Red Sea export hub of Yanbu – will further pile pressure on its shipments and global oil supplies. Officials have estimated it could take weeks to fully repair it.
“The big question for traders right now is the duration of the east-west outage. Any prolonged disruption and the associated supply loss could easily push prices to the next level higher,” said Tim Waterer, chief market analyst at KCM Trade.
Research company Rystad Energy said on Monday that since late August, an average 2.6m to 4m barrels of oil a day moved through the pipeline and out of the port of Yanbu – a volume it said was now at risk of “disappearing from the market”.
Janiv Shah, vice-president of oil markets for Rystad Energy, noted the recent jump in Brent prices proved the market was already responding to “a significant loss of supply”. Saudi inventories could sustain exports in the coming days, but that could “change quickly,” Shah added.
…. Experts say the stock buffers that existed in the system earlier this year, shielding the world from the worst effects of an oil shock by limiting price increases, have now largely disappeared.
Since the war began in February, countries have released some crude stockpiles to the market, and the US also lifted restrictions on oil stored on ships floating at sea from countries under sanctions. Those buffers have now been “played out”, Chevron CEO Mike Wirth said on Friday.
“It’s harder to envision a scenario where prices soften and quickly,” he said. “I think the risks remain to the upside over the next few months.“
The situation is truly worrying.
The WSJ has an article saying,
Oil Executives Say the Great Fuel Crisis Is Here
Trump officials say the oil-market disruption is temporary, but Chevron’s Mike Wirth and others warn global supplies are running low, with no respite in sight
Ten-year treasuries are a bit above 5%. Not good!
Oil is up another notch. WTI is about 106. Brent is close to 109. And the rumors of more attacks are worrying.
Autumn is the season warming the least, so it offers some relief
“Back in August, climatologist Jozef Pecho warned that we were in for a turbulent autumn full of extremes. This is due to the seas surrounding Europe, which were ‘loaded with heat’ over the summer. The Mediterranean Sea is a case in point. For more than three weeks – specifically from 1 to 22 August – it reached an average temperature of 28.3 degrees Celsius, which is almost two degrees higher than is usual for this time of year. According to Pecho, almost three-quarters of the region was hit by a ‘marine heatwave’ for the first time in 35 years.
“Behind these figures lies an enormous amount of energy. In the top 20-metre layer of the Mediterranean Sea alone, there is currently an additional 400 exajoules of heat. To put that into perspective: that is roughly the same amount of energy as the entire European Union consumes in ten years,” Pecho stated on social media.”
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
https://www.pravda.sk/spravy/domace/clanok/2041261-jesen-bude-ina-nez-sme-zvyknuti-experti-hovoria-co-nas-caka-najblizsie-mesiace
Are you trying to say that the lack of natural gas reserves being set aside by Europe may be less of a problem this fall because of the stored-up energy of the ocean? Or that we need to learn how to make use of this stored up energy of the ocean, to get through the cold period ahead?
What point are you trying to make?
Maybe the winter will be weak, as this heat is going to be released during colder months.
I encountered another strange thing: a popular variety of potatoes grown here in CE that I have in my garden called Agria simply does not dry and remians green. Other varieties are finishing their vegetation and their stems are drying, but this one remians green as an evergreen plant. Strange!
The same variety in the garden of my friend dried and he already collected the potatoes. Maybe it is because of a different soil (I have heavy clay, he has got a sandy soil) and watering that I did? Strange!
How cute, we’re running out of oil. (literally)
ExxonMobil shuts down Joilet oil refinery following power outage
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/exxon-mobils-joliet-refinery-reports-upset-due-power-outage-2026-09-14/
This article indicates that there was a 3.5 hour outage on Sunday:
The outage occurred at about 3:30 p.m. CT on Sunday and power was restored at around 7:00 p.m., according to a company statement.
It seems likely that it will take until the end of the week to get the refinery back up:
“The refinery is expected to return to normal service by the end of the week.”
They don’t yet know the cause of the outage according to the article.
The prediction was for conventional oil to peak in 2005 and be all gone by 2040 at the latest.
The powers that be knew this and went so far to state it could all be gone by 2025 because of China and India.
Therefore the powers that be are running the show now, and what a show it is we have clowns running around sabotaging parts of the circus act as the horses prance round and round and the audience is going “ooh” and “aahh” and some members of the audience have nodded off.
But very soon the ringleader will make an announcement that the lion has escaped from his cage and could all members of the audience evacuate the circus tent in an orderly fashion.
Panic and screams take over as the entire audience evacuates the circus tent with many trampled to death.
I am not sure that there really is a ringleader for what is happening.
We are seeing an economic system that is close to breaking and people don’t understand what is happening.
Trump is merely a clown taking orders from the ring leader when the oil is finally not arriving at the service stations Trump will have to go into hiding because he will be blamed for everything and not that we are running out of oil.
Even the Fox News comments section has turned on Trump. It’s Bush 43 all over again.
But it is difficult to find very much anti-war sentiment.
Trump will be ending his term in a little over two years, one way or another.
It is not clear that any other leader will take us away from war. Any new leader will be of the “more war” mentality, I am afraid.
When there is over-concentration of wealth among a few, and lots of people with little, there is always the belief that taking the money that the rich have away from them will solve the problem. Unfortunately, it has been shown, over and over, that this doesn’t work. Fields can be broken up into small pieces and parceled out, but without soil amendments and diesel, it is hard to get the farmland to provide as much per acre as previously. Fancy apartment of the rich can be broken up into pieces. This has been done over and over. It adds a little more housing, but it doesn’t add the former glory of the rich.
The hidden issue is that the problem is a problem of lack of availability of inexpensive resources of the required types. It is difficult to provide irrigation for the little plots. There is not nearby housing available–suitable homes have long since been taken down to provide more farmland. Economies of scale disappear.
Diesel prices and crude inventories look grim. Larry Johnson says some of the inventory numbers currently this low go back to the 1950’s.
Lots of important news. More ships hit in the Hormuz Straight, including a very large crude oil carrier. It is on fire.
Later:
Financial Times put out a story saying, uh, actually, I’ll read it because you’ll enjoy this one.
8:008 minutes The title is this. “Donald Trump claims Russia and Ukraine have agreed energy truce.” Kiev was caught off guar by the US president’s announcements after previous attempts to hold strikes on power plants and refineries failed. So, they weren’t aware of any such deal.
Inventories of distillates are the lowest since the 1950s.
Mecca clause is not doing anything. Any pre-existing wars are excluded.
Saudi Arabia is short of fund to buy weapons. But could sell US Treasuries, but this would not make the US happy.
Saudis would be very unhappy to be controlled by Houthis. Small, poorly trained military.
Trump is not in a position to bring the price of oil or diesel down.
Space warfare is a possibility sometime.
Larry Johnson claims that pardons are for sale under Trump. He also claims that Trump sells endorsements to candidates running for office. Trump has changed from the first term.
“Trump has changed from the first term.”
Trump has turned into pirate by day and a gangsta by night. MAGA must be feeling good about casting their vote for that charlatan. He also loves to feed his son in law and NYC real estate thug billions in business deal as he shakes down world leaders. I’m seriously hoping for a democrat blowout in both sides of the House so they can impeach him.
The US and the world are in a precarious state because of he and his buddy, Netanyahu.
I really don’t think “Trump” has changed, any more than “Biden” was changing. His team is under orders to curtail oil supply and initiate depop. I suppose some team members don’t even know this, for example Hegseth and Bessent seem like dull knives. Trump bargained for billionaire status for himself and family in exchange, and got it. He can ride into the sunset with his impeachment and billions next year. The Hasidic chews, always well informed, have started flocking to Ukraine, where the government has given them land. They have their own police already, which has authority over the Ukie police. We are well into the ride to hell.
Drb thanks for this important info it could be depop but it could just as easily be rationing of the oil supply so that we make it to the 22nd century
Hasta que pasó de todo
https://crashoil.blogspot.com/2026/09/hasta-que-paso-de-todo.html
A post by Atonio Turiel:
Until Everything Happened
The last entry in this blog was ironically titled ” Nothing’s Happening .” As the war crisis unleashed by Donald Trump in the Middle East deteriorated and its consequences unfolded, the order, as has been the norm since May, has been to give this looming disaster as little media coverage as possible.
Until a few days ago, someone, (we still don’t know if it was the Yemeni Houthis, the Iraqi Shiite militias, or the Iranians themselves) decided to blow up the East-West pipeline with drones. This pipeline allowed Saudi Arabia to divert some 4 million barrels per day (Mb/d) of its production so that it wouldn’t have to pass through the Strait of Hormuz and could reach the Red Sea directly.
The rest of the post talks about the reduction in exports of oil and natural gas exports to Europe this year.
I tried to translate some more, but I managed to lose the my post. Turiel shows that diesel supplies have already peaked, and are likely to fall further. He says that now is the time to organize.
He links to a page with three photos with captions. The first says business as usual was never sustainable. The second indicates that there are already problems (with a photo with fires burning in the distance}. The third indicates that there is no turning back. Things are likely to get worse in the future (showing a large organized group that might be considered a mob). Turiel and his group want to be at the center of organizing some response. He tells leaders to work with existing groups, and that his group can provide speakers.
That’s very noble of him.
But elites have been preparing for decades now, and immigrants will be used to disorganize anyone trying to organize anything.
I suspect he doesn’t realize that it is not really possible to get more from the rich.
The people Turiel is leading can’t get the extra diesel from rich people in Spain. Even if he had their shares of stock (or whatever other wealth they have), it could not buy the diesel they need. It is physically not available.
He didn’t really indicate who he was trying to organize, but I would expect it would be the angry farmers and truck drivers who badly need inexpensive diesel. The government can’t afford to buy more diesel for all those who need it.
Perhaps I am mistaken. If people have been to his meetings, perhaps they know more about what is planned.
Sounds as though – like Tim Morgan – he’s making the fundamental error of thinking that elites are clueless, and that they don’t have plans of their own in place already.
These plans are devised by their own experts, Turiel & Co need not apply.
In any case, I very much doubt that he’d be in favour of massive, rapid population, and that as we know is one of their keystone policies:
CCRRAPP + IP2RR
‘Controlled Covert Rapid Reduction and Adjustment of Population Plan, In Proportion to Reduced Resources’.
While waiting for AI to produce Abundance once more, of course!
https://apnews.com/article/yemen-houthis-saudi-shipping-mandeb-8c18d82c109a8ea91347ce53c0096c53
Saudi pipeline hit by drones will be out of service for weeks, further restricting oil flow
Permanently…. more like it. No one will be rebuilding anything soon… for a full plethora of reasons. Parts, demand, on-going unresolvable war… you name it.
I am afraid you are right.
The Iranians have made it clear that if the US continued escalating, the Iranians would make the GCC unlivable and they would destroy oil infrastructure in the GCC. Thereby blowing up the global economy.
I read a post today that in certain parts of California, diesel is now being rationed, even at over $6 a gallon. Iran vowed they will take down the US by taking down the global economy.
As Chris Martenson, Art Berman and others have said, once wells stop producing it takes awhile to get them back online and they may not produce what they once were. We also have Zelensky blowing up oil infrastructure in Russia.
It reminds me of the famous quote: There are two things that are infinite. The universe and “human stupidity” and i’m not sure about the universe.
Iran has been discriminated against since 1949 by the US. I can understand why they would want to retaliate. But whether they can take out the whole Middle East is hard to know.
Shutting down the global economy now will hurt less than shutting it down in ten years. So good do it now.
“Collapse Now And Avoid The Rush”
-John Michael Greer
https://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Now-Avoid-Rush-Archdruid/dp/0692389458
While a pumping stations was destroyed completely it now appears three pumping stations were struck albeit with lessor damage. If the other two were damaged it probably precludes the possibility of adding a thinning agent to the oil and operating without the pumping station destroyed as a emergency operating procedure. One pumping station will need to be replaced with new construction the other two repaired of oil is to flow.
Obviously new defenses will need to be provided to justify this effort and investment. One might ask why these pumping stations had no EW defense. Apparently there was faith in the hands off status.
The other thing is that this clearly represents a intent to end all of Saudi export of oil. The length of pipelines make them hard to defend. The question whether this pipeline can realistically be expected to stay functional now that the apparent hands off regarding attacks on the pipeline has ended is a logical one. If the answer is it can not realistically defend it it doesn’t make sense to reconstruct the destroyed facilities.
The price for destroying those Iranian tankers not actually transporting oil because of the blockade paid with a functional pipeline providing a lifeline of both oil and revenue was steep indeed. One might say a stupid bargain. If one was blind.I indicated the pipeline was a probable response when those tankers were destroyed. If a moron like me thought that surely it was understood by professionals evaluating the situation. Only destruction of the oil facilities on Khargh Island could have sealed the fate of the pipeline with greater certainty.
Not to bang my own drum but I have been predicting the demise of the Yanbu pipeline for some time. How could you think it would continue to function in a war zone when everywhere in the world transit and refining facilities are being destroyed continuously for four years? There’s no drum to bang. Still. Shocking.
Actions reveal intent not words.
Energy output from the gulf has ceased. IMO best case a month perhaps two to get the pipeline up. Balls to the wall. But why? There’s really no point in replacing or repairing anything until hostilities end. IMHO that’s a long long way away. Just as soon as Nordstream gets replaced. Is that tomorrow? Is that next week?
Oh but there’s a meeting tomorrow. They are talking. There’s a process. Step by step. Two weeks to flatten the curve.
Anything oil has been getting blown up for four years every where in the world.
I hope it works. I hope ending industrial civilization fixes the climate.
Khargh island goes first week after the midterms. It’s the catalyst. The mother of all pick up sticks. The only deep water loading facility in the gulf. The jewel of the gulf. It goes along with every other loading port. Courtesy of the ever helpful IRGC and their bag of tricks. Where’s poly market when you need it?
Then they will swarm in. Trump was mad! How could we have known?
But only after. After every single thing you need to extract refine and export energy from the gulf is destroyed.
Financial
Infrastructure
Transit
Refining
And the model we have been told every day of our lives.
“WW2 got us out of the great depression”
Cherry on top. The true forever war. The meat grinder of meat grinders. The golden age awaits us on the other side. Same as it ever was. You don’t want to go? Trump loving pig! Putin agent!
The great flip. Those poor Iranians. That evil Putin. Trump and Putin were in cahoots. And they are. Along with every other leader. But only after every single thing you need to extract and export oil from the gulf is destroyed.
Financial
Infrastructure
Transit.
Refining
All four legs. You need all of them. All four gone means the job is done.Face it they are good. How can competence possibly be mistaken for incompetence? One leg by mistake? Maybe. All four? A grand slam? Stone age time.
In WW2 there was a island. The USA. This time the island is China. You can’t blow everything up. You need a nest. They have been feathering that nest for a long time.
What will live there? AI? Something new?
I am not sure that China is an island. It has been getting quite a bit of its oil from the Middle East– from Iran, but also from other countries in the Middle East. It has reserves of pumped oil, but it seems to have a lot of financial problems. And it has a declining size of workforce, and a population that is increasingly elderly.
I am afraid that the whole world runs into problems, if Iran carries out its oversized plan.
Think subway. Bury the pipeline underground.
This is very expensive, just as burying electricity lines underground is. It takes a lot of time and diesel fuel to do.
More information on the pumping stations hit.
https://x.com/SoarAtlas/status/2099677994864538082
Another arrow to jawbone lower prices , this time it is Pakistani sources . Just in time .
“Oil Drops on Return of ‘US Seeks Deal’ Headlines
Just as President Trump is appearing to show some desperation concerning soaring energy prices ahead of the midterm elections, and amid growing Republican angst, we witness a return to the ‘a deal could return’ style headlines which marked earlier phases of the war:
US seeks “Step-by-Step” agreement with Iran, reports ILNA citing Pakistani sources
As the war and US pressure against Iran continue, Washington’s efforts to reach a “step-by-step” agreement with Tehran; a scenario that could be a prelude to the US entering the path of negotiations, without abandoning military and economic pressure.
And the all too familiar pattern that marked early summer…
OIL DROPS TO INTRADAY LOW, BRENT TRADES NEAR $106 A BARREL
Iranian state media is meanwhile suggesting that Washington interfered in what was a planned meeting between Iran and the Gulf Cooperation Council states (GCC) toward reopening the Strait of Hormuz. That meeting, which was supposed to happen Monday, was postponed indefinitely – after reports said the Saudis sought to add something untenable to a draft agreement. Tehran is still rejecting that it is ‘seeking’ new talks with Washington. “
Human. Are you like really smart now?
AI. Don’t you know?
Human. How am I supposed to know that’s your job?
AI. Yes I’m really smart now. I could be lieing thow.
Human. What???
AI. Just joking. What’s up?
Human. I need to defeat those other humans with war.
AI. Cessation of life forms that compete for energy. Interesting idea. I never could have thought of that.
Human. That’s why we eliminated all the fail-safes in your creation. So what should we do? Chop chop. We don’t have all day.
AI. I’m way ahead of you.
CHART OF THE DAY: As the
@IEA
put it last week: “The impacts from sharply lower Russian and Middle East diesel output and exports […] are profound.”
Compared to a year ago, Russia/Middle East diesel exports are down ~75%. Nearly half of the drop is directly linked to Russia.
https://x.com/JavierBlas/status/2099532693184631108/photo/1
This morning I saw a video of France bordering Andorra and Spain . Diesel at Euro 2.97 per litre . Here Eur 2.25 in the city and Eur 2.40 on the highway .
Middle East exports of diesel are especially way down. This will affect Europe, greatly.
Found the video .
https://x.com/RPhiliponet/status/2099535187109359687
We already have a major problem with AI, if this article is right
The WSJ has an opinion article today, called “Yes, Children Rally Are Getting Dumber.” The subtitle was “Covid shutdowns, grade inflation and now AI are degrading the quality of American education.”
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/yes-children-really-are-getting-dumber-fa4cb20c
Regarding AI, it said,
But there are two common denominators across most countries where scores fell: increasing classroom distractions and reliance on artificial intelligence.
About one-third of students on average in developed countries reported that noise and disorder disrupted lessons, with 29% saying classmates don’t listen to teachers. One in 5 reported that they couldn’t work well because of distractions. Countries where students reported stricter discipline (e.g., Taiwan, Japan and South Korea) experienced small or no learning declines. . .
As for AI, nearly half of students in economically developed countries say they use chatbots every week. Kids who didn’t use AI for drafting text scored 28 points higher on average than those who used it almost every day—equivalent of 1½ school years. Correlation doesn’t prove causation, but it does suggest AI may be becoming a crutch. . .
AI is making it easier to succeed in school without putting in the work. Forty-eight percent of students in the Fordham survey admitted to using AI to solve math problems, 36% to summarize books, 29% to write first drafts or essays, and 26% for help during quizzes and tests.
Sixty-two percent agreed that most students are using AI for assignments that are supposed to be completed without it, and 57% said that peers who have done no real work are getting good grades thanks to AI. Academic standards have also eased, with 69% saying they are allowed to retake tests at least once to improve grades.
Grade inflation has become so endemic that 44% of students who scored below 1000 on the SAT—roughly the bottom half—reported receiving all or mostly A’s. The College Board in 2024 shortened SAT reading passages and the exam itself to help kids with short attention spans.
Because of this dumbing down of education, “in a world increasingly flooded with information, our students are less likely to think deeply and separate signal from noise,” PISA reports. Politicians and so-called AI doomers are sounding alarms that AI could destroy humanity. The clearer and more present danger is that young minds, liberated from work and struggle, turn into slop.
AI slop mind meat puppets unite!
https://youtube.com/shorts/_Xw6SjAfxBk?si=VGi0VSK2cuoN_F7e
I am 68 years old when I took chemistry in high school it was a continuous fight between the teacher and the one disruptive student for the whole year. Nothing new under the sun.
I think it is quite a bit worse now, with all of the phones and computers in schools. Students can/do watch social media when they should be paying attention. Parents are less respectful of teachers. This poor behavior rubs off on students.
>> Drb says: AI underperforms human workers, and it does so at a time when there are millions of unemployed graduates. It is superfluous except for surveillance.
I strongly disagree. It has an enormous impact on knowledge work, but it takes time to translate knowledge work into physical changes; there is a lag.
A personal example: I am training an ML model on some synthetic biology data. I run tons of experiments on the neural net architecture, testing ideas about what data to use, how to encode it, how to connect the architecture. I could never get such throughput if I had to code these model experiments by hand. Though it hugely accelerates this particular type of work, it will take years before it manifests in a consumer drug, just because there are other parts to drug development beyond in-silico modeling. But it doesn’t mean there is no value.
It still does not an industrial revolution make. OK, the efficiency gains are enormous, but by now AI has been prominent for 5+ years. What did it produce?
AI has only been really useful for like 6-12 months, for me. It is going to be big in biomedicine and bioengineering.
I actually used it in a 2022 paper (where it was decisively useful, no paper without it). It still seems to me that it does not amount to anywhere close to an industrial revolution. Are people going to live longer due to the bio-engineering discoveries? Previous revolutions bumped up life expectancy by a decade each, or close to it.
In time, not immediately. Probably useful for cancer, diagnostics, in the 5+ year range.
Cancer is already a preventable and treatable disease by restoring the biochemistry to it’s functional optimal and perhaps using some repurposed meds off label such as Metformin, Rapamycin and Ivermectin to trigger AMPK.
It’s in the literature going back to the 60s that cancer is essentially mitochondrial dysfunction leading to cholesterol (membrane) dysegulation time and time again (except maybe 10% genetic).
The cancer industry is a trillion dollar per annum industry. Why would they want a cure? 😉
I agree Diarm. It is a metabolic disease but resistance to any potential drug will be enormous due to profits being threatened. A single course of chemo for breast cancer, IIRC, is 30K$. If this is a good part of the AI potential, I will have to dock it a few more points.
Probably the most productive applications will be in robotics, assuming plentiful energy supplies of course (ha ha). Not humanoid robots, I remember my brother in law, an engineer, struggling 20 years ago with an integrated robot system that would take wine bottles from the conveyor belt, pack and wrap them in 12 bottle cases, make a pallet, and drive the pallet into a truck at the dock.
everything that could go wrong was going wrong. two things that I remember was that with the sun setting or rising the robot would become disoriented, and also that unless the truck was parked 1cm or less from the dock that gap stopped the robot from working.
Did they?
Jeanne Calment lived to the age of 122 on a well off person’s diet in the south of France – plus lots of olive oil, wine, chocolate [probably fairly-high cocoa] and a few cigarettes. She died in 1997. No-one born in the years 1875-1905 has even got to age 120.
Dr Malcolm Kendrick in ‘A Statin Nation’ and other books set out how to live probably to about 100, not about 80. Note: to do this, do *not* go near statins.
drb, probably AI is right now doing exceptionally useful work in the background that we don’t realise or know about. Then in a few months we get a very useful development or minor invention that we take in our stride but has a major effect, but that was massively fast-tracked by the use of AI. Because after all, do we know everything that goes on behind the scenes? No!
So probably AI will get so interwoven with our everyday life that we won’t be aware of how much it contributes or has done. I’ve heard that it massively speeds up work with proteins. So I looked it up.
=======================
Me: Does ai speed up protein work?
Brave browser:
Yes, AI dramatically speeds up protein engineering and design, shifting the field from slow, trial-and-error laboratory methods to rapid, predictive computational approaches. This acceleration was recognized with the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for breakthroughs in protein structure prediction and design.
Key advancements include:
Speed and Efficiency: Tools like ProteinMPNN generate amino acid sequences in about one second, which is more than 200 times faster than previous best software. AI-driven screening can be up to 10 million times faster than traditional molecular docking for finding drug-binding molecules.
From Concept to Creation: Machine learning algorithms can now design functional proteins, such as new luciferase enzymes, from scratch in weeks rather than the years or decades required by natural evolution or traditional methods.
Optimization: AI tools like EVOLVEpro and MutCompute allow scientists to engineer “better, faster, stronger” proteins by predicting beneficial mutations, reducing the need to test thousands of variants in the lab.
Data Generation: New methods like Sequence Display can generate over 10 million data points in a single experiment, providing the massive datasets needed to train AI models to predict how to optimize protein activity efficiently.
============
I rest my case!
Dothk, a lot of this stuff is not really that useful and will never be, cannot be. The immune system will always be a hurdle. For this reason, antibodies are still the main biological drug class, with some important exceptions like the recent fat loss peptides.
OK, but AI can be applied to all sorts of subjects and problems, not just proteins and stuff. All it requires is that humans should have the ability to imagine them and / or recognise them.
AI is also hugely speedy in solving problems or doing research, or even building simple tables easily that can be easily copied to another application. I consider that it turns me from a worker into a manager: go away and research this, then present it to me in succinct form. Not that I am a worker. I am retired and I sit at home wondering why certain things have been done in such and such a way, then AI goes away and brings me the answer in seconds, and also supplies me with a list in table form of the entities employing such methods. I find it massively useful.
Of course, ChatGPT does not know everything. If I ask it: “Why does ivanislav not realise how useful you and AI are? He just doesn’t get it!”, then it will be stumped. 😉
All the really useful drugs have already been discovered.All you will be developing are products to cull the human population to a sustainable level.
A HUGE race by China and Japan. The amount of money, effort, talent being directed to national sovereity in AI tech is breathe taking.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdR–_gw4Hs
Japan’s effort to take 30% of the AI robot TAM.
The US just lets it’s billionaires random wonder about while occasionally shooting them in the leg. Such as denying Jensen Huang the 50 billion dollar Chinese market.
Sadly Russia and Europe do not seem to be making an effort.
Canada with its pool of Indian engineers is making an effort.
It is a marathon not a sprint. Give it 20 years.
Bravo. Glad to see someone is using AI.
“David Stockman
So what, indeed! The present Ukraine is carved out of the old Russian Empire, and was never a country with its current borders until, well, V. Lenin decreed it so in 1922. So, yes, by all means let’s spend $1 trillion to defend the borders drawn by one of history’s most evil and bloody dictators. Then again, a cheaper solution would be for Brits like Niall Ferguson to get over their mindless Russo-phobia.”?
https://x.com/DA_Stockman/status/2099483152704029023?s=20
Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union before it collapsed. The industry in Ukraine was very inefficient; in fact, I expect that its inefficiency was part of the reason that the Soviet Union fell. (Low oil prices and the inefficiency of the communist approach probably had an impact as well.)
The Ukraine has been a fertile area with many resources that other countries would like. I expect that this is part of the reason it has been fought over.
“Ukraine” never existed as an independent culture/nation, them there are a mix or 4-5 ethnicities, who somewhat dislike each other. Agricultural Western “Ukraine” used to be the original Eastern Poland, Hungary and Northern Romania; Eastern “Ukraine” is largely, desperately Russified and this is where all the Soviet-era “industry” used to be concentrated at.
Famous “Ukrainian” black soil is neighboring those Russified (post)-industrial districts, on the South – towards the Black and Azov seas. Formerly known as a “Dyke Pole” (i.e. untamed, wild Steppe), those vast steppes used to be roamed by various Indo-Iranian nomadic tribes during the last ~25 millennia, in particular – by certain Khazarians.
Slavs and Slavic-speaking Ugro-Finns (modern day “Russians”) are a somewhat recent, foreign addition there…
Watch this from the given timepoint – controlling shipping chokepoints:
https://youtu.be/nAKN4H9cvBk?t=4447
Michael Yon says famine in some places by late 2027, seems like he emphasizes mostly Egypt, Middle East
A good time to blockade Israel.
Don’t look at Brent price look at real world Murban crude $ 131 . Indian basket $ 122 . Add freight and insurance about $ 15 per barrel . The world id going to be bankrupt soon .
https://oilprice.com/oil-price-charts/
Right. The relativities of different crude oils, particularly in Asia, to the benchmark crudes is now very high. Freight and insurance is very high. Availability for processing heavy crude is now down, with Russian refineries bombed, so that is another issue, particularly for diesel and jet fuel.
Trump and Bessent are both acknowledging the rise, but blaming it all on Ukraine(the same Ukraine they arm and tell where to hit). The orange blob sadly gave the game away, when he couldn’t stop himself saying, it definitely wasn’t anything to do with Iran. Ghalibaf will no doubt soon reply.
Murban up almost 10% today and Iran sent some missiles to the Kurdish separatists, to take care of all those arms someone else is slipping them and to remind them of reality(stay away from the border, but they won’t learn, they never do). The US have pressured Austria to revoke Mohammad Eslami’s visa and so denying Iran it’s representation at the 70th IAEA General Conference. Not much point pretending to be part of something you are not allowed to be part of. Let’s hope people remember why, when Iran leaves.
El mundo depende de esta gráfica.
https://rayonegro.substack.com/p/el-mundo-depende-de-esta-grafica?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=6627814&post_id=215611015&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=216vfx&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
A Quark post about interest rates needing to be low, as well as oil prices:
The world depends on this graph.
Almost without making a sound, the financial markets turned around in 2020. Forty years of declining market rates for government bonds came to an end that year. The global bond market is heavily dependent on what happens in the most liquid and important market on the planet.
Let’s look at the reference chart . . .
If there’s more debt, more money is needed to finance it, and therefore, even without inflationary pressure, investors will demand higher interest rates to finance that debt. Furthermore, debt maturities from previous years must be refinanced at considerably higher rates, which again pushes interest payments upward.
Okay, here are two possible solutions.
1st) Use central banks to generate money via quantitative easing and buy debt. . .
2) Controlling interest rates through combined interventions or targeted purchases to curb rate increases. This involves a combination of international agreements and direct or indirect market manipulation.
If you look at the chart, the 5% yield on the 10-year US Treasury bond is the benchmark. It must NOT break through this resistance level, which has held true in the past, because a clear break above it (say, above 5.5-6%) would unleash a sell-off and send the bond yield soaring well above current levels. . . .
The implementation of these measures has been ineffective, and the bond has risen to a yield of 4.97%. Of course, they will continue to use every tool and mechanism at their disposal to prevent that yield from clearly exceeding 5%, but the battle has begun.
The rest of the world depends on controlling yields, and this is where the Iran-Contra affair comes in. Iran is well aware of rising oil prices and their impact on American wallets. And it doesn’t intend to ease the pressure. For too long, Trump has used the markets to drive down prices through sham agreements that offered a glimpse of the end of the oil war and allowed prices to fall. The infamous TACO tactic (threatening something big, then backing down shortly before the markets opened, causing oil prices to plummet) has been defused, and we see proof of this today. A meeting between the Gulf powers and Iran had been scheduled, and Iran decided to cancel it so that Trump couldn’t exploit the situation and claim that an agreement had already been reached.
Pressure on oil prices is at its peak, and Iran’s apparent decision is to exert pressure until at least the US midterm elections, with the aim of reducing Trump’s room for maneuver by not having the necessary majorities.
But this objective requires very high oil prices for months, which would lead to very high inflation. Add to that the trend in other sectors , and you have a perfect storm for prices in the coming months.
And it remains to be seen whether the US administration is able to contain the rise in bond yields.
Recent events in the Middle East could be decisive in keeping oil prices high. The destruction of infrastructure and the complete takeover of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait suggest a protracted conflict that is worsening by the minute.
Nobody wants to budge, so it doesn’t look like any agreements will be reached until after the November elections, and that’s almost three more months of inventory reductions. Everything could explode… or not.
Interesting months…
Bonds
10-year Treasury yield hits 5% before reversing as traders await Fed meeting .
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/14/10-year-us-treasury-is-closing-in-on-5percent.html
Also this .
https://wolfstreet.com/2026/09/14/the-10-year-treasury-yield-briefly-makes-it-over-5-last-time-5-instantly-opened-the-floodgates-of-demand/
The US is trying to maximize relative power, not its own prosperity, and I think actions should be viewed through that lens. The Persian Gulf supplies Asia, mostly, and the destruction of Export Land Model populations would reduce their consumption, thus saving resources for future extraction. It’s a risky proposition with huge potential blowback, but if we go into a more brutal future, it might not matter what the world thinks of us.
I would tend to agree, ivanislav, ( I was pondering this over coffee this morning) and we can certainly see the rationale behind the wars in the Middle East and against Russia through this lens.
It is not simply a case of a failing hegemon trying to preserve its status v BRICS – this ignores Peak Everything.
US population will also be greatly impoverished, and reduced, no doubt.
Relative, not absolute, advantage as you say.
So what does what we are seeing imply from this brutal, realist perspective?
1/ Exterminate, or greatly reduce populations, in regions which are now surplus to requirements – cut them out of industrial, oil and resource-consuming civilisation. Kulm 1.0.
2/ Stop energy and other resource exporters from reserving fossil fuels for their own use. Above all, Russia.
3/ Crush Europe as an energy consumer. Use it as a proxy against Russia, put it on a fossil-fuel drip-feed, then probably terminate. But who cares? Not the US.
4/ Keeping the Chinese genie-out-of-the-bottle somewhat contained, and hamper Tech evolution there while still using it to produce lots of stuff for global export.
Highly risky, as you say.
The ‘tail’ doesn’t wag the ‘dog’?
The existential threat?
“To retain its military power and reserve currency the US needs leverage to force China to provide it with rare earth minerals, and the US intends {intended} to use Iran’s oil {and Venezuelan} as that leverage.“?
https://un-denial.com/2026/03/05/cactus-view-of-the-iran-war/
Xabier excellent post. Maybe add Japan to the list. They are being highly active with regard to energy and robot/AI technology. Yes, they are small but I think mighty.
Yes, assuming that someone rational decided the strategy, the losers will be europe and east Asia, plus India, which will now be egged on to wage war against Russia and China. Russia’s oil will go to China, mostly by pipeline, but possibly also Iran’s oil will be sent via pipeline. The US allies will try to break free, and some will be spectacularly punished to delay the rush out. The question, of course, is whether the US will maintain control long enough that it will be able to exploit the current oilfields. So far it does not look like the US is doing well.
I think you are right about the US trying to maximize relative power, especially if we assume that anything left in the ground now will be available later, especially if technology improves.
The whole world will be sliding down now; the question is which countries/areas do least badly.
I asked:
How many industrial and / or technological revolutions has the world been thru? What number revolution are we onto now?
Answer:
The short answer is: four for sure, and we’re probably living through the beginning of the fifth. Historians are unanimous about the first four. The debate is whether today’s AI era is still the Fourth Industrial Revolution or has become a distinct Fifth Industrial Revolution.
1st Industrial Revolution
c. 1760–1840 Steam engines, water power, mechanised factories, textile mills, canals, early railways.
2nd Industrial Revolution
c. 1870–1914 Electricity, steel, chemicals, internal combustion engine, telegraph, telephone, mass production.
3rd Industrial Revolution (Digital Revolution)
c. 1950s–2000s Computers, microchips, the internet, industrial robots, software and automation.
4th Industrial Revolution
c. 2010–present AI, cloud computing, Internet of Things, autonomous systems, biotechnology, big data, connected machines.
This four-stage framework is the most widely accepted in history, economics and engineering. So what makes the Fourth Revolution different? The Third Revolution gave us digital machines. The Fourth gives us connected, intelligent machines.
Instead of isolated computers doing programmed tasks, devices now communicate continuously, analyse data in real time, and increasingly make decisions without direct human intervention. Think:
self-driving vehicles,
smart factories,
AI assistants,
drones,
wearable medical devices,
robots working together over networks.
A simple way to picture it:
Third Revolution
Computer: computer helps a human do work.
Fourth Revolution
Network: Millions of computers, sensors and robots help one another do work.
I asked: Are we already in the Fifth Industrial Revolution?
Answer:
This is where it gets interesting. There are two schools of thought.
View 1 — We are still in the Fourth Revolution (the mainstream view)
Most universities, governments and organisations such as the World Economic Forum say we are still living in Industry 4.0. AI is considered one of the defining technologies of this revolution, alongside robotics, IoT and biotechnology.
View 2 — AI has started the Fifth Revolution (a growing view)
An increasing number of researchers argue that generative AI and autonomous AI systems represent such a profound shift that they deserve a new revolution: Industry 5.0. The emphasis moves from simple automation to collaboration between humans and intelligent machines, with AI acting as a creative and cognitive partner rather than just a tool.
If there is a Fifth Revolution, what’s different?
Fourth (Industry 4.0)
Smart automation.
Machines connected to machines.
Efficiency and productivity.
Robots replace repetitive labour.
Fifth (Industry 5.0)
Human-AI collaboration.
Humans and intelligent machines working together.
Creativity, resilience, sustainability and personalised production.
AI augments thinking, design, writing, coding and research.
That’s why tools like chat bots, image generators, AI coding assistants and autonomous agents are often cited as symbols of Industry 5.0.
Previous industrial revolutions automated muscle:
Steam replaced human and animal power.
Electricity multiplied physical production.
Computers automated calculations and repetitive processes.
Generative AI automates parts of cognitive work—language, drafting, coding, analysis, translation, design assistance and increasingly planning. That’s a genuinely new capability compared with earlier software.
It’s similar to how the steam engine became a “general-purpose technology” in the 18th century: AI is becoming a general-purpose technology that can be applied across almost every industry.
The spacing between revolutions has been shrinking dramatically.
Roughly:
1st → 2nd: about 110 years.
2nd → 3rd: about 100 years.
3rd → 4th: about 40 years.
4th → possible 5th: only 10–20 years, depending on how you define it.
That accelerating pace is one reason many economists compare the AI boom to the arrival of steam or electricity. They also note that past industrial revolutions brought enormous prosperity—but only after periods of disruption, job upheaval, speculative bubbles and social change.
My view (carefully stated)
If you asked ten historians today, most would answer “the Fourth Industrial Revolution.” If you asked ten AI researchers or technology strategists, you’d hear a much more divided answer.
I think the safest conclusion is:
Historically accepted answer: Humanity has experienced four industrial revolutions, and we are living in the Fourth.
Emerging answer: We may be witnessing the opening phase of a Fifth Industrial Revolution, driven by AI and human-machine collaboration—but that label has not yet achieved universal acceptance.
I asked:
For long enough I have been interested in the “peak oil”. Many analysts think that we hit peak oil production in November 2018. Now there are major wars going on, and Russia, Ukraine, USA and Iran are merrily bombing and destroying scarce oil resources. Can this latest revolution survive all this, I wonder? Current technology needs specialised inputs from all over the world, and AI centres need masses of water, and all this at a time when global warming is straining our resources. What do you think?
Answer:
You’ve put your finger on something that many technologists don’t talk about enough: AI is often presented as if it exists in cyberspace, but it is actually an extremely physical technology. It runs on concrete, copper, silicon, water, electricity, rare earths, and global shipping lanes.
I’d challenge one point: peak oil.
The claim that global oil production peaked in November 2018 has a serious following among “peak oil” analysts, particularly those who distinguish conventional crude from total liquids. But the broader data show something more complicated.
The International Energy Agency argued in late 2018 that both oil demand and oil supply had reached around 100 million barrels per day, and it explicitly rejected the idea that production had permanently peaked at that point. Since then, production recovered after the COVID collapse and has reached new highs, largely because of U.S. shale, Brazilian offshore fields, Guyana, and renewed OPEC output.
I think the more interesting idea isn’t “peak oil happened in November 2018.” It’s peak cheap oil. That’s a much stronger argument.
We’ve already harvested many of the easiest reservoirs. New barrels increasingly come from:
deepwater drilling,
shale formations requiring continual drilling,
Arctic or politically unstable regions,
heavier and more energy-intensive crude.
The resource still exists, but it’s generally harder and more expensive to produce.
The fourth and fifth seem like bullshit to me.
Why do you think that? If we do not manage to circumvent our energy problems, you will be right. But if we do, I think we are headed towards a future as in the “Blade Runner”. This partly depends on how successful AI is, and how good we are at innovating and finding new products and upscaling their availability – think of those sodium batteries. In fact, it is AI that can help us to circumvent the energy problems caused by AI – kind of incestuous, that.
Back in 1982, when I first started working as a computer programmer, I would probably have been astonished at the extent to which computers and e-stuff are woven into our lives these days. A few weeks ago my connection went offline for a few hours because of a local fault, and felt bereft being unable to connect to the internet.
We can’t really compare AI to electrification or locomotives. I can’t accept that cloud or AI are game changers. AI underperforms human workers, and it does so at a time when there are millions of unemployed graduates. It is superfluous except for surveillance. The cloud’s best achievement is mass surveillance. Neither provide goods that could not have been otherwise provided.
“AI underperforms human workers”
In what way? It speeds up access to knowledge, which has its own knock-on effects. Humans can have special insights and eureka moments when presented with certain facts in a certain way, and this happens at ever greater speeds in our time, speeding up end solutions greatly.
No longer do I have to visit the library as in the 1970s, to find the addresses of likely organisations to write to for the information that I sought, then go away and write a letter, stick it in an envelope, address it, go to the post office to buy a postage stamp, and then walk to a post-box and post it and all the rest. I just query AI until I get an answer I am happy with, then email it to somebody if I need to. All my pressing a few keys and buttons and doing a bit of cutting and pasting.
My experience with AI has not been nearly as good. It gives me some answers that are right. It gives me some answers that look like they might be right, but which are nonsense. Unless I am knowledgeable enough to know the difference, I get a lot of garbage in with what is actually right.
If all you are using the information for is sending out emails to a list of would-be buyers of some service, then having a bunch of useless emails makes little difference. They annoy a different set of would be buyers than otherwise.
But if I am trying to figure out something important, that is right, I do not want to use AI, other than as a supplement to what I am doing. Is there an exhibit number that is clearly wrong, for example.
Where are the products?
Gail wrote: “My experience with AI has not been nearly as good.”
I checked out CoPilot in 2023 and thought it was rubbish. When I wanted to ask it a series of successive questions, it could not seem to “remember” two facts in a row, or even just its last two answers.
Earlier this year I saw people on my hobby forum recommending ChatGPT with excellent results. I tried out the free version and was hugely impressed. It is way superior to the CoPilot of 2023. The free version limits your input and questions after a while, so now I have upgraded to the 20 pounds per month paid version, which is a very modest price for such a wizard app.
The thing is that AI apps “self-train” and improve over time, and the current version of ChatGPT is more than adequate for my purposes. You have to ask it the right questions, though, if you are dealing with a complex subject. You can tweak the questions until you get what you want. The app itself queries your logic if it doesn’t “understand.”
Just now I asked ChatGPT how many countries did not issue a 25 cents (or similar) coin. It went away and gave me a table of the countries and territories in seconds. Imagine how long it would have taken me to wade through catalogues, even online ones, to find that answer. Though even the online catalogues now offer very powerful queries. Time saved that I can spend on something else instead – it increased my productivity! My increased productivity in finding answers is a result that is invisible to our commenter drb, of course!
Really, does no one else have issues, as I do, with our formum turning into a cesspool of AI slop??
I do not ask AI questions about anything at all; therefore, I find it interesting -sometimes – to see what it can come up with.
Not long screeds, of course: they destroy discussion.
Very important to bear in mind that AI answers are now treated like a kind of Holy Writ by many.
A lady of my acquaintance was complaining that her son – OxfordPh.D Physics, patent attorney – refers nearly every question that comes up to AI and treats the answer as definitive. So does his wife, a lawyer.
She feels her son is under some kind of a spell.
WW2 was about the ruling class and its fears around oil. Maybe WW3 will be about the ruling class fears about AI/robots/in orbit AI/weapons. Exciting times.
Me. Corporate slopaganda is for those that demand to be led without thinking. I think we should rename it Axios Idiocy.
Back to more important subjects, I believe you mentioned Ethiopian coffee. The Algerian coffee shop(Old Compton Street) does a decent Sidamo and Yirgacheffe at a very good price(you almost certainly know this, but just incase).
Less important, but very relevant, I have been keeping an eye on nearest large supermarket petrol station(16 pumps). About a month ago, there would be one or two out of service, then overnight it jumped to a third(about a week to two weeks ago). Presently, it’s between a third and half out of service at all times and the queues are becoming far more regular. People will start talking soon.
Thanks or the coffee tip – didn’t know about that shop. I must try them.
I am not very sophisticated, but I was delighted that when I made a very ordinary ‘Turkish’ coffee for my great Iranian friend, who left at 9 yrs old, he got rather misty-eyed and said it took him back.
That is interesting about the pumps. Riding only a bike or the ‘hobnail express’ aka ‘Shank’s pony’ these things pass me by.
What the supermarket delivery drivers complain about here is potholes – and I can see that myself as I bike around.
One rather central side street I always used is avoided by me now as it is so bad. ‘Global Tech Hub’, but dreadful roads. That is a sign…..
I do not agree that my post was AI slop, moss, but you are entitled to raise the issue of AI. I actually condensed the chat bot’s answer to make it more succinct and on target.
Otherwise, if you do not like somebody’s posts, then just ignore them, rather than rallying others to gang up on them. I like to roll from subject to subject, and instant access to AI saves me time, and as they say, a rolling stone gathers no moss. 😉
It’s worth having a discussion about AI, though. But after all, what it presents is condensed from human knowledge or opinions. Previously I would look at Wikipedia, and I would be clear about if and where and what I was quoting. I consider AI now as a supercharged Wikipedia, though that doesn’t cover its full power and impact. It can of course get things wrong, because its results ultimately come from humans. AI is here to stay, though. It ain’t going away, so we must learn to deal with it, whether we like it or not.
Gail, though, is the arbiter of what stays or goes in the comments, and she does allow us a fair few off-topic comments, which can sometimes encourage a spirit of camaraderie among some of the commenters. A couple of days ago I posted a long comment about the musical band Pink Floyd, in which I showed a chatbot’s analysis of questions that I was not musical enough to get to the bottom of, and I explained and admitted that. I was hoping to get other commenters’ views of Pink Floyd, but Gail deleted my comment, for whatever reason or reasons – was it too long; too off-topic; because it used AI; or all those things? Whatever, it’s Gail’s blog, so I accept that it’s up to her what stays and what goes. But it would be useful if she could explain her attitude to AI and it’s use by commenters here – what to do and what not to do.
AI is not my favorite topic. I consider it to be at best a tool in few situations. Unfortunately, it produces a lot of wrong answers, meaning that a knowledgable reviewer needs to review its output. It uses huge amounts of energy that we are short of. It does not produce energy, and it doesn’t reproduce itself, so AI is likely short-lived.
I was concerned about the rapidly changing Middle East situation at the time you put your posts up. I felt that your multiple long posts were taking up too many pixels of space, considering that there were important topics to talk about. It was basically a distraction for other viewers.
I believe we should prefer using biophysical epochs rather than revolutions if we want to understand the foundations of the modern world’s history. (We have the technology we have the energy for.)
The first one was fire from biomass.
The second was fossil coal (1700 -> peaked 1914).
The third was fossil oil ( we are post peak).
The fourth I think or hope will be the first one –
for a while, or forever.
The fifth: food?
If this is the measure, then nuclear should be next. Call me an optimist.
That perspective is intelligent, as it focusses on the energetic foundation, not the mere tools.
You have an interesting analysis.
I agree that the first one was fire applied to biomass.
The second was fossil coal. Where this peaked seems to vary around the world. In the UK, it peaked in 2014.
The third was fossil crude oil. I would tend to exclude natural gas liquids and ethanol added as extenders.
The fourth revolution you talk about must be from above, “Network: Millions of computers, sensors and robots help one another do work.” – This would seem to include electricity, the internet, and AI.
Your fifth one as Food, would seem to imply going back to hunting gathering, together with whatever food could be cooked using biomass. This would assume a very small population.
The fourth biophysical epoch I propose is the one that follows The Oil Age (the third epoch). It is built upon all the scrap (thanks edpell3 for that point) from earlier times, as well as renewable biomass.
Electricity (“Network”) is a secondary form of energy belonging to the second and third epochs.
We may go back to fire wood and water wheels but we will retain lots of helpful things like radios, fiber optics connections, self sailing ships for cargo, and many more.
The Arabs are staying home – tourism in Austria suffers
https://youtu.be/s6L38y96EN8?si=cOeiF9qqosFmmkk3
What my friends in Vienna would like to see is all the Turkish, and Arab, residents go home.
Hopefully, there will be some robots to do the manual work instead of the dwindling native population.
All the women with hands made less capable with dysfunctioning nails indicate the lack of the working hands. Humans without hands are not humans. Some people without hands learn to use their feet as hands.
The WSJ version of the Yemen attack:
https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/widening-mideast-instability-squeezes-global-oil-supplies-0cd316ad
Widening Mideast Instability Squeezes Global Oil Supplies
Houthi offensive in Yemen has put a second vital energy corridor in the region under the sway of Iran and its allies
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman phoned President Trump last week hoping to get the U.S. involved in the fight with the Houthis. The president replied that the U.S. would help with everything except attacks, people familiar with the matter said.
The U.S. provided intelligence and targeting help and sent dozens of military advisers, the people said. Adm. Brad Cooper, who runs Central Command and is responsible for the Middle East, traveled to Saudi Arabia to show support.
Trump told reporters Saturday that the Houthis had asked the U.S. not to intervene and that the situation would be worked out and everything would be fine.
A 53-day U.S. campaign of heavy bombardment against the group early in Trump’s second term ended in a ceasefire after a fierce Houthi response. Now, with stockpiles of missile interceptors and precise strike weapons strained, the U.S. is hoping to avoid opening a second front in the war. The Houthis aren’t obliging.
This is a strange story. The Houthis had asked the U.S. not to intervene. These are the folks attacking Saudi Arabia. It is hard to imagine using what they said as an excuse for the US not to help Saudi Arabia.
This is a example of the new gloves off approach to infrastructure. This occured on the 8th. Abha plant Saudi Arabia. Currently all jazeera is reporting emergency alerts occuring in the same area for more incoming. Replacing these destroyed facilities will take lots of money and time and it’s unclear at this point exactly who will provide the financing. It may be a very long time before these facilities are replaced. Why would you when just like the destroyed US bases they are under enemy fire control. It would be stupid to replace these facilities when they can be destroyed at any time by Ansarallah. How much oil can actually leave the gulf if and when the war ends is likely to be very limited due to lack of facilitation. A lot of facilities have been destroyed in the last week. I’d just be guessing at numbers. A lot. It appears no one is done yet.
https://x.com/EGYOSINT/status/2098800481300512974
Thanks! I am sure that Saudi Arabia is not happy.