Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 9/9/26
"Alert! US Runs Drills On Nuclear Site;
10 Tankers Hit! Yemen Collapse!"
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So, we rise from the rubble...
StatCounter
Wednesday, September 9, 2026
"Cotton Town"
Full screen recommended.
"Cotton Town: A Gentle Song About Home,
Memory, And Slowing Down"
"In a small town where time moves softly and golden light touches every stone, old Bram sits by his door, just as he always has. Here, grandmothers weave clouds from threads of gold and white, a quiet man sells silence for a moment of rest, and work feels like a slow, simple song. Cotton Town is a story about the place that makes us whole - and the home we long to return to through wind and rain. A quiet, dreamlike ballad about home, belonging, and the beauty of slow living. Original AI-assisted music and visuals. Turn up the volume, breathe out, and let Cotton Town hold you for a while."
"Why Stay?"
Full screen recommended.
Nathaniel MoonFall, "Why Stay?"
"Why Stay" is a soulful Delta Blues song about the moment you finally question why you kept holding on to something that had already changed. Sometimes the hardest thing isn’t leaving. It’s admitting you should have left a long time ago. A slow, raw and emotional blues song about regret, hesitation, loneliness, and finding the strength to finally walk away. If this song speaks to something you’ve lived through, leave a comment and tell me what line hit you the hardest."
"Why Time Is Going Faster Now and How to Slow It Down"
Full screen recommended.
Native American Elder,
"Why Time Is Going Faster Now
and How to Slow It Down"
"He Discovered That 'Brain Rot' is Real & Social Media Is Causing It"
Full screen recommended.
Redacted, 9/9/26
"He Discovered That 'Brain Rot' is Real &
Social Media Is Causing It"
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Musical Interlude: Runrig, "Running to the Light"
Full screen recommended.
Runrig, "Running to the Light"
"A Look to the Heavens"
"What created this unusual planetary nebula? NGC 7027 is one of the smallest, brightest, and most unusually shaped planetary nebulas known. Given its expansion rate, NGC 7027 first started expanding, as visible from Earth, about 600 years ago. For much of its history, the planetary nebula has been expelling shells, as seen in blue in the featured image. In modern times, though, for reasons unknown, it began ejecting gas and dust (seen in red) in specific directions that created a new pattern that seems to have four corners. These shells and patterns have been mapped in impressive detail by recent images from the Wide Field Camera 3 onboard the Hubble Space Telescope.
What lies at the nebula's center is unknown, with one hypothesis holding it to be a close binary star system where one star sheds gas onto an erratic disk orbiting the other star. NGC 7027, about 3,000 light years away, was first discovered in 1878 and can be seen with a standard backyard telescope toward the constellation of the Swan (Cygnus).”
Chet Raymo, “The Sea Grows Old In It”
“The Sea Grows Old In It”
by Chet Raymo
“The poet, like the electric [lightning] rod, must reach from a point nearer to the sky than all surrounding objects down to the earth, and down to the dark wet soil, or neither is of use. The poet must not only converse with pure thought, but he must demonstrate it almost to the senses. His words must be pictures, his verses must be spheres and cubes, to be seen, and smelled and handled.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Ah, Mr. Emerson. This seems about as good a description of poetry as one is likely to find. I love the image. Not a hand reaching up to grasp the hand of Zeus, the hurler of bolts, but merely a pointed rod that reaches higher than any surrounding objects. A pen-point, scratching the firmament. Not a conductor reaching down to the earth, but deeper, into the wet inkpot of the soul.
Not lofty thoughts, airy philosophies, gnostic arcana. Rather, ideas that come wrapped in the stuff of the senses. Ideas that must be unwrapped the way you’d peel an orange, or pry open an oyster, or stir up from the bottom of a bowl of soup. The electric fire of the heavens captured and stored in the Leyden jar of physical self.
Take, for example, Marianne Moore’s “The Fish”, a poem that has been endlessly analyzed without ever giving up its secrets. Anyone who stands on that rocky shore with the poet, looking into the wave-washed chasm - the sea as fluid as breath, as hard as a chisel- takes away a lesson as profound as any one might learn in school, perhaps without being able to articulate exactly what the lesson is. The experience is simply there, to be seen, smelled, handled, in the weave and wave of animal bodies, in the intricate rhyme and syllabication of the poem. Truth- crow-blue, ink-bespattered, hatcheted, defiant.
I’d go further. I’d say that Emerson’s description of poetry can be equally applied to science, or to any human attempt to attract the spark of Zeus. One must lift one’s rod beyond the scratch and tumble of the everyday, while keeping its foot buried in the dark wet soil of lived experience.”
•
“The Fish”
“Wade through black jade.
Of the crow-blue mussel-shells, one keeps
adjusting the ash-heaps;
opening and shutting itself like an injured fan.
The barnacles which encrust the side of the wave,
cannot hide there for the submerged shafts of the sun,
split like spun glass,
move themselves with spotlight swiftness into the crevices -
in and out, illuminating
The turquoise sea of bodies.
The water drives a wedge of iron through the iron edge of the cliff;
whereupon the stars, pink rice-grains, ink-
bespattered jelly fish, crabs like green lilies,
and submarine toadstools, slide each on the other.
All external marks of abuse are present on this defiant edifice -
all the physical features of accident -
lack of cornice, dynamite grooves, burns, and hatchet strokes,
these things stand out on it;
the chasm-side is dead.
Repeated evidence has proved that it can live
on what can not revive its youth.
The sea grows old in it."
- Marianne Moore
The Poet: Mary Oliver, "One"
"One"
"The mosquito is so small
it takes almost nothing to ruin it.
Each leaf, the same.
And the black ant, hurrying.
So many lives, so many fortunes!
Every morning, I walk softly and with forward glances
down to the ponds and through the pinewoods.
Mushrooms, even, have but a brief hour
before the slug creeps to the feast,
before the pine needles hustle down
under the bundles of harsh, beneficent rain.
How many, how many, how many
make up a world!
And then I think of that old idea: the singular
and the eternal.
One cup, in which everything is swirled
back to the color of the sea and sky.
Imagine it!
A shining cup, surely!
In the moment in which there is no wind
over your shoulder,
you stare down into it,
and there you are,
your own darling face, your own eyes.
And then the wind, not thinking of you, just passes by,
touching the ant, the mosquito, the leaf,
and you know what else!
How blue is the sea, how blue is the sky,
how blue and tiny and redeemable everything is, even you,
even your eyes, even your imagination."
~ Mary Oliver
"When I Am Old"
"When I Am Old"
Author Unknown
"When I am old… I will wear soft gray sweatshirts… and a bandana over my silver hair… and I will spend my social security checks on my dogs. I will sit in my house on my well-worn chair and listen to my dogs breathing. I will sneak out in the middle of a warm summer night and take my dogs for a run, if my old bones will allow… When people come to call, I will smile and nod as I show them my dogs… and talk of them and about them…the ones so beloved of the past and the ones so beloved of today… I will still work hard cleaning after them, mopping and feeding them and whispering their names in a soft loving way. I will wear the gleaming sweat on my throat, like a jewel, and I will be an embarrassment to all… especially my family… who have not yet found the peace in being free to have dogs as your best friends… These friends who always wait, at any hour, for your footfall… and eagerly jump to their feet out of a sound sleep, to greet you as if you are a God, with warm eyes full of adoring love and hope that you will always stay,
I’ll hug their big strong necks… I’ll kiss their dear sweet heads… and whisper in their very special company… I look in the mirror… and see I am getting old… this is the kind of person I am… and have always been. Loving dogs is easy, they are part of me. Please accept me for who I am. My dogs appreciate my presence in their lives… they love my presence in their lives… When I am old this will be important to me… you will understand when you are old, if you have dogs to love too."
Full screen recommended.
Alan Parsons Project, "Old And Wise"
"100 Laws of Life So You Don't Screw Your Life Up Like I Did"
Full screen recommended.
"100 Laws of Life So You Don't Screw Your Life Up Like I Did"
"Unearth 100 life-changing laws distilled from the mistakes of those who came before us. These are the lessons hard-earned through the school of knocks. These laws are your roadmap to avoiding missteps and leading a more meaningful life."
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o
And a few others...
“Never hate your enemies. It clouds your judgment.”
- "Michael Corleone"
"Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names."
- John F. Kennedy
"Has Our Luck Finally Run Out?"
"Has Our Luck Finally Run Out?"
by Charles Hugh-Smith
"Long-term cycles escape our notice because they play out over many years or even decades; few noticed the decreasing rainfall in the Mediterranean region in 150 A.D. but this gradual decline in rainfall slowly but surely reduced the grain harvests of the Roman Empire, which coupled with rising populations resulted in a reduced caloric intake for many people. This weakened their immune systems in subtle ways, leaving them more vulnerable to the Antonine Plague of 165 AD.
The decline of temperatures in Northern Europe in the early 1300s led to “years without summer” and failed grain harvests which reduced the caloric intake of most people, leaving them weakened and more vulnerable to the Black Plague which swept Europe in 1347.
I’ve mentioned the book "The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire" a number of times as a source for understanding the impact of natural cycles on human civilization. It’s important to note that the natural cycles and pandemics of 200 AD didn’t just cripple the Roman Empire; this same era saw the collapse of the mighty Parthian Empire of Persia, the kingdoms of India and the Han Dynasty in China.
In addition to natural cycles, there are human socio-economic cycles of debt and decay of civic values and the social contract: a proliferation of parasitic elites, a weakening of state finances and a decline in the purchasing power of wages/labor. The rising dependence on debt and its eventual collapse is a cycle noted by Kondratieff and others, and Peter Turchin listed these three dynamics as the key drivers of decisive discord of the kind that brings down empires and nations. All three are playing out globally in the present.
In this context, the election of Donald Trump in 2016 was a political expression of long-brewing discontent with precisely these issues: the rise of self-serving parasitic elites, the decay/corruption of the social contract and state finances and the decades-long decline in the purchasing power of wages/labor.
Which brings us to karma, a topic of some confusion in Western cultures more familiar with Divine Retribution than with actions having consequences even without Divine Intervention, which is the essence of karma. Broadly speaking, the U.S. squandered the opportunities presented by the end of the Cold War 30 years ago on hubristic Exceptionalism, wars of choice, parasitic elites and an unprecedented waste of resources on unproductive consumption.
Now the plan–for lack of any real plan–is to borrow trillions of dollars to fund an even more spectacular orgy of unproductive consumption, on the bizarre belief that “money” can be conjured out of thin air in essentially infinite quantities and squandered, and there will magically be no consequences of this trickery in the real world.
Actions have consequences, and after 30 years of waste, fraud and corruption being normalized by the parasitic elites while the purchasing power of labor decayed, the karmic consequences can no longer be delayed by doing more of what’s hollowed out the economy and society.
Which brings us to luck. As a general rule, historians seek explanations which leave luck out of the equation. This gives us a false confidence in the predictability and power of human will and action and cycles. Yes, cycles and human action influence outcomes, but we do a great disservice by shunting luck into the shadows as a non-factor.
If Emperor Pius had chosen someone other than Marcus Aurelius as his successor, someone weak, vain and self-absorbed like so many of Rome’s late-stage emperors, then Rome would have fallen by 170 AD as the Antonine Plague crippled finances and the army, and the invading hordes would have swept the empire into the dustbin of history. It can be argued that only Marcus Aurelius had the experience and character to sell off the Imperial treasure to raise the money needed to pay the soldiers and spend virtually his entire term in power in the front lines of battle, preserving Rome from complete collapse. That was good judgement by Pius but also good luck.
As we ponder luck, consider the estimate that had the meteorite that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago struck the Earth 30 minutes earlier or later, it would not have generated the Nuclear Winter that destroyed the dinosaurs. (A direct hit in deep water would have spawned a monstrous tsunami, but no dust cloud. A direct hit on land would have raised a dust cloud but without the water vapor/steam generated by the vaporization of millions of gallons of sea water, the cloud wouldn’t have risen high enough to encircle the planet.) That was bad luck for the dinosaurs, and good luck for the mammals who replaced them.
The global economy has been extraordinarily lucky for 75 years. Food and energy have been cheap and abundant. (If you think food and energy are expensive now, think about prices doubling or tripling, and then doubling again.)
In our complacency and hubris, we attribute this to our wonderful technologies, which we assume guarantee us permanent surpluses of energy and food. The idea that technology has reached hard limits or that it could fail doesn’t occur to us. We’ve taken good luck to be our birthright because it’s all we’ve known. We attribute this good fortune to things within our control–technology, wise investments and policies, etc. The possibility that all these powers that we consider so godlike are insignificant doesn’t occur to us because we’ve enjoyed the favorable winds of luck without even being aware of it.
We are woefully unprepared for a long run of bad luck. My sense is the cycles have turned and the good luck has drained from the hour-glass. Energy and food will no longer be cheap and abundant, our luck in leadership will vanish, and our vaunted technologies will fail to maintain an abundance so vast that we can squander the finite wealth of soil, water, resources and energy on mindless consumption.
I’m reminded of a line from an Albert King song, "Born Under a Bad Sign" (composed by Booker T. Jones and William Bell): “If it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have no luck at all.” The next few years might have us singing this line with feeling."
"Snyder Reports, 9/9/26"
Full screen recommended.
Snyder Reports, 9/9/26
"The Economic Storm Is Here, Why You Need To Prepare.
"83% Are Not Ready For What's Coming, Recession, Layoffs & Food Crisis"
"Why 83% of Americans won't survive the next recession and the warning signs flashing right now. From gas stuck at $4.22 until after the midterms to JP Morgan's food crisis warning, here's why so many households have less than 1 month of expenses saved and what a recession actually does to jobs, credit, and housing. In this video I break down President Trump's latest comments on oil hitting $100 a barrel and gas dropping below $2 only after the midterms, why $4.22 today matters for your wallet, the fertilizer backup-plan problem no one is solving, and the real layoff spiral one business owner just showed me (cutting 80 employees to 40-50). Plus, why 3-6 months of savings isn't enough anymore - experts now say 9-12 months. Are we in a recession? Is a recession inevitable in 2026? And what's giving Americans a false sense of security right now? Let's get into it."
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o
Full screen recommended.
Snyder Reports, 9/9/26
"3 Huge Changes Are Happening In America Right Now"
"3 massive changes are hitting America right now and millions are not prepared. From TSA ending a 25-year post-9/11 rule, to new bans and 50% tariffs on Canadian imports starting September 9th, to Brent crude topping $100 and gas averaging $4.22 - here's what's happening, how it impacts your wallet, and what to do next. In this video: ✓ TSA's new Gateside program - which 13 airports now let non-ticketed visitors past security and how to apply ✓ US bans on Canadian alcohol, dairy & motorcycles + 50% tariffs on cheese, furniture, steel & more ✓ Why oil over $100 means higher food, shipping, insurance & gas prices. Sound off: Should TSA open secure areas to non-ticketed visitors? Is banning Canadian products smart? How are $4.22 gas prices hitting you?"
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"This Is What's Coming To Every Store In America And It's Scary"
Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 9/9/26
"This Is What's Coming To
Every Store In America And It's Scary"
"Store closings are moving faster than the announcements. In this video, Americans film what is left after the doors shut - a mall down to a single open store, a GameStop chain vanishing from Long Island, a Starbucks marked permanently closed, a 70-year-old Chicago shop that did not make it to 71, a pharmacy pulling its shutters down, empty windows on Rodeo Drive, and three malls counting down their last weeks. What follows a closure is never in the press release. The anchor store goes, the center loses its traffic, the small shops that lived off that traffic go inside of two years, and the tax base goes with them. One closure in one town is a headline nobody outside it reads. This many is a structural change - and it is happening while the official numbers still say the consumer is fine. Both are true at once, because the spending is concentrating: moving online, moving to a handful of chains, and draining out of the places built for a country that shopped locally. Nobody is tracking how many corridors go dark in a single county, and nothing exists to put anything back."
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"America After 9/11: 25 Years of Fear, War, Surveillance and Permanent Emergency"
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"Spy TVs: 200 Million Smart TVs Serve As Eavesdropping And Listening Devices - Even When Switched Off"
"Spy TVs: 200 Million Smart TVs Serve As Eavesdropping
And Listening Devices - Even When Switched Off"
by Leo Hohmann
"Remember when the government used to have to plant an electronic bug inside the home or office of a suspected criminal, and they needed to get a search warrant providing solid evidence of criminal wrongdoing before they could plant such a device? Those days are long over, as most of us purchase the bug ourselves and set it up in our living rooms. Most, if not all, smart TVs, along with smartphones, smart appliances, etc., are daily collecting loads of data on every individual and family in America.
Cybernews reports in a September 8, 2026 article that LG Corp.’s smart TVs can listen in on voice commands, gather data that reveals your location, and scan your home for other connected devices, according to a major new investigation into the company’s webOS platform. LG Electronics, maker of the smart TVs, is owned by the South Korean conglomerate LG Corp., which after Samsung is the world’s second-largest maker of internet-connected smart televisions.
Researchers working with independent technology outlet Gamers Nexus captured LG televisions scanning local networks and identifying phones, smartwatches, printers, air-conditioning units, and many other everyday consumer devices and appliances that had never been connected to the TV. These devices all have one thing in common, however. They are all connected to the internet and are part of the “internet of things.”
I’m pretty sure that if a similar test was run on other brands of smart TVs, the results would be similar, but this article focuses exclusively on LG as that was the company that was placed under a microscope by the independent researchers in their recent study.
Their investigation found that LG’s televisions use an advertising technology called Automatic Content Recognition, or ACR, to identify what was being watched across different inputs, while voice interactions could be converted into plain text and stored in logs on the television. In other words, the TV’s speakers hear what you’re saying and the software is trained, probably using AI, to make a note of it and feed this information into algorithms. In one test, researchers said voice data continued to be stored even after the TV was disconnected from the internet.
Smart TVs are not only ubiquitous in homes, but in hotel rooms, hospitals and corporate offices, “potentially placing them alongside sensitive conversations and devices,” Cybernews reports. Gamers Nexus worked with cybersecurity researchers MrBruh and unturn, alongside Wendell Wilson of Level1Techs, to investigate LG TVs and the company’s webOS software. The results are presented in a video (below) posted to YouTube:
Full screen recommended.
Below is an excerpt from the Cybernews recap of the test run on LG smart TVs: In one test, an LG TV identified 38 other devices, including smartphones belonging to staff who were unaware of the investigation, smartwatches, a 3D printer, an air purifier, thermostats, and a dev board. According to Gamers Nexus, testing showed LG TVs were capable of collecting and identifying:
ͦ IP addresses and geolocation data.
ͦ Internal IP addresses belong to other devices on the network.
ͦ Names, signal strengths, and channels of neighboring WiFi networks.
ͦ Phones, smartwatches, and other connected hardware.
ͦ Content displayed on the TV using ACR.
ͦ Audio fingerprints of content played through the television.
ͦ Voice commands converted into plain text and stored in on-device logs.
ͦ Privacy and consent settings stored by the TV (and whether users had opted in or out).
Information about surrounding WiFi networks can potentially be used to help determine a device’s physical location, Wilson noted. Gamers Nexus said much of the network discovery and data collection it observed was built into LG’s TVs rather than the result of a security vulnerability. The investigation also reported that its test television was sending around 4GB of ACR-related data back to LG each month. I wonder how much of that data is sold to the govenment, or just handed over upon request? George Orwell’s "1984" is no longer a fictional account of a dystopian future. It’s here, and has been for quite a few years, but with AI we are rapidly moving beyond Orwell’s vision."
Bill Bonner, "Battleships and Camshafts"
US Commodore Matthew Perry is greeted by Japanese officials in Yokohama.
"Battleships and Camshafts"
by Bill Bonner
‘I believed Free Trade would have the tendency to unite mankind in the bonds of peace, and it was that, more than any pecuniary consideration, which sustained and actuated me, as my friends know, in that struggle.’ - Richard Cobden
Poitou, France - "Yesterday, we reported on the move to remake the map of the world. The UN approved a more ‘realistic’ map...in which the large countries of the northern hemisphere were no longer made to appear larger than they actually were. The US voted against it. And then, POTUS, roused to cartographic fever, awakened his inner Mercator...or perhaps his inner Teddy Roosevelt. He draped the US flag over all of North America...including Caribbean islands.
Which is it? Is the US empire swelling, as Trump suggests? Or, is it being downsized and deflated? All we know is that bubbles always deflate; Bubble Empires, like a bloated steer, deflate in a particularly noisy and disagreeable way. We also mentioned yesterday that the US had lost the top credit rating, which it has had since 1919.
Here are couple more news ‘dots’ that need to be connected. Modern Diplomacy: "Norway’s $2.3 Trillion Fund Is Cutting Treasuries. Here’s Who’s Left Holding Washington’s Debt." The $2.3 trillion Government Pension Fund Global - the largest single pool of investment capital on Earth - asked its own finance ministry for permission to do something it has never done at this scale: shrink its government-bond weighting. The September 1 letter proposes cutting government bonds from 70% to 50% of the fund’s fixed-income benchmark, trimming roughly $80 billion from US Treasuries alone. It landed the same week fresh jobs data pushed the 10-year Treasury yield toward 4.8%, and as Beijing’s and Tokyo’s own Treasury stacks sit near multi-year lows.
The Financial Times: "Dutch Central bank moves gold bars out of New York over “geopolitical unrest.” DNB prefers London over the American city. The Dutch are not given to hysteria. When they take their gold out of your vaults you might want to consider moving your own money, too.
But money - and the goods and services it buys - are on the move all the time. Cutting yourself off from the world is cutting yourself off from money...and progress. Then, the people who did not cut themselves off kick your butt. Cobden was wrong. Trade is not necessarily the way to peace; but it is the only way to protect yourself from war.
But POTUS seems to have come to a different conclusion: "We could do tremendous good for ourselves by just not trading with countries." If that were so, there is no evidence for it in the historical record. Countries that cut themselves off fall behind. Eventually, they are pried open by someone with better artillery.
That is what happened to Japan. The country had been isolated - by choice - for 220 years. Then, in 1853, Commodore Perry landed a group of just 250 marines, backed by the latest ship-borne artillery. The local authorities realized it was impossible to resist. They came to an important insight: close your doors and you will fall behind.
Commodore Perry’s diplomatic gifts included a model train and the latest rifles and handguns. In a few years, there were railways all over Japan. And then, Japan was soon on the map...and growing larger - economically and militarily. A few decades later, Japan had the most lethal armies in Asia.
By the 1930s, it had captured much of the Chinese mainland. In 1940, it attacked French Indo-China. Then, in 1941, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor...followed in 1945 by America’s devastating firebombing of Tokyo...and the first and, so far, only use of atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And by 1989, the Honda Accord was the best-selling car in America.
It is only by trade, interaction, and competition that a nation is able to keep up with its rivals...and improve its own citizens’ standards of living. Richard Cobden’s free-trading Great Britain proved it. Japan proved it twice, once with battleships...and later with camshafts. More to come..."
Dan, I Allegedly, "Your Bank Account Just Went To Zero"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 9/9/26
"Your Bank Account Just Went To Zero"
"Thousands of bank customers woke up over Labor Day weekend to discover something terrifying: their bank accounts appeared to have a zero balance. BMO completed the sale of 138 branches to First Citizens, and customers in multiple states reported problems accessing their money, debit cards, online banking and everyday transactions during the transition. This happened at the beginning of the month, when rent, bills, automatic payments and other financial obligations were coming due. This is not a bank failure, but it raises serious questions about banking, branch sales, mergers, digital banking and what happens when control of your account suddenly changes. We look at BMO, First Citizens, the 138-branch transaction, customer access problems, bank runs, financial instability, business news and why having multiple financial institutions and a backup plan may be more important than ever. This is a warning about how quickly access to your money can change when banking becomes entirely digital."
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"The First 50 Foods You Should Stockpile For Disaster - Before the 2027–2028 Food Crisis Begins, When the Shelves Go Empty and It’s Already Too Late"
"The First 50 Foods You Should Stockpile For Disaster -
Before the 2027–2028 Food Crisis Begins,
When the Shelves Go Empty and It’s Already Too Late"
by John Walter
Excerpt: "Editor’s Note: "I have spent years listening to people who know things the general population prefers not to hear. I have sat in rooms with agricultural economists who whisper about phosphorus depletion curves, spoken with truck drivers who describe the increasing difficulty of sourcing diesel parts, with warehouse managers who watch real-time inventory dashboards flicker from green to red. The panic is there, beneath the surface, in the questions people ask when they think no one is listening.
This manuscript is not the product of professional expertise in nutrition or logistics. It is the synthesis of countless conversations with the worried, the observant, the quietly preparing. I have no credentials to wave, no institutional authority to invoke. I have only the accumulated testimony of those who have watched the machinery falter and who understand that the abundance we assume permanent is, in fact, conditional.
What follows is a catalog of resistance. Not political resistance, but biological resistance - the refusal to let one’s family become malnourished because systems failed to deliver. The fifty items listed here are not theoretical recommendations. They are the specific foods that keep reappearing in the calculations of those who have done the mathematics of scarcity. Acquire them, store them, learn to use them now, while the window remains open.
The Winter That Does Not End: By the winter of 2027-2028, the convergence of pressures we have collectively ignored will reach a threshold that cannot be smoothed away by press releases or temporary adjustments. I do not speak in metaphors of apocalypse. I speak of diesel shortages already constraining agricultural machinery across the grain belts, of phosphate reserves depleting to the point where fertilizer production must ration, of aquifers that have sustained American agriculture for generations finally reaching extraction limits that physics will not forgive. These are not distant problems. They are present realities that have not yet translated into empty shelves at your local market.
The prediction I offer is specific and grounded. Within thirty months, the just-in-time inventory system that places food on shelves approximately twelve hours before you purchase it will experience cascading failures that last not days but weeks. You will not receive clear warning. Official channels will speak of “temporary supply adjustments” and “regional distribution challenges” even as the scope widens and the duration extends. By the time the general population recognizes that this is not a temporary disruption but a structural transition, the opportunity to prepare will have closed.
Consider what it means to live in a society where the average family maintains less than three days of food in their home. Consider that this is not historical necessity but recent aberration - a condition that has existed for only fifty years of human history, enabled entirely by cheap petroleum and functional electrical grids. Consider that both of these conditions are now subject to increasing volatility. The shelves you see stocked today represent not abundance but velocity, the rapid movement of goods through a system with no margin for error. When that velocity slows, the shelves empty. When the shelves empty in a culture that has forgotten how to store, the result is not inconvenience but crisis.
You feel it already, perhaps without naming it. The way prices climb while quality degrades. The increasing frequency of “out of stock” notices for items you once assumed permanent. The subtle wrongness in the air that your grandparents would have recognized immediately but which you have been trained to dismiss as temporary glitch. That feeling is your inheritance speaking - the survival instincts of ten thousand generations who knew that winter always came, that harvests failed, that preparation separated the living from the dead.
The question before you is not whether you will face hardship, but whether you will face it with resources or with empty hands. The fifty items that follow are your margin. They are the difference between anxiety and capability, between dependence and autonomy, between watching your children hungry and feeding them from stores you laid down in foresight. They are not excessive. They are not paranoid. They are the minimum prudence that every generation before ours would have considered obvious." "The Fifty: What You Must Store Before the Darkness Falls."
Full, most highly recommended article is here:
"Goldman Sachs Warns Oil Could Soon Rise Above $120 A Barrel And The Price Of Diesel Just Set Another Record As World War 3 Continues To Escalate"
by Michael Snyder
"The global energy supply crunch is only going to get worse as long as the conflicts in the Middle East and Eastern Europe are raging. A lot less oil is getting through the Strait of Hormuz than normal, and diesel production in Russia has been significantly diminished by relentless Ukrainian drone strikes. As a result, we have a facing an unprecedented energy squeeze. The average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States has never been this high so late in the calendar year, and the average price of a gallon of diesel in the United States just set yet another all-time record.
At this stage, nobody can deny that a global energy crisis is here. In fact, Goldman Sachs just warned that the price of oil could soon jump above $120 a barrel… Goldman Sachs is warning that heightened attacks in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea could push global oil prices above $120 a barrel, which would add to the surging fuel costs Americans have faced during the Iran war. The investment bank’s forecast implies a roughly 20% increase in the cost of Brent crude, the international benchmark, which is trading at nearly $100 a barrel.
For months, there have been extraordinary efforts to keep the price of oil below the psychologically important $100 a barrel mark. But authorities will not be able to hold that line for much longer. Already, U.S. consumers have spent an extra $100 billion on fuel since fighting with Iran erupted in February…American consumers spent an additional $100 billion on fuel between the start of the Iran war on Feb. 28 and Sept. 8, according to a tracker from Brown University. Higher gasoline prices accounted for about $55 billion of that amount, while diesel accounted for the remaining $45 billion.
Unfortunately, fuel prices just continue to rise. On Labor Day, the average price of a gallon of diesel in the United States reached another brand new record high…Diesel, which is widely used in the trucking, construction, agriculture and rail sectors, reached a record $5.90 a gallon on Labor Day, AAA data shows. It is over six dollars a gallon where I live. In some parts of California, it is now over eight dollars a gallon. And industry executives are telling us that global supplies of diesel will continue to be very tight for the foreseeable future…
Global diesel supply will remain tight due to a lack of spare refining capacity, Russia’s ban on exports and the approach of peak winter demand, senior industry executives said on Tuesday. The wars in Ukraine and Iran have impacted refineries in Russia and the Middle East, pushing diesel margins to record levels in Europe and the U.S., while reducing crude supplies to Asia. “There’s really a shortage of products because we’re missing 2 million barrels a day from Russia, and we’re missing nearly 2 million barrels a day from the Middle East,” Vitol CEO Russell Hardy told the APPEC conference on Tuesday.
If things are this bad now, what will they look like a few months from now if World War 3 continues to intensify? On Tuesday, oil spiked after the Houthis launched a barrage of missiles and drones at Saudi Arabia…Oil prices rose Tuesday after Iran-allied militants in Yemen attacked several energy facilities in Saudi Arabia, forcing a temporary halt to some operations. Brent crude futures rose 1% to $97.99 a barrel by 11:28 a.m. E.T. The international benchmark hit a session high of $99.46 earlier. U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures advanced 1.55% to $92.90 per barrel. Oil prices are up more than 8% in September as the U.S. and Iran have traded military strikes for the first time since July.
We are only a little over a week into this month, and the price of oil is already up about 8 percent. That is not a good sign at all. The Houthis know how to hit Saudi Arabia where it hurts. Multiple Aramco facilities were targeted, and it is being reported that fires caused “temporary shutdowns” at several of them…Houthi militants targeted civilian and economic assets in the cities of Abha, Khamis Mushait, Jazan and Najran, the Saudi Foreign Ministry said. More than 70 civilians were injured in the attacks, it said.
The attacks caused fires at several energy facilities resulting in temporary shutdowns, the kingdom’s Energy Ministry said in a statement. Emergency services are working to contain fires at the sites and assess the extent of damage, the world’s largest oil exporter added. Riyadh did not disclose what type of energy facilities were struck. Houthi state media said the group attacked Saudi Aramco facilities in southern areas with drones and ballistic missiles.
In addition to launching missiles and drones at the Saudis, the Houthis have also begun a major ground offensive in the direction of the Bab al-Mandab Strait… The Houthis launched a broad offensive along frontlines on the western Red Sea coast in a bid to advance towards the Bab al-Mandab Strait, experts say. The waterway forms the southern entrance to the Red Sea, a shipping artery that has become vital for Saudi oil exports during Tehran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz since the start of the U.S.-Iran war.
Meanwhile, the recent fighting between the U.S. and Iran threatens to greatly escalate. Over the weekend, the U.S. severely damaged three Iranian oil tankers…The United States struck three Iranian oil tankers on Saturday, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) has confirmed, which it said were involved in covert oil shipment near the critical Kharg Island terminal.
Only one of the vessels was near Kharg Island. In addition to one vessel “permanently disabled” off the coast of Kharg, Centcom said it had “completely destroyed” another oil carrier near the port city of Jask, while rendering another “inoperable” in the Gulf of Oman “after the crew was directed to abandon ship.”
Exports of Iranian oil have essentially dropped to zero, and the Iranian economy is being strangled by the U.S. naval blockade. Authorities in Iran are deeply frustrated, and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian is pledging that the U.S. will soon be “brought to complete regret”…Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian vowed continued resistance against the U.S. on Tuesday, writing on X that the U.S. will “regret” the war.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran has always opposed war and has considered the preservation of the people’s interests and regional security to lie in refraining from igniting conflict,” Pezeshkian wrote. However, just as it has boldly risen to defend against aggression up to this day, it will continue this resistance with full strength until the aggressors are brought to complete regret and will remain the guardian of the rights of the great Iranian nation,” he added.
Many wrongly consider such threats to be quite empty. But the Iranians do appear to have freshly upgraded ballistic missiles, and they are threatening to use them to conduct preemptive strikes…Iran has issued a fresh threat to the US over its newly upgraded ballistic missile, with officials warning that the nation “will take action against any threat, even before it is carried out.” The report by Iran’s state news agency on Monday highlighted comments broadcast on state television the previous day by the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Mohsen Rezaei.
He praised the country’s expanded arsenal and claimed a new missile had been “tested” against a US warship. However, it was unconfirmed whether the test involved the solid-fueled Qassem Basir featured in the new report. There is speculation that Iran’s freshly upgraded ballistic missiles could potentially be a serious threat to our warships. Needless to say, the sinking of even a single U.S. warship would change everything.
But President Trump continues to be optimistic. On Monday, he assured us that the price of oil will quickly fall below two dollars a gallon “when we WIN the war with Iran”…President Trump on Monday said oil prices “will drop precipitously” after the Iran war is won, as Iran seeks to maintain its control of the Strait of Hormuz with a “restricted zone.” “Oil prices will drop precipitously, like everything else is dropping (but more!), when we WIN the war with Iran,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Three Dollars a gallon, but ultimately, below Two Dollars a gallon. It will all happen quickly, and Iran will never have a Nuclear Weapon.”
In Ukraine, the Russians have resumed hitting Ukrainian cities with a vengeance…At least five people were killed in Kyiv after Russia launched what Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called a “complex” attack on the city, with Moscow resuming long-range strikes on the Ukrainian capital following a three-day pause to allow the visit of a U.S. peace talks delegation. Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 166 drones, 32 cruise missiles and an unspecified number of anti-ship and ballistic missiles into the country overnight. The air force said its forces downed 142 drones, 31 cruise missiles and two ballistic missiles.
The Russians are hoping that greatly escalating the intensity of strikes will convince the Ukrainians to stop hitting their refineries. It isn’t going to work. Both sides are just going to continue to pummel one another, and that isn’t going to be good news for any of us.
In addition to repeatedly targeting Kyiv, the Russians also hit the city of Odessa really hard…Kyiv and the southern port city of Odessa were the main targets, the air force reported. Missiles and drones impacted across 29 locations, it added in a post to Telegram. Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a post to Telegram that the “massive strike” targeted defense industrial facilities and military transport and logistical hubs, plus port facilities in Odesa. The ministry also posted a graphic showing what appeared to be cruise missiles, with the caption, “Targeting day and night.”
Unless the war between Russia and Ukraine ends, the diesel supply crunch will continue to escalate. And as long as traffic through the Strait of Hormuz is only a fraction of what it was before the war with Iran, there will be upward pressure on the price of oil. The higher energy prices go, the worse things will get for the entire global economy. The clouds on the horizon are getting really dark, and at this point everyone can see that a major storm is rapidly approaching."
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