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So, we rise from the rubble...
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Tuesday, October 13, 2026
"Vulcan Guiding Principles"
"Vulcan Guiding Principles"
by Moon
"Ideally, do no harm. Harm speeds up the heat-death of the Universe, and indirectly, your own. More practically, do as little harm as possible. We are creations of a Universe in which entropy exists, and therefore see no way of escape, but we do not need to help it."
"Harm no one’s internal, invisible integrities. Leave others the privacies of their minds and lives. Intimacy remains precious only insofar as it is inviolate: invading it turns it to torment. Reach out to others courteously: accept their reaching in the same way, with careful hands."
"Do not murder. The spear in the other’s heart is the spear in your own; you are he. All action has reaction: what force you inflict, inevitably returns. The murder of the other is the murder of your own joy, forever."
"As far as possible, do not kill. Can you give life again to what you kill? Then be slow to take life. Take only life that will not notice you taking it. To notice one’s own death increases entropy. To die and not notice it increases it less, but still does so."
"Cast out fear. Cast out hate and rage. Cast out greed and envy. Cast out all emotion that speeds entropy, whether it be love or hate. Cast out these emotions by using reason to accept them, and then move past them. Use in moderation emotions that do not speed entropy, taking all care that they do not cause others pain, for that speeds entropy as well. Master your passions, so that they become a power for the slowing of the heat-death."
"Do no harm to those that harm you. Offer them peace, and offer them peace again, and do it until you die. In this manner you will have peace, one way or another, even if they kill you. And you cannot give others what you have not experienced yourself."
"Learn reason above all. Learn clear thought: learn to know what is from what seems to be. This is the key to everything: the truth of reality, the reality of truth. What is will set you free.”
Surak’s concept of cthia, the guiding principle of Vulcan society,
as written by Diane Duane in her novel, “Star Trek: Spock’s World.”
- http://www.moonhillproductions.com/
"In Ordinary Times..."
"In ordinary times we get along surprisingly well, on the whole, without ever discovering what our faith really is. If, now and again, this remote and academic problem is so unmannerly as to thrust its way into our minds, there are plenty of things we can do to drive the intruder away. We can get the car out or go to a party or to the cinema or read a detective story or have a row with a district council or write a letter to the papers about the habits of the nightjar or Shakespeare's use of nautical metaphor. Thus we build up a defense mechanism against self-questioning because, to tell the truth, we are very much afraid of ourselves."
- Dorothy L. Sayers
"The Disturbing Advancement of AI ‘Mind-Reading’ Technology"
"The Disturbing Advancement
of AI ‘Mind-Reading’ Technology"
by Leo Hohmann
"Scientists at an Israeli research lab targeted last year by an Iranian ballistic missile attack announced last week they’d created an AI-powered “mind-reading” technology that can recreate images people are looking at by analyzing their brain scans. As part of a study at the Weizmann Institute of Science, the Israeli scientists asked participants to look at photos ranging from images of a baseball game to a dog leaning out of a car and a group hiking across a snowy tundra. Within minutes, the AI program scanned and analyzed their brain-activity patterns and accurately reproduced the pictures – which it had never seen before.
According to France 24, “The Institute is ranked among the best in the world (outside the United States). It also has strong links to the Israeli defense industry.” Professor Michal Irani, from the Weizmann Institute, was quoted in the Daily Mail saying: “There exist nowadays models that translate brain activity into images, and they can even produce impressive reconstructions that preserve the semantic meaning of the image reasonably well. However, they tend to make mistakes in basic features such as composition and color. The new model we developed outperforms them in reconstructing both the content of the image and its details. What’s more, while every other model requires dozens of hours of brain scans to learn to ‘read’ a new person, our model needs only one hour.”
In one hour, this technology can size up your brain patterns and reconstruct your thoughts. The Daily Mail, Slay News and several other conservative news outlets reported on this new development last week. What none of them reported is that the Weizmann Institute is an Israeli research organization heavily involved with the Israeli military. It doesn’t take too much of an imagination to realize how this technology could be used by malevolent governments. It could be used in their quest to have a functioning department of pre-crime in which people could be investigated and even arrested based on their thoughts. It would also come in handy for militaries when interrogating captured POWs.
Weizmann Institute of Science is a postgraduate university and research institute in Rehovot, just south of Tel Aviv. Its Nancy and Stephen Grant Israel Center specializes in genomics, DNA profiling, bioinformatics, preclinical studies and drug discovery. Bioinformatics is defined by American Heritage as “The use of computer science, mathematics, and information theory to organize and analyze complex biological data, especially genetic data.” This is the type of research sought by militaries looking for new and creative ways to kill or harm people. Biowarfare is seen by many military experts and the next frontier in weapons of mass destruction.
The Weizmann research facilities were targeted by Iran with a ballistic missile strike during Israel’s 12-Day War with Iran in June 2025. The Iranian attack on the night of June 14 was said to be in retaliation for Israel’s assassination of 30 top nuclear scientists in Iran approximately 24 hours prior. Iran’s strikes on the research facilities of the Weizmann Institute were heavily censored by the Israeli government, reported France 24.
But according to Wikipedia, citing multiple sources in Israel, the missile strikes resulted in 90% of the Weizmann Institute’s buildings sustaining damage and approximately 25% of its operations being suspended. The attack caused an estimated $600 million in damages but resulted in no human casualties.
WIO News, a New Delhi, India-based news outlet, reported in an article on June 20, 2025 as follows: "Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, near the site where an Iranian missile struck earlier this week. Amid heightened tensions in West Asia, Iran targeted the Weizmann Institute of Science, damaging crucial research facilities. This came after an Israeli strike killed as many as nine nuclear scientists, with Israel Defense Forces (IDF) calling it a “significant blow to the regime’s ability to acquire weapons of mass destruction.” While no one was killed in the strike on the Weizmann Institute of Science, it caused heavy damage to multiple labs on campus, snuffing out years of scientific research and sending a chilling message to Israeli scientists that they and their expertise are now targets in the escalating conflict with Iran.
“This is the world-renowned Weizmann Institute, where the most advanced research in human biology is conducted - medical research, genetic research,” Netanyahu said during his visit. “This research was shattered by a missile from the evil regime. They seek to destroy human progress. That is the essence of this regime.”
Why was the Weizmann Institute targeted by Iranians? Well, as it turns out, some of this so-called human progress was being militarized. While it is a multi-disciplinary research institute, Weizmann, like other Israeli universities, has ties to Israel’s defense establishment, including collaborations with industry leaders like Elbit Systems, which is why it may have been targeted. “It’s a moral victory” for Iran, said Oren Schuldiner, a professor in the department of molecular cell biology and the department of molecular neuroscience whose lab was obliterated in the strike. “They managed to harm the crown jewel of science in Israel.”
Dr. Yoel Guzansky, senior analyst at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, told the Associated Press that Weizmann Institute symbolizes Israeli scientific achievement. “Iran is saying: You killed our scientists, now we’re coming for yours.”
Unfortunately, the Iranian attacks did not seem to slow down the Weizmann Institute’s dangerous research to invade human minds and read their thoughts, a technology that, if captured and weaponized by governments, could result in dystopian outcomes that make Orwell’s "1984" look like child’s play."
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"CVS Pharmacies Are Leaving Sick Americans Without Their Medicine"
Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 10/13/26
"CVS Pharmacies Are Leaving Sick
Americans Without Their Medicine"
"CVS pharmacies are falling behind on the one job people count on them for: getting sick Americans their medicine on time. In this video, CVS customers and pharmacy workers show it from their side: a twenty-person line at the pharmacy counter, a prescription nobody called about, a card stuck in a machine for a week, an insurance billing ordeal, a prior authorization that never cleared, Caremark mail-order prescription mix-ups, and a pharmacist describing what chronic understaffing does to the people waiting in line. We look at why the pharmacy counter keeps breaking down, what it costs patients who need their refills on time, and how to keep a household's medicine supply from hanging on a single pharmacy counter."
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"Compare “Mad” King Ludwig II of Bavaria to Today’s Psycho Leaders"
"Compare “Mad” King Ludwig II of Bavaria
to Today’s Psycho Leaders"
by John Leake
King Ludwig II of Bavaria was declared mad because he built “fairy tale” castles. His Neuschwanstein cost (inflation adjusted) 57 million Euros, and now brings in 100 million Euros per annum. Right after I posted my interview with Dr. Joseph Sansone “Are Many Western Elites Sadistic Psychopaths?” I thought of the irony that King Ludwig II of Germany was declared mentally incompetent and deposed on June 10, 1886 and found dead in Lake Starnberg - along with the psychiatrist who evaluated him (Dr. Bernhard von Gudden) - three days later.
People thought that Ludwig was nuts because of his fondness for building “fairy tale” castles like Neuschwannstein.
Compare Neuschwannstein - which cost (inflation-adusted) the equivalent of 58 million Euros and now brings in about 100 million per year in revenue - to the trillions that governments across the West spend on nonsensical crap, corrupt deals, and weapons. When was the last time a major leader in Europe proposed building something beautiful that would would inspire awe and admiration in visitors from all over the world?
Upon meeting the 18-year-old king, Richard Wagner perceived that his romantic character to be so at odds with the harsh reality of the world that he wouldn’t last long. "Today I was brought to him. He is sadly so beautiful and wise, soulful and lordly, that I fear his life must fade away like a divine dream in this base world… You cannot imagine the magic of his countenance: if he remains alive it will be a great miracle."
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Full screen recommended.
Don McLean, "Vincent"
"This world was never meant for one as beautiful as you..."
"Yes, Donald Trump Really Did Just Say That “An Economic Depression Much Like 1929” Could Be Coming"
by Michael Snyder
"A lot of people may not like what Donald Trump just said about the economy, but it is accurate. As you will see below, he recently warned that we could soon be facing “an economic depression much like 1929”, and without a doubt the stage has been set for a downturn of that magnitude. Right now, we are in the midst of a global bond crisis, the housing market is paralyzed by high mortgage rates, stores and restaurants are closing all over the nation, there have been mass layoffs in the tech industry, demand at food banks is soaring, and we are experiencing a seemingly endless cost of living crisis that stretches back all the way back to the beginning of this decade.
So I very much agree that we are potentially facing a full-blown economic depression. Earlier this month, Trump caused quite a shock when he publicly stated that the U.S. “will have an economic depression much like 1929” if the Democrats win the midterms… Trump made the warning while promoting his pledge to give every adult American $5,000 if Republicans retain control of the House and Senate. “If the Democrats win, you will have an economic depression much like 1929,” Trump said in a video posted to Truth Social on Saturday. He also argued that Republican control would allow the administration to return money to Americans, citing record tariff revenue and economic gains. Trump has estimated the proposed “Trump dividend” would cost about $1 trillion.
Of course Trump is convinced that an economic depression can be avoided if Republicans win the midterms. At the moment, pollsters are telling us that such an outcome is very unlikely. The latest surveys indicate that Democrats are almost certainly going to take the House, and there is a good chance that they will also take the Senate. Needless to say, the pollsters have been wrong before, and they could be wrong again. So we will just have to wait and see what happens.
But without a doubt, our economy is teetering on the brink of disaster. Today, we learned that pending home sales in the U.S. just hit their lowest level in more than 12 years…U.S. pending home sales are down to their lowest level since spring 2014–with the exception of April 2020, when the onset of the pandemic ground the housing market to a halt. Pending home sales declined 4% from a month earlier in September on a seasonally adjusted basis–the biggest monthly drop in more than three years. This is a real-time indicator of what’s happening in the housing market; fewer homes went under contract in September largely because mortgage rates rose steadily, surpassing 7% by the end of the month.
The bond crisis has driven mortgage rates to absurd heights, and this is absolutely crushing the housing market. The areas that are being hit the hardest were once some of the hottest during the boom years… The declines were biggest on the West Coast: Seattle posted the biggest drop (-24.4% year over year), followed by Los Angeles (-16%), San Diego (-15.8%) and Anaheim, CA (-15.5%). Those Southern California metros are among the priciest in the U.S., so rising mortgage rates hit them hard, pricing many on-the-fence buyers out. Seattle is also expensive, and a bumpy local job market is curbing demand.
It appears to be inevitable that home prices will fall substantially. In fact, this has already started to happen in some parts of the country. That may sound like good news, but the last time this happened our economy plunged into “the Great Recession”. What will happen this time around?
Right now, U.S. households are struggling to keep up with their debts at a level that we haven’t seen since 2010… The ability of U.S. families to stay current on their debts worsened over the past three years, hitting levels not seen since the aftermath of the global financial crisis, the Federal Reserve reported Friday.
In the central bank’s Survey of Consumer Finances, researchers found that while wealth disparities narrowed somewhat, the ability to meet debt payments deteriorated significantly. “Families were more likely to be behind on their financial obligations than at any point since the 2010 survey,” stated the survey, a data-rich document the Fed releases every three years to chronicle the nation’s financial health. The country in 2010 was just emerging from what became known as the Great Recession, a period that ran from December 2007 to June 2009.
The reason why so many Americans are struggling to stay afloat financially is because we are in the middle of the longest multi-year cost of living crisis in U.S. history. For years, I pleaded with our politicians to stop borrowing and spending so much money. For years, I pleaded with the Federal Reserve to stop flooding our financial system with fresh cash. But they didn’t listen.
Now the purchasing power of our money has fallen dramatically and the cost of living crisis is strangling the life out of communities from coast to coast. In West Virginia, just trying to survive has become a daily struggle for countless numbers of people…Those forces have hit especially hard in areas that were already struggling economically, like West Virginia’s once-flourishing coal mining communities. The spike in gas costs means a 45-minute drive to the nearest grocery store can set residents back more than $15. And West Virginians who must comply with the new work requirements to receive food benefits are confronting a lack of jobs and training programs. Since last summer, about 24,000 people, including 8,000 children, have lost food stamps, according to the West Virginia Department of Human Services. “It’s like the pandemic on steroids without funds,” Kirkhart said. “I don’t believe the government needs to provide everything, but if you’re going to ask us to, please help.”
Of course it isn’t just our rural areas that are dealing with hard times. Our major cities are teeming with the impoverished, the homeless and the addicted. In some cities, homeless encampments stretch on for block after block, and hordes of drug addicts wander around like zombies and defecate in the streets.
Such an environment is perfect for rats, and it is no surprise that New York, Los Angeles and Philadelphia are the most rodent-infested cities in the United States…A national pest control company has released its annual list of the top 10 most rodent-infested cities in the U.S. — and one Midwest city has now joined the list for the first time. The list is based on rodent control service data from more than 300 Terminix branches nationwide in 2025, ranking cities where residents most frequently used the company’s services. While New York and Los Angeles held onto the top two spots, Philadelphia moved up one spot to No. 3.
If things are this bad now, what will they look like if “an economic depression much like 1929” soon hits us? When I was growing up, our major cities were quite clean and there were no homeless encampments anywhere to be seen. When I was growing up, drug addicts were not publicly urinating in front of children. When I was growing up, millions of Americans were not living in their vehicles.
The middle class has been eroding for decades, and now millions upon millions of U.S. citizens live in third world conditions. This is what long-term economic decline looks like, and now we are being told that “an economic depression much like 1929” could be in our future. Brace yourself, because we are moving into times that are going to be extremely challenging for all of us."
Bill Bonner, "Those Not Chosen"
"Those Not Chosen"
by Bill Bonner
Ardmore, Ireland - "Many years ago, an aspiring statesman from one of the hayseed states hoped to unseat his rival by reading aloud the menu from a French restaurant in Washington where the member of Congress was a frequent diner. “Les cuisses de grenoodles...or something like that...I’m talking about damned frog legs. He eats frog legs. You want a man like that representing you?” Then, as now, a man may lie, cheat, and fornicate - male or female - but let him show a little refinement, either in his speech or his victuals, and his career in politics is over.
Yesterday, we suggested that there is not as much difference between France’s major problems and those of the US. Today, the French still eat frog legs. Men still kiss each other on the cheek. And in polite society, a man makes a gesture - the ‘baise-main’ - of bowing towards a woman’s hand, as if he meant to kiss it. But, on the important numbers, we are as alike as two hogs at the trough. The Sunday (Irish) Independent: "France is set to borrow 340 billion euros next year and is running a deficit of 5.4%." America’s deficit is not too far off - 5.7%.
France’s debt to GDP is 116%. The gross US debt ratio is 130%; the debt ‘in the hands of the public’ is 100%. America’s ‘diesel fuel’ of finance - the 10-year Treasury - yields 5.3%. France’s 10-year note yields 4.9%. The ‘grenoodle’ eaters are apparently the better credit. Both countries are insolvent. They do not have the cashflow to support their obligations - including the cost of supporting old people, providing medical care, and financing and refinancing their debt. And the higher interest rates go, the more insolvent they become.
Japan is perhaps the most insolvent in the world. It has a debt/GDP ratio of 234% and is now facing the highest interest rates in a generation. BBC: Japan raises interest rate to new 31-year high to curb rising prices
But it is far from alone. AI Overview: "Interest rates are rising globally as central banks respond to persistent inflation, with major economies like the U.S. (4.0%), U.K. (3.75%), and Eurozone (2.65%) increasing policy rates, and bond yields reaching multi‑decade highs. Interest rates are on the rise. And a casual run through the numbers tells us that when Japan’s interest rate reaches a more normal 5%, it will be paying about 12% of GDP just on its national debt. An impossible burden.
With this scenery in place, today’s drama takes center stage. School children in France are on the warpath. They say they don’t like their shabby schools. They want the government to spend more money on them. What they also must dislike is France’s amazingly complex way of rationing school resources, called the Parcoursup. France has socialized its university system. People whose children don’t go to college must pay for those who do. The latter’s children may loiter for years in ‘higher education’ and pay nothing for it.
In a market economy, the consumer – not the government -- pays for what he gets. The more demand, the higher goes the price. Higher prices diminish demand...and draw forth more supply. But when you abandon the market system, letting politicians fix prices to make things more ‘affordable,’ you upset the whole delicate apple cart. Demand goes up...as supplies go down. Pretty soon, you need a way to ration what little you have left. Typically, scarce supplies of food, for example, are rationed — in socialist societies — by forcing people into long lines and then limiting what they can buy.
French universities use algorithms, grades, and sometimes interviews, to determine who gets in. In a recent year, for example, the prestigious law school in Paris, Pantheon-Sorbonne, got 19,404 applications for 745 places. To award the few places, the French came up with a system so complicated that only 6% of parents said they could readily understand it. But few public policies are ever purely matters of technique. There is also ideology, theory, economics, politics - and a whole gamut of crackpot ideas and prejudices.
Typical of a late-stage, degenerate society, the governing elite becomes more and more powerful. They address more and more issues with policies, programs, laws, regulations - and money. Ambitious young people see how it works. They no longer dream of providing new goods and services; instead, they want to decide who gets them.
This is merely an illustration of what Peter Turchin describes as ‘elite overproduction’ - more lawyers, more administrators, more experts, more specialists, more consultants - all of them hoping to share in the wealth, power and status to which they think their education entitles them.
As long as a society is young and growing, new posts are found for them. But then...the burden of supporting its upper classes causes growth rates to go down. The GDP of France is growing at a 0.9% rate, according to the IMF. The US is higher, but still low, at 2.1%. Take out the AI capex spending, however, and you get barely 1.5%. Sluggish growth opens few new spaces for the aspiring elite. Those chosen put on their business outfits and join the ranks...drearily spending their careers trying to keep the money flowing. And those not chosen? They become outlaws...idlers...sourpusses...revolutionaries...complainers. They mount the statue at the Place de la Republique, wave the black flag...and vote for ‘extremists.’"
"Snyder Reports, 10/13/26"
Full screen recommended.
Snyder Reports, 10/13/26
"Is A New Lockdown Coming?
The Warning You Need To See"
"China is warning people to stockpile food amid fears of lockdowns over a suspected Russian plague case. What does it mean for you? In this video, we break down the reports out of China urging food stockpiling, the mysterious death of a 28-year-old researcher at an anti-plague lab in Siberia, why 5 hospitals were closed and 200 people were quarantined, what the WHO still doesn't know, President Trump's response on bioweapon fears, and what former CDC Director Redfield just revealed about transparency and engineered plague concerns. There is still NO confirmed plague case - but Russia's silence has China on alert, and the parallels to 2019 are hard to ignore. We’ll cover what could happen next for China, whether lockdowns or quarantines could spread, and what you should do now to prepare your pantry, supplies, and finances."
Comments here:
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Full screen recommended.
Snyder Reports, 10/13/26
"Side Hustle Desperation:
Americans Can't Afford To Live"
"More Americans are falling behind on rent, mortgages and credit cards - and turning to odd side hustle jobs just to survive. In this video we break down how the cost of living crisis and 61 inflation maxed out credit cards, forced seniors back to work in their 80s, and pushed everyday people into gig work like driving Uber for $12.40, plasma donation for $100 a visit, selling $5 burritos at school, and reselling clothes on Mercari and Facebook Marketplace to pay a $1,000 bill. You'll see why food, McDonald's, Chick-fil-A and gas all cost more, why even high schoolers and college students are strapped for cash, and the 2 things you must do at the same time: find a way to make a little extra money and find a way to lower expenses. I also share how you can save $1,000 to $4,500 per year by cutting 10 wasteful expenses - full breakdown on my Snyder Finance channel linked below."
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Dan, I Allegedly, "People Are Falling Behind - And It’s Getting Worse"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 10/13/26
"People Are Falling Behind - And It’s Getting Worse"
"Americans are falling behind financially, and the warning signs are showing up everywhere. Household debt is growing, credit card and car payments are going past due, and completed home foreclosures are reportedly up 42%. In this iAllegedly business and personal finance news update, Dan Golka connects the dots between rising debt, repossessions, Getty Images’ financial restructuring, door-to-door sales regulations, hospital billing practices, expensive theme parks, record-high beef prices, Cybertruck sales, and the Hershey Company’s Reese’s lawsuit. Plus, practical advice on getting out of debt, increasing income, and building an emergency fund. Can you keep up with the rising cost of living? Let’s talk about it."
Comments here:
Adventures With Danno, "Dollar Tree Items Everyone Needs To Buy Right Now!"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 10/13/26
"Dollar Tree Items Everyone Needs To Buy Right Now!"
Comments here:
Monday, October 12, 2026
"Saudi Arabia at the Breaking Point"
"Saudi Arabia at the Breaking Point"
by Larry C. Johnson
"For most of this war, Saudi Arabia has been the shock absorber of the world oil market. When Hormuz closed, Riyadh pushed crude west through the East-West pipeline to Yanbu on the Red Sea and kept at least part of its exports moving. That bypass is now under attack. Ansar Allah has seized islands at the mouth of the Red Sea, declared a “maritime ban” on Saudi shipping and claimed strikes on Saudi airports, and in September drones knocked the East-West pipeline largely out of service. Riyadh blamed that strike on Iranian-backed militias in Iraq. On October 4 a pumping station at Khurais, east of Riyadh, was hit for the first time and the pipeline stopped again.
Karl Miller, whose earlier assessment of the global fuel emergency I have drawn on before, has just completed a new analysis of what this means for Saudi Arabia and for the world. His conclusion is stark: the Gulf’s energy system will take far longer and cost far more to rebuild than anyone in Washington is admitting, and Saudi Arabia can no longer be counted on to cover the gap. Here are his key findings.
1. The bypass is the weak point: Miller’s starting point is that a pipeline is not a pipe. It is a connected system of pumping stations, power supplies, controls, storage tanks and loading berths, and it is only as strong as its weakest link. The September damage to the East-West pumping stations, the October interruption at Khurais, a fire at the Riyadh energy complex and the disruption of Saudi aviation all hit that system at different points. The pipeline has been partly restored, but Miller warns that permanent equipment losses remain unresolved. Yanbu can be shut down without a single bomb hitting the port: if crude stops arriving, tankers stop loading.
He also cautions against counting damaged stations as if each represented a fixed share of lost capacity. What matters is throughput, and he measures it against a benchmark of 5.8 million barrels a day through the corridor. A complete interruption for seven days would put 40.6 million barrels of movement at risk; for 30 days, 174 million. He stresses that this is a stress calculation, not a claim that the line is fully shut.
2. The rebuild now runs to 2033–2036: In his previous paper Miller set a five-year horizon for rebuilding the damaged Gulf energy complex. He has now extended it to seven to ten years for the most severely damaged, interconnected systems, meaning recovery between roughly October 2033 and October 2036. Partial output will return sooner, but full, reliable operation will not.
The reason is equipment. Large compressors, turbines, high-voltage transformers, specialized pressure vessels and integrated control systems are custom-built and cannot be pulled from a warehouse. His critical path for replacing such a package is 84 months: a year to define the damage and fund the design, three years to procure and manufacture, two years to deliver and install, and a year to commission and stabilize. Insecure sites, financing gaps, factory queues and repeated attacks could add up to three more years. As he puts it, money can reserve a manufacturing slot, but it cannot compress every stage of engineering and fabrication.
3. A bill of $550 billion to $2.28 trillion: Miller models the reconstruction of the wider Gulf energy system, Saudi Arabia included, in three scenarios. He is explicit that these are funding envelopes built on stated assumptions, not audited damage estimates and not a Saudi-only bill. Source: Karl W. Miller, "Saudi Arabia: The Breaking Point" (12 October 2026). Covers the broader Gulf reconstruction portfolio.
In the central case, $180 billion must be committed in the first two years alone, rising to $540 billion in years three to five. Over seven years that averages more than $170 billion a year. And every Gulf state will be competing for the same manufacturers, engineering firms, fabrication yards and specialist crews. A transformer slot taken by Kuwait or Qatar is one that Saudi Arabia does not get.
4. Delay is expensive: Miller puts numbers on what waiting costs. A three-year delay on the central program could add $76 billion to $125 billion in cost escalation and another $42 billion to $90 billion in financing charges. Meanwhile the fuel must still be bought somewhere: each year that 1 million barrels a day of fuel supply stays offline means 365 million barrels to replace, about $55 billion at his illustrative price of $150 a barrel. Leaving his full 3 million barrel-a-day gap unrepaired for three more years implies nearly $500 billion in replacement purchases.
5. The diesel gap gets wider: Miller’s baseline remains a minimum global shortfall of 3 million barrels a day of diesel and jet fuel. The Saudi attacks threaten to push it higher. If disruption leaves 1 million barrels a day of crude unable to reach working refineries, the loss of diesel and jet fuel is roughly 300,000 to 450,000 barrels a day. An additional net loss of 500,000 barrels a day would raise his baseline to 3.5 million, an increase of one-sixth, adding 15 million barrels of shortfall every month.
He is careful not to double count: lost crude, the refinery output it would have produced and the missed export cargo may all be the same barrels. But the direction is clear. Saudi Arabia was the Gulf’s main source of relief. If its bypass is unreliable, the global deficit grows.
6. America cannot fill the hole: Miller’s test of American capacity is sobering. Over the four weeks to October 2, US refineries produced about 5.17 million barrels a day of distillate, exported 1.56 million and used 3.77 million at home. Replacing a 3 million barrel-a-day gap from the United States alone would require 58% more distillate output than American refineries produce today. US production is only about 150,000 barrels a day higher than a year ago; the global gap is nearly 20 times that. Promising more exports does not create more fuel. It simply moves the shortage from one buyer to another and drains American inventories.
7. Food, freight and flights: The fuel crisis is already reaching the real economy. Cereal prices are 17.2% higher than a year ago. Farmers need diesel before the harvest pays, truckers before their invoices are settled, and refrigeration before food reaches the shelf. Airlines need certified jet fuel at the airports they serve, and diesel cannot substitute for it. Miller’s warning is that the weakest buyers, countries short of foreign exchange and credit, will not just pay more. They will be priced out entirely.
My take: Miller’s assessment confirms what I have been arguing for months: the energy damage from this war is not a temporary price spike that ends when a ceasefire is signed. Reopening a shipping lane does not rebuild a refinery. Saudi Arabia, which only months ago was the world’s insurance policy, is now itself a source of risk, and its economy shows it: Saudi oil activity fell by a quarter in the second quarter and GDP shrank 4.8%. The rebuilding of the Gulf will be measured in years and trillions of dollars, and the world will be short of diesel for much of that time.
That should be the frame for every promise coming out of Washington, whether it is Russian diesel, export bans or claims that prices are about to fall. As Miller concludes, recovery will be proven by fuel actually delivered, not by repairs announced or by a lower headline price."
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"MBS Went Back to War With Yemen.
Now He’s Paying for It Alone"
"Saudi Arabia restarted its war with Yemen - and the Houthis answered at its oil heart, from Abqaiq to the pipeline to Yanbu. Now the money that bought its allies is running out, and Pakistan and Turkey won’t fight. Military and intelligence analyst Larry Johnson joins host Zulfiqar Ali to trace the chain, link by link: the strike that lit the fuse, the damage, the money, the allies, the isolation of Mohammed bin Salman - and the one power that wins.
What you’ll learn: how the 13 July strike on Sanaa airport restarted a war frozen since 2022 · why the East–West pipeline matters more than ever · why Saudi money no longer buys Pakistani or Turkish firepower · what leverage Riyadh still has over Washington · what a negotiated end would look like. Sourcing note: The pumping-station count and the Aramco repair timelines are Larry Johnson’s figures and have not been independently confirmed. Pakistani positions are our host’s own reporting; Pakistan’s Ministry of Information called the New York Times report of PAF strikes “fake and fabricated” on 8 October. On 7 October a Turkish official said Turkey would send mainly defensive and technical support. Public reporting describes the 13 July strike as hitting the Sanaa airport runway; the delegation’s plane diverted to Hodeidah."
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"Snyder Reports, 10/12/26"
Full screen recommended.
Snyder Reports, 10/12/26
"US On High Alert:
Grocery Stores Hacked Causing Panic!"
"Hackers just turned up the heat in hundreds of supermarkets in France - fridges hit 122°F, food spoiled, and stores posted out-of-service signs. This already happened to US military grocery stores in late August, so here's what it means for your grocery prices and 64 emergency food supply. In this video, I break down what happened last night in France with 150-200 Intermarche stores and nearly 100 U outlets affected, why Dutch retailer Ahold Delhaize taking systems offline matters for the US, what authorities are investigating about a connection to the US commissary defrost incidents, and whether this could surge prices through inventory loss, supply disruptions, and panic buying."
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o
Full screen recommended.
Snyder Reports, 10/12/26
"El Nino Winter Warning:
5 Things To Buy Before The Arctic Freeze"
"Meteorologists say El Nino will bring a wild winter 2026 into 2027 -
with stretches of Arctic freeze hitting the South. Don't wait for the warning to prepare."
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"Alert! 30 Oil Tankers Hit! Russia 'No Ceasefire', It's All Fake; Massive Cyberattack On Food Supply!"
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 10/12/26
"Alert! 30 Oil Tankers Hit! Russia 'No Ceasefire',
It's All Fake; Massive Cyberattack On Food Supply!"
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Jeremiah Babe, "The Politicians Are Eating Good While The American People Starve"
Jeremiah Babe, 10/12/26
"The Politicians Are Eating Good
While The American People Starve"
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"Humans Couldn’t Have Built Baalbek’s Colossal Structure - So Who Did?"
Full screen recommended.
Relic Origins,
"Humans Couldn’t Have Built Baalbek’s
Colossal Structure - So Who Did?"
"Who built the giant megaliths of Baalbek? In Lebanon, the ancient Baalbek complex contains some of the largest stone blocks ever associated with ancient construction. The famous Trilithon blocks weigh around 900 tons each, while the nearby Stone of the Pregnant Woman exceeds 1,200 tons. The Forgotten Stone discovered in the quarry is estimated at roughly 1,650 tons. How could ancient builders handle stones weighing more than 1,000 tons? Were the Romans responsible for everything we see at Baalbek, or did they build upon something much older? Explore one of the greatest ancient mysteries on Earth."
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"A 'Cause I Like It' Musical Interlude: Men Without Hats, "We Can Dance"
Full screen recommended.
Men Without Hats, We Can Dance"
"An Ultra Deep Look to the Heavens"
Full screen recommended.
"The Hubble Ultra Deep Field in 3D"
o
"A Universe of 2 Trillion Galaxies"
"In 2016, a study published in The Astrophysical Journal and led by Christopher Conselice of the University of Nottingham using 3D modeling of images collected over 20 years by the Hubble Space Telescope concluded that there are more than two trillion galaxies in the observable universe."
o
"In this galaxy, there's a mathematical probability of three billion Earth-type planets. And in all of the universe, 2 trillion galaxies like this. And in all of that... and perhaps more, only one of each of us." - "Dr. Leonard McCoy"
"What's He To Do?"
"You've seed how things goes in the world o' men. You've knowed men to be low-down and mean. You've seed ol' Death at his tricks... Ever' man wants life to be a fine thing, and a easy. 'Tis fine, boy, powerful fine, but 'tain't easy. Life knocks a man down and he gits up and it knocks him down agin. I've been uneasy all my life... I've wanted life to be easy for you. Easier'n 'twas for me. A man's heart aches, seein' his young uns face the world. Knowin' they got to get their guts tore out, the way his was tore. I wanted to spare you, long as I could. I wanted you to frolic with your yearlin'. I knowed the lonesomeness he eased for you. But ever' man's lonesome. What's he to do then? What's he to do when he gits knocked down? Why, take it for his share and go on.”
- Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
○
"When I hear somebody sigh, 'Life is hard,'
I am always tempted to ask, 'Compared to what?'"
- Sydney J. Harris
oltsev art, "I Blinked and It Was Autumn…"
Full screen recommended.
oltsev art, "I Blinked and It Was Autumn…"
"This film follows a handful of quiet moments - a mailbox latched shut, a woodpile counted and recounted, a last boat waved off from a harbor - small acts of people getting ready for a winter none of them quite remember agreeing to. And somewhere in all of it, a life doing the same thing, at its own unhurried pace. AI doesn't always prove the Dead Internet Theory. I'm open about using AI - and genuinely glad to be. Not as a shortcut, but as a tool. The way a filmmaker uses a camera, or a composer uses a piano. Every idea on this channel begins in a human mind. The concepts, the imagery, the words - they come from me. And lately, more and more often, they begin with you - with stories you leave in the comments that stay with me long after I've read them. The lyrics are mine. The visual direction is mine. The subtle details and quiet references woven into each frame - I'm always quietly hoping someone will notice them, and every time you do and write about it, it means everything. Reading hundreds of your comments, I feel something I didn't expect: that this work reaches people in the way I hoped it would. That it makes you feel something real. That's the whole point."
Native American Elder, "10 Things Only People Born Before 1970 Will Understand"
Full screen recommended.
Native American Elder,
"10 Things Only People Born
Before 1970 Will Understand"
Delta Blues Brother, "Damn Near Everybody's Fake"
Full screen recommended.
Delta Blues Brother,
"Damn Near Everybody's Fake"
"Anybody can look genuine when life is easy. The hard part is staying genuine when everything starts falling apart. "Damn Near Everybody's Fake" is a gritty Delta blues song about authenticity, pressure, and why hard times reveal more about a person than years of easy living ever could. With raw resonator guitar, expressive harmonica, and the weathered voice of Delta Blues Brother, this song reminds us that time and pressure have a way of exposing what appearances try to hide. This is the blues of authenticity. "Pressure tells the truth... way before people do."
Todd Hayen, "The Joy of Being Stupid"
"The Joy of Being Stupid"
by Todd Hayen
"Yesterday I was engaged in my typical morning routine. Scanning the internet for interesting stories to read and news to soak in. Reading a few things here and there and watching a couple of videos. I settled in after a bit of this to write an article for my Substack “Shrew Views.”
The topic is unimportant - typically something to do with something that caught my fancy during my news scanning, or something someone said to me yesterday about whatever, all mixed in with my learned and experienced knowledge of archetypal psychology. Nothing earth-shattering, mind you, but hopefully an insight some people might find interesting, resonating with their own observations, maybe a bit funny, insightful, whatever. Who really cares.
I consider myself and my ideas interesting. Sometimes informative, sometimes insightful, and nearly always consciously honest and authentic. Not always “right,” mind you, that isn’t possible, of course, but always intended to be truthful. To be honest with you, I don’t really know why I write - at least I don’t know why I write publicly. (Same here, I don't really know why I blog...- CP)
I just started doing it during the beginnings of the Covid koo-koo-fest, and it seemed a handful of people enjoyed (is that the right word?) what I was writing, so I kept doing it. I have written well over 500 articles as of today, and don’t plan to stop, although at times I have seriously considered it.
I am not a particularly smart guy (as I am sure many of you would agree). And at times I believe I am quite stupid. But I do think my heart is in the right place. And I do believe that counts for something. To say it again, I am not very smart - certainly not compared to so many people I have run across in this weird journey since 2020.
I am again and again blown away by the people out there who are chock full of pertinent information - many of them seem to know nearly everything there is out there to know about a particular subject. And not only do they know what they know, but they are incredibly skillful at putting that knowledge together in such a way that their opinions, insights, and intellectual conclusions are mind-numbingly relevant.
These are impressive people: I admire them and am in awe of them. I’m not one of them. Maybe you, who are reading this, are one of these people. Maybe not. Maybe you are more like me. Just a human being living on this planet in this strange time, trying to make some sense of what you are experiencing. Maybe you are terrified, maybe you are not. Maybe you are very sad and depressed, or maybe you are able to find joy in your life regardless of what you are seeing. Maybe you don’t even see it. Maybe you are stupid like me, maybe you are not. Whatever, it doesn’t really matter. More than likely, you are being called to do whatever you are doing. Whatever that is, whether it is significant or insignificant, you are doing it. So, to you at least, it matters.
But maybe you don’t agree. Does it really matter to you? I see many people every day in my psychotherapy practice who tell me that what they are doing in their lives doesn’t matter to them. They wonder why they are here, and they wonder what they are doing. They wonder if they matter at all. If I ask them what they think they are being called to do with their life, they just stare at me with a blank stare. “What? What do you mean by that?” If you are being called, then who is calling you?
I do believe our calling can be effectively covered up, and if we don’t make an effort to uncover it, we may never see it. But even if covered, as long as it is not pathologically obliterated, we will tend to move toward it. Call it intuition, call it an archetypal pull to allow creativity to express, call it divine inspiration, whatever it is, it usually will push through the junk and move you.
From my personal observation, most people do their best to ignore that push. They pay more attention to the calls of the flesh, satisfying the senses. They pay more attention to protecting the body and being as safe as they can possibly be. They are more apt to listen to and trust external forces claiming they will protect them from harm. Their own inner calling is ignored.
So, what does all this have to do with the joy of being stupid? Being smart or being stupid has nothing to do with anything. What we are called to do, does. Being “stupid” in the eyes of the world may actually be one of the last refuges of the free soul.
The smart ones - the credentialed, the data-drenched, the ones who can rattle off every study and counter-study - often end up paralyzed by their own sophistication. They see every angle until they see nothing at all. Meanwhile, the simple-hearted keep moving because something inside them says this matters, even if they can’t cite a single peer-reviewed paper to prove it.
I’ve come to suspect that the real division in our time isn’t between the informed and the ignorant, but between those still listening to an inner voice and those who have traded it for the louder, shinier, externally validated one. The former may look stupid to the latter.
They write Substacks instead of bestsellers, speak truth at dinner tables instead of on TED stages, refuse the jab, the mask, the narrative - not because they have a 400-page dossier, but because something in their chest simply says no. That quiet refusal is, in its own way, luminous.
So, I keep writing. Not because I’m brilliant, but because I’m called. The words arrive awkward and imperfect, yet they arrive. And every time someone messages me saying “this is exactly what I’ve been feeling but couldn’t articulate,” I remember: authenticity has its own intelligence. It cuts through the noise where IQ alone never could.
Maybe the deepest joy of being stupid is discovering that love, courage, and a stubborn commitment to what feels true are smarter than we ever needed to be. In a world engineered to make us feel inadequate, showing up as your uncredentialed, occasionally bewildered self, is a quiet act of rebellion."
Todd Hayen PhD is a registered psychotherapist practicing in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He holds a PhD in depth psychotherapy and an MA in Consciousness Studies. He specializes in Jungian, archetypal, psychology. Todd also writes for his own substack, which you can read here.
"A Brief Refocus-Get-Away-From-It All Musical Interlude: Jefferson Airplane, "White Rabbit"
Jefferson Airplane, "White Rabbit"
"Albert Camus On How to Live Whole in a Broken World"
"Albert Camus On How to Live Whole in a Broken World"
by Maria Popova
"Born into a World War to live through another, Albert Camus (November 7, 1913–January 4, 1960) died in a car crash with an unused train ticket to the same destination in his pocket. Just three years earlier, he had become the second-youngest laureate of the Nobel Prize, awarded him for literature that “with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience” - problems like art as resistance, happiness as our moral obligation, and the measure of strength through difficult times.
During WWII, Camus stood passionately on the side of justice; during the Cold War, he sliced through the Iron Curtain with all the humanistic force of simple kindness. But as he watched the world burn its own future in the fiery pit of politics, he understood that time, which has no right side and no wring side, is only ever won or lost on the smallest and most personal scale: absolute presence with one’s own life, rooted in the belief that “real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.”
Camus addresses this with poetic poignancy in an essay titled “The Wrong Side and the Right Side,” found in his altogether superb posthumous collection "Lyrical and Critical Essays" (public library). In a prescient admonition against our modern cult of productivity, which plunders our capacity for presence, Camus writes:
"Life is short, and it is sinful to waste one’s time. They say I’m active. But being active is still wasting one’s time, if in doing one loses oneself. Today is a resting time, and my heart goes off in search of itself. If an anguish still clutches me, it’s when I feel this impalpable moment slip through my fingers like quicksilver… At the moment, my whole kingdom is of this world. This sun and these shadows, this warmth and this cold rising from the depths of the air: why wonder if something is dying or if men suffer, since everything is written on this window where the sun sheds its plenty as a greeting to my pity?"
Echoing the young Dostoyevsky’s exultant reckoning with the meaning of life shortly after his death sentence was repealed (“To be a human being among people and to remain one forever, no matter in what circumstances, not to grow despondent and not to lose heart,” Dostoyevsky wrote to his brother, “that’s what life is all about, that’s its task.”), Camus adds:
"What counts is to be human and simple. No, what counts is to be true, and then everything fits in, humanity and simplicity. When am I truer than when I am the world? What I wish for now is no longer happiness but simply awareness. I hold onto the world with every gesture, to men with all my gratitude and pity. I do not want to choose between the right and wrong sides of the world, and I do not like a choice. The great courage is still to gaze as squarely at the light as at death. Besides, how can I define the link that leads from this all-consuming love of life to this secret despair? In spite of much searching, this is all I know."
These reflections led Camus to conclude that “there is no love of life without despair of life”; out of them he drew his three antidotes to the absurdity of life and the crucial question at its center. Couple with George Saunders - who may be the closest we have to Camus in our time - on how to love the world more, then revisit Wendell Berry’s poetic antidote to despair."
"The First 24 Hours of World War 3"
Full screen recommended.
Spotlight,
"The First 24 Hours of World War 3"
"What would really happen if World War 3 started tomorrow? In this realistic WW3 simulation, we explore the terrifying first 24 hours of a modern global conflict - from the first missile launches to full-scale nuclear retaliation. Using real military data, nuclear strike maps, and expert analysis, this simulation shows how quickly civilization could collapse once the first domino falls. Who would strike first? How would NATO and China respond? And could humanity survive the first hour of nuclear war? This isn’t fiction - it’s based on real-world weapons, alliances, and escalation protocols used by the U.S., Russia, China, and other nuclear powers."
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Full screen recommended.
Spotlight, 11/1/25
"The First Hour of Nuclear War -
What You’d See Before the World Ends"
"What would really happen in the first 60 minutes after a nuclear war begins? This video takes you minute by minute through the terrifying chain of events that could unfold if the world’s nuclear powers launched their arsenals today. From the first radar warnings and command center alerts, to the immediate military responses and global chaos that follows - this is a realistic look at how civilization could unravel in just one hour. Discover how nations like the United States, China, Russia and NATO would react, what early targets would be hit, how nuclear command systems work, and what survival would actually mean in those first minutes after impact."
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