COL. Lawrence Wilkerson, 4/1/26
"This Is Israel's Worst Nightmare"
Comments here:
So, we rise from the rubble...
StatCounter
Thursday, April 2, 2026
Wednesday, April 1, 2026
"Breaking News: Map Reveals Imminent WW3 Escalation, Russia Frantically Deploying Reserves To South"
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 4/1/26
"Breaking News: Map Reveals Imminent WW3 Escalation,
Russia Frantically Deploying Reserves To South"
Comments here:
"War May Be About to Widen Hugely"
"War May Be About to Widen Hugely"
by David Haggith
"I’m putting this headline/video right on top because this guy makes an awful lot of clear-headed, basic sense. If you get this in time, you can listen to it ahead of the president’s speech or read the editorial:
Now that the Houthis have joined the war and Iran has stated they are tasked with closing the Red Sea, this war could easily become a global catastrophe. We all know how easily this tiny group of dessert rats managed to shut down the Red Sea for all shipping traffic last year. Imagine that both sides of the Arabian peninsula now become shut down to shipping. Now you’re talking a loss of maybe 40% of oil supply being cut off and an enormous amount of other commercial shipping through the Suez Canal. At that point, which could begin tomorrow, following the president’s speech tonight, given that it happened in one day last year, we move from a prognosis of global recession to a full-on global depression.
With the help of Houthis, small as they are, Iran has the capacity to shut off a lot of lights around the world, putting large regions in the dark. Then how is NATO or Europe going to stay out of this? They’re not going to just sit and wait for their lights to come back on. At some point they will be pressed to greater involvement. Yet, the more they get involved in the Middle East, the more oil transportation and refining likely gets knocked out.
On top of that, the Pashtuns, the largest tribal group in the world - who live primarily in Pakistan, Afghanistan, India and Iran - have just offered to join the war as a jihad in Iran’s defense. While the tribal members in the video probably don’t speak officially for Pakistan, and its not possible to say if they even speak for the majority of Pashtuns, the Pashtuns are a large enough people group to have significant influence on official decisions in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Many high officials in both nations are Pashtun.
Pakistan has nukes. Whether they would use them or not, that certainly changes the calculus. Do these guys have enough influence, if things get desperate enough in Iran, to decide that now is the time to do with Pakistan’s nukes what Iran has been threatening? They could completely wipe Israel out.
That may still be reaching, so let’s say nukes stay out of the equation: You still have Iran, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthi’s and now thousands of Pashtun soldiers united in jihad against Israel. Does anyone think that they will back down before they destroy Israel now that things have united them to this degree? So, is Trump going to get out and then just sit and watch Israel and his buddy Netanyahu get ripped to shreds without US help?
This war may abruptly go all-out world war if Trump, tonight, takes the next step he is threatening and begins a land invasion with troops on the turf. Russia is moving nuclear submarines into the gulf and has said that if a land invasion by the US takes place, they will defend Iran. Putin didn’t say Russia would use its nuclear weapons, but that is primarily what those subs are good for. China also said it is ready to deploy 100,000 troops into Iran, should the US launch a ground invasion.
All kinds of headlines whisper today that the president’s big speech tonight may be about starting a ground invasion. The president keeps talking both sides multiple times a day: He may do a ground invasion; he may pull out altogether. He could use the talk to claim he is now pulling out because of his big victory, leaving the region in total chaos with nothing resolved at all. Or we could plunge full on into the darkness world war tonight.
Trump may think he will pull out in two more weeks (the ultimate extent of his original deadline), but if the war leaps to that global level, it will go so wild he will have no idea what he is going to have to do. Maybe TACO in a hurry, still leaving utter chaos in a situation that has accomplished none of the original objectives he has mentioned. (See: “DEEPER LIES: Trump Displacement Syndrome Hits MAGA in Bitter Outrage over Betrayals.”)
Is confusion a plan? It could be. Let’s hope that what appears to be confusion on Trump’s part about what his objectives really are and what he’s going to do is just intentional chaos to keep Iranians disoriented and off balance, but that certainly doesn’t appear to be the case. He looks and sounds more like a loose canon firing off new objectives and denying old ones every minute. He looks like he suffers Trump derangement. Forget the syndrome. He looks and sounds deranged. Period. Maybe that’s just the plan - a broadening of “the weave” to keep the enemy confused. I doubt it.
We’ll see what Trump does tonight in his big special address to the nation. I doubt this is Armageddon yet, but it is sure a path that has the potential to get us there. I think there are a lot more events to come in between; so, this may just result in an absolutely chaotic Middle East that lays the ground for Armageddon down the road IF Trump pulls out tonight. But, boy, it has never looked so close.
By the way, today was Passover when God rescued Israel from Egypt. Is deliverance like happened with Egypt or like the Six-Day War with Egypt in our time still God’s plan? Or is Israel going to be taught that you cannot take and hold the Promised Land while continuing to reject its promised Prince of Peace? Hence, why he is called the “Prince of Peace.” Peace only come under his rule, and I certainly don’t mean that in any Christian Nationalist way."
"US Marines vs IRGC Navy"
Full screen recommended.
OPTM, 4/1/26
"US Marines vs IRGC Navy"
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
OPTM, 4/1/26
"Russia's Kadyrov Just Did Something So
Out Of This World…Israel trapped in Iran"
Comments here:
Musical Interlude: 2002, "The End of the Journey"
Full screen recommended.
2002, "The End of the Journey"
Amazingly beautiful...
"A Look to the Heavens'
"Braided, serpentine filaments of glowing gas suggest this nebula's popular name, The Medusa Nebula. Also known as Abell 21, this Medusa is an old planetary nebula some 1,500 light-years away in the constellation Gemini. Like its mythological namesake, the nebula is associated with a dramatic transformation.
The planetary nebula phase represents a final stage in the evolution of low mass stars like the sun, as they transform themselves from red giants to hot white dwarf stars and in the process shrug off their outer layers. Ultraviolet radiation from the hot star powers the nebular glow. The Medusa's transforming star is near the center of the overall bright crescent shape. In this deep telescopic view, fainter filaments clearly extend below and to the left of the bright crescent region. The Medusa Nebula is estimated to be over 4 light-years across.”
'This Is Your Life..."
“This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time.
Every breath is a choice. Every minute is a choice.
To be or not to be.
Every time you don't throw yourself down the stairs, that's a choice.
Every time you don't crash your car, you re-enlist.
If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume
and come back as a new character...Would you slow down? Or speed up?"
- Chuck Palahniuk
"If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make,
who would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting?"
~ Stephen Levine
'Guard Your Honor..."
"Reputation is what other people know about you.
Honor is what you know about yourself."
- Lois McMaster
“What Mark Will You Leave On The World?”
“What Mark Will You Leave On The World?”
by Maria Rodale
“As some of you know, this time of year is my favorite time to truly reflect on the past and the future. Things seem to slow down enough that there’s finally time to ponder and think and plan and dream. The questions and thoughts change as I get older. When I was younger, it was more about what I wanted to accomplish (although I still have a VERY ambitious list for that). Now, it’s a little bit more of what do I want to leave behind?
The thing about life and reality is that it is so fleeting. Things that seem huge and vastly important can become footnotes to history or, like handprints in the sand – here today, gone tomorrow – washed away by wind or a wave. But I firmly believe that if we don’t think about it – and aren’t awake about it – we simply drift through life asleep and miss the best of it. In fact, I kind of believe that part of our purpose here in life is to create it, create change, push evolution forward, and improve things. To me, leaving a mark isn’t about getting credit or recognition, but making sure that the things we do have a positive impact rather than a negative one, and I think that starts in our heads and our hearts.
So I urge you to take some time for yourself this week, carve out an hour or, better yet, a day when you can really open your heart and calm your head enough to dream about what you truly desire. If you can dream it, you can create it. And then your life will leave a wake of happiness and joy.”
“Yet now, as he roared across the night sky toward an unknown destiny, he found himself facing that bleak and ultimate question which so few men can answer to their satisfaction. What have I done with my life, he asked himself, that the world will be poorer if I leave it?”
- Arthur C. Clarke, “Glide Path”
"The Reality of Life; Get You Stuff Together..."
"Despite my firm convictions, I have been always a man who tries to face facts, and to accept the reality of life as new experience and new knowledge unfolds it. I have always kept an open mind, which is necessary to the flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth."
- Malcolm X
“We all got problems. But there’s a great book out called “Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart.” Did you see that? That book says the statute of limitations has expired on all childhood traumas. Get your stuff together and get on with your life, man. Stop whinin’ about what’s wrong, because everybody’s had a rough time, in one way or another.”
- Quincy Jones
"Complexity Theory: the Avalanche and the Snowflake"
"Complexity Theory:
the Avalanche and the Snowflake"
by James Rickards
"One of my favorites is what I call ‘the avalanche and the snowflake’. It’s a metaphor for the way the science actually works, but I should be clear: it’s not just a metaphor. The science, the mathematics and the dynamics are actually the same as those that exist in financial markets.
Imagine you’re on a mountainside. You can see a snowpack building up on the ridgeline while it continues snowing. You can tell just by looking at the scene that there’s danger of an avalanche. It’s windswept… it’s unstable… and if you’re an expert, you know it’s going to collapse and kill skiers and wipe out the village below. You see a snowflake fall from the sky onto the snowpack. It disturbs a few other snowflakes that lie there. Then, the snow starts to spread… then it starts to slide… then it gains momentum until, finally, it comes loose and the whole mountain comes down and buries the village.
Question: What do you blame? Do you blame the snowflake, or do you blame the unstable pack of snow? I say the snowflake’s irrelevant. If it wasn’t the one snowflake that caused the avalanche, it could have been the one before, or the one after, or the one tomorrow. The instability of the system as a whole was the problem. So when I think about the risks in the financial system, I don’t focus on the ‘snowflake’ that will cause problems. The trigger doesn’t matter.
A snowflake that falls harmlessly – the vast majority of all snowflakes - technically fails to start a chain reaction. Once a chain reaction begins, it expands exponentially, can ‘go critical’ (as in an atomic bomb) and release enough energy to destroy a city. However, most neutrons do not start nuclear chain reactions, just as most snowflakes do not start avalanches.
In the end, it’s not about the snowflakes or neutrons. It’s about the initial critical state conditions that allow the possibiity of a chain reaction or an avalanche. These can be hypothesized and observed at large scale, but the exact moment the chain reaction begins cannot be observed. That’s because it happens on a minute scale relative to the system. This is why some people refer to these snowflakes as ‘black swans’, because they are unexpected and come by surprise. But they’re actually not a surprise if you understand the system’s dynamics and can estimate the system scale.
It’s a metaphor, but really the mathematics behind it are the same. Financial markets today are huge, unstable mountains of snow waiting to collapse. You see it in the gross notional value of derivatives. There is $700 trillion worth of swaps. ($2.5 Quadrillion by other reputable estimates. - CP) These are derivatives off balance sheet, hidden liabilities in the banking system of the world. These numbers are not made up. Just go to the IS annual report and it’s right there in the footnote.
Well, how do you put $700 trillion into perspective? It’s ten times global GDP. Take all the goods and services in the entire world for an entire year. That’s about $70 trillion when you add it all up. Well, take ten times that, and that’s how big the snow pile is. And that’s the avalanche that’s waiting to come down."
"How It Really Is"
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Oh no we haven't, not even close.
This is just beginning, and you ain't seen nuthin' yet, but you will...
"This Recession Indicator Has Never Been Wrong! It’s Flashing Now"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 4/1/26
"This Recession Indicator Has
Never Been Wrong! It’s Flashing Now"
"The Walmart recession indicator is flashing red, and it’s something you need to pay attention to right now. In this video, I break down how consumer behavior is shifting rapidly as Americans move away from name brands and toward discount retailers like Walmart. This indicator has historically predicted the last four economic downturns, and today we’re seeing the same warning signs again - rising prices, shrinking purchasing power, and families struggling to keep up with everyday expenses like groceries, gas, and housing. We’re also seeing real-world proof of economic stress with business closures, rising costs across the board, and major shifts in spending habits. From record-high diesel prices to restaurant shutdowns and increasing reliance on cheaper goods, this isn’t theory—it’s happening right now. The big question is: are we already in a recession? Watch this breakdown and decide for yourself, and let me know what you're seeing in your area."
Comments here:
"The Fall of Singapore, Dien Bien Phu... and the Battle for Kharg Island?" (Excerpt)
"The Fall of Singapore, Dien Bien Phu...
and the Battle for Kharg Island?"
by Ron Unz
Excerpt: "The World War II chapters of my introductory history textbooks always devoted a great deal of space to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that brought our country into the conflict. But they only spent a couple of paragraphs on the major military victories of Japan that had soon followed. Perhaps a single sentence was devoted to the fall of Singapore to a Japanese army, yet that event actually had major world importance.
For many years, the British had relied upon Singapore as the central military pillar of their East Asian holdings, a fortress-city that they often called “the Gibraltar of the East.” Garrisoned by a large British army of 85,000, it was regarded as totally impregnable. Yet just a few weeks after the destruction of most of the American fleet in distant Hawaii, a Japanese general attacked it from the landward side, marching his men through what the British had regarded as totally impassable Malayan jungle. With “the guns of Singapore” all famously pointing in the wrong direction, the British garrison was caught completely flat-footed when he invested the city and began his attack. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered his troops to fight to the last man, but instead they all surrendered after just a single week of combat, taken into captivity by a Japanese force little more than one-third their own size. This represented a total national humiliation for the mighty British Empire.
When Churchill later wrote his six volume history of the war, he described the fall of Singapore as “the worst disaster and the largest capitulation in British history,” and the aftermath had major geopolitical significance. Asians across the entire region were stunned by such a massive British defeat at the hands of a much smaller Asian force. Everyone saw the photographs of huge numbers of British troops being marched into POW camps with the top British generals at the head of those endless columns.
Whereas the Japanese success at Pearl Harbor could be ascribed to a treacherous surprise attack, no such excuse existed for the crushing British defeat at Singapore, so the long-standing bubble of perceived European military invincibility had been permanently punctured. Many have argued that the dramatic resulting changes in local Asian psychology played a major role in the postwar collapse of all the European colonial empires in that part of the world. Yet despite those resounding geopolitical consequences of the Fall of Singapore, I doubt whether even two Americans in one hundred are currently familiar with that important history.
Probably far more present-day Americans are at least somewhat familiar with the name “Dien Bien Phu,” at least if we include those who vaguely assume that it is some sort of tasty Chinese culinary dish, perhaps related to “Egg Foo Young.” But that 1954 French military defeat in Vietnam also had major world importance.
Less than a year after the outbreak of World War II, France had unexpectedly suffered a stunning total military defeat at the hands of Germany and as a result, Germany’s Japanese allies soon seized control of Vietnam, France’s major colonial possession in Asia. The Allied victory in 1945 ultimately left France in the winner’s circle, so after the Japanese surrendered, the new French government reestablished its former rule over Vietnam, but was faced with strong Vietnamese nationalistic resistance led by Ho Chi Minh and his Vietminh forces.
The resulting colonial war dragged on for nearly a decade, with the French gradually being worn down until they finally decided upon a bold military strategy intended to turn the tide and defeat the Vietnamese independence movement that they faced. They placed a large French army in the valley of Dien Bien Phu inviting a Vietnamese attack. Given the strong defensive positions they established, they felt confident they would be able to inflict very heavy losses upon Vietminh troops, perhaps winning the war as a result.
But contrary to all those French expectations, the Vietnamese managed to drag their artillery into the hills surrounding that valley, and the resulting bombardment they unleashed allowed them to defeat the entrenched defenders. In desperation at the looming disaster, the French even asked their American allies to launch tactical nuclear strikes to destroy the besieging Vietnamese, but President Dwight Eisenhower rejected that option and the result was a humiliating French surrender.
Once again, many thousands of white Europeans were marched into bitter captivity by their Asian opponents, and this further debacle marked the end of most of the outright colonial control of the region. The Vietnamese forced the French to pay large financial reparations in order to get their POWs back, which further added to France’s national ignominy.
Few Americans today remember these historical incidents from three generations ago, and even those who do probably regard them as elements of the dead past. But they both came to my mind when the media began reporting that President Donald Trump had decided to dispatch ground forces to the Middle East, planning to deploy them against Iran."
Full article is here:
"The Calamities of Others"
"The Calamities of Others"
by Joel Bowman
“The surest and indeed the only method of learning how to bear
bravely the vicissitudes of fortune is to recall the calamities of others.”
~ Polybius, "The Histories" (150–120 BC)
Buenos Aires, Argentina - "World War II officially ended on September 2, 1945*. It’s been more than 80 years since the close of that gruesome affair – or 29,431 days, as of today. Is the world about to reset the counter? “War,” as that old peacenik philosopher, Bertrand Russell, used to say, “does not determine who is right — only who is left.”
Which leads us to wonder... Where do the belligerents – the so-called “allied” and “axis” powers – stand today, eight decades on from their last encounter? How have their allegiances changed during the ensuing years? And what about China, India and the new movers and shakers on the global stage? What roles do they play in the grand geopolitical game of chess?Hmm...
War in Pieces: Historians, not generally known for their wry sense of humor, often refer to the period since WWII as “Pax Americana” (latin for “American Peace”). This is the era during which U.S. hegemony shaped global trade and security, the age of supranational, alphabet soup institutions, like the UN, NATO, IMF, WTO, BIS etc. ... along with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the Bretton Woods monetary system, the Group of Seven (G7), and other such branches of the so-called “Rules Based International Order.”
Fittingly enough, the period was named after the “Pax Romana” – the period from roughly 27 BC – 180 AD, during which emperors from Augustus through to Marcus Aurelius consolidated power under Roman law, securing important trade routes across Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. And yet, for the Romans – as for the Americans – the era was not without conflict. One eye on the vicissitudes of fortune… the other on the calamities of others… we thumb the pages of history for possible clues regarding the future…
Though Roman citizens of the Pax Romana era enjoyed a period of relative peace inside the imperial gates, with some very notable exceptions, bloody wars raged on almost constantly outside them, as the empire fought for control of lands and trade routes near and far. Naturally, such campaigns ranged greatly in terms of ambition, reward and, ultimately, cost...
Frontier skirmishes with nomadic tribes along the Arabian Desert, for example, were relatively minor in terms of capital expenditure and “sandals on the ground,” though they were a persistent nuisance for the Great Power of the day. Mostly this entailed maintaining forts and patrols and protecting trade routes along the way, with forces of up to about ~20,000 men required at any given time for the task. Not enough to bring a mighty empire to its knees, but certainly enough to bite at its ankles.
From Gold to Lead:
The Dacian Wars, meanwhile – two separate wars waged by Trajan between 101–102 and 105–106 AD – saw 100,000 soldiers take to the field in what we know as modern day Romania. A massive undertaking at the time, in which both sides suffered enormous human casualties, the spoils of the vast Dacian goldmines nonetheless helped fill Rome’s coffers, just as victory helped swell her imperial chest...and fill her head with ideas of greater glory to come.
But while the Dacian Wars were short, and the taste of their lucre sweet, the same could not be said of Rome’s other quagmires, of which there were no shortage. The Germanic Wars, for instance, which lasted on and off for centuries, were a virtually ceaseless drain on the imperial purse, requiring up to 80,000 soldiers on the front at a time, most of whom were housed in permanent garrisons along the Rhine and Danube Rivers. Constant battles kept the soldiers pitted against “the barbarians,” with many such encounters coming at punishing cost for the empire. In the epic Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, to name but one bloody scene, three entire Roman legions (~15,000–20,000 men) were ambushed... and annihilated... in a matter of days.
Then there were the so-named Britain & Northern Campaigns, which saw Roman soldiers marching their shiny standard into what is today Northern England. While the far flung land offered some bounty – mostly in the form of tin, lead, some agricultural land and a few slaves – the fact was Claudius needed a military victory to show his restless citizens just who was boss. And as nobody had attempted to invade the distant land since Caesar (perhaps with good reason), Briton must have seemed as good a spot as any for the wily ruler. As Cassius Dio writes two centuries later: “Claudius desired to win glory by making a conquest… and so he undertook a campaign against Britain.”
Muck and Mire: Alas, as with the barbarians, the Romans were never fully able to bring the Britons under heel. Instead, they found themselves entrenched, bogged down, sank ever deeper into the muck and mire of their own expansionist ambitions...which would persist for some 80 more years, until Hadrian shifted gears from offense to defense... and to drawing a stone line around the empire.
Truly, few things say “high tide of empire” quite like Hadrian’s Wall, a 117kms (73 miles) fortification just south of the Scottish border... constructed more than 2,000kms (by Roman roads) from the Imperial City. That’s the fortification against those further northern tribes, such as the scrappy Picts, feisty Caledonians, and the rest of the bedraggled peasants huddled up on the very edge of those dreary isles, in what is today’s Scotland. To say the empire had overextended itself would be something of an understatement.
And yet, for all the waste and squander, the mud and the blood and the flat, warm beer... for all those protracted northern expeditions... their battling the barbarians at the gates… and tracking the Arabian nomads around and around the deserts... these misadventures amounted to little next to the losses sustained during Rome’s primary Great Power rivalry during the so-called Pax Romana... We refer, of course, to Rome’s epic wars with the vast Parthian Empire, centered in the ancient land we know today as... Iran. Which is where we’ll pick up the action, and the calamities of others, in your next Notes From the End of the World. Stay tuned…"
* In some countries (like the U.S.), people also refer to August 15, 1945—when Japan announced its surrender—as V-J Day, or Victory over Japan Day, but the official end of the war was September 2. This date commemorates Japan’s formal surrender aboard the USS Missouri, which officially ended the war.
"You Don't Realize How Bad It's About to Get"
Full screen recommended.
Finance Economist, 4/1/26
"You Don't Realize How Bad It's About to Get"
"More people left America than moved in last year - for the first time since the Great Depression. Bankruptcy filings are up 11%. 80 million Americans are working side hustles just to survive. And only 17% trust the government. This is the video they don't want you to share. In this video, I break down the 10 warning signs that prove something fundamental has broken in the American system - from the record exodus of citizens leaving the country, to the collapse of the gig economy, to the insurance scam draining your bank account, to the generation locked out of homeownership forever. Every stat is sourced. Every claim is backed by data. And by the end, you'll understand why the life you thought you had isn't coming back."
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Financial insight, 4/1/26
"The Month After the Crash -
When Businesses Start Failing"
"The market crash was just the beginning. While most people focus on the S&P 500 and wait for a recovery, the real damage is happening quietly: businesses are starting to fail. And unlike the market, which crashes in a day, businesses collapse over weeks - creating a delayed wave that hits jobs, income, and entire local economies. This video breaks down exactly how that failure cycle works, why it begins after the crash (not during it), and the sequence of collapse from small businesses to larger employers. You’ll learn how credit tightening and falling consumer confidence trigger a chain reaction, which industries fail first, and how that ripple spreads across the economy. More importantly, you’ll get a clear 4-step framework to protect yourself: run a cash flow stress test, audit your income exposure, reposition savings into safer instruments like U.S. Treasuries, and identify sectors that gain market share during downturns. Because crashes don’t just affect portfolios - they affect paychecks. And by the time most people notice, it’s already too late. Watch until the end and understand what happens next before it reaches your front door."
Comments here:
Adventures With Danno, "Credit Card Companies Hate Me.. This Is Why"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 4/1/26
"Credit Card Companies Hate Me.. This Is Why"
Comments here:
Tuesday, March 31, 2026
"Alert! Trump Is About To Do Something Serious In 24 Hours"
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 3/31/26
"Alert! Trump Is About To Do
Something Serious In 24 Hours"
Comments here:
Musical Interlude: The Rolling Stones, "If I Was A Dancer (Dance Pt. 2)"
The Rolling Stones,
"If I Was A Dancer (Dance Pt. 2)"
Turn it up! lol
Attitude. In Philly, pronounced at-tee-tood...
- CP
Musical Interlude: Liquid Mind, "Moment of Grace Part 1"
Full screen recommended.
Liquid Mind, "Moment of Grace Part 1"
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Large galaxies and faint nebulae highlight this deep image of the M81 Group of galaxies. First and foremost in the wide-angle 12-hour exposure is the grand design spiral galaxy M81, the largest galaxy visible in the image. M81 is gravitationally interacting with M82 just below it, a big galaxy with an unusual halo of filamentary red-glowing gas.
Around the image many other galaxies from the M81 Group of galaxies can be seen. Together with other galaxy congregates including our Local Group of galaxies and the Virgo Cluster of galaxies, the M81 Group is part of the expansive Virgo Supercluster of Galaxies. This whole galaxy menagerie is seen through the faint glow of an Integrated Flux Nebula, a little studied complex of diffuse gas and dust clouds in our Milky Way Galaxy."
Chet Raymo, “Not Known, Because Not Looked For”
“Not Known, Because Not Looked For”
by Chet Raymo
“A reader shared with us those well-known lines of T. S. Eliot (“Little Gidding”). It is not quite what Eliot is up to, but I was reminded of some lines of Pascal that I shared here several years ago: “Scientific learning is composed of two opposites which nonetheless meet each other. The first is the natural ignorance that is man’s lot at birth. The second is represented by those great minds that have investigated all knowledge accumulated by man only to discover at the end that in fact they know nothing. Thus they return to the same fundamental ignorance they had thought to leave. Yet this ignorance they have now discovered is an intellectual achievement. It is those who have departed from their original condition of ignorance but have been incapable of completing the full cycle of learning who offer us a smattering of scientific knowledge and pass sweeping judgments. These are the mischief makers, the false prophets.” (“Pensees” V:327)
It took almost three centuries for Pascal’s remarkable insight to become the common opinion of scientists. The 20th-century philosopher Karl Popper expressed it this way: “The more we learn about the world, and the deeper our learning, the more conscious, specific, and articulate will be our knowledge of what we do not know, our knowledge of our ignorance. For this, indeed, is the main source of our ignorance- the fact that our knowledge can be only finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.”
It is an odd, unsettling thought that the culmination of the scientific quest- the long slow gathering of reliable empirical knowledge of the world- should be confirmation of how little we understand about the universe we live in. A willingness to say “I don’t know” is a prerequisite of scientific discovery. Only in the silence of acknowledged ignorance can we hear - half hear - the thing that calls us to attend.
Click image for larger size.
"The Story of Man..."
“The sands of time blew into a storm of images... images in sequence to tell the truth! Glorious legends of revolutionaries, bound only by a desire to be true to themselves, and to hope! Parables of colliding worlds, of forbidden love, of enemies healing the wounds of circumstance! Projected myth of persecution through greed and selfishness... and the will to survive! The Will to survive! And to survive in the face of those who claim credit for your very existence! We survive not as pawns, but as agents of hope. Sometimes misunderstood, but always true to our story. The story of Man."
- Scott Morse
Vangelis, "Alpha"
This song always suggested the image of our relentless, idealized, noble, glorious March of Mankind through the ages. Despite it all, despite ourselves, we survive and march onward towards our unknown destiny.
Still, some wonder about our true nature as a species, as the Apex Predator of this planet, as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle did when he asked,“What can we know? What are we all? Poor silly half-brained things peering out at the infinite, with the aspirations of angels and the instincts of beasts.”
Indeed, Angelic aspirations regardless, the historical record suggests a less benevolent but far more accurate and truthful view of the instincts of beasts within Humanity...
Steve Cutts, "MAN"
“What a chimera then is man, what a novelty, what a monster, what chaos, what a subject of contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, yet an imbecile earthworm; depository of truth, yet a sewer of uncertainty and error; pride and refuse of the universe. Who shall resolve this tangle?”
- Blaise Pascal
"Pride and refuse," indeed...
"The Truth They're Not Telling You About Gas, War, and The Economy"
Jeremiah Babe, 3/31/26
"The Truth They're Not Telling You
About Gas, War, and The Economy"
Comments here:
"Alas..."
“Alas, regardless of their doom, the little victims play!
No sense have they of ills to come, nor care beyond today.”
- Thomas Gray,
“Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College”
"Is The End Of The Road Nearly At Hand?"
"Is The End Of The Road Nearly At Hand?"
By John Wilder
"Pa Wilder was a banker, and when we communicated via a while back, I’d send him long-ish messages about most everything. One time, I broached the economy with him. As a small farm banker with more than 50 years of experience, he was familiar with the way the system worked.
When I first heard that the Federal Reserve™ wasn’t owned by the government, but by the member banks, I asked him. I figured he’d tell me, “Nah, John, it’s really owned by the government, aliens aren’t real, go back to sleep – we won the war.” Nope. He then went through how each member bank was required to buy stock in the regional Federal Reserve Banks (as I recall) with at least 6% of their deposits.
Whoa. His bank owned a tiny part of the Federal Reserve Bank®. Certainly not much, but part of it. The Federal Reserve Bank© is a private institution. It was the 1913 mechanism to get the politicians out of the economy. The Great Depression shows how well it worked.
After World War II, there was a time of relative stability – Europe and Japan were shattered, and the United States had industry that was just waiting to stop making weapons and start making washers. The sudden influx of labor with the demobilizing G.I.s made a combination for economic growth. After they drank the bars dry and made a zillion babies.
Even with the added costs of Social Security, it worked. The economy was working so well that we could build an interstate highway system without breaking a sweat. The highway system even added to the economic boom by lowering the cost and time required to move goods, effectively shrinking the country.
However, every good party has to end. Johnson’s Great Society and financing for the Vietnam War out of “money we just made up” caused Nixon to end the last tether between gold and the dollar. Sure, the Fed® had been cheating about the amount of cash it had been printing, but when the bluff was called, Nixon had the option of sending all our gold to France or saying “just kidding”.
He chose the latter. I think it was a good idea, because it wasn’t like France was going to do anything about it, anyway. The result was the petrodollar – the idea that all international transactions in oil would take place in dollars. That also resulted in almost all transactions taking place in the dollar. The inflation of the 1970s was the result – it was before we figured out how to tax the world by printing dollars in a sorta responsible way.
So, people all over the world needed dollars, even though we were printing them like we were, well, the Fed™. As long as the Soviet Union existed, there was a counterbalance to the United States, so at least there was some check. But after they went tango uniform? That’s when the responsibility completely ended, the cash was printed, and the instability really started.
The Dotcom Bubble was the first – fed by cash from the Fed® with no place to go. And then it tanked. So the Fed™ printed a few trillion bucks. That led directly to . . .
The Housing Bubble. You probably have heard of it. But this was different – it actually lead to protests against the banks. A reprogramming was necessary – “put the bankers in jail” had to be stopped, because bankers like to use our money to buy themselves nice things like that tiny part of France where they don’t let Muslims in. Except the Saudis.
A reprogramming was needed – Occupy Wall Street™ had to turn to...something. That reprogramming of the Lefty rank and file was into “white people are awful” and it got the heat away from the bankers. And made movies suck.
Meanwhile, the money hijinks led to country after country having revolutions, from Libya to Egypt to Syria. Why? Because inflation in the United States (at that point) meant that people had to pay a nickel more for Cheetos®. In Egypt, that meant that one of the children had to be sold into medical experimentation.
The key to all of this was keeping the dollar as the key currency used in international transactions. The Russians certainly threatened all of this with Nordstream® and Nordstream II©. These pipelines pushed natural gas straight from Russia to Europe. Now, Russia could take euros for gas. Dollar not required. And scary. All the investment of the Left in Green Energy® led them to shut down nuclear power plants (Germany, I’m looking at you) and replace them with natural gas plants. And you see the results. (hint: Ukraine, Iran and certain underwater explosions.)
Now we find that we have a currency that’s becoming worth less every day, foreign folks are building ways to not take the dollar. So they need fewer of them. And want fewer of them in their pockets. It doesn’t help that we’re in debt by (spins wheel) over $39 trillion bucks, the economy is distorted, and that Medicare® and Medicaid™ will soon cost more. And we’re going to double that in the next eight years, and double it again in the next eight. That’s $100 trillion dollars. Does anyone reading this believe we can last that long?
Pa Wilder said 20 years ago that he didn’t see how it could last. But many folks have gone broke by betting against the Fed™. That one day they can’t paper it all over? Nah. Don’t worry. It’ll be fine."
"15 Great Depression Foods We Will All Be Eating Again Soon"
Full screen recommended.
"15 Great Depression Foods
We Will All Be Eating Again Soon"
By Epic Economist
"The reality of millions drastically changed after the 1929 stock market crash. All of a sudden, affluent Americans lost everything, middle-class families became poor, and poor households fell into misery. For over a decade, our citizens struggled to make ends meet and many of them didn’t have enough to eat.
Parents would skip meals to feed their children as they were forced to survive on next to nothing. Bread lines extended for miles, and food insecurity became an epidemic. Fast forward to today, and we have what experts call the biggest stock market bubble in history just ready to burst. Even though we have learned a lot since the 1930s, our leaders continued to make the same mistakes. And now more than ever, it’s looking like history is about to repeat itself. The question is: when everything collapses will you be prepared?
According to a very detailed article published on Ask A Prepper by Katherine Paterson, for us to be truly ready for the challenges that are coming for us, we will all need to get creative with our meals. To understand how Americans survived the dark times of the Great Depression, we need to understand how to make our resources last. Back then, essentials including meat, eggs, and milk were in extremely short supply, and people often had to make a little go a long way, as explained by Paterson.
We are already seeing the same shortages happening today. And it’s just a matter of time before another financial disaster throws our economy into disarray. With a little bit of preparation, you won’t have to panic when staples start disappearing from store shelves if you know how to adapt. You don’t need many different ingredients, and you definitely don’t need expensive foods to cook delicious dishes.
Culinary is something very important for our culture. It was through such hearty meals that people had the drive to keep fighting to get out of such challenging situations. Food connects us and gives us a sense of purpose and identity. That’s why it is so crucial to make preparations for when the essentials we rely upon aren’t available anymore. The warning signs of an impending financial and economic meltdown are everywhere. And once it happens, vulnerable supply chains can be broken in a snap of fingers.
Our leaders may have made the same wrongful decisions that put us where our grandparents and great-grandparents were almost a century ago. But that doesn’t mean we can’t make more conscious choices this time around. So get ready now while we’re still experiencing the calm before the storm, because when start to spiral out of control, it may be too late. That’s why in today’s video, we listed some very popular meals that previous generations used to eat during that era because those recipes may soon become handy for all of us as well."
"The Debt Spiral That Ends in Dollar Destruction: 6 Hard Truths America Can No Longer Ignore"
"The Debt Spiral That Ends in Dollar Destruction:
6 Hard Truths America Can No Longer Ignore"
By Nick Giambruno
“Whenever governments are granted power to purchase their own debt, they never fail to do so, eventually destroying the value of the currency.” – Ron Paul
Let’s take a step back and look at the big picture so we can assess the US government’s financial situation, where it’s likely headed, and what these trends could mean.
Observation #1: It’s Politically Impossible To Cut Spending: Among the biggest expenditures for the US government are so-called entitlements like Social Security and Medicare. It’s unlikely any politician will cut entitlements. On the contrary, I expect them to continue growing. That’s because tens of millions of Baby Boomers - about 22% of the population - will enter retirement in the coming years. Cutting Social Security and Medicare is a sure way to lose an election.
The interest on the federal debt is already the second-largest federal expenditure. In a matter of months, it’s set to exceed Social Security and become the biggest expenditure.
With the most precarious geopolitical situation since World War 2, National Defense - another large expenditure - is unlikely to be cut. Instead, defense spending is all but certain to increase. President Trump has proposed increasing it from $917 billion to $1.5 trillion. The ongoing war with Iran guarantees military spending has nowhere to go but up, way up. The Pentagon has requested an additional $200 billion for starters for the Iran war.
Different types of healthcare and welfare programs also make up a considerable part of the federal budget and are unlikely to be cut. In short, efforts to reduce expenditures will be meaningless unless it becomes politically acceptable to make chainsaw-like cuts to entitlements, national defense, and welfare while reducing the national debt to lower the interest cost.
In other words, the US would need a leader who - at a minimum - returns the federal government to a limited Constitutional Republic, closes the 128 military bases abroad, ends entitlements, kills the welfare state, and repays a large portion of the national debt. However, that’s a completely unrealistic fantasy. It would be foolish to bet on that happening. Here’s the bottom line. The government cannot even slow the spending growth rate, let alone cut it. Expenditures have nowhere to go but up - way up.
Observation #2: Ever-Increasing Debt Is the Only Way To Finance Deficits: When faced with a choice, politicians always choose the most expedient option. In this case, that means issuing more debt rather than making tough budget decisions or explicitly defaulting. Consider the recurring debt ceiling farce in the US Congress, which has been raised over 100 times since 1944.
In any case, don’t count on increased tax revenue to offset these increases in federal expenditures. Even if tax rates went to 100%, it still wouldn’t be enough to stop the debt from growing.
According to Forbes, there are around 902 billionaires in the US with a combined net worth of about $6.8 trillion. The US federal government spent around $7 trillion in FY 2025, and will almost certainly spend a lot more in FY 2026 and beyond. Even if the US government confiscated 100% of billionaire assets through a wealth tax, it wouldn’t cover even a single year of current federal spending. And even after confiscating all billionaire wealth, the US government would still have to borrow more than $200 billion to cover FY 2025 spending.
Here’s the bottom line: increasing taxes, even to extreme levels, isn’t going to change the trajectory of this unstoppable trend - even slightly. The truth is, no matter what happens, the deficits will not stop growing, nor will the debt needed to finance them. The growth rate is not even going to slow down. It’s going to increase. That means interest expense on the federal debt will continue exploding higher.
Observation #3: Over Half of US Treasury Debt Matures by 2028: This year, nearly $10 trillion of US Treasuries will mature. And every bond that comes due has to be refinanced at today’s much higher rates - locking in substantially larger interest costs for years. What used to roll over quietly can now only be rolled over at roughly double the interest cost seen in 2022.
That’s what the chart below is really showing: the easy-money era is over. The “free money” party ended, and now the bill for the last round of stimulus has to be carried - and paid. More than half of America’s debt will mature by 2028. Every time US debt is refinanced at higher rates, it adds interest costs to the deficit—costs that have to be financed with even more debt issuance, compounding the problem.
It’s worth noting that about $6.6 trillion of the $9.6 trillion maturing this year - roughly 69% - are short-term T-bills. That’s typical in a debt crisis. As demand for long-term bonds weakens, investors gravitate to short-term instruments like T-bills instead of 10-year notes and 30-year bonds. It’s the same pattern you see in emerging-market crises. The market shortens maturities as conditions deteriorate. Only a fool would want to lend a bankrupt government money for the long term.
Observation #4: An Ever-Growing Interest Expense Fuels the Debt Spiral: Annualized interest on the federal debt exceeds $1.2 trillion and is surging higher. That means more than 23% of federal tax revenue is going just to service interest on the existing debt.
Ray Dalio is one of the world’s most successful hedge fund managers. His success is due to his consistent ability to get the Big Picture right. He recently said this: “We are at a point in which we are borrowing money to pay debt service. When you keep having debt growth faster than income growth, that means you have debt service encroaching on your spending, and you want to keep spending at the same time. As that happens, there is a need to get more and more into debt. It accelerates. We are at the point of that acceleration. We are near that inflection point.”
The financial position of the US government has been gradually deteriorating for decades, so it’s not surprising that many people are complacent. They’ve long heard about the debt problem, and nothing has happened. However, it is now reaching the tipping point. That’s because the US government is now borrowing money to pay the interest on the money it has already borrowed, as Dalio noted. Politicians are adding more debt to solve the problems of prior debt. It’s creating a self-perpetuating doom loop.
The federal debt’s interest cost is already higher than the defense budget. It’s on track to exceed Social Security in the coming months and become the biggest in the federal budget. In short, the skyrocketing interest expense has become an urgent threat to the US government’s solvency.
Observation #5: Surging Interest Expense Forces Fed To Ease Monetary Policy: The soaring interest expense threatens the solvency of the US government and forces the Fed to cut interest rates, buy Treasuries, and implement other monetary easing measures to try to control interest costs. In the bond market, when demand for a bond falls, the interest rate rises to entice buyers. However, the federal debt is so extreme that allowing interest rates to rise high enough to entice more natural buyers could bankrupt the US government because of the higher interest costs.
For context, when Paul Volcker raised interest rates above 17% in the early 1980s the US debt-to-GDP ratio was around 30%. Today, it’s north of 123% and rising rapidly. Today’s higher debt load and accompanying interest expense are why meaningfully higher interest rates are not on the table; the growing interest expense could lead to the US government’s bankruptcy. That’s a big reason President Trump has stacked the Fed with loyalists who will push for lower interest rates and pursue easy-money policies.
Further, the world isn’t hungry for more US debt right now. It’s an inopportune moment for lackluster demand because supply is exploding higher. If higher interest rates are off the table and cannot entice more natural buyers, and foreigners aren’t going to step up to the plate, who will finance these growing multi-trillion dollar budget deficits? The only entity capable is the Federal Reserve, which buys Treasuries with dollars it creates out of thin air.
Observation #6: Ever-Increasing Currency Debasement Is Inevitable: The skyrocketing interest expense forces the Fed to implement interest cost control policies, which inflate the money supply and debase the currency. As that happens, prices rise. That causes the US government to spend even more on Social Security and welfare to keep up with the cost-of-living increases. The same is true of defense and other government spending, which adjusts upward for rising prices.
Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates recently said, “Barely staying even with inflation or worse is wholly inadequate. Significant additional resources for defense are necessary and urgent.” This compounds the problem because, as government spending rises to account for rising prices, that increased spending can only be financed with more currency debasement. That’s why ever-increasing currency debasement is the inevitable outcome of the US government’s debt spiral. It’s a self-perpetuating doom loop from which they cannot escape.
In short, the only way the US government can continue to finance itself is for the Fed to create ever-increasing amounts of fake money. It brings to mind the phrase: “You can’t taper a Ponzi scheme.” Financial commentator Max Keiser originally said these simple yet profound words.
A Ponzi scheme is an unsustainable scam that relies on a continuous influx of new money to keep it going. The scheme collapses if the flow of new money slows down or tapers. Many believe the Federal Reserve is running what amounts to a giant Ponzi scheme. That’s because the US government’s obscene spending and skyrocketing debt have reached an inflection point. The whole system will collapse unless the Fed pumps an ever-increasing amount of new fake money into the system. It’s like being on a runaway train with no brakes.
Ludwig von Mises, the godfather of free-market Austrian economics, summed up the Fed’s dilemma: “There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.”
The US government will not voluntarily “abandon credit expansion,” as Mises puts it, because Washington is dependent on issuing increasing amounts of debt to pay for the ever-growing costs of Social Security, national defense, welfare, and interest on the federal debt. That means their only choice is to debase the US dollar by ever-increasing amounts until, as Mises puts it, the “final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.” It’s like a drug addict who needs to keep raising his dose to get the same effect… until he dies of an overdose."
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