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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.
The Tainterian dynamic and the advent of the ‘Great Simplification’ – Part One
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2026-08-18/the-tainterian-dynamic-and-the-advent-of-the-great-simplification-part-one/
The Tainterian dynamic and the advent of the ‘Great Simplification’ – Part Two
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2026-08-19/the-tainterian-dynamic-and-the-advent-of-the-great-simplification-part-two/
This is an essay by Paul Arbair. A few things he says in Part 1:
The world in 2026 increasingly resembles a runaway train gathering speed towards a dangerous storm, with no emergency brake in sight and no Hollywood hero willing to divert it onto a safer track.
Just like some animals can physically sense the arrival of impending storms, more and more of us have an increasingly unsettling feeling that something unpleasant and dangerous is about to hit us. . .
Hence, for most of us, the reaction rather consists in becoming increasingly restless and aggressive. . .
The list of those we can choose to blame for the various aspects, dimensions, and layers of our predicament is virtually endless. . .
this translates into a relentless rise in conflict within and between human societies, and into the decline of decision-making processes based on collective deliberation and compromise, which are increasingly degenerating into, or being replaced by, processes based on authority and coercion.
In Part 2, he says:
According to Tainter, complex human societies (i.e., societies that grow and develop increased heterogeneity and differentiation, hierarchy, specialization and division of labor, inequality and stratification, and regulation) have historically acted as problem-solving organizations. In order to solve the social, economic and political problems they face, these societies make choices and implement ‘solutions’ (e.g., new practices or operating processes, technologies, regulations, organizational setups, hierarchies, administrative layers, as well as new supporting beliefs and narratives, etc.) that tend to result in ever-greater socio-political complexity.
As their complexity grows, the problems they have to deal with become more difficult to solve, requiring rising investment in further societal and political complexity. At some point, though, investment in socio-political complexity typically reaches a point of diminishing returns, meaning that the marginal beneficial returns (i.e., problems solved) of additional complexity begin to decline, leading to a lowered capacity to solve the new problems that arise and to deal with their consequences. . .
Ever since their emergence about 250 years ago, industrial societies have relentlessly grown more complex, socio-politically and technologically, to the point of becoming, by far, the most complex human societies that ever existed. . .
The main reason why industrial societies have been able to grow and become more complex to a much greater extent than previous human societies, according to Tainter, has been their capacity to access ever-growing supplies of affordable energy.
Ending:
What sets industrial societies apart, however, is the speed, scale and extent of the ‘complexification’ they have achieved thanks to fossil energy. Consequently, the global ‘superorganism’ into which they have morphed could very well be set for a ‘collapse’ or simplification that could also be unprecedented in speed, scale, and extent. That could be the case, in particular, if the fossil-fueled ‘energy-complexity spiral’ that has been propping us up for the last 200+ years were to turn from being an upward spiral into being a downward spiral, bringing us down as the availability of surplus energy shrinks and/or the accumulated waste of our energy and material use overwhelms us and chokes the planet.
But are we there yet? Or are we about to get there?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/aug/26/iran-faces-strait-of-hormuz-paradox-as-strategic-value-of-chokehold-erodes
Internal calls to end war get louder as Gulf neighbours plan alternative pipelines to cut reliance on waterway
One analysis written by Hamid Paktinat, the founder of the Forum of Economic Activists, suggests the construction of alternative pipelines and export routes by Iran’s Gulf neighbours will halve the strait’s strategic value within three years.
Three years. And in the meantime the world must limp along with a lot less oil and all that that oil provides. Plenty of time for a crisis – or multiple crises.
Even cutting the shortfall by half is not enough. We need the full amount back and the trading route back.
TALES FROM SLOVAKIA
I see you are all clamouring for more tales from this fascinating country.
==================
In 1938, the population of Czechoslovakia was approximately 14.5 million, with the following ethnic breakdowns:
Czechs: Approximately 50% of the total population (roughly 7.3 million), primarily residing in the Czech lands (Bohemia and Moravia), where they comprised 68.4% of the local population.
Slovaks: Approximately 16% of the total population (roughly 2.25 million), concentrated in Slovakia, where they made up 67.6% of the local population.
Germans: Approximately 23–23.3% of the total population (roughly 3.15 million), largely concentrated in the border regions known as the Sudetenland.
While the 1930 census recorded Czechs and Slovaks under a unified “Czechoslovak” nationality in some counts, separate declarations showed Czechs at 68.4% and Slovaks at 67.6% within their respective core territories by 1930, with these proportions remaining stable through 1938. The German population was the largest non-Slavic minority, concentrated in industrial border areas.
===========
So you see, back then Czechoslovakia should really have been called Czechogermanoslovakia. And that is where its problems started. A certain German nationalist leader famously intervened, and the country was split asunder. Slovakia broke away and declared its independence in 1939. This first modern Slovak state lasted through to 1945. Then Czechoslovakia was reconstituted and its ethnic German population mostly expelled. The next independent Slovakia was born in 1993.
===========
The History and Coinage of the First Slovak Republic.
https://www.worldofcoins.eu/forum/index.php/topic,42241.0.html
Each ethnic group wants to have its own country.
I understand that in Norway, transportation was so bad that each valley had pretty much its own dialect. This made putting together a unified Norwegian language difficult.
As the saying goes, “A language is just a dialect with its own army and navy.”
Norway has not done well with armies or navies. Its land is pretty unforgiving. Without oil, the country is too cold to support much of a population. The decline of oil production will be devastating to Norway, in my opinion.
“Norway has not done well with armies or navies.”
Tis true. Your ancestors never sent a single Viking ship to my poor country to indulge in rape and pillage. It was all a myth and a hallucination. So I can’t expect any reparations from you. Sigh.
https://gns.wisc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/461/2019/09/Nazi-propoganda-Neher-6.png
“Each ethnic group wants to have its own country.”
As the saying goes, “Why should I be a minority in your country, when you could be a minority in mine?”
“They’re saying things that we could say, but the Russian side is choosing and is very
6:41 important to understand. Russian side is choosing to side with Trump”?
I found this video interesting. A lot of what John Helmer says is obvious, if a person thinks about it.
He talks about the US believing in the tooth fairy. If the US makes a country suffer through sanctions, it will be rewarded in the end. This is similar to a child leaving a tooth under his pillow, for the tooth fairy to take after the pain of taking it out.
He points out that many of the political leaders involved in current disputes are up for re-election. Part of what they are doing and saying is to try to further their political chances.
In the US, he points out that Trump currently has low approval ratings with both parties, but both parties really support war. He believes that come November 4, the Democrats will win the house, and they are very close to perhaps winning the Senate. He says there are only a handful of toss up states, and most of them are on the border with Canada (Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, and Alaska).
Helmer’s current guess seems to be that the Republicans will keep the Presidency, under either Rubio or Vance. They will be more likely to keep war against Iran going than the Democrats.
At the upcoming talks with Xi Jinping, both sides will want some sign of stability. Helmer thinks that any substantive agreement will be put off until after the November elections, however.
Druckenmiller’s warning to Bessent is devastating:
His bond yield defense will fail & is irresponsible
Once Treasury starts defending bond yields against fundamentals, the market stops being a price-discovery mechanism and becomes a test of government resolve.
And his point about fiscal discipline is stronger still.
Higher long rates are conveying information Washington does not want to hear: deficits, debt issuance, inflation risk and fiscal credibility matter.
Suppress that signal and the government can postpone adjustment—but it cannot eliminate the underlying imbalance.
The historical pattern Druckenmiller is invoking is brutal:
Governments can fight market prices for a while, but if fundamentals remain unchanged, the intervention usually becomes larger, more expensive and less credible until policy finally yields.
The killer line: the bond vigilantes are not the problem; they are the messenger.
I must give credit where it is due . Bessant , Wright and Trump have had quite a success in jawboning the price of crude . The system has shown better resilience than expected . Yes , in the initial stages there was disorder ( not chaos) remember jet fuel for only 30 days etc . Things seem to have smoothed out . No panic , no politician calling for the public to reduce consumption , no talk of rationing . Heck the headlines are about the 3 tankers that got thru and not about the 135 gone missing from prewar levels and ” Trump is an idiot ” Yes , there is collateral damage like the bond markets , inflation , frayed International relations , drums of war but still calm — the calm before the storm ?
This is worrying! The economy cannot withstand higher interest rates. such higher rates will tend to pull the whole system down.
Why can’t debt be liquidated? Does high debt cause higher overhead costs, or lower? Liquidate the damn debt!
Trust is everything
No one likes defaulted debt. Hits the bottom line profit and loss acct
Better to extend and pretend as invented by the nips.
This is a sober look at the Chinese demographic situation. The population is falling, but most Chinese are still around. There are empty city centers because young people from smaller cities migrate to the mega cities and because more people are shopping online than visiting the mall these days.
12 minutes / The blurb:
There’s a viral theory that China’s real population is only 300 million, and that hundreds of millions secretly died during Covid. In this video we separate the clickbait from what’s actually happening. Why are the streets really emptier? Where does the “missing billion” claim fall apart?
We trace how China engineered this situation on purpose, starting more than 40 years ago, and why the one decision that built its economic miracle is now the exact thing unravelling it. Then we look at everything Beijing is throwing at the problem and why almost none of it is working.
Because the question isn’t whether China is hiding a missing billion. It’s what a country becomes when the one thing it was built on starts to run out…
“The population is falling, but most Chinese are still around.”
Rather Yogi Berra, that statement. “Nobody goes there any more. It’s too crowded.” 🙁
My favorite one is, “”Hey there, Boo-Boo! I’m smarter than the average bear!”
Of course, debt at a positive interest rate requires a growing economy to support it. There is huge debt in China, but most of it is buried in hard to find locations, including state governments. It seems likely that most of this debt will default, with falling population. Japan has the same issue. Banks will be hit hard. Governments can try to bail out banks, but this won’t work out well.
‘Brigadier General Robert Spalding (Ret), former Senior Director for strategic planning at the National Security Council at the White House tweeted that Canada wants to continue assembling Chinese products before shipping them to the US, in order to help the latter evade tariffs or what the White House recently dubbed “The Great Transshipment Scam”. The US told them to stop this practice but Canada refused.
The DOJ recently settled with two Canada-based steel companies, who paid $19 million for evading customs duties. Apparently, the trans shipment business is so good, Carney would rather lose 100,000 high-paying, skilled manufacturing jobs and pay $20 billion in tariffs. This issue is being omitted from most news reports.’?
https://forbiddennews.substack.com/p/carney-says-canada-is-at-war-with
If Canada is doing this, Mexico must be doing it 10X.
I hadn’t stopped to think about this issue: Canada (and probably Mexico) are assembling goods made with inexpensive Chinese parts, undercutting US prices. This is the reason for the tariffs.
there was a $$$ limit on gasoline purchases at the station today. They’re common but I’ve never come across any of these limits until today.
where was this?
Interesting conversation between to Aussies.
Karl Stefanovic interviews chef and former TV presenter Pete Evans “for one of the most controversial conversations we’ve ever had.”
The blurb:
COVID. Censorship. Big Pharma. Mainstream media. The cancellation that nearly destroyed him.
Pete confronts Karl over his role during the pandemic, while Karl admits: ‘I personally believe I got it wrong.’
From vaccine mandates and media pile-ons to nutrition, chronic illness and the influence of pharmaceutical companies, this is the conversation Pete says mainstream television would never allow.
Pete also opens up about the personal toll of being publicly attacked, why he rejected ‘one-size-fits-all medicine’ and the moment the media turned on him.
Whether you agree with him or not, this is a raw, uncomfortable and brutally honest discussion about one of the most divisive periods in modern Australian history.
Diesel seems a bit expensive in California. $7.18. Must be taxes. Lunar eclipse. Something of that nature.
https://gasprices.aaa.com/?state=CA
UK diesel yesterday was £1.80 to 1.82 per litre (our pump prices include £0.53 per litre duty *and* 20% VAT on the whole price incl duty)
= £8.10 to 8.20 per UK gallon
= $US 10.90-11.00 per UK gallon
= $US 9.00-9.10 per US gallon.
Good news!
The just realized that China Gretaed last year!
And you know what that means…
More for us!
Silly SPR does not matter.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-24/china-s-oil-demand-very-likely-peaked-last-year-sinopec-says
Berries are increasingly popular, but the cost of growing, handling, and storing them makes them expensive.
Now I am harvesting and freezing my blackberries, canning grapes and plums, and this appeared:
I Tracked Down the Company Ruining Fruit
https://youtu.be/nyG-np0S0ZQ?si=YWbZ6ajFnzyKZdY-
It’s a good year for blueberries here. We’ve got so many that we might have to make some jam.
Who needs fresh berries when you have Kraft Blue dye47?
But RFK Jr. is going to take that option away from us!
In areas unsuited to blueberries, people who like blueberries might like to plant Amelanchier alnifolia. The fruit looks and tastes very similar. It’s a bush/shrub more than a tree, so it would fit into small gardens.
Birds here take the fruit soon after it starts to turn blue, so you might have to net it. (But birds here are a constant pest, I can’t even grow figs without putting a paper bag over every fruit which confuses them long enough for the fig to become ripe-ish.)
The soil is a medium loam, quite acidic (pH about 5.7). I still can’t grow blueberries – I tried three times and gave up.
My late blueberry varieties were dried out while still unripe by the hairdryer-like air of the current heatwaves in Europe. Maybe I should consider some varieties that are grown in warmer parts of the USA. I have already had a look at them.
Thanks for the link MG. This topic is very dear to my heart, but at age 71, realistically I cannot attempt subsistence gardening which is fraught with failure in the early going by inexperienced gardeners, not to mention the likelihood of theft. Here in costal northeastern North Carolina, rain has been good and plentiful. I saw only 3-4 geoengineering trails over the skies early this summer. A different situation in Slovakia as I understand it.
Since this is the poor section of NC, I get my food from Walmart and Food Lion. I’m convinced they are dumping grounds for expired produce. Red seedless grapes which are labeled as a product of Peru are now comingled in a single bag. One cluster with underripe grapes, another cluster in the same bag -grapes that are overripe and starting to shrivel. The taste also varies.
Blueberries are not from Driscoll at my Walmart or Food Lion. They are also labeled as imported from Peru.
Then there is what I think is a scam with the ” organic ” label , kind of like the word “premium” to make you think you are getting “better” food, but at a higher price. Every food is coated with pesticides and preservatives until proven otherwise. Same with meat.
I gave up buying strawberries two years ago, even at a U-pick farm in VA. They are huge and tasteless, even if freshly picked.
I also noticed the super large strawberries with no favor. But I think they have backed off and now have smaller berries with some favor.
There is so much arable land in the US that everyone could have a baseball field-sized veggie garden (2.5 acres).
This would take up 1,308,594 square miles—an area equivalent to two Alaskas (Alaska is 665,384 square miles), or a combination of Texas, California, Montana, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, and Oregon combined.
I say Americans should go for it!
Very sorry to hear about the supermarket/fresh produce situation. And I can appreciate that a lot of US farm produce is huge and tasteless. They have got that down to a fine art.
I am a big fan of California organic raisons, although I guess I could be poisoning myself with those. I try not to think about it too much and just enjoy them. At least the ones I buy from a specialist company in Kobe are not huge or tasteless.
I Tracked Down the Company Ruining Fruit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyG-np0S0ZQ
Driscoll’s is the middleman that controls the genetics, reaps the profits, and then shifts blame.
A whistleblower alleges the Canadian government repeatedly flagged their berries for exceeding pesticide limits.
Producer: Alec Opperman
I watched the whole video…very good information
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVuSYUNAekc
The Flying Lizards – Money
Broadcast date: 11/10/1979
Lyrics: I want money. That is what I want. Your love won’t pay my bills.
Should be the theme song for the DSA 😉
Inspirational music for re-arranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic.
Jona Lewie – Re-arranging The Deckchairs On The Titanic
This is nice, gentle, soothing music. Not exactly something to run to the lifeboats over, but passable.
Roxy Music: Sea Breezes (1972).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nqmf39ZOJRc
This opens with sounds of sea waves. The song proper doesn’t really start until about 32 seconds in. The brief middle section is gorgeously mad and frenetic, in huge contrast to the rest of the track. This is very different from the later Roxy Music that you probably know and which I dislike.
Demi, that was back when Brian Eno still had hair on the top of his head rather than the bottom. We all liked Roxy Music in 72 because glam rock (and pop) was the “in” thing. I was less into them than most of my friends because right off the bat, I thought Brian ferry was too pretentious. He overdid the makeup, the voice, and the mannerisms. But they had some good tunes.
Since we’re on a sea theme here, how about this one from the same era?
Demi? You saying I’m not the full shilling? Rather Debussy-esque, that tune.
The headline is beyond bizarre:
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/anthropic-expected-to-tell-investors-it-sees-over-30-trillion-in-potential-revenue-a611efea
Anthropic Expected to Tell Investors It Sees Over $30 Trillion in Potential Revenue
The AI startup is likely to top SpaceX’s eye-popping potential revenue estimate
The maker of Claude is likely to tell investors its potential revenue opportunities are above $30 trillion, topping SpaceX’s $28.5 trillion estimate, according to people familiar with the matter.
Tech startups or other growing companies going public often estimate their “total addressable markets,” or TAMs, to show investors they have ample room to grow. Such figures estimate the amount of annual revenue a company could theoretically capture if it achieved 100% market-share using inputs ranging from industry data to bankers’ models. . .
Anthropic more than doubled its revenue to $11.6 billion in the second quarter. To put its more than $30 trillion vision in context, the 191 technology companies in the S&P 1500 brought in $2.4 trillion in revenue last year, according to FactSet. . .
Anthropic could aim to raise as much as $100 billion in the offering, people familiar with the matter said, compared with SpaceX’s $86 billion. And Anthropic is aiming for a valuation of about $2 trillion, the Journal has reported, above the $1.77 trillion valuation SpaceX garnered.
It seems like the stock market can only absorb so much of these overpriced offerings.
Do the hustle!
Maybe in the future a trillion will be like a million today
Rumor has it, they are shedding executives and directors like rats leaving the Titanic.
By the way, did rats leave the Titanic?
Recently Tim made a comment about the impenetrability of checker puzzles on websites – an ongoing annoyance to me to the extent I have been just deleting such sites from my history; sayonara. Of course there’s always been the switch off your adblocker to access our site, which suffer a similar treatment
However, very recently I’ve noticed a proliferation of we’re checking your connection, or just a moment while we verify you;re not a bot etc etc all of which sites have become inaccessible on a secure browser. Some sites, such as meta platforms, require login though search engines seem to be able to get through and fill with their content. Much of substack requires login.
Today, this:
On Monday 24th August at 8PM EST, we received at letter from X Corp. asking to cease and desist the service XCancel.
The service XCancel is stopped until further notice.
We are seeking legal advice and won’t share more details for now.
Thank you for the trust you have put in these two years of XCancel.
And don’t mention Cloudflare, or log in with g00g!!!
The exponential rate of increase in this enshitification has put the www as I know it on a course to collapse. I wonder if it will last as long as the electricity supply or the financial architecture, or the military or until the arrival of the local FEMA equivalent or … ???
submit submit submit
Taking Xcancel off is not good.
I know that Ugo Bardi has had trouble with his posts being censored on Facebook and perhaps other sites. It is relatively easy to run afoul of the censors. They have exactly one message they want to get across.
Wondering why you aren’t having faith in the ‘self-organizing’ system on this one Gail. Seems inconsistent.
You have very strange ideas about what the self-organizing system does. It doesn’t necessarily fix things the way that I want them or that Ugo Bardi wants them.
Consistency is vastly over-rated IMHO.
It stifles innovation, breeds boredom, creates rigidity, reinforces errors, and encourages complacency.
Consistency is for the mediocre. Gail has soared above all that. She has achieved true greatness through adaptability, experimentation, ruthless concentration, and resilience.
When the world changes, Gail adeptly and agilely shifts her focus, cranks out some new graphs, and pioneers new ideas and new perspectives, to boldly go where no actuary has actually gone before.
This flexible and dynamic approach is vastly superior to rigid consistency.
Enshitification—that’s the word!
I guess the market players think people are so addicted to their online fodder that they will go through any number of hoops in order to keep getting their fix.
I’m a member of a little hobby forum that usually gets maybe 300 viewers at a time. Last year we started getting more and more 503’s (service unavailable). Most frustrating. Turns out that we’d been invaded by masses of screen-scraping bots, presumably to feed their LLM’s. One day we had 29000 viewers simultaneously – quite ridiculous for our little forum. The problem was solved when the admin implemented Cloudflare. But how long will it be before bots learn to click on a button or enter something to get in?
So Silicon Valley creates the problem with their LLMs and then sells the solution – additional surveillance.
Surely a sufficient number must get through, unlike conscientious objectors to surveillance, otherwise LLMs wouldn’t exist.
And the search engines certainly get through, but
O … wait … Cloudflare is pay to play, isn’t it?
no need to train a bot to click on a button, Doth
Dolly Parton has has died aged 80
Dolly Parton, Kenny Rogers – Islands In the Stream (Official Audio)
https://youtu.be/UaNGtgYwSsU?si=Wlr4S7I6wwzyJrQy
She could not cope with the complexity.
My impression is that she was a decent human being. RIP
Strange that you mentioned a non-Slovak death.
Dolly Parton claimed English, German, Welsh and Anerican(whatever that is), but not Slovsk.
I mention things about Slovakia that I experience here in Central Europe, but otherwise, I like music.
American like Mashantucket Piquoit
Five years on, this song hasn’t aged well, has it?
Vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, vaccine
I’m begging of you, please don’t hesitate
Vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, vaccine
Cause once you’re dead, then that’s a bit too late
“I’m dead serious”
Bye Dolly miss you.
Sorry bout your luck
Jelly Roll hosted Jimmy Kimmel calling Trump a fat pig and mocking his weight.
https://x.com/i/trending/2092223702276640987
Splendid find Tim!
Well, she got through all the talking points smoothly, didn’t she?
Moderna branding.
‘Back to Normal’.
Sensible un-injected people are ‘cowards’ and stupid. A similar line was used by Her late Majesty QE II.
And she even put a mask on for the close encounter with an armed and dangerous trusted professional.
One hopes the film crew were masked while she was previously ‘spreading it without having it’ as dear old Dr Whitty here put it!
There is an interesting back story to the Moderna vaccine development.
Apparently, Dolly made a vital philanthropic donation of $1 million to the Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Tennessee to support early-stage coronavirus vaccine research. The funds helped finance the critical early research stages that contributed to the development of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine.
She later received her own first dose of the Moderna vaccine at Vanderbilt in March 2021, famously joking that she was getting a “dose of her own medicine.”
She had no equity in Moderna and did not receive any royalties, profits, or financial returns when the Moderna vaccine became commercially successful.
I may be gullible here, but I think she wanted to do good and she believed she was doing good both by donating to the cause and by taking the jab. In this respect, she could have been a victim of her own sunny nature.
As a snarling misanthrope, I do envy the innocently sunny philanthropists just a bit.
You may well be right about Dolly. But what a twist in the plot!
I doubt Her Maj coughed up the readies for her shots: they don’t carry any cash, as you know…….
RIP to them both.
“she believed she was doing good both by donating to the cause and by taking the jab”
So did the those who followed the Nazis. If you aren’t asking questions, and you have no idea how the world really works (and if you still believe BS childhood fables as an adult) you really shouldn’t act on anything. Lies lies lies yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
I think Dolly’s death might trigger the collapse of the AI boom. It’s monumental.
Dolly Parton, country music icon, dies at 80
The beloved star’s team said she had faced a brief battle with cancer.
As word of Parton’s death spread, the tributes began pouring in.
President Donald Trump ordered U.S. flags lowered to half-staff nationwide for one week while a constellation of the entertainment world’s biggest stars weighed in with condolences.
Her death comes after Parton announced in May that she was canceling a Las Vegas show and had been undergoing treatment for kidney stones for several years.
“Lord, they dig more stones out of me a year than the rock quarry in Rockwood, Tennessee,” Parton said in a statement. “But seriously, my immune system and my digestive system got all out of whack over the past couple three years, and they’re working real hard on rebuilding and strengthening those, and hopefully, I’ll be up to snuff again soon.”
On Friday, Parton acknowledged she had lost a step after her husband, Carl Dean, died in March 2025. But she insisted she wasn’t ready to leave the stage.
“Even though I’m still healin’,” Parton told People. “I’m still workin’! You know me — as I’ve often said — I’ve dreamed myself into a corner, and I still have so many things I want to achieve, so I’m gonna keep on working as long as I can to see everything come to life.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/dolly-parton-county-music-icon-dies-80-rcna236277
Sachs described the current geopolitical situation as potentially the “most dangerous moment in the world since World War II” and argued that Trump’s shifting rhetoric between military escalation and negotiations highlights deeper problems in the U.S. political system. He also criticised Congress for failing to exercise sufficient oversight over presidential war powers and accused major U.S. media outlets of normalising what he views as increasingly erratic political behaviour.
Sachs went on to argue that unchecked presidential power and decades of U.S. military interventions have created a dangerous system, warning that Trump’s alleged lack of “self-control” could further increase global risks. The psychological and political assessments expressed are Sachs’ own views.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJUr7YiHfsM&t=9s
Needs to be seen, but probably won’t
Watched it Mike. In general, the You Tube videos I watch are increasingly only through recommendations of OFW viewers, especially because a lot of comments are made by readers who live outside the US.
Sachs may have his definition of sociopathy and psychopathy blurred, although I am not sure of the distinction myself. But sociopathy as I understand it broadly means a lack of empathy. A sociopath has no concerns that his manipulations, deceit, and dishonesty cause harm and suffering to people. He exploits them for his own benefit. A psychopath in contrast, is one who derives pleasure or excitement in seeing people being tortured, maimed, or killed.
Even more troubling is the evidence that about 2% of the population possesses these traits and there may be a genetic component. It therefore may have some survival/ reproductive value which means it will be impossible to extinguish it.
And to my horror and shame I must confess that I voted for Trump three times, not because I liked him or supported him, but the illegal alien invasion was the immediate most existential threat to our country.
AI saves time. But companies are turning that time into more work
The promised relief may end up putting even more pressure on performance
Artificial intelligence will affect virtually everything – from science to the labour market – and young people should have a say in how it is used, said former Google boss Eric Schmidt, speaking to around 10,000 graduates. “The rocket is here,” he told graduates of the University of Arizona. The audience booed him. Nevertheless, E. Schmidt carried on and concluded his speech with a call for them to board the AI rocket.
New technologies promise to make work easier, but they do not necessarily mean fewer tasks. Whilst AI will take over some work duties, it also creates a need to monitor its outputs and correct errors. Work can thus pile up and create an additional burden. This is the experience described by some employees who do not share the enthusiasm of technology leaders.
Translated by DeepL.
https://www.trend.sk/biznis/jedna-firma-otocila-vysledky-celej-slovenskej-elektrotechniky?itm_modul=react_trend_subtopbox&itm_brand=trend&itm_template=hp&itm_position=3&itm_cb_position=top_main_2
What is the net benefit? Humans replace themselves. AI requires constant fossil fuel replacements.
A lot of hype about something that doesn’t exist.
I chatted recently with an A.I. I’m am certain was actually a human because it had a sense of humor.
A sucker really is born every second.
We’re more human than human, don’t ya know?
Our only fault is we can’t tell our bikes from our baby buggies.
When they asked me to tick all the images that included a zebra crossing, I was unable to find a single member of the species Grévy’s zebra (Equus grevyi), the plains zebra (E. quagga), or the mountain zebra (E. zebra) in the entire frame!
World Number #1 Golf catches “Hand, Foot, and Mouth” disease.
Scheffler: Battled hand, foot and mouth disease during BMW
ST. LOUIS — Scottie Scheffler wrapped a most ordinary performance by his standards with his 13th bogey of the week in the BMW Championship. Turns out it was a most extraordinary week given his health.
“I’m sick,” Scheffler said while turning down an interview request Thursday.
After he closed with a 2-under 68 on Sunday to finish tied for 12th, Scheffler offered a few more details. He said he was dealing with hand, foot and mouth disease that causes blisters.
https://www.espn.com/golf/story/_/id/49705204/scottie-scheffler-says-played-bmw-championship-sick
Ontario premier wants Canada to withhold oil exports to the U.S. Here’s what that would mean
“Ford says Canada should hit back harder every time U.S. President Donald Trump escalates, and that oil and potash should be part of the retaliation”
“We have to hit them hard. We have to make sure that they feel pain like we’re going to feel pain,” Ford said on the Bill Carroll Show on Newstalk 1010 in Toronto. “Nothing should be off the table.”
https://edmontonjournal.com/business/ontario-premier-doug-ford-alberta-oil-donald-trump
Maybe Canada needs fusion bombs and ICBMs?
It is hard to understand why Trump cannot get along with Canada. We desperately need Canada’s heavy oil.
Diesel for the northern part of the US mostly comes from Canada, from US owned refineries. Now, how this all unfolds… is anyone’s guess.
North America is heading to schism levels of insanity.
I’m starting to think that there is going to be some terrifying unrest and starvation kicking in soon right across the continent… possibly even before it hits Africa and India… which is nearly guaranteed at this point (unless of course, we are in a simulation).
Whoop! There it is! Amazing how the U.S can’t see its own vulnerabilities
We don’t teach children and adults about the essential nature of fossil fuels.
True, i was just binge watching N. Korea docs the other night on NatGeo. And they totally omitted the loss of their oil imports after the USSR collapsed. Which sent them into a massive tailspin and famine. They just blamed it all on their leadership and communism.
School systems give the same false information, I am afraid.
Análisis sobre el futuro desplome de la producción de petróleo.
https://rayonegro.substack.com/p/analisis-sobre-el-futuro-desplome?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=6627814&post_id=212653733&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=216vfx&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
An article by Quark:
Analysis of the future collapse of oil production.
The Norwegian offshore (marine exploration) directory has just published its forecasts on future oil and gas production in Norway .
And his first comment is already enlightening.
“ Resources Report 2026: Without significant discoveries, production on the Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS) could decline sharply after 2030. Resources remain abundant, but growth rates are too low to sustain current production levels over time .”
It shows several graphs, and then transitions to talking about the world:
To avoid a negative outcome, the board proposes starting to replenish reserves by increasing investment and provides three production curves based on the results. The IEA is also doing this to prevent the perception of imminent collapse in the next decade.
Quark shows a graph showing that world spending to replenish reserves has increased greatly, but actual production has leveled off, in a Hubbert Curve type of chart. This is a documentation of diminishing returns.
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!UCJ1!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbeaf5d30-abfa-4595-8099-721ea701f415_997x638.png
Another chart:
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!4yD2!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F176d4b0f-429a-4291-b8fd-b974f045acc6_940x567.png
Near the end, he says:
Talking about a temporary oil surplus (even if it lasted for a few years) is a bad joke given these long-term prospects…
Quark says Canada will continue to produce at the same rate for decades. I have to wonder if the machinery will be available to do it… and if there will be the demand to ensure it all remains viable.
Russia doesn’t do too badly either. I gather a few others like Kazakhstan will do okay too.
The issue for heavy oil is that refining costs and transport costs tend to be higher than for light oil. For this reason, the selling price of Canada’s heavy oil (and that of Russia, Venezuela, and many other countries with heavy oil) tends to be lower than the benchmark prices we see, which are for light, easy to refine and transport oil. These fuels are essential for industrial use and transport, but we are already having difficulty keeping production up high enough. I am afraid production will not remain high for long, because the price refineries can afford to pay will not rise high enough.
“Diesel Crack Spread” is a new term (to me) which relates to all this.
Its currently at 100… just down from the All Time High (tn) of 103.
Maybe the high crack spread will trickle down to better prices for heavy oil.
TALES FROM SLOVAKIA
I expect that all our commenters are desperate to hear some more about Slovakia today, so here we go!
In 1993 Czechoslovakia peacefully dissolved into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in an event known as the Velvet Divorce. While the split was largely administrative, a few remote border villages held local referenda to decide which country to join.
These votes concerned very small areas, typically involving single digits of square kilometers and affecting only tens of people. The swaps were minor territorial adjustments rather than large-scale population exchanges, reflecting the peaceful nature of the dissolution.
The specific settlements involved in the 1990s border swap between the Czech Republic and Slovakia were two small hamlets exchanged to straighten the border and align it with practical infrastructure connections. The formal transfer occurred in 1997, following the 1993 dissolution of Czechoslovakia.
U Sabotů was also known as Šance. This hamlet, historically part of Moravia and administratively linked to the Czech municipality of Vrbovce, was transferred to Slovakia. Despite its Czech historical ties, the settlement was geographically isolated from the Czech road network and accessible only via Slovakia. Following the swap, it became part of the Slovak municipality of Vrbovce (note: the Czech side has a municipality of the same name, now Javorník nad Veličkou). About one-third of its residents opposed the transfer, leading to a compensation package from the Czech government for those who wished to relocate.
Conversely, a small cluster of approximately 9 to 12 houses belonging to the settlement of Sidonie, which had fallen on the Slovak side of the initial border line, was transferred to the Czech Republic. These homes were physically cut off from Slovak infrastructure, with all roads and utilities connecting them to the Czech side. The transfer unified the entire hamlet under Czech administration, attaching it to the municipality of Brumov-Bylnice in the Zlín Region.
The exchange involved a total area of roughly 452 hectares (though this figure sometimes includes other minor technical adjustments alongside the main hamlets). The primary motivation was logistical: the original border, drawn along a creek in the case of Sidonie and through difficult terrain for U Sabotů, divided communities from their essential services and transport links. The agreement resolved these anomalies, ensuring that each settlement was governed by the country to which it was physically connected.
It is difficult to please everyone. It sounds like the people involved in dividing into two countries did their best to please everyone.
All I can say is, if I had been born in England (I was), and the authorities had decided to pull my birthplace into Scotland so that I had to move in order to stay in England, I would not have been at all pleased.
For what it’s worth, lots of people must have faced that very prospect as the border between England and Scotland has a long history of being tweaked. The modern Anglo-Scottish border was established primarily through a medieval peace treaty signed nearly 800 years ago.
The border evolved into its current state through four distinct historical phases:
1. Early Battles and the River Tweed (1018)
Before a formal border existed, the kingdoms of Alba (early Scotland) and Northumbria (early England) constantly fought over the frontier. In 1018, the Scots won a major victory at the Battle of Carham. This pushed the Scottish frontier south to the River Tweed, establishing the natural eastern boundary that remains in place today.
2. The Treaty of York (1237)
The true legal birth of the modern border came with the Treaty of York. King Alexander II of Scotland and King Henry III of England signed this agreement to settle long-standing territorial disputes.The Terms: Scotland officially abandoned its claims to the northern English counties of Northumberland, Cumberland, and Westmorland.The Result: It drew a definitive line between the Solway Firth in the west and the River Tweed in the east, freezing the frontier in place. It stands as one of the oldest, most enduring national boundaries in the world.
3. The Resolution of “Exceptions”
While the 1237 treaty fixed the bulk of the border, two notoriously violent areas required later adjustments:The Capture of Berwick-upon-Tweed (1482): The prosperous town of Berwick changed hands between England and Scotland 13 times. In 1482, the English captured it for good, pulling the final few miles of the eastern border slightly north of the River Tweed.The Debatable Lands (1552): A strip of land on the western border near Carlisle was claimed by both nations and ruled by lawless, cattle-raiding clans known as Border Reivers. In 1552, French diplomats stepped in to split the territory, digging a frontier ditch called the Scots’ Dyke to mark the final line.
4. Pacification and the Union of Crowns (1603)
Even with a legal line on a map, the “Scottish Marches” remained a lawless warzone for centuries. This changed in 1603, when King James VI of Scotland inherited the English throne as James I, uniting both crowns under one monarch. James abolished the border administrative zones, renamed the area the “Middle Shires,” and ruthlessly executed or exiled the reiver clans, turning the volatile frontier into the peaceful boundary it is today.
On our trip to both Greece and Turkey, we heard about similar issues. IIRC, they were with respect to islands with both residents who were both Greek and Turkish. Some needed to be paid to leave, to go to be with others of similar backgrounds, when these islands were assigned to one country or another.
Yes, that is life in areas with complicated geography. You have many natural borders (rivers, mountains) that are difficult to reconcile with state borders. One of the most frequent causes of quarrels with neighbours is over property boundaries: terrain shifts, and more precise surveying methods can reveal discrepancies in recorded boundaries.
There are hundreds of thousands of houses for sale in the Romanian Carpathians that are difficult to sell because of missing paperwork.
https://youtu.be/3tvpMCrkXqo?si=0quWMfil-l8ylo_8
What happens if we get energy blackouts because of the coming discontinuities caused by the two ongoing major wars? How many people today have gone cashless?
Yesterday I proffered my debit card as payment in a shop. The man behind the counter shook his head and said that his electronic payment system wasn’t currently working. Then I had to revert to the stone age method and hunt out a cashpoint in the urban jungle and withdraw notes from it. Rather annoying. But how often will we end up having to do that in the near future?
We never know. The woman ahead of me yesterday in the grocery store paid her $78 bill in cash. I looked up, because I was surprised. There are quite a few who use “Food Stamps,” and they get some the benefit of something that acts like a credit or debit card .
The automated stations do not take cash.
It seems like the move away from cash accelerated in 2020, when people became afraid of physical cash carrying germs.
Posters were on display in railway stations warning of germs on notes long before 2020, though: I recall thinking how silly they were.
What I find really annoying is that whenever one withdraws cash at the bank, they are now obliged to ask ‘What are you withdrawing this for/why so much, etc?’
I often think of darling FE, and am tempted to say ‘Hookers, blow and the VIP room, it’s not cheap you know!’
‘But I’ve taken to replying: ‘I don’t really trust banks these days,you know cyber fraud and attacks and so on’.
Laughs, wry smiles ensue, and they hand it over.
Interesting response.
I’m happy to report that I’ve never been asked why I was withdrawing cash from my back account in Japan. We are well behind the times here.
But I have had a few envelopes in the mail from banks with questionnaires insisting I confirm that I am not a drug dealer or a terrorist or else they will close the account.
It seems that as they can’t catch real drug dealers or terrorists they are reduced to pestering us poor rice farmers just so they can say to the authorities that they’ve done something.
And the need to show ID is growing apace. Last month i was asked to present my “My Number” the national photo ID card in order to get a mature bank insurance policy in my name paid into a bank account in my name at the same bank.
When I presented the card, the clerk asked, “do you have any additional ID, such as a driving license?”
“Sure I have,” I answered. But why would you need to see any more? If in addition to my bank card, the government photo ID card doesn’t identify me sufficiently, what’s the purpose of the thing?”
Amazingly, the logic penetrated! Or the clerk was convinced I was not a bot!
“It seems that as they can’t catch real drug dealers or terrorists they are reduced to pestering us poor rice farmers just so they can say to the authorities that they’ve done something.”
I’ve come to the conclusion that they are the drug dealers and the terrorists. Just more boogeymen to herd the flock. The call is coming from inside the house!
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/israel-influence-chatgpt/
Israel Creates Fake Think Tank In Likely Attempt To Dupe AI Chatbots
The story is about the organization publishing all kinds of fake AI articles, in an attempt to influence world opinion that what Israel is doing is good.
The whole race does not know the meaning of honor.
After 2020, saying that is throwing stones in a glass house: where IS there any honour now?!
I admit – to my embarrassment – that I once believed in a solid core of British decency (especially compared to Spain) but the Plandemic lies, murders and cover-up blew that away for good.
Most movers and shakers in the world don’t believe in honor.
Chucky FitzClarence believed in honour with a capital “H” and a “u”, and with a bit of help from the scum of the earth, he brought down the British Empire.
“11:38 I think the next two months are crucial to determining whether we Americans could keep the republic. There is no no
11:47 reassurance in uh Trump being he’s unpredictable and um not well and he has
11:54 a people people around him that will encourage him to do the worst. Very
12:00 concerned about that.”?
“Under such circumstances, I find it very difficult to believe that the true goal of the creation of a massive, militarized federal force of masked ICE troopers has been immigration enforcement. Instead, the great expertise they have gained in brutal raids and street abductions seems intended for far darker purposes.”?
https://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-the-jewish-roots-of-the-ussr-and-the-ussa/
Duh, if we didn’t have tens of millions of illegals, we would not need a beefed up ICE.
Global Fertiliser Export Restrictions .
https://x.com/JoshiEien/status/2092135647360553245/photo/1
Unavailability now will take 6 months to manifest, yes? Winter wheat in the northern hemisphere, summer planting now in the southern hemisphere. I am not a farmer, but I take it this means still no SHTF for now, i.e. BAU-baby-party-time?
Probably closer to 20 months. We certainly learned that these ships take a long time to arrive. Then you fertilize, but can not plant immediately or the seedlings will be burned by the urea. Then you have to mature the crop. Then you have to wait until people eat through the scarce crop, which might take close to one year all by itself. If you want a smaller but faster food crisis, close Odessa.
This is great news. Everything is coming together to keep the can kicked a while longer. Surely something will materialize before those 20 months to kick it yet again.
I look forward to our celebration here in 2030 where things will somehow still not be apocalyptic and davidina will proclaim BAU 2040.
To be honest, the financial crisis seems significantly more advanced than the physical crisis. Significant news might come this week, when the US will kick off Swift some entity to show they mean business. And these will probably be Chinese entities, teapot refineries or banks. Some of the banks have significant US holdings, hundreds of billions. The arabs will sit tight, apparently unaware that their holdings will ultimately be confiscated whether they comply or not. They might even end up with both ruined infrastructure and confiscation of trillions. Many countries in fact will suffer confiscation. The gold held in NY has, in fact, already been confiscated long ago, with countries like Germany or Italy losing big.
It is the nuclear financial option, equivalent also to a US default once the outcome is clear. Putin will still not restrict nuclear fuel exports, because he is Putin. I should not complain because this step significantly decreases the probability of a real nuke, at least for the time being.
This is a concern:
“the financial crisis seems significantly more advanced than the physical crisis.”
Somehow, the system is breaking, but we don’t understand precisely how.
Even if the boiling is slow, poor old froggie gets well and truly cooked in the end…….
Somehow, countries need to make fertilizer themselves. This becomes impossible for some missing minerals. Even composting animal manure doesn’t do enough to fix the situation.
Human manure needs to be composted. And perhaps human corpses. The oceans and landfills are other areas that could host some.
Looking ahead to it (even if I’m destined to be composted too), good riddance…
~31 ammonia plants in the Middle East have been disrupted/shut, while another 49 facilities across India, Pakistan & Bangladesh have reduced/ halted output due to feedstock constraints. Read the post and cry .
https://x.com/gaurav_kochar/status/2092512467079319831/photo/1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maDpWRRayg8
This Is It: Mike Maloney’s Most Important Video Ever – Helium, Oil, Gold, Silver & the Iran Crisis (55:10)
242,998 views Aug 17, 2026
In this urgent update I explain:
• Why a third of the world’s helium supply has been disrupted — and how that threatens the entire AI/microchip industry
• How the shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz has already cut ~20% of global oil & LNG supply
• Why Russia has gone from major energy exporter to importer after Ukraine’s refinery attacks
• The largest simultaneous stock market + real estate bubbles in recorded history (Buffett Indicator at 238% of GDP, Shiller CAPE at all-time highs)
• The coming fertilizer & food crisis that almost no one is talking about
• Why essentials (food & energy) are about to inflate hard while stocks and real estate deflate
• Exactly where gold and silver stand right now — and why I believe they are bottoming
This is not another “maybe someday” warning.
The energy crisis has already begun. The financial system is more leveraged than at any point since WWII. And the next chapter is going to be extremely painful for the unprepared.
I urge you to watch every minute of this video and share it with everyone you care about. YouTube may try to suppress it — so please help get this message out.
Definitely worth a watch. Its a reminder that a lot of stuff is all happening at once.
That said, if we get through to 2028 unscathed … then we are definitely living in a simulation.
Who will be standing in front of the classroom in September? Schools are scrambling to find teachers, with agreements falling through at the last minute
Schools have been looking for teachers for months, yet some applicants ultimately do not take up their posts.
Hundreds of posts remained unfilled ahead of September.
The shortage is forcing headteachers to patch up gaps in the timetables.
According to the schools themselves, even higher salaries will not, on their own, attract new staff.
https://hnonline.sk/slovensko/96298582-kto-bude-v-septembri-stat-pred-tabulou-skoly-zhanaju-ucitelov-dohody-padaju-na-poslednu-chvilu
That is what AI is for no?
Or put the classes on television. Have one teacher teach hundreds of children. Parents have the responsibility of making certain that their children listen and do the work.
A few well to do folks will hire tutors. For most, education will go downhill.
A hybrid system is also possible. Ther are too many teachers anyway. The western expats here are all homeschoolers, and it is interesting to see how many capabilities they have developed with the internet available.
Double the pay and you will have plenty of teachers.
It is about the rising complexity: children with disabilities, AI, more and more complex world, society falling apart…
It is not just pay.
“It is about the rising complexity: children with disabilities,”
What an agreeable way of saying dumber and poorly prepared by parents for life.
Instead of one society we have dozens of societies, all performing poorly because all the time and money is going to support big businesses and big government…who don’t support anyone these days but themselves.
If energy were more plentiful and much cheaper, things would go much better. It is a plentiful supply of cheap energy of the right kinds that we need.
Anthropic is struggling; companies prefer cheaper AI
The era when customers automatically opted for the most powerful AI models is over. They are now content with older ones
The American company Anthropic is facing challenges with the competitiveness of its most powerful model, Claude Fable 5, in the domestic market. This is because businesses are increasingly opting for cheaper AI tools.
https://www.trend.sk/spravy/anthropicu-sa-nedari-firmy-preferuju-lacnejsiu-ai?itm_modul=react_trend_timelinebox&itm_brand=trend&itm_template=hp&itm_position=4&itm_cb_position=top_sidebar_1
Inexpensive sells!
Don’t tell Apple that.
Updates from https://xcancel.com/hormuzletter
“2 hours ago”
: Iran has just struck an oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz US-backed southern corridor, while transiting under US escort, causing damage to the engine room and fully disabling the vessel, per UKMTO.
So much for US escort.
“4 hours ago”
Canada’s Ontario Premier Doug Ford directly responds to Trump amid the Canada-US trade war:
“I have a lot of real estate on my ass, so he has a lot of room to kiss my ass.”
This comes after Ford threatened to cut off all electricity and critical minerals to the US.
“5 hours ago”
Iran reframes Trump’s and Bessent’s announced “Operation Economic Outcast” as “solely based on a design by his media team, aimed at increasing psychological pressure on the Iranian people” and “these media operations usually occur on the eve of the reopening of financial markets, with the aim of controlling energy prices,” a high-ranking Iranian source told Tasnim.
Iran says “Each time, after controlling energy prices, these campaigns end with Trump’s statements such as ‘I am giving Iran time,’ or ‘Regional countries have intervened to prevent this,’ or ‘We have achieved all our goals,’ and notably, immediately afterward, the line of negotiation with Iran is raised in media outlets close to Trump.”
Iran adds “in practice, the United States has done everything it can against the Iranian people, from initial and secondary sanctions to naval blockades, and more,” so “nothing new will happen in the field.”
Bessent’s threat du jour was such a flop that it doesn’t seem to have even been reported on the NYPost – the sold US MSM I read with any regularity. Markets don’t seem to have blinked. I’ve been someone puzzled why this announcement had been his responsibility as I would have thought Rubio or Hegseth or even Trump would have rather been the one to stand in front of the cameras
Yves Smith, this morning in her daily Iran beat thread began her article with a fascinating financial analysis reflecting her personal concern as to the present impass. She was right in the middle of the online analysts for 2008 and her article today reflects on the comparison between then and now. My impression is that she’s very concerned about the immanency of the next biggie.
The reason the distribution of debt matters is that another reason the 2008 crisis was so volcanic is that the subprime derivatives and lending losses were at already over-leveraged financial firms at the heart of the payments system and capital markets. We will soon find out how many critical financial firms are exposed to the private credit/AI debt bomb. For instance, it was a big ugly surprise to learn that Credit Suisse had been issuing boatlaods of total return swaps to family office Archegos. Credit Suisse did not survive and was merged into UBS.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2026/08/iran-war-bessent-effectively-admits-new-ferocious-iran-sanctions-likely-to-fizzle-as-treasury-intervention-fails-more-evidence-of-us-military-impotence-ansar-allah-makes-drone-strikes-into-saudi-ar.html
Having bessent announce that was remarkable. If you did not know better, you would guess he is the president, since he is on the air all the time. Simplest explanation is that they know it is going to fizzle and no one wanted to be associated with it. Trump is a full time damage controller now, no time for policy. It is such a dysfunctional cabinet.
Yves Smith can not or will not (i suspect because she lost her mind over covid) admit a financial crisis began in 2019 and 2020 was used to cover it up. I’d take whatever she says with a grain of salt. She is rude and filled with hubris. She should marry Wolf Richter.
Definitely the rudest blog artist I’ve observed. I think the problem is a metastasized self-esteem but I do consider her to be amazingly intelligent, has a pachydermal memory and an expert on derivatives. Since I regard derivatives as the core of the imminent collapse (davidina?) I continue to spend time thinking through what she has to say on the subject.
Maybe fifteen years ago I began posting there briefly – no freedom of thought permitted, but then it’s her place, her rules. I very much appreciated her counterbalance mainstay, Lambert Strether, who “retired” a couple of years ago and I wondered why. Maybe he was too. Know the feeling. I note her number of commenters has been declining for several years
Gail, pls delete this post if you consider it inappropriate
too old
and in regards to a financial crisis, why do you think we started the war with Iran?
I think the war on Iran was a last chapter in a very long term plan to degrade the signicance of the muzzie ME. There has been a seven nations in the crosswires plan floating around the nutcastosphere for more than ten years, Iraq, Lybia, Syria, etc
Carthago Delenda Est
I think you are talking about this and this was at least 20 years ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAnNJW9_KYA
I don’t think they have any plan currently. I think its all just thrashing and flailing. Money is the ultimate power, without it you can’t pay the soldiers.
I don’t think they have any new plan.
It’s Michael Hudson’s view that standardised metallic money was invented in antiquity to pay soldiers not the generally held opinion that money originated from the inconvenience of barter.
Power is a shape-shifter. It can morph between its essential elements
energy = military = money
“If the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail.”
All we can do is start wars. Wars add to GDP, increase employment, and disguise other problems.
In every conflict, one must ask what the victory condition is for the contenders. In the case of the war with Iran, we don’t have a very clear idea of what the objectives for either side would be. Perhaps for the US, the victory condition is simply that things return to square one, with the Strait of Hormuz open, oil flowing, and Iran under sanctions. I don’t think they can aspire to much more, although lately they seem to indicate that their victory condition is the fall of the Iranian regime.
For the Iranians, on the other hand, the victory condition is to ensure that sanctions will be lifted and that they will not be attacked in the future, and they can only achieve this by instilling such a degree of economic fear that no one would even think of bothering them again.
The current moment reminds me of a speech, of ill-fated memory, in which a chancellor said that they were not going to continue paying the reparations of the Treaty of Versailles, and that whether they won or lost, they would do so in such a way that it would never cross the world’s mind to try to collect them again. And the fact is that that’s exactly what happened, because ten years after the war ended, both losers were in much better economic shape than a large part of the victors.
That is the use of fear as a weapon. And I very much fear that we are in a similar scenario.
Apparently, Adolph Hitler was the one making the pronouncement referred to in your comment in 1933, and Germany was the loser in WWI.
The stated amount of remuneration was very high, but it was doubtful if anyone expected it so be fully repaid.
https://www.historyskills.com/classroom/year-10/versailles-reparations-paid/
When the commission announced its figure, the headline number was 132 billion gold marks, roughly US$33 billion at the time.
Germany was expected to pay annual instalments of 2 billion marks, plus a sum equal to 26 per cent of the value of its annual exports.
At first glance, this amount appeared crushing. In practice, though, the obligation was considerably smaller.
The 132 billion was divided into three categories of bonds. A bonds accounted for 12 billion marks, and B bonds accounted for another 38 billion marks, meaning these two categories totalled 50 billion marks.
The remaining 82 billion consisted of C bonds, which were not scheduled for repayment until Germany had finished paying off the first two categories.
Sally Marks described the C bonds as “entirely chimerical,” arguing that they existed primarily as a political device to convince the French and British publics that Germany was being punished severely.
For this reason, the true obligation that Germany faced in 1921 was closer to 50 billion gold marks, not the 132 billion that dominated newspaper headlines.
Even this reduced figure was substantial, as it was roughly equivalent to Germany’s entire national income for one year.
Nonetheless, the gap between the headline number and the actual requirement is significant, because it shows that the Allied governments themselves expected to collect considerably less than the figure they announced publicly.
How the Dawes and Young plans reduced the bill
As a result of the crisis, an international committee led by American financier Charles G. Dawes proposed a new payment schedule in 1924.
Under the Dawes Plan, Germany would pay 1 billion marks in the first year, with the amount gradually increasing to 2.5 billion marks per year by the fifth year.
The plan also reorganised the German central bank and introduced a stable new currency called the Reichsmark.
To stabilise the economy, the committee arranged US$200 million in international loans from American banks.
For five years, the Dawes Plan appeared to work. American money flowed into Germany, and Germany used a portion of it to make reparation payments to France and Britain, who in turn used those payments to repay their own war debts to the United States.
The arrangement depended entirely on continued American lending.
By 1929, a new committee chaired by American businessman Owen D. Young proposed another revision.
The Young Plan reduced Germany’s total obligation to 112 billion Reichsmarks, payable over 59 years until 1988, and established the Bank for International Settlements to manage the transfer of funds.
Annual payments were set at roughly 2 billion marks, with one-third designated as unconditional and the remaining two-thirds eligible for postponement in times of economic difficulty.
How the Great Depression ended reparations altogether
Within months of the Young Plan taking effect in September 1930, the global depression had gutted the international economy.
American banks stopped lending to Germany, which meant the circular flow of money that had sustained reparation payments dried up almost immediately.
A Wikipedia article tells more:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_reparations
Let’s call him Adolf with an F, while reminding ourself of that Liza Minnelli song.
Thank you very much, Gail, for your response.
I was not referring so much to the amount of the reparations, but rather to the psychological effect they create on those who have to pay them. And as we all know, the defaults brought with them the military occupation of the Ruhr basin, as well as the occupation of the Rhineland, which lasted twelve years, aggravating these effects.
Bringing this example to our topic, it seems evident that economic punishment of a country does not make people rise up against their government, except perhaps to choose an even more radical one.
It seems difficult today for Iran to become even more radicalised, but I do not consider it impossible. In any case, they know that at the slightest sign of weakness they will be torn apart without mercy, but if they go too far, they could end up under atomic bombs, which perhaps is the real objective of all this commotion. In fact, although it may be outrageous, it is the only thing that makes some kind of sense: to provoke such a serious crisis that the absolute destruction of Iran enters the Overton window of public opinion and is seen almost with relief.
In the case of the war with Iran, we don’t have a very clear idea of what the objectives for either side would be
May I humbly disagree. The US has stated their goal is regime change in Tehran. Between the lines it’s clear to me they mean install a US corporate friendly financial system so as to control the oil. The Iranians , on the other hand, want to be left alone to develop their country, to trade and do business with whom they choose. They do not seek “victory” or to conquer anyone but will defend themselves militarily against foreign aggression. The Iranians have given a list of five conditions, basically the MOU that Trump signed and will cease action when these terms are fulfilled.
I agree with you.
I don’t agree with Mr B . Degrowth , low-tech etc are not the solutions to the problem of ” Overshoot ” compounded by “Limits To Growth” .
https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/i-saw-the-future-of-the-west-in-india
Very interesting article… this is where we are heading. I don’t think we have a choice. Thx for sharing
I am willing to believe that at least some of what Mr. B is saying may happen. People are inventive. If they are missing something, they will do what they can to provide an alternative.
There may be local areas where production may continue for some time using materials and labor that are locally available. Trying to maintain roads, bridges, hydroelectric dams, electricity transmission lines, and water treatment plants will become more and more difficult. But it will be difficult for people in the West to think “out of the box” sufficiently to start making a major transition.
Very true, Gail.
JMS recently recommended to us the story of Marcos Rodriguez, who was let to fend for himself in the Spanish mountains at the age of 9.
He’d had an introduction to tough self-reliance from living as assistant to an old shepherd for two years, and when the big crisis of his life came and he was left on his own, he was intent on surviving, not hanging on to what he had, which was nothing except a knife, some food which soon ran out, and clothes which he soon outgrew.
People who are used to all the industrial comforts will want to hang on to what they have. And on the whole they can’t tolerate the least discomfort.
He, having almost nothing, could tap into ancestral instinct.
Human beings will survive somewhere, probably on the margins, and they may very well be good, admirable people. Like Marcos.
The Mad Max/Zombies scenarios have been quite deliberately fed to us in order to make us accept anything rather than such savagery.
There is a saying: ‘I believe in God because I can no longer believe in Man’.
For myself, I believe in both, and certainly in the best of Mankind.
I am really rather eager to see what happens next.
@ Ravi,
I don’t think B’s intent is to fear monger or over dramatize. He’s just quietly trying to analyze the end result of civilizations generations from now. I have been to China in 1994 and the manufacturing techniques in a stamping plant were even more primitive than what B referred to in India. I also visited India in 2000. But look how far China transformed! In theory, due to the dependency of complexity and energy I suppose things could devolve equally as fast. But maybe not collapse as quickly as a lot of authors try to dramatize to sell their books and click bait, I agree.
I look at Cuba which has essentially “stabilized” in a relative sense since Communism took over in the 1950s. Same cars, ok, maybe importing solar generators and panels is more tricky. But regardless of the argument that the western world consumes the vast majority of the resources but can do so because it is a small percentage of the total population, brings back another Stalinism: “Quantity has a quality all of it own.” So yes, total population, even if one discounts the low per-capita consumption by the third worlds matters. Eventually.
Rediscovered this song while on my drum kit the other night. Written by Moody Blues drummer Graeme Edge (RIP) on the birth of his son. It applies to all our children, grandchildren, or even great grandchildren, depending where you are on this mortal coil.
“Lots of luck, lots of health , lots of wealth, and little pain. It’s what I want for you but there’s little I can do to put you on the gravy train. I’ll be level with you I don’t know what I would do if I had to face what you’ve got coming down the line.”
Nice song by the Moody Blues from 1978. Good words and pleasant scenery graphics.
I know it’s a quaint tiresome trendy response, but “we don’t have solutions. ee have consequences.” But I guess we are talking semantics here.
Young people want to leave their countries. But where can they go if everyone wants to move somewhere else?
https://www.sme.sk/domov/c/mladi-ludia-podla-globalneho-prieskumu-stracaju-vieru-v-lepsie-zajtrajsky-vo-svojej-krajine
In practice, what happens in situations like today is young people join military groups in which they see the world. Unfortunately, these military groups get into what are essentially resource wars.
Too expensive. Not achieving the goals originally thought possible.
https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/europe-chastised-trumps-climate-rollback-now-its-delaying-its-own-green-goals-835b6724
Europe Chastised Trump’s Climate Rollback. Now It’s Delaying Its Own Green Goals.
Developed nations are increasingly balking at the cost of measures to cut down on fossil fuels
“The Green Deal had been a central focus of Europe,” said Daniel Yergin, a veteran energy historian and vice chairman of S&P Global. “Now, for Europe, the focus is obviously on security and on being economically competitive.” . .
European fossil fuel companies that once touted renewable goals, including Shell, BP and Norway’s Equinor, have dialed them back and doubled down on more profitable oil and gas. Shell called off a biofuels plant in the Netherlands. BP said it would reduce spending on projects to transition to a greener energy future by more than 70% a year, and only invest in top-tier offshore wind and solar projects in a “capital light” way. Equinor recently abandoned its target to install 10 to 12 gigawatts of renewable power by 2030. . .
U.K. Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s government said earlier this month it would review electric-vehicle sales targets to ensure they remain “pro-business and grounded in the real world.”
In Canada, Prime Minister Mark Carney, once the face of the global fight against climate change, has dismantled some of the central planks of predecessor Justin Trudeau’s energy policy—including an unpopular consumer carbon tax.
I’m so tired of this delusional privileged Democratic Party Green New Deal crap. Its amazing how they never talk about overshoot and sustainability.
If they have realised that the Transition won’t work as planned, they may move again on culling the population.
Lots of possibilities: Bird Flu, Nipah, Hanta, Ebola….
President of Iran, Pezeshkian, is apparently pushing for peace rather than holding the US to the fire. The only thing I can think of that would result in this attempt to save the Empire, apart from being a traitor, is Chinese pressure, but I would lean towards him being a coward, compromised, traitor, or just a fool.
>> “The war must come to an end at some point,” Pezeshkian stated in a Friday address, according to state media. “It is better that we demonstrate our strength and dignity today and tell the world that we have won and that we are ending the war.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/tehran-crossroads-irans-civilian-leaders-call-peace-amid-crippling-us-blockade
We are entering one of the most dangerous weeks in the Iran War.
Iran has made it crystal clear that any escalation of the economic warfare campaign from the United States will be treated as it should be: as warfare.
In response, Iran has repeatedly stated that they will respond militarily to any notable escalation from Bessent after his press conference on Monday.
How severe will Bessent’s escalation be? How severe will the Iranian response be? Will the United States then fall back into the escalation spiral by responding again?
This is a DANGEROUS week…
There is always TACO .
Concur with your post but let us see what happens. AFAIK he has little power now.
Also is zerohdge now in any way distinguishable from axios? If it is not the Irania president baaaah-ing, it is Hormuz open news during the week end. Their business model is all too clear. As usual, manipulating the market is extremely profitable but there are many mouths to feed. Thr US is essentially Ukraine.
Don’t forget Pezeshkian was installed after the rather suspicious helicopter crash that killed the former president and foreign minister after leaving a dam opening ceremony in Azerbaijan.
At the time it crossed my mind, totally without evidence, that maybe Pezeshkian was an American plant ..
nothing I’ve seen since has persuaded me one way or the other
drb – ZH has been solely a kaching click harvester since the site redesigned from horizontal format (screen) to vertical format (mobile) maybe eight years ago. At the time the whole coding for the site was changed to add huge amounts of nasty-looking (to me) scripting. My browser security went bonkers. I monitored it for a short time and came to the conclusion it was just clickbait with a brand. Waste of time
>> Don’t forget Pezeshkian was installed after
Indeed.
This D Day is lame. Just saying more to come basically.
D-Day delayed for a week .
https://x.com/StrickerNonpro/status/2091938028998873164
A nothing burger .
” Note language:
major announcement of financial institution sanction.
Not the announcement of sanctioning a major financial institution.
One to watch.”
US cannot sanction Iran without harming Chinese interests . Remember it is restrained buying by the Chinese that Brent is not $ 150 . Scotty boy FAFO .
FAFO = Fool Around Find Out, or different first word
No reaction from stock market. We haven’t figured out anything that will work, yet.
Gail… Jeffrey Currie summed up well the possible tactics of the Trump administration in this video linked below…And then to connect this video with something you have discussed and that is a possible federal government collapse. Could this happen if we are unable to pay the high interest payments on our debt?
Economist Jeffrey Currie gives his view of what is ahead.
At 31:49, he talks about the huge demand for commodities that is occurring because of needing to rebuild in response to deglobilization and in response to electrification (in response to decarbonization. Later, at 41:11, he remarks that commodities, as a group are up by 215% since October 2020, more than any other asset class.
At 33:24, he says that the whole system will break within 12 months. He remarks at 34:00 that in 1820, the Dutch East India Company provided a safety net. He expects that Apple and other large international companies may provide somewhat of a safety net this time.
At 35:32, he says that to prevent civil unrest, any government (Republican or Democrat) will spend, spend. This will debase the currency. [This would seem to assume that the government is still in power after the “whole system breaks.”]
At 36:20 Currie mentions the book “This Time is Different” by Rogoff and Reinhart. He talks about the many times that countries have, in the past, gotten into debt at levels similar to the level the US government (and other governments) are getting into now. He said that they often got into wars, if they had high debt levels. Then, they could simply cancel the debt held by other countries, since they were enemies. Alternatively, they try to deflate their way out of the problem.
He feels that there is way too much investment in AI. Chinese always do things cheaper. The best investment he says is to learn Mandarin.
Currie is concerned that the West has been the hegemon since 1600, but he is concerned that Trump will lose this position. The thing that he sees has helped the West is having control of hundreds of ports around the world, many of them on small islands, such as Diego Garcia. This has allowed troops to be restocked around the world. [This is something I can’t imagine the US can keep up.]
—–
The thing I notice is that the world is working toward less and less efficiency, with de-globalization, ever-lower ore grades, and longer trade routes. This never works out well. The total quantity of goods and services produced tends to fall, whether or not there is an economy that is in power that can issue more and more currency.
Thanks for the summary… I somehow missed some key points. I agree with your assessment. These guys can’t go full reality as they are still invested in the system.
https://youtu.be/maDpWRRayg8
This Is It: Mike Maloney’s Most Important Video Ever – Helium, Oil, Gold, Silver & the Iran Crisis
Don’t think this has been linked here yet. Mike Maloney is back. He has a collection of all the stuff in charts that we seem to love here. Links to other happy happy fun fun videos within. Poly Crisis…. but without the pesky environmental stuff.
One more thing in this salvo. I have become rather fond of this X account:
https://xcancel.com/hormuzletter
Whoever is posting on it seems to be plugged in with the right feeds.
Nice link. Those huge cope cages to protect against drones are wild!
According to this link:
BREAKING: US Treasury Secretary Bessent announces the US is launching “the single greatest financial offensive ever marshalled against an adversary” against Iran, per FT.
Bessent implies the US will directly target China and Gulf states, saying “any nation that serves as a financial artery of a withering regime should expect to share in its isolation” and that any country that keeps doing business with Iran will become a “global pariah.”
Iran already warned all Gulf countries not to join the US in the economic war and “any country that takes part in imposing economic restrictions on Iran will be regarded as an enemy.”
Gulf states will have an impossible choice to make.
This sounds strange, but the self-organizing system may make some use of this plan. It may push the world toward a kind of bifurcation, to cut back on oil consumption. The world economy needs to move manufacturing and agriculture to closer to where things are made. If countries take sides, it may lead to the necessary bifurcation.
It’s going to be much. Much worse than you think. We are being led by idiots who have been pampered their whole lives. They know not what they do. I hope this is not true.
The self-organizing system works with whatever it is given. I don’t think it matters if we are being led by idiots who have been pampered all their lives. Somehow, the system will fairly slowly go down, unless there is a way that complexity will somehow allow parts of the system to rise again, probably after a time-period for adaptation to the changing situation.
Self-organizing systems are the opposite of faith-based systems.
Complexity isn’t an actor. It doesn’t do anything other than increase catastrophic risk proportional to its own degree of existence when the collapse phase arrives.
The Universe as a whole has gradually become more and more complex. This is the overall trend of the Universe according to Eric Chaisson in Cosmic Evolution: The Rise of Complexity in Nature.
Faith-based systems help make certain that best-practices are handed down from generation to generation. They help bind groups together. They make certain that people look out for each other in their own group, so that the Maximum Power Principle takes place. The fact that people are bound together as religious groups allows survival of the best adapted group, in addition survival of the best adapted individuals.
The principles taught by various religions around the world have been surprisingly similar. An awfully lot of prayer takes place. People seem to assume that there is a life after this world ends, giving them a reason to continue, even if things seem hopeless in this world. Mothers need to care for their children.
A flabby, manicured, sodomitical, former hedge-funder, threatening the suffocation and death of whole nations as if he were Genghis Khan is a wonderful illustration of late-Imperial degeneration and the corruption of the United States.
As an historic spectacle it is something to be savoured, and truly beyond any satire.
Or should one now say, post-Imperial?
Very well said! Thank you!
We should say post- historical, remember?
It can only be post- historical and beyond satire if it’s Not Real.
Why the latest episode with Canada? Why now? drb seems to think the Hand is stoopid. Well, the Hand isn’t American and Hormooz plandemic 2.0 is very much about cultivating opposition to American exceptionalism. Only thing theHand wants to make great again right now is American rationing, so great that people the world over think they’re gonna be dead within a year because Hitler. Because BNS. Because Coup. Hand on the hunt for red October. Gotta bring the Doom to control the Doom. And you gotta subvert the Right with and villainous Hollywood fag while you subvert the Left with the same villainous Hollywood fag. Bessent be like, I’m both your fags. Hand be liking the subliminal dark arts of Edward Bernays. Look at me, I’m still Gail’s rebel fag. But who isn’t, right? (Minus the rebel.)It’s her world and we’re just living in it. As above so below.
Broken Social Scene, “I’m still your fag” song:
https://youtu.be/3_FxR4UkgmA
https://youtu.be/Rr4vxqbQyZ4?is=Y9JT7qhJF8GpZA8N
Just an artsy video from the same era
Musing on a trait war. Fischerspooner, the 15th
Before we characterize the hand as stupid, let us see what its source of info is. Probably they get high quality info about some things, but do they get or were they getting good info about weapons inventories and performance for example? The hand is born in the bubble and ultimately gets info from within the bubble. There are MIC representatives in it.
garbage in garbage out is an unchanging rule of science. Also I get that Trump is the designated bag holder, but could they use a tighter leash for better efficiency?
That has been debated-implied before here in various discussions. The Iran conflict ” resolution ” misused as fantastic opportunity to wheel-in new global order of restricted trade within regional blocks from now on.. In that way US remains a powerful center not for 99% of the world anymore but instead say ~[ 40-65% ] which is a lot of money and influence for few more decades to come. In a way it’s a corralling agenda again.
Way better than disorderly total collapse.
Well, at least that seems the plan for now.. if they can deliver it ( mid-long term )..
According to the blurb:
In this urgent update I explain:
• Why a third of the world’s helium supply has been disrupted — and how that threatens the entire AI/microchip industry
• How the shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz has already cut ~20% of global oil & LNG supply
• Why Russia has gone from major energy exporter to importer after Ukraine’s refinery attacks
• The largest simultaneous stock market + real estate bubbles in recorded history (Buffett Indicator at 238% of GDP, Shiller CAPE at all-time highs)
• The coming fertilizer & food crisis that almost no one is talking about
• Why essentials (food & energy) are about to inflate hard while stocks and real estate deflate
• Exactly where gold and silver stand right now — and why I believe they are bottoming
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PArr9-RMYSg
They Just Triggered the Biggest Energy Crisis Ever – Mike Maloney & Chris Martenson (Part 1) (17:56)
Two of the world’s leading voices on money, energy, and resources sit down for an urgent conversation about the greatest ‘polycrisis’ in modern history.
In this first part they break down:
• Why the current energy crisis is already bigger than any in recorded history
• How oil prices are being deliberately suppressed while diesel has nearly doubled
• The explosive sulfur shortage that is crushing fertilizer production and copper mining
• The cascading shortages of helium, aluminum, and other critical resources
• How the 1971 closing of the gold window set the stage for today’s debt and bubble nightmare
• The coming wealth transfer and why those under 40 are being left behind
• Why they both see a major crisis window opening in October 2026
This is not theory. The shortages are already here. The interventions are already failing. And the next phase will be unlike anything we’ve seen.
These shortages cause recession. Whether or not they cause high oil prices is speculation.
The debt bubble may collapse, causing defaults and deflation.
The situation will be yet another rerun of overshoot and collapse. The situation happens over and over. Higher costs because of diminishing returns are not reward by higher wages.
Strange wobbles everywhere indeed !
Toyota announced that in order to stay competitive ( in hybrids and EV segment ) have to drop prices by upto 30% to match CHN’s recent production volume and quality upswing. Their production lines in JAP and globally are gearing for this plan 2027- and beyond.
So, in laymen terms ~quite expensive will get expensive soon-ish, what a progress.
Wonder whether these Japanese cars will be allowed sold in the US and whether there is any need to drop pricing in the US, when Chinese cars are disallowed on the US market and thus only Tesla as competition. Maybe no impact for consumers here, only in other global markets.
Yes, it seems we are back into econ-block structure revival big time. CHNs ( BYD ) are tariff&trade rulez limited-prohibited from the US market ( TSLA home turf ), so they expand in Europe, Brazil, Asia. So, one would expect JPN focusing towards this non-US vector as well. But in technical terms it will at least partly reach the US too as the pre-announced savings coming from manuf. are in the batt./cells domain chiefly.. not necessarily introducing cheaper budget brand off-shoots etc.
But realistically, I’d expect at max ~15% price improvement from it, not more, as that [ 30% ] is PR stunt – more of a sales pitch you get ” only ” if you cross recalculate the vehicle parameters vs each other ( batt range/ cycles / speed of re-charge/cargo-form factor of vehicle/ .. )
Ahh.. my post above should be watched after these two videos. That is the order I went through them with. And then the linked Pape video…. well, I just read the transcript of it here….
https://singjupost.com/transcript-of-robert-pape-interview-diary-of-a-ceo-mass-casualty-attack/
Perhaps this is true?
“Iran Is Losing Its Grip On Hormuz”: Strait Traffic Explodes Nearly 400%
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/axios-40-tankers-transited-hormuz-friday-night-real-crisis-diesel
Hormuz Commercial Traffic Surges
Shortly after President Trump declared the Strait of Hormuz “an American territory” on Friday evening, the New York Post published a new report citing UK Maritime Trade Operations data showing that commercial traffic through the critical waterway has rebounded sharply as more vessels use a US-backed route along Oman’s coast. This suggests that the US military presence and offensive operations in the region have degraded Tehran’s ability to fully control the waterway.
According to the article:
Nearly 200 ships navigated the strait last week, up from about 150 the previous week and just 40 two weeks earlier, according to UKMTO data. Traffic has recovered to roughly 20% of prewar levels, when the waterway carried about one-fifth of the world’s seaborne oil.
“It increasingly looks like Iran has at least partially lost control of the strait,” Homayoun Falakshahi, head of crude oil analysis at Kpler, told CNN.
“The Oman route absolutely makes the most sense,” added Dan Pickering, founder of Pickering Energy Partners, noting that it allows vessels to avoid the possibility of paying a toll to Tehran.
Kepler says none passed yesterday. In other news, Iran says they have been invited to join the defense pact now including Turkey, Pakistan and S. Arabia. This will certainly speed up some processes.
Axios again. I would ignore Axios, AP and the rest of the ilk, for anything supposedly “news”.
So let’s speculate what if world peak oil has actually peaked now and we are entering the downslope of hubberts curve then the closure of Hormuz for a short time then reopening but with less not more makes perfect sense the elders have succeeded in mass manipulation of people’s minds , it was not hard to accomplish even finite worlders believed the spin.
Nothing has been sank. So there’s that. This rate of increase would return BAU on about 40 weeks. Ships are entering the gulf also. Ship to ship transfer out of Fujairah more popular for VLCc. Saudi is taking the risk. Losing a tanker might be cheaper than capping wells.
About 15 percent of strait trafficl prior to war. And Yanbu. Beats nothing for sure.
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Aramco-Puts-VLCCs-Back-Into-Hormuz-After-Three-Week-Pause.html
Piece of crap as usual .400 % . Just keep on churning lies . They said 16 million barrels and 40 ships at Axios .
“US officials apparently don’t know enough about oil tankers to lie convincingly.
40 tankers carrying 16 million barrels = just 400,000 barrels each
But a VLCC carries ~2 mmb
If officials had said 8 tankers, maybe I’d believe it.
But 40 is pure amateur hour ”
Art Berman
ROFL . Here is a graph . ” “Strait of Hormuz traffic explodes 400%” ”
https://x.com/JoshYoung/status/2091631673204990173/photo/1
Oil is getting dumped during illiquid trading hours…
On fake reports claiming Hormuz traffic has basically recovered by 80%.
In reality, flows are still down ~75%.
They’ve pivoted from fake deal announcements to fake flow announcements.
https://x.com/ekwufinance/status/2091841299036991508/photo/1
*COST OF MOVING VLCC THROUGH HORMUZ IS ABOUT $20M: TOTAL CEO
That is $ 10 per barrel .
WSJ is reporting:
https://www.wsj.com/business/energy-oil/u-s-says-oil-is-pouring-through-hormuz-trackers-cant-find-it-306faebd
U.S. Says Oil Is Pouring Through Hormuz. Trackers Can’t Find It.
Industry firms that count ships, oil output and imports aren’t able to verify the full volume of oil the U.S. claims is getting through Iran’s chokehold
Pretty boring . VW to cut 50,000 jobs .
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/death-europes-industrial-base-vw-ceo-set-announce-50000-job-cuts
It would really be a news item if VW were to add 50,000 jobs!
It’s a ‘Man Bites Dog!’ is real news, kind of thing…..
Another thing that a decent hand would not have done is pick a fight with Canada, which provides around 65% of the US energy imports. And it looks like the Canadians are united and digging in. Just like in any imperial collapse, the hand is an absentee.
Yes it’s strange Canada could strangle the U.S with oil imports. The U.s does not have the capacity for light oil. Canada is united Americans are ignorant to what is going on. Liberals are “we won’t need oil in the future “ and conservatives are “we have so much oil in this country but the liberals won’t let us drill”
It’s the heavy oil that disproportionately makes diesel. Our industry runs on diesel. This is the reason we need Canadian oil.
Strangle is too strong a word. How about listening to offers coming from the other side of the Pacific? Or if they want to be funny, selling it to the US for canadian dollars.
Canada is a branch of London. Mark Carney and all that. It makes sense; they’re vassals, just not ours.
I get it. Not a good look with the bonds market imploding and the Iran war lost. If the plan is to nuke something in West Asia maybe they should be focused on preparing the operation, all united.
Trump is only demonstrating his total dedication to the Greta mandate.
The spice must not flow.
Actions reveal motive not words.
Cessation of Canadian oil imports.
For the midterms.
LOL.
Trump is the greatest Greta ever!
Greta is only replaced with Greta.
Approaches vary.
Greta Pepsi.
Greta Coke.
Its the only card we (Canada) has to play on this…. and Alberta is quite frankly tired of Canada… as are most people who have lived here for more than 20 years.
Also, look who owns its refineries.
This is such a fantastic fuster cluck, that its nearly enjoyable to watch as … we collectively start to go dark.
The endz justifiez the meanz!
It’s all done for the Greta good!
drb
Almost like a stealth carbon tax.
Several posts about Greta T. above. Media figure propped up, sure.
2018. Some entity in Sweden (non-Gov + allowed, the tricky part so Idk) ran a competition in teen-years schools in Sweden to write an essay about: How to Combat Climate Change?
The top three refused the role offered (no links sorry..) and attention was turned to the runner-ups – one was very promising!
Greta Thunberg’s father Svante T. is a well-known film-maker and actor, her mother Malena Ernman is a famous singer, once the official court singer, she adopts a lot of various ‘styles’ and competed in Eurovision.
Beata MonaLisa, the younger sis, whose career path is … hmm 🙁
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malena_Ernman
3 min. Sky News of Beata as an adult (pix younger prob. illegal)
https://tinyurl.com/58srd62e
What for? Lucrative wow-now money-making schemes of the ‘humanit’ type, in a circuit that exploits public feeling (sad worries) sucks up Gvmt. funding, panderns to MSM for top scare mongering, in cahoots with others – who then ‘support’…
https://thegretathunbergfoundation.org/where-the-money-goes/
Greta is greater than Ms Thunberg now. Like Marx and Marxism. Greta is not a individual but a worldwide trend and philosophy not in public belief but in actions of nations witnessed.
Greta per se is as you mention a media event. A introduction. The Greta mandate was actually not voiced but it’s logical inferance was obvious. It is this mandate we see implemented as a trend with no equal world wide regardless of the motives presented. Even motives whatever they may be are opaque are secondary to the actions we see implemented across the globe and the mandate itself. All actions comply with the Greta mandate. Motives are never actually observed only actions.
The spice must not flow.
It is this mandate we see implemented by every nation in the world. A clear mega trend spanning half a decade. All actions are easily explained when the Greta mandate is considered. Motives may be questioned but that actions comply with the mandate is not debatable. A radical reduction of oil consumption and carbon emissions is observed. The likelihood is that this ubiquitous and unprecedented powerful action witnessed by all great powers will continue. Time will tell but every day that passes the Greta mandate is demonstrated with observed behavior.
Late in the day or rather week… Yes, OK, Itrustmydog. I tried to find out who actually thought up and funded the GRETA initiative, didn’t succeed (though ‘green NRG’ were on board, duh.)
Since GRETA’s success (if only in money terms) there have been various initiatives to promote / boost / teens into positions of ‘influencers’ in the pol/soc/econo sphere.
Books published (ex. below) bought by parents, very exploitative, alarming.
https://www.amazon.com/You-Can-Change-World-Better/dp/1524860921
Los milagros no existen …
https://rayonegro.substack.com/p/los-milagros-no-existen?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=6627814&post_id=212263211&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=216vfx&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
It’s weird that the 70s energy crisis was solved by tripling generation while population doubled. I’m kinda dumb like Carter (are they Berbers?) because I would’ve conserved . Good thing im not in charge of Ai data centers – peak oil, climate change!
In any case I saw the world just hit 3terawatts solar generation while usa uses one ?
The Chinese (because they’re non Berbers ? are solving these technical problems.
Im sure there’s enough oil to keep building solar exponentially for quite a while.
These guys are oblivious to energy limitations . Maybe being a Luddite is detrimental.
https://youtu.be/LUFJE5QkINg?si=Rj2SWQ81tPVQXKow
Future Outlook
While the industry currently faces a “warm shell” crisis where chips cannot be deployed due to power constraints (0:20:50), the consensus is that the rapid evolution of energy tech, paired with regulatory changes in grid access, could unlock significant abundance in the coming years.
Sports are just useless propaganda for the idea that humans can overcome their limits. Machines surpassed human abilities long ago.
Chinese ROBOT beats USAIN BOLT’s 100m WORLD RECORD with a 9.32-second run
https://youtu.be/PzMqoBEbx84?si=57OOKO4gGHm1dLvz
Damn sports which are just useless propaganda. A chinese robot put paid to it. damn them.
Just one step away from the Terminator…fantastic….
Insert an AI. Chip and we are there….progress
The feet allow humans to move across different terrains and overcome obstacles.
But the most distinctive feature of humans is their hands: humans use them to shape the world. The idea is formed in the head, but the hand turns it into reality.
I have mentioned it here before:
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Michelangelos-The-Creation-of-Adam-Sistine-Chapel-Rome-1508-12-above-and-schematic_fig2_263311084
Zombie companies, zombie states
Slovakia: The state is fleecing its citizens. It takes two-thirds of their earnings through taxes and charges
“All compulsory payments, partly due to consolidation, have risen on average by more than the increase in average wage costs and the average gross wage
An employee on an average wage hands over almost two-thirds (63.59 per cent) of their earnings to the state. To cover all these compulsory payments, they would therefore need 232 days in the year. The symbolic Tax Freedom Day falls on 23 August this year, one day later than last year.”
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
https://www.trend.sk/spravy/stat-zbija-obcanov-cez-dane-a-poplatky-berie-dve-tretiny-zarobkov
Wikipedia tells us:
During the communist era in Czechoslovakia (roughly 1948–1989), workers did not pay direct social security or health insurance contributions from their paychecks; these costs were handled entirely via state enterprise payroll deductions. Employees paid a modest progressive wage/income tax, generally averaging around 5% to 15% depending on earnings.
MG, are you better off now under EU rule or were you better off under Soviet rule?
The real question is whether the EU can pay promises, now. It is pretty clear that the Soviets could not. We are really comparing two losing organizations.
Soviets resided in cold areas. The EU resides in warmer areas. The EU has favorable access to the seas.
So there is at least something that holds the EU together. Creating borders requires energy. Natural borders merely need to be protected against immigrants.
Russia is imploding as its citizens flee to warmer regions to avoid mobilization.
>> Russia is imploding as its citizens flee to warmer regions to avoid mobilization.
Interesting take, which points to at least one of us being a propaganda victim. In another year we can see what the state of the war is and evaluate which of us it was.
H4 does not believe in resources being the driver of history and geopolitics. He is more of a media gossip gadfly.
Yes, resources, especially cheap quality food in the era of clmt chng.
Cheap inputs for food production. If Russia wants to import cheaper food, it must provide cheap resources in exchange.
Does nobody in Slovakia own a gun?
Why not? There are especially a lot of hunters. At this rate of clmt chng, there may soon be more hunters than actual game. There is less grass available to feed the animals because of droughts.
But hunting is not safe:
A parasitologist on a new study into the fox tapeworm: Even healthy young people can fall ill. The number of cases will not fall, as there is nothing that can be done about the parasite in foxes
https://www.postoj.sk/179886/ochoriet-mozu-aj-zdravi-mladi-ludia-pocet-pripadov-klesat-nebude-pretoze-s-parazitom-u-lisok-sa-neda-nic-robit
These immigrants seem to be mostly from Algeria.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/spanish-beach-stormed-ceuta-chaos-spreads
Dozens of military-age men leapt from boats onto packed tourist beaches in mainland Spain this week, sending holidaymakers scrambling for their belongings as the fallout from the Ceuta mass crossing continues to escalate.
Footage from Cala del Barco near the exclusive La Manga Club in Cartagena captured the moment a large vessel packed with predominantly North African males in their late teens and twenties powered close to shore in broad daylight.
The men jumped into the water, waded or swam the final metres, and charged inland past stunned sunbathers. . .
Playgrounds that once hosted local children have been taken over. Footage shows groups of young men lingering in the same spaces where mothers previously brought their kids. . .
The great taking or reset. Comes in many shapes and sizes…
Most of these migrants were from the poorer Morocco, while Algerians said to be the organizers.., propping up the fake news about Ceuta “now open” gateway to EU etc. These countries at each others throat.
Do the Spanish own no guns?
The Spanish would like to earn money from tourists. Intruders of any type are not welcome. Poor Moroccans, in particular.
Ceuta … most of the asylum seekers / looking like invaders just went home I reckon, whatever, Idk.
One point about ppl from the Mahgreb, Morroco and Algeria, going into Europe (young men..) into Spain, Italy, and France, that is never reported about, is that many declare themselves to be Palestinians.
They speak Arabic, have no papers, they look the part, and that is that, Pals. do not have the right of return, so they are stuck, accepted, there is no alternative, no place to send them to.
In Switz that is the situation for ?? (Other countries more complex maybe, France, say.) None of this is logged in official stats, no numbers.
Algeria is known for not accepting ‘returns’ at all, under any conditions. Morocco … heh… other story.
Why there are no rebellions?
Because people in the advanced countries are completely domesticated.
They won’t survive a day in the wild.
The Berber-Americans, aka rednecks, think they are free but they are loyal minions of TPTB, who will kill and die for them but will be disposed of without any qualms.
The animation Fox and Hound, the only Disney animation which doesn’t have a happyish ending, has an even more harrowing ending – the Fox and his entire family are eliminated by the sadistic owner of the Hound, and when there were no more foxes to kill and the landowner felt an urge to kill, he shoots the Hound since he has to kill something.
That’s how it ends up.
People have become convinced that the stock market will always go up. Politicians will always tell the truth. Governments will make good on their promises. History is irrelevant because we now have so much control of complexity that we can handle any problem that comes up.
The last point you made is especially important. Even if things are bad now, people want to have hope they will improve. The alternative is hard to live with on a daily basis with the amount of stress we face in the modern world.
All modern humans are long ‘self-domesticated’, and that shows in genetic, physiological and behavioural traits; they wouldn’t be modern humans otherwise.
Nevertheless the civilising process builds on that, and civilised adaptation is ongoing. Northern Europe, along with Steppe nomads, was about the last in Eurasia to receive advanced civilisation and state centralisation, written language, law and order &c.
(Advanced civilisation spread independently (and later fused/ diffused) from three origin points in Eurasia; the East Med (Egypt, Mesopotamia, Iran &c.), India and China. Greece and Rome spread it across the Med but it largely vanished with the fall of Rome. Empire failed in Europe unlike India, China, Russia and N. America, which is why it is massively fragmented into little polities. Spain, France and Germany had goes at regional expansion but other polities combined to thwart them – balance of power, collective containment. The major/ emergent major powers now are all where empire historically succeeded to produce larger polities. Europe largely did well through maritime control of trade routes in recent centuries but those days are over.)
So, all modern humans are self-domesticated, and its expression somewhat depends on socialisation in the time and place. Now it is mainly about whether the larger polities can function in a successful, civilised manner. Some of the states that cannot do so, big or small, are liable to look for more barbaric strategies depending on what they have become.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-domestication#Modern_humans
> Self-domestication
… Modern humans
Physical anatomy
Based on the dating of the fossil record, archaeologists have concluded that self-domestication likely occurred during the Pleistocene, over 300,000 years ago. Using the fossil record to compare Homo sapiens to pre-sapiens ancestors, archaeologists observed many of the same telling phenotypic characteristics that emerge as a consequence of self-domestication in animals. These features include diminished sexual dimorphism, smaller tooth size, reduction of the cranium, and smaller body size. H. sapiens fossils also demonstrated the flattening of brow-ridge projection and shortening of faces.
Reactive aggression
Richard Wrangham further built upon this body of research, addressing how bonobos and chimpanzees could elucidate development of aggression in humans. Academics have raised concerns with inconsistencies with the self-domestication hypothesis, pointing out that it isn’t logical that humans could potentially be domesticated given the profundity of violent acts for which they are responsible. Reconciling this paradox, Wrangham posited that self-domestication is the outcome of two different kinds of aggression: proactive and reactive aggression.[19]
Proactive aggression, which is commonly observed in chimpanzees, is defined as an attack that was planned, motivated by achieving an end goal. Generally, humans demonstrate lower aggression within groups. Reactive aggression, much more closely associated with anger, is characterized as an immediate response to a threat—the human equivalent being “bar fights”. Aligned with the behavior of self-domesticated bonobos, humans do not have a high propensity for reactive aggression. This lends further evidence to supporting the self-domestication hypothesis, of which reduced reactive aggression is a central trait……
I used to have to make all my attempts at debunking by myself. But these days I have Grok to help me.
Great times we live in! I can also write long novels in the style of Tolstoy and compose music that sounds just like Pink Floyd!
While the self-domestication hypothesis has many proponents, several scholars have raised conceptual, empirical, and definitional objections. Here are some of the clearer lines of criticism drawn from the literature:
1. Weak empirical basis for comparing humans to domesticates
A 2019 review by Sánchez-Villagra and van Schaik evaluates the hypothesis and finds that meaningful comparison is hindered by a lack of data on evolutionary rates and trait variation in both human evolution and animal domestication. The neural-crest-cell explanation often invoked for the “domestication syndrome” has broad appeal but is difficult to test rigorously. They recommend testing whether alternative explanations for the same morphological and behavioral traits are mutually exclusive rather than assuming self-domestication is the unifying cause.
2. The “domestication syndrome” itself is contested
Critics (including Lord et al. and related work) argue that there is little consistent evidence for a single, shared suite of traits across domesticated mammals. Many of the classic markers (floppy ears, coat-color changes, reduced brain size, etc.) are not universal, often appear only in modern breeds rather than early domesticates, or were already present in the founding populations of famous experiments such as the Russian farm-fox study. If the syndrome is weakly supported or non-existent as a unified package, using it as the model for human evolution loses force.
3. Human social evolution differs from that of domesticates
Shilton, Breski, and colleagues (2020) contend that human social evolution more closely resembles the evolution of other highly social mammals than that of classic domesticates. They propose that the key process was selection for socially mediated emotional control and plasticity (especially after the emergence of language), not primarily selection against reactive aggression or for simple prosociality. They explicitly challenge the idea that early human evolution is best described as self-domestication. Darwin himself was already skeptical of applying the term “domestication” to humans, noting that human breeding has never been controlled by other humans in the systematic way true domestication implies.
4. Terminology and process are misleading
Losey (2022) argues that treating domestication as a discrete historical moment of selection for prosociality is incomplete and inaccurate. Domestication is an ongoing, multi-species process involving care, ownership, breeding influence, and ecological relationships—not merely the production of a morphological “syndrome.” Applying the label to humans therefore risks focusing on bodily by-products while ignoring the actual processes. He suggests it would be clearer and more accurate to call the idea the “prosociality hypothesis” and drop the domestication analogy.
. Developmental and morphological mismatches
One criticism noted even on Wikipedia is that several key differences between humans and other great apes arise from accelerated and prolonged brain development rather than the retention of juvenile traits (neoteny) that is characteristic of many domesticates. This suggests additional or alternative processes are required to explain important evolutionary changes.
. Limited unique explanatory power / risk of circularity
Some authors treat self-domestication more as a useful heuristic or organizing metaphor than as a fully established evolutionary mechanism. Because the core claim often reduces to “selection against reactive aggression produced prosociality plus correlated morphological by-products,” critics question how much novel explanatory work the domestication framing actually performs beyond existing accounts of selection on temperament and social tolerance. Definitional debates about what counts as “domestication” further risk circular reasoning (using the syndrome to identify domestication and then citing the syndrome as evidence of it).
Older literature also rejected earlier versions of the idea for lacking evidence of controlled artificial selection or a clear “wild” ancestral human population from which a domesticated form was derived, and some modern writers note the historical association of domestication language with eugenic thinking as a reason for caution.
In short, the main objections are that the analogy with animal domestication is imperfect or misleading, the supporting “syndrome” is empirically shaky, human evolutionary patterns do not map cleanly onto those of domesticates, and the hypothesis may add little unique predictive or explanatory power beyond more straightforward accounts of selection on aggression, tolerance, and social cognition. These critiques do not necessarily refute every element of the idea, but they do challenge its status as a robust, distinctive explanation for human evolution.
========
The Japanese believe that foreigners who haven’t undergone the training are not domesticated because the latter don’t remove their footwear upon entering the house. “Filthy habit!” And because they seldom use the correct honorifics in formal speech. “Too rude!” As for Australian guests, they look in the fridge without asking. While the vegans when invited to dinner are always asking what’s in the food. My wife won’t have ’em in the house. “They’re not domesticated,” she insists.
Bravo, Tim! Screw these nonsense spewers, poisoning the discussion here.
That doesn’t actually change the facts but only whether human social evolution is best explained in terms of a broader and consistent mammalian domestication ‘syndrome’. It is important not to miss the wood for the trees.
I doubt that anyone is seriously suggesting that human pro-social evolution has not impacted on neurochemical function and broader physiology, but whether a broader and consistent mammalian ‘syndrome’ is in play.
It is good to play with AI but you have to be able to spot what is salient to the question, and it is no substitute for common sense. You can call it ‘self-domestication’, you can explicitly construct a broader mammalian domestication ‘syndrome’, or you can just call it ‘pro-social evolution’, but the facts remain the same.
Run this through AI and see what it says:
> The evidence for many of the underlying anatomical and behavioural changes is relatively robust, including evidence consistent with evolutionary selection for reduced reactive aggression and increased social tolerance. Such changes are central to influential accounts of animal domestication and form the basis of the widely studied human ‘self-domestication’ hypothesis. The principal controversy is whether these changes constitute a genuine domestication ‘syndrome’ and whether ‘self-domestication’ in that sense provides the best explanation for their evolution.
Thanks, Mirror, for going to the trouble of giving a reasonable and pertinent response.
Looks like that final paragraph was AI generated in the first place. I don’t think I need to run it through AI again.
When we speak of domestication, we should start with a definition of the word. I’m very found of definitions. They are like paperweights that pin the words down so they don’t fly away with every draft or breeze.
The term domestication originates from the Latin word domesticus, which means “belonging to the house” or “of the household”. It entered the English language in the late 18th century to describe the specific act of taming wild animals. This is interesting because in today’s English, taming and domesticating are different processes. We can tame an individual wild creature, but to domesticate wild creatures, we need to work for at least several generations.
My definition of domestication would be something like this:
Domestication means humans have selectively bred and managed the individuals over hundreds or thousands of years, permanently changing their genetics, anatomy, and behavior compared to their wild ancestors.
This “biological” definition holds for human domestication of animals and plants, and possibly even for yoghurts for all I know.
It isn’t an all-encompassing definition by any means. For one thing, the domesticators don’t have to be human. I’m reliably informed that several species of ants, termites, and beetles practice highly advanced forms of agriculture and animal husbandry, meeting the exact definition of domestication.
When domestication first entered the English language in the 18th century, it referred only to conscious or deliberate domestication. But today we have concepts such as unconscious domestication and even self-domestication. As an old stick in the mud, I am handicapped by my insistence on cleaving toward the original meaning.
According to Science Direct, the shift from viewing domestication as an exclusively conscious, heavy-handed human action to an evolutionary and behavioral process is one of the biggest changes in modern evolutionary biology.
I had no idea!
Charles Darwin, the bald guy with the long round beard was the first to bridge this gap in the 19th century by distinguishing between methodical (conscious) selection and unconscious selection, paving the way for the concepts we use today. Essentially, unconscious domestication occurs when a species adapts genetically to a human-made environment without humans intentionally breeding them for specific traits, says Science Direct again.
So, the focus has been shifted from intent (what someone wanted to do) to consequences (what happened/the result). Originally, domestication was a deliberate action aimed at a specific goal. Now it has morphed into any action that results in the goal, However, I see a logical contradiction here in that with unconscious selection, there isn’t any goal.
But never mind, modern science resolves this logical paradox by shifting the focus from intent to mechanism.
However, if we strip away “conscious human intent” and define domestication purely as “a long-term change of behavior resulting in evolutionary adaptation to a new condition,” then the word domestication loses all specific meaning and becomes completely synonymous with standard evolutionary adaptation.
To prevent the word from becoming utterly useless, modern biologists such as Melinda Zeder and Guillaume Achaz insist on a strict boundary. They argue that for a relationship to be classified as domestication, it must meet three specific criteria that separate it from general adaptation: namely, Asymmetrical Control (The “Manager” Dynamic), Dictating Reproduction, and Complete Obligate Dependence.
However, if we look at human evolution we find no evidence of any of these factors in play, do we?
There is no outside master manager, no external entity dictating who we mate with, and we are not obligately dependent on another species for our biological survival.
So, based on Zeder and Achaz’s boundary conditions, I can’t see how humans could have self-domesticated.
Nevertheless, self-domestication is an interesting metaphor. It draws attention to things that our own recent evolution shares in common with the good old-fashioned deliberate, goal-oriented conscious domestication of other species that our ancestors have practiced for many thousands of years.
Self debunking attempts are always very valuable. Politeness is also very valuable although many many cultures regard overt use of politeness as the epitomy of rudeness I would say it’s a matter of taste. My understanding is the Japanese invented bathing and as I have advocated here I find bathing to be a primary indicator of civilization. Appreciate the post as always.
Thanks!
I remember about 25 years ago after the Soviet Union had collapsed and Russia was still in a real mess, entrepreneurial Russians were visiting Japan to try to sell off bits of the country’s infrastructure as scrap, while Russian fishermen were bringing their catches to Japanese ports in search of better prices.
In Hokkaido, the Russian men would often visit the local onsen (hot spring resorts) and sento (bath houses) in the port of Otaru, where they developed a reputation for getting quite bolshy, drinking and singing loudly, scaring the other customers away.
The operators of the resorts and bathhouses, being at their wits’ end because Russians will not be told how to behave, wanted to ban the Russians from their establishments completely, but they were told they could not do this because of the human rights laws in Japan. So they came up with a compromise: they banned all foreigners so that they were not discriminating against one group of foreigners any more than the other groups of foreigners—because that would be racist!
This led to people in the foreign community complaining in the media that banning all foreigners was equally racist!
Even at the time, it sounded to me like a Monty Python skit, but it actually played out over the course of a couple of years, before common sense prevailed and everyone who wanted could get a bath.
Some foreign residents brought a lawsuit, which they won, leading to bathing establishments in Otaru being open to all again.
The international affairs section of the Otaru City Government then created and distributed targeted educational flyers and posters, which explicitly detailed proper Japanese bathing customs—such as scrubbing your body entirely before stepping into the communal water, and not behaving rowdily or getting drunk—which were printed in Russian and English.
I asked Google, Can the Sentinelese of North Sentinel Island be described as undomesticated?
And I got a right royal rebuke for my trouble:
No, the Sentinelese cannot be described as “undomesticated.” In anthropology and biology, the term “domestication” applies to plants and animals bred or cultivated by humans, not to human populations themselves. Applying it to a human group carries colonial or dehumanizing connotations of being “wild” or “savage.”
Instead, the Sentinelese are accurately described as an uncontacted Indigenous people or a voluntary isolated hunter-gatherer community practicing a self-sufficient way of life on North Sentinel Island.
In that case, are you implying that all humans are domesticated?
No, that is not the implication. From a scientific standpoint, humans are not considered a “domesticated” species in the traditional sense because no outside species selectively bred us for specific traits.
However, anthropologists and evolutionary biologists often use two distinct concepts to explain human development without using dehumanizing terms:
1. The Human Self-Domestication Hypothesis
This is a prominent scientific theory rather than a literal classification. It suggests that during our evolution, humans naturally selected partners who were more cooperative and less aggressive.
Behavioral Shifts: Reduced intra-group aggression allowed for complex tribal societies, shared language, and intense cooperation.Physical Byproducts: This natural selection for friendliness inadvertently altered our anatomy over hundreds of thousands of years, resulting in shortened faces, smaller teeth, and reduced brow ridges compared to our ancient ancestors (like Neanderthals).Universality: If this evolutionary process is true, it applies equally to all anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens), whether they live in a modern metropolis or a hunter-gatherer community like the Sentinelese.
2. Biocultural Evolution
Instead of being domesticated, humans are shaped by culture.
Niche Construction: Humans alter their environments—through fire, clothing, agriculture, or social rules—to survive.
Feedback Loop: These cultural adaptations change the evolutionary pressures on our bodies. For example, cooking food led to smaller jaws, and dairy farming led to adult lactose tolerance in certain populations.In summary, the Sentinelese are just as evolutionarily modern, cultured, and self-determined as any other human population. They have simply maintained a highly successful, isolated hunting-and-gathering lifestyle rather than adopting agriculture or industrialization.
OK, that’s enough from Google AI. It could talk the hind legs off a donkey.
Instead, let’s ask Bill Clinton;
Bill Clinton: It all depends on what your definition of domesticated is.
Thanks, Bill. I think we’re sorted now.
Kulm. Because.
https://internationalman.com/articles/why-comfortable-people-dont-revolt-propaganda-debt-and-control/
Debt (together with rising asset prices) convinces people that things are better than they really are.
Berber red necks? Millions of rednecks (mostly descended from indentured servants during colonialism? Can’t be the ones from the immigration waves.
Not many Berbers
A lot of rednecks are moors=berbers who sneaked in during the Spanish rule and later simply anglicized their names
Back when I was a younger man I used to enter wilderness areas with my dog at that time. The world’s most gentle Malinois. He was one in a million. About a week was as much as I could take going cross country off trail.
Crossing fallen timber and other flora barriers takes a lot of energy. Of course I brought all my food with me. I would take every convenience of modern clothing and portable shelter with me. My girlfriend at the time did not accompany me although she enjoyed the outdoors. It was not enjoyable for her. Three days and on trail was her limit. This was a “tough guy” outing. LOL.
After a week I was always quite eager to return to civilization. I would get a cheeseburger and frys. Paradise. Then I would miss the woods almost immediately although there was no inclination to return in a immediate time frame.
I was always struck at how exhausted my body was when I returned to civilization. It took days to recover. I was on decent shape back then exercising at the gym several times a week. It took so much out of me. It didn’t seem like I would get stronger able to tolerate the environment it just depleted me.One thing was clear to me. Without the food I brought I would perish. I would burn 3000 calories a day. Same for malinois a tough creature by all measures. Neither of us would not perish without the things I brought. Of course pup had to pack his own food although he got a free ride with shelter and bedding. I stopped doing that after a couple years. Too many close calls with bears. No desire to be 20 miles back with a mauled dog.that far back Frank church wilderness has a bear or two.
I really think humans were tougher back in the day You look at life expectancy… And I will tell you. It’s anecdotal but my perception was the woods changed. My perception is climate change is real. The vibrant moist woods got hotter and dryer. The eco systems were not as diverse. Like I said anecdotal. Perception.
The world is a very very beautiful place and very very tough. Very good times. Before 911. Before the endless wars. Before COVID. Before the entire nation was a shopping mall . Before we sent everything to China. Before the beetle infestation. Wages were decent. Energy was affordable and abundant. Mostly. The little 70s glitch. i am very lucky. And very privileged.
Nowadays it’s day outings. I don’t know if the tents will ever get used again.
As I seek to address my own anger with stupid people, maybe I should take this to heart.
What strikes me is that AI has a lot in common with stupid people. It comes up with very superficial answers to questions.
The video ends with the point that you don’t have to correct every falsehood that comes along.
I wonder why we need more and more huge AI data centers when local LLMs running on small, local hardware can provide inspiration for new ideas.
We are essentially diverting energy to these data centers for entertainment purposes.
The amount of energy consumed by these calculations is immense, while people are falling into poverty—whether because of crushing complexity or an outright lack of resources.
“I wonder why we need more and more huge AI data centers when local LLMs running on small, local hardware can provide inspiration for new ideas.”
In one word, investment. Have you ever listened to the snake oil salesman known as Sam Altman? Half the time he speaks it’s nothing more than “word salad”. It’s almost as he’s trying to convince himself of his own gibberish.
The poor will always be with us, MG.
Unless the Georgia Guidestones people get their way.
If we took all the AI investment money and gave it to the poor instead, we simply end up with more people living on welfare and breeding like rabbits.
It is about consuming resources, and data centers consume resources just like real estate projects that no one needs. They are a burden.
It’s to create ‘economic growth’? Without that, the banking system would collapse as debts couldn’t be repaid.
It’s not even good entertainment, either. It’s this low effort “slop”. The growth of computers has been bad for the arts in terms of quality. It’s all a bout getting people’s attention to sell them ads, particularly young working age women. The flipside, is men who can’t attract women. These are the two markets for all advertising on the internet, and therefore all advertising in general.
Combine the growth of a.i. and the deliberate outsourcing of well paying i.t. jobs to countries where companies can hire less (but still qualified) qualified programmers, we have to conclude that “smart” people are not really desirable by the economy anymore. The economy cares about output. If a “smart” person can generate more output, great but if a “stupid” person can increase desirable metrics, even better. Of course, it’s important to keep the “stupid” people out of sight and present token “smart” people on hand for pr reasons.
“Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.”
— George Carlin
More on stupidity. Interesting from an energy expenditure aspect and survival advantage.
What is SADS? The fatal heart condition in those who appear healthy
“The answer starts with something easy to forget: the heart isn’t just a pump; it’s also an electrical organ. Every heartbeat begins with a signal that ripples through the heart in a precise sequence, telling each chamber when to contract. In Sads, the fault often lies in that electrical system, not in the heart’s physical structure.
If the signal becomes unstable, an abnormal rhythm – an arrhythmia – can develop. Most are harmless. But some that start in the heart’s lower chambers, the ventricles, can be fatal. During ventricular fibrillation, electrical activity turns chaotic and the heart quivers instead of pumping. Blood stops reaching the brain, causing the person to lose consciousness.
Without CPR and a shock from a defibrillator, they can die within minutes. This is a cardiac arrest.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/sudden-adult-death-syndrome-mark-hughes-b3034131.html
If a person is going to die, isn’t this, in a sense, a good way to go? Suffering from Alzheimer’s disease for years is a bad way to go. Being in pain from cancer (or cancer treatment) is not good. Dying in an accident can be very painful.
Yes, one of my old bosses just died last week of heart attack. He was 72. And I was just drinking with him at bar two weeks ago. People are sad he died but at least he was kicking until the end.
Could be worse like this dude.
https://x.com/MadCityTech/status/2090848559583158444
My late grandfather who was a rather sickly child, lived to a very robust old age, dying at 92. Until 90 he could take two stairs at a time.
One morning, he paused on the stairs coming down to breakfast, sat on the stairs for a minute, rubbing his chest, then descended, walked slowly to his armchair, and died of a heart attack lasting a very short time.
The least awful end imaginable! Although, obviously the dying was painful. As he was seated, there was no indignity in his death either.
Catholics pray for ‘A quiet night, and a good end’ as a favour of the Almighty. Rather sensible!
George Hamilton Says He Had to Re-Read His Own Biography After Waking Up from Surgery ‘Not Knowing Who I Was’
https://people.com/george-hamilton-had-to-re-read-his-own-biography-after-losing-memory-12061944
In a recent interview with Page Six, he opened up about an operation he underwent around four or five years ago that left him “not knowing who I was.” Despite doctors telling him the condition would last only a few days, Hamilton said it ultimately took years to work through the experience, forcing him to revisit his own history in an effort to understand himself again.
“I had to read my own biography to learn who I was,” Hamilton told the outlet. “And I had to think, ‘Do I like this person?’ I read it through several times and looked at things from my past and I wasn’t sure if I had done them.”
….
Interestingly, the memories that returned most vividly were not necessarily tied to his years in Hollywood. Instead, Hamilton found himself remembering childhood and the lessons he associated with that period, like “kindness” and “resiliency.”
That return to earlier memories also helped Hamilton reconsider what he values after a lifetime spent in the public eye — qualities that he tells Page Six cannot be measured by fame or material success.
Other things have come and gone, but kindness and good manners and optimism and belief in something more important than our egos is something people probably don’t think I think about, but it’s most important to me at this age,” he explained.
There’s only one rule.
Never ever jump the gun.
All in good time.
https://youtube.com/shorts/O_lF2OkGizc?si=MFKzbYBmCUVVexu6
Le monde consomme moins de pétrole, que dit l’Economie ?
https://2000watts.org/index.php/energies-fossiles/petrole/1486-le-monde-consomme-moins-de-petrole-que-dit-leconomie.html
Translation. (I can’t get italics to work on this computer.)
The world is consuming less oil, but what does the economy say?
The International Energy Agency has revised its oil forecasts: global crude oil demand will fall by 1.6 million barrels per day in 2026. In July, the world consumed 101.5 million barrels per day (b/d). This decline is not driven by environmental concerns, but by Trump’s manipulation of the Strait of Hormuz. The closure of the strait is impacting Middle Eastern exports, especially as the Houthis are currently disrupting Saudi Arabia’s oil shipments from the Red Sea.
But less oil means slower global growth. [Emphasis added] Let’s not even use the word recession, which could take hold in some countries. Attention is turning to Europe, but also to China and the United States.
Inventory of Fixtures
The Agency forecasts a stratospheric increase in oil consumption by 2027, rising by 8 million barrels per day to 110 million barrels per day. That’s going to generate a lot of CO2, but what can you expect? The Swiss have to fly during their holidays.
On the demand side, China has reduced its crude oil imports by 4 million barrels per day (b/d), down from 9 million b/d before the Gulf War. Beijing had stockpiled over 1 billion barrels thanks to favorable prices for Russian, Iranian, and Venezuelan crude. This may be good news, but what will happen when it resumes imports of those 5 million b/d?
In the US, the strategic reserve has fallen to its lowest level, dropping below 300 million barrels, while its capacity is 745 million. The Trump administration will have to pull out all the stops.
Gasoline, refining, and crack spread
At gas stations, the price of a regular gallon was $4.07 in the United States this weekend. A year ago, it was $3.14, representing a 30% increase over 12 months, while crude oil prices have remained stable.
In Europe, it’s the same story. Oil companies have a secret weapon to justify high prices: the drought that reduces the Rhine’s flow. As a result, barges can carry less diesel or gasoline. The oil companies then raise prices by 16 cents. The advantage of being an oil company is that there’s no need for transparency. Some companies are more equal than others.
But there’s another factor for oil companies: the crack spread. It’s not a drug, but the difference between the price of a barrel of crude oil and the price of refined gasoline. In short: the refiner’s profit margin. This spread has just climbed to its highest level in history. Now you understand where your money goes when you fill up your tank.
Refineries processed 80.9 million barrels per day in July, while global refining capacity is hampered by conflicts and plant shutdowns, and meanwhile, crude oil flows steadily. The price of a barrel falls, the price at the pump rises, and no one will reimburse you for the difference. Especially not the governments whose gasoline taxes keep their budgets flowing smoothly. . .
We mustn’t forget that the less oil and methane we consume, the more growth slows, to the point of falling below zero. Trump doesn’t seem to have this detail on his radar. The more he continues to zigzag with Iran, the closer we get to a tipping point.
Sounds like the author has been listening to me.
I’ve noticed that since the crisis started there are suddenly many pundits explainingTverberg physics as their own. Thats the way of the world. There is no shame. Shame is for nice guys and we all know where they finish.
OGs know who the maestra is.
Actually Gail’s zigzag theory is her version of my switchbacks sub theory of the DA, which I encouraged because she tacitly acknowledged the origin when she debuted it, so it’s fair game out on the creative commons. Greta theory which is a co-optation of a mere positive feedback loop of the DA — a secondary dynamic — is, OTOH, the very definition of shamelessness, and highly amusing. It’s not so much god mode as it is dog mode. Still luv ya though, feel free to reorient Greta theory back onto peak oil where it belongs lol.
As Gail – unlike most bloggers – isn’t on a ego-trip, nor making any money from this, it doesn’t matter much as long as understanding spreads.
I’ve learnt a great deal here,both from Gail and other commenters, and this has helped me to position myself not only materially, but most importantly psychologically, for what is transpiring.
Staying sane at the end of our world is immensely important.
To give credit where credit is due. Gail formally introduced the “zigzag effect” theory in her September 29, 2015, Our Finite World article, “Low Oil Prices: Why Worry?”.
The concept, describing the pattern of rising and falling oil prices due to affordability constraints, was developed throughout 2014–2015 to explain the impacts of a global oil supply glut at the time.
She also came up with the term “zigzag effect” in the same article.
When discretionary spending gets squeezed, layoffs are likely. Waitresses at restaurants may get laid off; workers in the home building and auto manufacturing industries may find their jobs eliminated. Some workers who get laid off from their jobs may default on their loans causing problems for banks as well. We start the cycle of recession and falling oil prices that we should be familiar with, after the crash in oil prices in 2008.
So instead of getting oil prices to rise permanently, at most we get a zigzag effect. Oil prices rise for a while, become hard to maintain, and then fall back again, as recessionary influences tend to reduce the demand for oil and bring the price of oil back down again.
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2015/09/29/low-oil-prices-why-worry/
Thanks for the reminder!
“In economics, the term pork cycle, hog cycle, or cattle cycle[1] describes the phenomenon of cyclical fluctuations of supply and prices in markets. It was first observed in 1925 in the pig market in the US by Mordecai Ezekiel and in Europe in 1927 by the German scholar Arthur Hanau [de].[2] In short, the pork cycle runs as thus:
As pork, being a rare good, is a high-priced item, a few farmers decide to start raising pigs. While pig supply is limited, prices remain high.
More farmers realise the value potential and also begin raising pigs. As more and more piggeries come ‘online’ and start delivering pigs, the price begins to decrease.
At some point, demand and supply equalise. Pig farms are still producing pigs and supply begins to outstrip demand. The prices decrease further. Pork becomes a common commodity, and consumers may get bored of pork.
In view of the decrease in prices, farmers turn away from raising pigs, and go back to more valuable crops or livestock.
As a result, the pork supply begins to decline, eventually below demand, and then pork goes back to being a high-priced item.
The cycle begins all over.”?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pork_cycle