"If only"... you don't stop because you can't stop.
If you do it's all over. It's all over anyway, you're just buying time...
Tell me I'm wrong...
So, we rise from the rubble...
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Wednesday, June 24, 2026
"People's Lives Are Falling Apart In A Single Day - And It's Unreal"
Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 6/24/26
"People's Lives Are Falling Apart
In A Single Day - And It's Unreal"
"You woke up today thinking it would be ordinary. So did every person in this video. Then something snapped - and the whole day went down with it. This is a compilation of real people telling the story of the day everything fell apart. A mother who walked nearly a mile with her three kids and her last hundred dollars, only for the ATM to swallow it whole. A girl whose entire world unraveled the night before she moved into her dorm. A first date that turned into something no one saw coming. A voice on a phone call that sounded exactly like a parent - except the parent never called. A server who clocked out of a brutal shift with almost nothing to show for it.
These are the small catastrophes hiding inside a normal day. The storm with no warning. The person you trusted who turned. The machine that ate your money. The job that took everything and gave nothing back. Each story begins the same way - a regular morning, a first date, a birthday, a shift - and only later reveals what it truly cost. Some are absurd. Some are genuinely dark. A few you'll laugh at, only because the person lived to tell it. But every single one shares one thing: the moment an ordinary day decided to end the person living it. Because the worst day is never loud at the start. It arrives disguised as just another morning. And you are never the only one standing on the ground when it gives out. If any of these stories hit close to home, you're not alone - leave a comment, share your own worst day, and subscribe for more."
Comments here:
"Human Years"
"Human Years"
by Joel Bowman
"I have made this letter longer than usual
because I have not had time to make it shorter."
~ Blaise Pascal, from "The Provincial Letters" (1656)
Buenos Aires, Argentina - "The War with Iran... the world’s first trillionaire... SpaceX stock “to the moon” (and back?)... and always, the rise and rise of the AI machines... We’re not even half way through the year, Dear Reader, and already the memories of six... nine... twelve months ago feel like relics from a quaint and distant past.
Remember the Epstein Files... saber-rattling over Greenland... the abduction of Venezuela’s dictator, Nicolás Maduro? Recall the Gulf of America brouhaha... shots fired at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner... and “penisgate” at the Winter Olympics? (Readers unfamiliar with that last item are invited not to Google it... or at least not in a public space.)
Like all the news that’s unfit to print, these stories – and plenty more besides – are now yesterday’s fish ‘n’ chip paper. In this, the Age of Information Abundance, where attenuated attention spans reign supreme and history is that thing each generation ignores so as to repeat the mistakes of the past, we’re already onto “the next thing”... whatever that is. One has to wonder, with a ceaseless cascade of events pouring over our digital, hand-held horizons, is time really speeding up? Or are we humble observers merely slowing down? (Perhaps it’s a bit of both?)
Man as the Measure: Not so long ago, our literate ancestors used to gaze in wonder at the distant future, visions of the impossible dancing in their heads. We recall a television show from our own childhood, "Beyond 2000," which featured flying cars, sidewalk travelators and other seemingly improbable predictions.
What next? Will our vocation-free children treat us to vacations on Mars, where we’ll enjoy an “earth-downer” cocktail while watching our home planet dip behind the brave new red horizon?
Will the human race have minted its first quadrillionaire, with a near 80-year old Elon Musk having slipped back into the pack of mere trillionaires, the way Harold Hamm (oil), John Malone (cable television), Lex Werner (shopping malls), and other forgotten titans of “old industry” now populate the lower rungs of the world’s richest lists?
What documents will our meddlesome political overlords deem sufficiently benign to declassify by then, once all the crooks and rogues are expired, and will anyone bother to read them, anyway? Or will reading, that antiquated pastime, have gone the way of the dodo?
Perhaps the State itself will have been domesticated by then, relegated to an historical curiosity, one our progeny will study in virtual museums, like they do the pyramids and the pharaohs, wondering how their ancestors ever tolerated such abject abuses of power? Will the US empire still stand... will its currency hold sway... will the ideas of the west, so hard won, survive to fight another day? Or will the tides have turned?
A New Suggestion of Time: Outside our window, here in the capital city of an empire that never was, we hear the steady hum of traffic and the honking of horns below. Neighbors and strangers pass one another by; some offer greetings, others are lost in their own thoughts. Strolling these broad streets earlier today, alone amongst the crowd, we began to reckon on the concept of time itself... that sleepless, eternal trickster.
Perhaps one novel way to think about it, given the apparent acceleration of world events around us, is to measure our experience by human years lived. Think of it as adding together every human life being lived in a given moment. We might call this “civilizational time,” for instance, or “aggregate human years.”
For example...At the turn of the first millennium, New Year’s Eve of the year 1,000 AD, there were roughly ~300 million human beings living on our pale blue dot. Put another way, we might say that, during that calendar year, our species experienced ~300 million “aggregate human years,” or that ~300 million years passed in “civilizational time.”
That’s how much we lived, collectively, as a species, during the year 1,000 AD. All the births and deaths... the breakthroughs and bruised egos... the grandest campaign to the humblest action... from first kisses to last rights... the sum total of all fears, dreams, desires, of the entire human race: ~300 million human years.
Now, fast-forward to the present. This year, 2026, roughly ~8.2 billion human beings will make the same journey around the sun, and will experience the passage of time, both in their own way and as part of a greater whole. In that way, this calendar year will yield ~8.2 billion aggregate human years, or about 27x more than did a single calendar year just one millennium ago. And this is all happening every day... every hour... every single minute.
Here’s the basic math. Assuming a global population of roughly ~8.2 billion people, humanity is generating approximately: 8.2 billion human-years per calendar year, about 22.5 million human-days every day, roughly 940,000 human-hours every hour.
Consider one last figure for just a moment: Every second that passes on Earth, humanity collectively experiences about 260 years of conscious lifetime. With such a flood of accumulating human experience... this vast multitude of lives unfolding in real time... is it any wonder that civilizational time feels like it’s accelerating at an exponential rate?
Since time immemorial, man has measured time in calendar years because astronomy was the best game in town… or indeed, the universe. Throughout the ages, we have developed other ideas too. Physics has space time… geology has deep time… evolution has genetic time… etc.
But civilization doesn't run on astronomy any more than a tuna keeps time by the opening hours at the local sushi joint. Rather, it runs on human minds. And if that's true, perhaps the relevant measure of time is not so much the orbit of planets overhead or the age of rocks beneath our feet, but the accumulation of human experience itself. That means more brain surgeons… and more congressmen. More poets… and more prison guards. More genius inventors… and more airhead influencers. As to where all this leads, to paradise… or purgatory? We’ll look at that next time. Stay tuned for more Note From the End of the World…"
"Only Puppets..."
“Politicians and corporate leaders who appeared to rule over their fellow humans were actually only puppets for the Masters, who used them to implement all their agendas to ensure a continuation of separation and control. In this way, when the populace became irate at a politician or corporate leader, the Masters would force them to resign from their position and have another puppet take their place. The populace would believe the problem had been taken care of and real change had occurred, that the root of the problem had been fixed, so they would rejoice and become complacent. When in actuality, the same old revolving-door record would play over and over again, with the real root of power, the Masters, staying at the helm of the ship.”
- Jasun Ether
Bill Bonner, "A Case Study in Self Sabotage"
"A Case Study in Self Sabotage"
by Bill Bonner
London, England - "Every natural thing runs its course, in a pattern that no committee of planners has ever yet learned to repeal. England was a dump after WWII. After 40 years of prosperity, it looks like she is becoming a dump once more. Friends who grew up in the London of the 1950s tell us they were ten years old before they tasted their first orange, and that you had to wait half a year to have a telephone strung to the wall. The ‘kinetic’ war stopped in 1945, but the rationing soldiered grimly on until 1954 - and then, came the strikes.
Our own first pilgrimages, in the 1960s, were to a city plainly down at the heels yet still with a residual charm - a threadbare gentility. London was still inhabited by Englishmen. And the guest of modest means, your correspondent among them, still fed pound coins into the radiator to coax out a little heat, and trooped ‘down the hall’ to a bathroom held in common with strangers.
Then came the reckoning. In the bitter “Winter of Our Discontent” of 1978, the strikes rose up and the government came down. The Callaghan Labour ministry simply shattered. The voters, their stomachs turned, threw the rascals out and reached for Mrs. Thatcher - who soon enough faced a trial of her own, when Arthur Scargill marched his miners out again in 1984.
She was a tiny woman - we lunched with her after her retirement - but Ms. Thatcher had no more fear of a brawl than a terrier has of a rat. It was said that she was the only person in the whole government with any stones. She meant to unbind an arthritic economy, and the unions meant to see her broken first. But she did not bend. “The lady’s not for turning,” she said, and the phrase rang. And out of that collision a new pattern was struck: where there had stood a shabby nation run by half-baked central planners, there now rose a smart and prosperous one run, more or less, by free-market types.
But Success, when she calls, never unpacks her bags for a long stay. She is a flighty visitor - promiscuous, even. Britain enjoyed her favors from about 1980 to, say, 2020. Now she seems to have moved on. The Wall Street of London - “The City,” they call it - drew capital from the four corners of the earth. The rich of Russia, of the Levant, of Africa and the Orient looked to it to shelter and multiply their hoards. A copy of The Economist lay in every corporate anteroom. The financial industry hauled the whole economy up behind it, and the pound climbed into the clouds.
Few perceived it then - your correspondent no quicker than the rest - but it was not the cunning of fresh graduates from the London School of Economics that made this fortune. It was Alan Greenspan, who died on Monday. His counterfeit-money pumps inundated the planet with dollars.
The British met their sudden affluence in the most predictable and most unproductive manner. They fattened the welfare rolls and laid on layer after layer of regulations. The one squeezed the economy; the other drained it dry. Benefits were apparently too easy to get; they appear to have hatched a whole underclass of idlers. Sixty percent of the young between sixteen and twenty-four have never held a job - a new record. Many claim hard-to-verify mental health issues. There are, apparently, websites that show you how to get disability payments even if there is nothing wrong with you. .
There are also said to be some three hundred thousand households in which no living member has ever been employed. And the bill for maintaining those who will not work now devours a full quarter of what the government spends. And as the bucket sprang ever more leaks, the refilling of it grew ever harder. FoxBusiness: "High taxes, over-regulation and risk aversion are strangling the UK economy, experts say. When it built a high-speed train to Manchester, for example, it needed to make special provisions for a colony of bats along the way. It took 8,000 permits to do so, and an expense of more than 200 million pounds. The resulting train line was the most expensive in the world."
Our own civic pride stirs at all this talk of forlorn cities. We would back Baltimore against any ruin in the United Kingdom. But we will spare the reader the point-by-point match. It is widely advertised, in any case, that Britain has now slipped below Mississippi - The Atlantic calls it a “case study of self-sabotage:”
The country’s output per person is now only just above that of Mississippi, America’s poorest state - and that slight lead is only achieved thanks to London. Outside the capital, in places where tourists do not visit, living standards fall well below Mississippi’s. Brits visiting the United States find that their currency has depreciated to the point where the pound today buys only about $1.35. British wages have lagged well behind those in the U.S., and also those in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Denmark; once you account for inflation, they’ve barely grown at all. Within the next decade, the typical Pole will have a standard of living equal to the typical Brit, if current trends continue.
In July of 2020 the forty-year cycle of interest rates, for the pound as well as the dollar found its bottom. Since then, yields have crept upward - punishing borrowers the world over. Even so, the real return upon government paper in both pounds and dollars sits at a historic low; from here, most yields are likely to rise until they stand again at a historic high. If so, look for Britain and America to shuffle along together down the same road - stumbling, bumbling, and grumbling toward Yazoo City, on the edge of the Mississippi Delta, where half the inhabitants live in poverty."
"SNAP Cuts Coming for Millions of Americans as Inflation Surges"
Full screen recommended.
Michael Bordenaro, 6/24/26
"SNAP Cuts Coming for Millions
of Americans as Inflation Surges"
Comments here:
Adventures With Danno, "Shocking Prices At Sam's Club"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 6/24/26
"Shocking Prices At Sam's Club"
Comments here"
Judge Napolitano, "Prof. Mohammad Marandi: Iran Stands Firm at Negotiations"
Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 6/24/26
"Prof. Mohammad Marandi:
Iran Stands Firm at Negotiations"
Comments here:
"Pepe Escobar: Failed Assassination Plot Against the Iranian Delegation - Israel Targets Pakistan"
"Pepe Escobar: Failed Assassination Plot Against
the Iranian Delegation - Israel Targets Pakistan"
"In the second half of the discussion, geopolitical analyst Pepe Escobar focuses on explosive claims involving Pakistan, Israel, Iran, and the future of regional security in the Middle East. Escobar argues that growing tensions behind the scenes could reshape the geopolitical landscape at a time when concerns about a wider U.S.-Iran conflict remain high. A major topic is the allegation that Israeli intelligence sought to disrupt ongoing diplomatic efforts involving Pakistan and Iran. According to Escobar, Pakistani officials received intelligence warnings about potential threats targeting members of their delegation during sensitive negotiations. He claims these reports triggered strong reactions from Pakistan and raised fears that diplomatic channels could collapse if regional tensions continue escalating.
The conversation also explores the broader implications for Iran, the United States, and President Donald Trump. Escobar suggests that Washington and Tehran remain locked in a fragile standoff despite ongoing diplomatic efforts. Any breakdown in negotiations could increase the risk of military confrontation, with serious consequences for regional stability. Another key focus is the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world's most important energy chokepoints. Escobar explains that any escalation involving Iran, the United States, or Israel could threaten shipping routes, global oil supplies, and international markets.
The discussion highlights how the Hormuz Strait remains central to Middle East security calculations and global economic stability. Throughout the interview, Escobar argues that the struggle over diplomacy, security alliances, and regional influence is entering a new phase. As tensions between Iran, Israel, and the United States continue to evolve, the stakes for the Middle East and the global economy remain extremely high. This analysis examines the latest developments surrounding Iran, Trump, regional security, and the growing uncertainty facing the Gulf region."
Comments here:
"Douglas Macgregor: Netanyahu Is Facing a Test Nobody Saw Coming...End of Israel!"
OPTM, 6/24/26
"Douglas Macgregor: Netanyahu Is Facing
a Test Nobody Saw Coming...End of Israel!"
Comments here:
"UN Details Widespread Death and Maiming of Palestinian Children in Gaza"
"UN Details Widespread Death and
Maiming of Palestinian Children in Gaza"
by Redacted
"The United Nations published a horrifying report detailing the wholesale slaughter of Palestinian children by the Israeli military. The numbers are shocking and the stories are a nightmare. You've been warned.
The report estimates that at least 20,000 children have been killed and 44,000 wounded between October 7, 2023 and October 7, 2025. This accounts for 30% of the Palestinian casualties, and the rate may be higher because of the estimated 5,160 children that are still "buried under the rubble."
The children that were wounded are often wounded for life and will require medical care that is not available in Gaza. The report says that they have suffered from what is medically known as "polytrauma," or "multiple traumas impacting multiple body parts at once, such as bone fractures, significant soft tissue damage, brain and spine injuries, nerve and organ damage and perforating wounds."
Doctors reported what they described as “clustering” of injuries, with children arriving on different days with similar wounds to specific body parts. One physician cited in the UN report said the pattern led him to conclude that some children appeared to have been deliberately targeted.
This is consistent with reporting by the BBC last year. “Based on the clustering of injuries and the targeted body parts, I assess that the Israeli soldiers have been deliberately shooting teenage boys in a game of target practice – a different body part being targeted on different days… There is a very clear pattern that suggest this is a deliberate aiming of different body parts [of children]," says a doctor who visited Gaza on medical mission. Other children are at risk for injury because at least 10 percent of the explosives sent into Gaza have not detonated.
When the United Nations asked Israel why it was in violation of the United Nations law to ensure children "all the rights of human beings, as well as rights held by them alone as children, including under article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR),10 which entitles them to special care, assistance and social protection, and under the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC)," Israel "maintained its longstanding position that it does not have legal responsibility under the CRC for Palestinian children in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including Gaza."
Israel has signed and ratified the CRC, they are just choosing not to honor it. And the rest of us are watching our governments choose to do nothing about it."
o
“The essence of childhood has been destroyed”: Israel’s deliberate targeting of Palestinian children in the Occupied Palestinian Territory since 7 October 2023 Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel. Download the report here:o
A Comment, and I don't give a damn who doesn't like it! Eternal shame and disgrace on America! YOU paid for every goddamned bullet, every tank, every artillery piece, every vehicle, every fighter/bomber plane, every single bomb and missile. YOUR hands are covered with blood the same as the psychopathically degenerate inbred Israeli monsters! And you sat your fat asses back and pretended you didn't see, didn't know, and it wasn't YOU doing it, right? $300 billion at least since 1947 supporting this horror!
And there's the proof of inbreeding monstrosity:
"Shocking Genetic Science Reveals Ashkenazi Jews
Suffer High Rates of Mental Illness Due To Inbreeding"
by Mike Adams
"We are facing a dire situation for humanity. Today, I reveal some of the elements that have led us to that, including shocking scientific evidence that studied the inbreeding common among Ashkenazi Jews (the dominant population worldwide) and found that centuries of inbreeding has produced widespread mental illness and schizophrenia. This is relevant because Netanyahu thinks God talks to him and tells him to mass murder people in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran. He thinks he's hearing voices from God. It's actually a genetic mental illness caused by inbreeding.
- Genetic studies on Ashkenazi Jews reveal mental disorders.
- Generations of inbreeding have produced mental illness defects.
- High levels of schizophrenia among "God's chosen people."
- Netanyahu thinks God is talking to him and telling him to commit genocide.
- Quotes from Jewish Rabbis calling for mass death of non-Jews.
- The U.S. has provided nuclear weapons to mentally ill sociopathic inbreds.
- Jewish inbreeding has also removed "mirror neurons" responsible for empathy and compassion.
- High risk of nuclear war that kills billions, due to Israel's insane genocide."
Fully explained in video here:
Adventures With Danno, "Shocking Prices At Sam's Club"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 6/24/26
"Shocking Prices At Sam's Club"
Comments here"
Tuesday, June 23, 2026
"Russian Wholesale Market Exposed: Life Under Sanctions"
Full screen recommended.
Travelling With Russell, 6/23/26
"Russian Wholesale Market Exposed:
Life Under Sanctions"
"What does the inside of a Russian Wholesale Market look like? What products are available as Russia faces the toughest sanctions in its history? Join me at Bukhta Market to find out how sanctions have affected Russia, and how workarounds have been found."
Comments here:
"This Is One Big Ponzi Scheme, You Can Check In But You Can Never Check Out"
Jeremiah Babe, 6/23/26
"This Is One Big Ponzi Scheme,
You Can Check In But You Can Never Check Out"
Comments here:
"A Look to the Heavens"
"This fantastic skyscape lies near the edge of NGC 2174 a star forming region about 6,400 light-years away in the nebula-rich constellation of Orion. It follows mountainous clouds of gas and dust carved by winds and radiation from the region's newborn stars, now found scattered in open star clusters embedded around the center of NGC 2174, off the top of the frame.
Though star formation continues within these dusty cosmic clouds they will likely be dispersed by the energetic newborn stars within a few million years. Recorded at infrared wavelengths by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2014, the interstellar scene spans about 6 light-years. Scheduled for launch in 2021, the James Webb Space Telescope is optimized for exploring the Universe at infrared wavelengths."
"The Psychology of People Who Have Endured Too Much Trauma"
Full screen recommended.
"The Psychology of People Who
Have Endured Too Much Trauma"
by Kai Psychology
"Is your "laziness" actually exhaustion? Is your "need for control" actually a desperate search for safety? The traits you likely judge most harshly in yourself are often not defects - they are scars. We tend to believe that if we were "better" people, we would be more relaxed, more trusting, or more open. But psychology tells us a different story: these behaviors are not signs of a broken character; they are signs of a nervous system that has worked incredibly hard to keep you safe. In this deep dive, we look at the biology of survival. When you endure chronic stress or childhood instability, your brain - specifically the amygdala - rewires itself for hyper-vigilance. You become an expert at reading micro-expressions and anticipating danger, but you lose the ability to rest. This video explains why you feel like a car with the engine revving in neutral, why you might feel "numb" to survive, and why your high-functioning armor is so heavy to carry. It is time to understand the machinery under the hood so you can finally stop fighting your own biology.
This is for the person who has always been the "strong one." If you are the friend everyone calls in a crisis, if you were called an "old soul" as a child, or if you feel like you are constantly holding up the ceiling so it doesn't collapse on everyone else - this analysis is for you. It is for anyone who is tired of being resilient and just wants to be human. You are not broken. You are simply a survivor who is still wearing armor in a room where the war ended years ago."
Comments here:
"The Monstrous Thing..."
“The monstrous thing is not that men have created roses out of this dung heap, but that, for some reason or other, they should want roses. For some reason or other man looks for the miracle, and to accomplish it he will wade through blood. He will debauch himself with ideas, he will reduce himself to a shadow if for only one second of his life he can close his eyes to the hideousness of reality. Everything is endured – disgrace, humiliation, poverty, war, crime, ennui – in the belief that overnight something will occur, a miracle, which will render life tolerable. And all the while a meter is running inside and there is no hand that can reach in there and shut it off.
All the while someone is eating the bread of life and drinking the wine, some dirty fat cockroach of a priest who hides away in the cellar guzzling it, while up above in the light of the street a phantom host touches the lips and the blood is pale as water. And out of the endless torment and misery no miracle comes forth, no microscopic vestige of relief. Only ideas, pale, attenuated ideas which have to be fattened by slaughter; ideas which come forth like bile, like the guts of a pig when the carcass is ripped open.
Somehow the realization that nothing was to be hoped for had a salutary effect upon me. For weeks and months, for years, in fact, all my life I had been looking forward to something happening, some intrinsic event that would alter my life, and now suddenly, inspired by the absolute hopelessness of everything, I felt relieved, felt as though a great burden had been lifted from my shoulders. At dawn I parted company with the young Hindu, after touching him for a few francs, enough for a room. Walking toward Montparnasse I decided to let myself drift with the tide, to make not the least resistance to fate, no matter in what form it presented itself.
Nothing that had happened to me thus far had been sufficient to destroy me; nothing had been destroyed except my illusions. I myself was intact. The world was intact. Tomorrow there might be a revolution, a plague, an earthquake; tomorrow there might not be left a single soul to whom one could turn for sympathy, for aid, for faith. It seemed to me that the great calamity had already manifested itself, that I could be no more truly alone than at this very moment. I made up my mind that I would hold on to nothing, that I would expect nothing, that henceforth I would live as an animal, a beast of prey, a rover, a plunderer. Even if war were declared, and it were my lot to go, I would grab the bayonet and plunge it, plunge it up to the hilt. And if rape were the order of the day then rape I would, and with a vengeance.
At this very moment, in the quiet dawn of a new day, was not the earth giddy with crime and distress? Had one single element of man’s nature been altered, vitally, fundamentally altered, by the incessant march of history? By what he calls the better part of his nature, man has been betrayed, that is all. At the extreme limits of his spiritual being man finds himself again naked as a savage. When he finds God, as it were, he has been picked clean: he is a skeleton. One must burrow into life again in order to put on flesh. The word must become flesh; the soul thirsts.
At this very moment, in the quiet dawn of a new day, was not the earth giddy with crime and distress? Had one single element of man’s nature been altered, vitally, fundamentally altered, by the incessant march of history? By what he calls the better part of his nature, man has been betrayed, that is all. At the extreme limits of his spiritual being man finds himself again naked as a savage. When he finds God, as it were, he has been picked clean: he is a skeleton. One must burrow into life again in order to put on flesh. The word must become flesh; the soul thirsts.
On whatever crumb my eye fastens, I will pounce and devour. If to live is the paramount thing, then I will live, even if I must become a cannibal. Heretofore I have been trying to save my precious hide, trying to preserve the few pieces of meat that hid my bones. I am done with that. I have reached the limits of endurance. My back is to the wall; I can retreat no further. As far as history goes I am dead. If there is something beyond I shall have to bounce back. I have found God, but he is insufficient. I am only spiritually dead. Physically I am alive. Morally I am free. The world which I have departed is a menagerie. The dawn is breaking on a new world, a jungle world in which the lean spirits roam with sharp claws. If I am a hyena I am a lean and hungry one: I go forth to fatten myself.”
- Henry Miller, "Tropic of Cancer"
"We're All Mad Here"
"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can't help that," said the cat.
"We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the cat, "Or you wouldn't have come here."
- Lewis Carroll,
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the cat, "Or you wouldn't have come here."
- Lewis Carroll,
"Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"
Oh, I know, I know lol...
Thanks for stopping by!
"The Only Final Sin..."
"In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is
getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity."
- Hunter S. Thompson
"Antoine de Saint-Exupéry on How a Simple Human Smile Saved His Life"
"Antoine de Saint-Exupéry on
How a Simple Human Smile Saved His Life"
by Maria Popova
"Though researchers since Darwin may have spent considerable effort on the science of smiles, at the heart of that simple human expression remains a metaphysical art - one captured nowhere more beautifully and grippingly than in a short account by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry(June 29, 1900–July 31, 1944), found in "Letter to a Hostage" (public library) - the same exquisite short memoir he began writing in December of 1940, a little more than two years before he created 'The Little Prince' on American soil, which also gave us his poignant reflection on what the Sahara desert teaches us about the meaning of life.
In a creative sandbox for what would become Saint-Exupéry’s most famous line in 'The Little Prince' - “What is essential is invisible to the eye.” - he writes:
"How does life construct those lines of force which make us alive?
[…]
Real miracles make little noise! Essential events are so simple!"
One such essential event in Saint-Exupéry’s life had to do with the mundane miracle of a simple smile, a gift he so poetically describes as “a certain miracle of the sun, which had taken so much trouble, for so many million years, to achieve, through ourselves, that quality of a smile which was pure success.” He once again channels the spirit of his famous Little Prince line and writes:
"The essential, most often, has no weight. The essential there, was apparently nothing but a smile. A smile is often the essential. One is paid with a smile. One is rewarded by a smile. And the quality of a smile might make one die."
Indeed, in a subsequent chapter, Saint-Exupéry recounts an incident that rendered a smile very much the difference between life and death - his life and death. One night during his time in Spain as a journalist reporting on the Civil War, he found himself with several revolver barrels pressed tightly into his stomach - the militia of the rebel forces had snuck up on him under the veil of the dark and captured him in “solemn silence,” staring at his tie - “such a luxury was not fashionable in an anarchist area” - rather than his face. He recounts:
"My skin tightened. I waited for the shot, for this was the time of quick trials. But there was no shot. After a complete blank of a few seconds, during which the shifts at work appeared to dance in another universe - a kind of dream ballet - my anarchists, slightly nodding their heads, bid me precede them, and we set off, without hurry, across the lines of junction. The capture had been done in perfect silence, with an extraordinary economy of movement. It was like a game of creatures of the ocean bed.
I soon descended to a basement transformed into a guard post. Badly lit by a poor oil lamp, some other militia were dozing, their guns between their legs. They exchanged a few words, in a neutral voice, with the men of my patrol. One of them searched me.
Saint-Exupéry didn’t speak Spanish, but understood enough Catalan to gather that his identity documents were being requested. He tried to communicate to his captors that he had left them at the hotel, that he was journalist, but they merely passed around his camera, yawning and expressionless. The atmosphere, to his surprise, wasn’t what one would expect of an anarchist militia camp:
"The dominant impression was that of boredom. Boredom and sleep. The power of concentration of these men seemed exhausted. I almost wished for a sign of hostility, as a human contact. But … they gazed at me without any reaction, as if they were looking at a Chinese fish in an aquarium.
(One has to wonder whether that desire for contact, whatever its nature or cost, might be a universality of the human condition - the same impulse that drives trolls to spew the venom of hostility as a desperate antidote to their own apathy and existential boredom. Aggression is, perhaps, the only form of contact of which they are capable, and yet it is contact they crave so compulsively.)
After a tortuous period of observing his captors wait for nothing in particular, Saint-Exupéry grew increasingly exasperated with a longing for contact, for the mere acknowledgement of his existence. He paints the backdrop of the miracle that would take place:
"In order to load myself with the weight of real presence, I felt a strange need to cry out something about myself, which would impose upon them the truth of my existence - my age for instance! That is impressive, the age of a man! That summarizes all his life. This maturity of his has taken a long time to achieve. It was grown through so many obstacles conquered, so many serious illnesses cured, so many griefs appeased, so many despairs overcome, so many dangers unconsciously passed. It has grown through so many desires, so many hopes, so many regrets, so many lapses, so much love. The age of a man, that represents a good load of experience and memories. In spite of decoys, jolts, and ruts, you have continued to plod like a horse drawing a cart."
Saint-Exupéry was thirty-seven at the time. But what happened next had nothing to do with the achievement of age, or the gravitas of maturity, or any other willful self-assertion. Instead, it was driven by the simplest, most profound form of shared humanity:
"Then the miracle happened. Oh! a very discreet miracle. I had no cigarette. As one of my guards was smoking, I asked him, by gesture, showing the vestige of a smile, if he would give me one. The man first stretched himself, slowly passed his hand across his brow, raised his eyes, no longer to my tie but to my face, and, to my great astonishment, he also attempted a smile. It was like the dawning of the day.
This miracle did not conclude the tragedy, it removed it altogether, as light does shadow. There had been no tragedy. This miracle altered nothing visible. The feeble oil lamp, the table scattered with papers, the men propped against the wall, the colors, the smell, everything remained unchanged. Yet everything was transformed in its very substance. That smile saved me. It was a sign just as final, as obvious in its future consequences, as unchangeable as the rising of the sun. It marked the beginning of a new era. Nothing had changed, everything was changed. The table scattered with papers became alive. The oil lamp became alive. The walls were alive. The boredom dripping from every lifeless thing in that cellar grew lighter as if by magic. It seemed that an invisible stream of blood had started flowing again, connecting all things in the same body, and restoring to them their significance.
The men had not moved either, but, though a minute earlier they had seemed to be farther away from me than an antediluvian species, now they grew into contemporary life. I had an extraordinary feeling of presence. That is it: of presence. And I was aware of a connection.
The boy who had smiled at me, and who, until a few minutes before, had been nothing but a function, a tool, a kind of monstrous insect, appeared now rather awkward, almost shy, of a wonderful shyness - that terrorist! He was no less a brute than any other. But the revelation of the man in him shed such a light upon his vulnerable side! We men assume haughty airs, but within the depth of our hearts, we know hesitation, doubt, grief. Nothing had yet been said. Yet everything was resolved."
Saint-Exupéry ends with a reflection on the sacred universality and life-giving force of that one simple gesture, the human smile: "Care granted to the sick, welcome offered to the banished, forgiveness itself are worth nothing without a smile enlightening the deed. We communicate in a smile beyond languages, classes, and parties. We are faithful members of the same church, you with your customs, I with mine."
Four years after he wrote 'Letter to a Hostage', which is a sublime read in its totality, Saint-Exupéry disappeared over the Bay of Biscay never to return. Popular legend has it that Horst Rippert, the German fighter pilot who shot down the author’s plane, broke down and wept upon hearing the news - Saint-Exupéry had been his favorite author. What a tragic form of contact, war."
The Poet: Shel Silverstein, “Where the Sidewalk Ends”
“Where the Sidewalk Ends”
“There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.
Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.
Yes we’ll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we’ll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.”
- Shel Silverstein
"I Pity You, Too"
“Said a philosopher to a street sweeper, “I pity you. Yours is a hard and dirty task.” And the street sweeper said, “Thank you, sir. But tell me, what is your task?” And the philosopher answered saying, “I study man’s mind, his deeds and his desires.” Then the street sweeper went on with his sweeping and said with a smile, “I pity you, too.”
- Kahlil Gibran
"Thank God I'm Still Breathing"
Full screen recommended.
Delta King's Blues,
"Thank God I'm Still Breathing"
“Thank God, I’m Still Breathing” is a grateful, soul-deep Delta King’s Blues tune about surviving hard times, carrying scars, and appreciating every sunrise that still finds you here. A warm, weathered acoustic guitar moves slow and steady like footsteps that kept going through every storm. The harmonica sings soft and thankful, carrying memories of battles fought and blessings still standing. The groove rolls easy and reflective, built for quiet mornings, front porch thoughts, and hearts that know the value of one more day. This is blues about gratitude through the struggle."
"How It Really Is"
"We do not rest satisfied with the present. We anticipate the future as too slow in coming, as if in order to hasten its course; or we recall the past, to stop its too rapid flight. So imprudent are we that we wander in the times which are not ours, and do not think of the only one which belongs to us; and so idle are we that we dream of those times which are no more, and thoughtlessly overlook that which alone exists. For the present is generally painful to us. We conceal it from our sight, because it troubles us; and if it be delightful to us, we regret to see it pass away. We try to sustain it by the future, and think of arranging matters which are not in our power, for a time which we have no certainty of reaching. Let each one examine his thoughts, and he will find them all occupied with the past and the future. We scarcely ever think of the present; and if we think of it, it is only to take light from it to arrange the future. The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means; the future alone is our end. So we never live, but we hope to live; and, as we are always preparing to be happy, it is inevitable we should never be so."
- Blaise Pascal
"My Internal Exile"
"My Internal Exile"
by Edward Curtin
"Let me have war, say I; it exceeds peace as far as day does night: it’s spritely waking, audible, and full of vent. Peace is a very apoplexy, lethargy; mull’d, deaf, sleepy, insensible; a getter of more bastard children than war’s a destroyer of men.”
- Shakespeare, "Coriolanus"
“To ravage, to slaughter, to steal, this they give the false name
of empire; and where they create a desert, they call it peace.”
- Tacitus
"Long ago, but what seems like only yesterday, I didn’t go to the U.S. war against Vietnam but the war came to me. It was when my exile began. I am telling you this to try to shed some light on today’s wars and alarums since my tale is common for a small subset of Americans of my generation. We learned long ago that the USA was run by ruthless killers who reveled in war. Vietnam, the Phoenix Program, Cambodia, Indonesia, etc. Nothing was beyond them. We sensed that they would never stop and they haven’t. The genocide of Palestinians, the proxy war via Ukraine against Russia, the US/Israel/Turkey bloodbath in Syria and Lebanon led by our ruthless terrorists, and now war with Iran – it is all nightmarish, malevolent, utterly evil, and conjures up hell on earth. And it will get worse in the future.
The mainstream media claimed that the new savior of Syria is the terrorist “rebel” leader, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, the founding leader of Al Qaeda in Syria, al-Nusra, and a former deputy to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
While there is truth in the view that the world has always been a butcher’s bench with wars, hatred, and strife being a common theme, “always” is meaningless to me. For I have never lived in “always.”
I have lived since birth in the United States during a period of time when it has been the world’s number one butcher, starting with the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, then continuing waging non-stop wars, assassinating foreign and domestic leaders, including President Kennedy, executing coup d’états, supporting and arming ruthless dictators and terrorists, and creating an economy dependent on war.
All this has been sustained by lies and propaganda that most Americans have swallowed. It is a deeply ingrained Yankee doodle dandy ethos joined with American exceptionalism and a self-induced false innocence.
Just this as it did during the Vietnam war, The New York Times spewed out lies about the events in Syria, calling the U.S.-backed jihadist terrorists (Hayat Tahrir al-Sham/Al Qaeda, et al.) “rebels” and the overthrow of the Assad government a “civil war.” In doing so, the paper is just doing what it has always done as an organ for U.S. foreign policy, seemingly forgetting that it was the Obama administration that in 2012 launched Operation Timber Sycamore, a CIA program to, under the guise of a civil war, overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as part of a larger effort to undercut Iran and Russia for U.S./Israel/Turkey/NATO control of the region.
It is propaganda about a much larger war well underway, as the presence of Ukrainian forces in Syria and the usual Israeli bombing attest. Like a mountain ridge wildfire, the winds whip wildly now, and whether the fire spreads next to Iran or somewhere else, it is sure to spread.
To paraphrase Thoreau, there is no need to care for a myriad of instances and applications, the only thing you need is to be acquainted with the principle, which in this case is the long-standing demonic nature of U.S. foreign policy which is synchronous with waging perpetual war. Yet most people don’t want to go past such lying headlines that are repeated by all the mainstream media. They never did, except when the issues concerned them personally, as when there was a military draft.
Yes, government and media propaganda have contributed mightily to it, but so many of the country’s war crimes have been committed out in the open and accompanied by the public’s cheering and flag waving that propaganda is only part of the explanation. The will to believe and self-delusion are a large part of it. And people seem to like war, if it is far away and the cheerleaders are on this side of the water. It lends excitement to life like a real murder mystery, a sex scandal, or an approaching hurricane.
Furthermore, it provides roots for the national myth, the mythic home, the mythic womb, wherein one can root for the home team as one stands with tens of thousands of team people and sing along with the words “bombs bursting in air” while feeling a stirring of patriotic pride. This desire to be patriotically conventional, to support the national team in war and peace, is very powerful. Why else the creation of the mammoth bureaucracy called Homeland Security, the un-American word homeland taken straight from Hitler’s 1934 Nuremberg rally. Root, root, root for the home team.
I know the patriotic feeling. It left me back in 1967 when my exile began. For the most part, it has not been apparent to outside observers, for there are places difficult to reach, and the one within is the most distant. My youthful “normalcy” received its first body blow with JFK’s assassination in 1963. By 1967 I had joined the Marines and then declared myself a conscientious objector as I realized the evil my country was committing in Vietnam. I was on my way away.
In the years that followed, as Malcom X, MLK, Jr. and RFK, were assassinated and Johnson and Nixon lied and brutalized Vietnam, my understanding of history and politics deepened. Families and friends called me a communist for being a C.O. and opposing the war and a lying government. It was laughable but relentless.
Many years have elapsed, and the charges have risen and fallen as the years have gone by. For years now, the name of abuse is a “conspiracy” theorist or Russian sympathizer for daring to say that Russia Gate was a Democratic conspiracy and the war against Russia in Ukraine has been a U.S. project from the start. There is much more.
But my point about internal exile is that I had to adopt the motions of normalcy in everyday life – to create a pleasant persona – to get through the days. My teaching and writing continued as hard-hitting as before, but family, friends, academic colleagues, and acquaintances didn’t take my courses or read my writing, which they made sure to avoid.
These days, many more people have been forced to discover the twofold life where they can’t talk to the people in their lives about many issues – politics, wars, Covid, etc. Something has broken. Almost everything.
To accept the conclusion that the country is run by a bunch of ruthless warmongering imperialists is a step too far for most people. They must mean well or just make mistakes, for their hearts are in the right place, runs through so many minds. At least they assume that about the leaders they support.
A key way the endless wars roll on is the deadly political game of the lesser of two evils. If it is one’s political party waging the foreign wars, there are always many reasons to still find it better than the other party’s wars. “My leader may be a warmonger but he’s better than your warmonger” is the unspoken implication.
This neat trick is supported by a host of mitigating excuses to justify the delusion that one is for peace even as these wars occur non-stop throughout the decades as the Democratic and Republican leaders switch highchairs. Rather than dismiss the lot of them, the desire to feel that patriot heart-pump, however dim, and to reject the “extremist” conclusion that war is the life blood of the country, remains.
Throughout the 62 years of my adult life, the U.S. has been continuously waging wars, hot and cold, small and large, openly and secretly, all across the world, and its economy has increasingly become a military-industrial-national-security complex so vast and intricately linked to daily life that the country would collapse without it. Simply put: Beneath daily life lies a death cult, a river of blood. If that sounds too strong for you, give me another name for it.
It seems to me very clear that most Americans are today suffering from some sort of traumatic mental sickness, trying desperately to deny it in a multitude of ways. Scratch the surface of an everyday conversation or a greeting on the street and there’s the rolling of the eyes and the looks that say, “Let’s not go there, it’s all too crazy!” Something has broken, and people seem like walking desperadoes with the flag planted like a dagger in their hearts.
Even the alternative media, those writers with whom I share wishes for a peaceful world, have for a good while let their hopes trump realty by claiming the American empire is doomed, as is Israel and the neo-liberal, neo-con agenda. For many months now, I have noticed something amiss with these claims. Too much wishful thinking. Too little appreciation for the machinations of the CIA, M-16, Mossad, Turkish conspiracies. To think these devils would accept defeat without bringing the world down is naïve. I don’t relish saying all this. It is depressing. But I think it is true.
Some people who know me call me an extremist and claim I make no room for the middle ground. When it comes to U.S. war-waging, I say there is none. It is endless and integral to U.S. foreign policy no matter which party is in office. And the foreign policy is integral to the domestic policy. Without it, the country would be so different. Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden, Trump – to buy their lies is to be a fool.
To realize the difference between power and innocence is to come to understand the demonic nature of America’s Forever Wars. When in 2014 President Obama stood at West Point and said, “I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being,” he was revealing, consciously or not, a hard truth, just as when he received the Nobel Peace Prize and told the world he believed in war. But he smiled. For war is the lifeblood of this “exceptional” country. But if you keep repeating that, don’t expect smiles to come your way."
Full screen recommended.
James Blunt, "No Bravery"
Dan, I Allegedly, "2 Million Cars Returned - Nobody Wants These"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 6/23/26
"2 Million Cars Returned - Nobody Wants These"
"Over 2 million vehicles have been returned in the last 18 months, and it raises a serious question: what happened to quality? From expensive repairs and recurring defects to massive recalls and growing consumer frustration, today's vehicles are costing more than ever while delivering less reliability. Many drivers are discovering that a $50,000 car isn't the dependable investment it once was. In this video, I break down the growing wave of vehicle returns, the rise in lemon law claims, recent recalls from major manufacturers, and why consumers are increasingly dissatisfied with new cars. We'll also discuss your rights as a car owner, what to watch out for before buying a vehicle, and why so many people are holding onto older cars instead of taking on another expensive payment."
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