Full screen recommended.
Ludovico Einaudi,
"The Royal Albert Hall Concert:
Lady Labyrinth and Nightbook" ( 2010 )
So, we rise from the rubble...
StatCounter
Friday, November 13, 2026
"A Look to the Heavens"
"The small, northern constellation Triangulum harbors this magnificent face-on spiral galaxy, M33. Its popular names include the Pinwheel Galaxy or just the Triangulum Galaxy. M33 is over 50,000 light-years in diameter, third largest in the Local Group of galaxies after the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), and our own Milky Way. About 3 million light-years from the Milky Way, M33 is itself thought to be a satellite of the Andromeda Galaxy and astronomers in these two galaxies would likely have spectacular views of each other's grand spiral star systems.
As for the view from planet Earth, this sharp image shows off M33's blue star clusters and pinkish star forming regions along the galaxy's loosely wound spiral arms. In fact, the cavernous NGC 604 is the brightest star forming region, seen here at about the 4 o'clock position from the galaxy center. Like M31, M33's population of well-measured variable stars have helped make this nearby spiral a cosmic yardstick for establishing the distance scale of the Universe."
Chet Raymo, “Trying To Be Good”
“Trying To Be Good”
by Chet Raymo
“A few lines from Mary Oliver's poem "Wild Geese":
"You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves."
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves."
"I've quoted these lines before, if not here, then elsewhere. When I first read them back in the late 80s, they resonated with what I felt at the time. I had spent part of my earliest adulthood walking on my knees, both literally and metaphorically, seeking to tame what I took to be the animal within. Saint Augustine was whispering in my ear, and Bernanos' gloomy country priest walked at my side. I was ready to follow Thomas Merton into the desert; indeed, I once took myself briefly to the monastery at Gethsemane, Kentucky, where Merton was in residence. That was a journey of more than a hundred miles, and I was busy repenting, although of what I don't know.
As I read those lines from Mary Oliver in middle age, I had long been cultivating the "soft animal" within, immersing myself in the is-ness of things, the flesh and blood, the gorgeously sensual. No more walking on my knees, repenting. I walked proudly upright, with my sketchbook and my watercolors, my binoculars and my magnifier, sniffing the world like an animal on the prowl. I was letting my body learn to "love what it loves." Those were the years I wrote "The Soul of the Night" and "Honey From Stone" - the most intensely creative years of my life. The world offered itself to my imagination, if I may borrow another line from "Wild Geese."
And now, another half-lifetime has passed. The soft animal dozes, the body seeks repose. And I think of the first line quoted above: "You do not have to be good." What could the poet have possibly meant by that? Of course one has to be good. In a cell at Gethsemane or on the bridge over Queset Brook, one has to be good. And so one tries, one tries. The soft animal of the body that nature has contrived for us is not fine-tuned for goodness.”
•
“Wild Geese”
"You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things."
- Mary Oliver
"He Tended His Flock Every Dawn… Until the Last One"
Full screen recommended.
"He Tended His Flock Every Dawn…
Until the Last One"
"He had never counted the years. He counted the sheep. Every dusk, he would walk the same hillside path - staff in hand, lantern swinging at his side - calling each one home by name. Not one ever got lost. Not one was ever left behind. For forty years, the village fell asleep to the sound of his gentle voice echoing off the stone walls. Nobody ever thought to ask how long he could keep walking that hill. Until one evening, the hill was quiet. And the flock waited by the gate, alone. An original frontier folk storytelling song - composed, written, and imagined by a human artist who believed that the most faithful people in the world are often the quietest. This song is part of the Cotton Villages series: cinematic storytelling songs set in cozy fantasy worlds, frontier folk landscapes, and heartwarming village tales. Every track is an original narrative - a small life, fully told in music and image."
Delta Blues Brother, "I Don’t Argue With Life Anymore"
Full screen recommended.
Delta Blues Brother,
"I Don’t Argue With Life Anymore"
"There comes a point when a person stops fighting the current. “I Don’t Argue With Life Anymore” is a Delta blues reflection about learning that not every battle needs resistance. A slow, worn resonator guitar carries the mood with quiet patience. The harmonica breathes low and tired, like wisdom earned the long way. Nothing dramatic. Nothing forced. Just truth settling in. This is the blues of acceptance - not defeat, but understanding. For those who learned that peace often costs less than pride. Life doesn’t negotiate… it just continues."
Native American Elder, "Here's Why I Trust Animals More Than People"
Full screen recommended.
Native American Elder,
"Here's Why I Trust Animals More Than People"
Todd Hayen, "I No Longer Trust Anyone"
"I No Longer Trust Anyone"
by Todd Hayen
"Sad, but true. Since the Covid fiasco, I’ve seen the true nature of people - or at least the nature they were willing to show once the fear got turned up and the herd started moving. Most of them are still firmly under the sheep banner, content to graze wherever they’re told. A small handful stand under the “critical thinker” banner. Those are the ones I still trust.
The sheepies? I don’t trust them anymore. Did I ever, really? I thought I did, back when I was younger and still believed most people were basically decent when the chips were down. Turns out that was optimistic.
Lately this loss of trust has had me thinking about the American Wild West. Not the Hollywood version p the real one. Back then, almost every man who wanted to stay alive carried a revolver on his hip. It wasn’t for show. You never knew when some mean-eyed bastard might decide your horse, your money, or your life was worth more to him than it was to you. The sensible ones stayed ready. They watched people. They didn’t assume good intentions just because someone smiled and said howdy. Trust was something you earned slowly, usually after a man had proven he wouldn’t sell you out the first time it became convenient.
So, did folks in that dusty, hard country go around trusting their neighbors? Hell no. You bet your boots they didn’t. And the ones who did - the tenderfoots who rode into town believing everybody was basically good underneath - usually got fleeced, shot, or both. The sheep of that era didn’t last long.
I keep coming back to that because it feels uncomfortably close to where we are now. The difference is the wolves don’t need to hide behind a bandana anymore. They wear white coats, or sit in glass offices, or smile at you from a television screen while they tell you what you need to do for your own good.
And the sheep-types? They didn’t just follow along during Covid. A lot of them became enthusiastic enforcers. They reported neighbors for having too many people over for dinner. They cut off family members who wouldn’t take the shot. They posted smug little memes about how the unvaccinated were selfish and stupid while their own kids were losing years of school and their elderly parents were dying alone in nursing homes. They did it with a clear conscience, because the authorities had given them permission to be cruel.
That’s the part that still sticks in my throat. Not the government lying - governments always lie when it suits them. Not even Big Pharma doing what Big Pharma does - make scads of money and not giving a crap who suffers for it. It was the ordinary people, the ones I used to think were mostly harmless, who turned out to be so willing to turn on anyone who stepped out of line.
The masked Karens. The vaccine passport enthusiasts. The ones who genuinely seemed to enjoy punishing others for non-compliance. I saw longtime friends and even family members do things I would have sworn they were incapable of. And they did it without a second thought. That’s what really got to me - not the betrayal itself, but how easily it came to them. How little it seemed to cost them.
The rest of us were the ones who kept their powder dry. We asked questions when the story kept changing. We noticed the bodies didn’t match the narrative. We refused to pretend that “following the science” meant following whatever the people who owned the science told us to do. For that, we got called dangerous, selfish, and - my personal favourite - grandma killers. The irony was almost funny if you had a dark enough sense of humor. The real danger was coming from the people screaming the loudest about keeping everyone safe.
I don’t know if this loss of trust is permanent. Maybe it softens over time. But right now, it feels pretty solid. I still have my circle. Those are the people I can still talk to without wondering whether the conversation is going to end up on some government list or get repeated at the next family gathering as evidence of how crazy I’ve become. With them I can lower my guard a little. We’ve got each other’s backs. That counts for something in a world where most people will throw you under the bus the moment the authorities give them a good enough reason.
Everyone else? I’ll be polite. I’ll make small talk. I’ll even hold the damn door. But I’m not handing over trust again just because someone seems nice or shares my politics or went to the same school. That ship sailed somewhere around 2021, and I don’t see it coming back into port anytime soon. Once you’ve watched people you cared about turn into informants and punishers, it changes how you move through the world. You don’t go back to the old way of seeing things. You can’t.
Maybe that’s the real lesson buried in all this mess. The Wild West never actually ended. The outlaws just got better costumes and much better PR. And the sheep-types learned to police each other instead of waiting for the sheriff. The thinkers are still here, though - eyes open, hands near the metaphorical holster, not particularly interested in pretending everything is fine just to make other people comfortable.
All this has seemed to calm down a bit. But don’t kid yourself. It is still there. That’s the hard part now; you can’t tell who from who. But you know it is there. There are still occasional masks, a tell-tale sign the murmuring sheep-mind is still bubbling underneath. We don’t have to be mean to strangers; we can still love our fellow human beings no matter how lost they may be, but we must be wary, and not automatically expect a helping hand if needed.
So yeah. I no longer trust anyone the way I used to. And I’m not sure that’s entirely a bad thing. It’s clarifying, at least. You find out who’s really with you when the pressure is on. And you find out who was only ever along for the ride until it got inconvenient. The ones who stayed? Those are my people now. The rest can go graze somewhere else."
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
The Poet: Paul Laurence Dunbar, “We Wear The Mask”
“We Wear The Mask”
“We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,-
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.
Why should the world be overwise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.
We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!”
- Paul Laurence Dunbar
"We May Know..."
“We may know that the work we continue to put off doing will be bad. Worse, however, is the work we never do. A work that’s finished is at least finished. It may be poor, but it exists, like the miserable plant in the lone flowerpot of my neighbor who’s crippled. That plant is her happiness, and sometimes it’s even mine. What I write, bad as it is, may provide some hurt or sad soul a few moments of distraction from something worse. That’s enough for me, or it isn’t enough, but it serves some purpose, and so it is with all of life.”
- Fernando Pessoa
"The Only Question..."
"Sometimes even to live is an act of courage."
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"Life is an end in itself, and the only question as to whether
it is worth living is whether you have had enough of it."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
That ultimately is the question...
Adrian Lester as Hamlet: "To be or not to be..."
William Shakespeare, "Hamlet", Act III, Scene I
Bill Bonner, "Fun House of Cards"
Click image for larger size.
The US government’s deficit was $404 billion in October,
the first month of fiscal year 2027. Source: Monthly Statement of the Treasury
"Fun House of Cards"
by Bill Bonner
Paris, France - "How much of the US economy is like a meme stock? Empty? Worthless? Fake? Motley Fool: "Nvidia stock has wiped out $1.7 trillion in value since October… Nvidia’s business hasn’t changed. Same chips. Same customers. Same profits. How could it be worth $1.7 trillion less? And could it shed another $1.7 trillion? Without the hype... and the frenzy... how much is Nvidia really worth? And how much is it just pumped up... inflated by the AI capex boom and phony credit money?
We’ve pointed out before that, according to the famous Buffett metric, comparing stock prices to GDP output, there’s about $40 trillion in US listed stocks that never dirties its hand. It toils not. Neither does it spin. Like memes, these stocks can be traded for goods and services. But like memes, their values can also wilt like a lily at a dead man’s wake.
The math is simple enough. Up until around 2013 there was almost always at least $1 of output behind each $1 of stock value. Not until mid-ways through the Obama years did stock values go decisively and permanently above 100% of GDP. And now they’re about 231% of GDP. Which is to say, stock prices now float high above their real worth. About $40 trillion above, by our back-of-the-envelope calculation.
Let’s begin by reminding ourselves that stocks are evidence of ownership in what are supposed to be profit-making companies. Those profits are the difference between the value of goods and services produced and the cost of producing them. If the costs are greater than the value of the output, the company is losing money...destroying wealth. Logically, the shareholders should participate in the losses as well as the gains. Sometimes they do.
So, here we have Opendoor Technologies. It is the brainchild of some fellows who thought they could make the housing market more fluid by putting it online. They buy houses online... send out crews to fix them up... and then resell them. In 2021, for example, they bought 37,000 houses. A year later, they sold 7,500 of them at an average loss of $28,000 on each one.
We’ve fixed up a number of houses. If someone had asked us about the Opendoor business plan, we would have said that it would never work. You can buy a house carefully, fix it up frugally, and sell it sensibly. And maybe you’ll make money. But you can’t do it at scale. Because the good deals go to the local guys, who know their trade, have the local knowledge, and often do much of the work themselves. And those guys, who are successful locally, will scale up as much as they can.
“Opendoor will lose money,” we would have predicted. But we never would have guessed that it would lose so much. It lost $339 million in 2019, $253 million in 2020, $662 million in 2021...and on and on, year after year, up to a loss of $1.3 billion last year. Total losses tot up to $5.1 billion.
How much is a company like that really worth? Back in 2021, it was valued at $18 billion, $28 a share. But in terms of what it was really worth - a serial wealth-destroyer on a grand scale — its value was always negative. And now the share price has dropped down to near $1; more than $17 billion of fake value has been wiped out. Wall Street Psychology:
The irony of flipping houses in a 7% mortgage environment while claiming to be an AI company shouldn’t be lost on anyone. Opendoor is a gaudy example. But how much of Nvidia is unsupported by real output? Apple? Microsoft? These are real companies with sales and profits. But all through the economy, sales and profits - and losses - have been flattered by inputs of ‘money’ that isn’t real money.
As Tom has explained, it is actually debt. Debt is not the same as money. You can pile up all the money you want. You can even lend it out and receive interest on it. But pile up debt and you’ll be the one paying interest. Then, more debt is needed just to pay the interest on the old debt. And whee! You are on your way to hyperinflation.
Individual companies or memes can boom and bust...creating false value and then destroying it... all good fun. But when an entire economy does it, the fun stops. People believe they have real wealth. They expect to live on it... to retire on it... to use it to pay mortgages and tuition... and to fund the feds’ retirement and medical programs. A few years ago, the feds inflated the economy for pleasure - it gave them a boost, like a glass of wine before dinner. Now, they inflate it to avoid the pain of a correction hangover. Time to close the door."
Jim Kunstler, "Villainy Abides"
"Villainy Abides"
by Jim Kunstler
“Sometimes things are happening that are
bigger than what the headline flow suggests.”
- Tom Luongo, Gold, Goats and Guns
"The Party of Victims (a.k.a., the Democratic Party), the so far designated “winners” of the midterm election, spent the past week talking smack to the country about how they aim to go after the president and everyone in his cabinet... impeachment-o-rama... persecutions... a veritable Grand Guignol of Jacobin-style political bloodletting in the next Congress - until Mr. Blanche, the attorney general, had to remind them that such an agenda seemed to lack legislative purpose, implying that this is how punks talk.
Chatter overheard out of the White House bespeaks a hearty debate about how to handle these garish threats. Does the president try to play nice with such a pack of rabid animals? Or is it time for Mr. Trump to channel his inner Harry Callahan? You must think the answer is self-evident, but it kind of turns on what reputable detectives can discern about the propriety of the election that put them in Congress, or lack of such.
You could not contrive a more excessively convoluted balloting process than our fifty states of the union have come up with. The many complex layers between registration, casting, and counting of ballots, plus the intervention of computerized tabulation machines, scream of vast openings to manipulation and fraud. There are many sound theories about what happened this time to produce such a suspiciously uniform “blue shift” in so many places with stark regional and demographic differences, from Mississippi to Minnesota.
And, of course, the basic numbers have a fishy bouquet: Nationwide, Republicans were down about 5-million votes from the previous midterm and Democrats ended about 15-million votes up. Many suspect there is a correlation between the huge Democratic Party increase and the fact that some 20-million illegal immigrants were allowed to rush the border under the sketchy regime of “Joe Biden,” given Social Security cards and driver’s licenses, and nicely prepped to pretend to be US citizens.
The Democratic Party has a designated election field marshal, one Marc Elias, attorney-at-lawfare, devoted to the scientific gaming of our hyper-complex election procedures, plus help from scores of well-funded NGOs to provide muscle in his field operations, which entailed materializing hordes of new voters, many of them non-citizens and others completely made-up, fake. Was AI used to assemble all those new voters out of state rolls that included the dead, and voters who had moved to other states? And then, were nefarious algorithms at work to engineer outcomes in those states’ tabulation machines?
You might suppose that aside from the appointment of Stephen Miller as the new chief of staff, Mr. Trump has appeared strangely flaccid the past ten days in the face of what might have been a meticulously staged coup. Well, this is what you do when you watch your enemy maneuver in this battle-space. The first order of business is to establish whether there was any mischief in the voting apparatus.
Executive Order 13848 designates the ODNI to conduct an investigation on foreign interference in the vote and report to the president in 45 days after the election - meaning the week before Christmas. All the intel agencies in the executive branch are available to investigate: the FBI, CIA, DOW-Intel, Homeland Security, Treasury, etc., a swarm of very sophisticated crime detection, surely aided by AI.
Under their regular duties, beyond EO 13848, the agencies are not limited to looking for foreign interference. Where federal elections are involved - House and Senate seats - and probable cause exists, the FBI and DHS especially can investigate homegrown fraud and report criminal referrals to the attorney general at the DOJ.
The DOJ can move to prosecute state officials for federal crimes such as 18 U.S.C. § 241 (conspiracy against rights) and § 242 (deprivation of rights under color of law). 52 U.S.C. §§ 10307(c), 10307(e) and related Voting Rights Act criminal provisions cover false information in registration or voting, multiple voting, and related conspiracies when a federal candidate is on the ballot. 52 U.S.C. § 20511 also provides for fraudulent registration or related acts. State officials enjoy no general immunity from federal prosecution for violating these laws. The Supremacy Clause ensures that valid federal criminal statutes apply to state officers when the elements are met.
Under the Constitution, however, in contested elections, when January 3 rolls around, the old Congress officially ceases to exist and the new Congress ultimately can decide to seat itself without first being seated. Say, what? Try to imagine the scene where the election results have been discredited in several states, and dozens of state officials are subject to prosecution for election fraud - on top of the discovery, reported to the president by the DNI, that China, Cuba, and perhaps elements in and around the EU interfered in the midterm election... and Hakeem Jeffries gavels in the 120th Congress despite all that. Does it sound like a recipe for crisis to you? And all because Senator John Thune could not find a way to pass the SAVE Act in the many months after the House passed it in April and sent it to him. Villainy abides."
Larry C. Johnson, "USS Bush in Crisis: Iran Fires Ten Missiles, US & Israel Move to War"
Full screen recommended.
Larry C. Johnson, 11/13/26
"USS Bush in Crisis: Iran Fires Ten Missiles,
US & Israel Move to War"
"Former CIA analyst Larry Johnson discusses the major crisis aboard the USS Bush aircraft carrier as the US Navy prepares for a long deployment joined with USS Roosevelt and Washington in a new operation against Iran. Iran has struck back, preemptively attacking US warships and Israel is moving closer to war. Don't miss this must watch show covering all this and more!"
Comments here:
Dan, I Allegedly, "The Ultimate Black Friday Guide"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 11/13/26
"The Ultimate Black Friday Guide"
"Black Friday 2026 is November 27, but you don't have to wait until then to start saving money! Retailers are rolling out their deals early, and I took a trip through Home Depot to show you some of the offers already available. From Christmas trees and holiday decorations to rechargeable work lights, storage containers, appliances, folding steps and grills, there are some interesting deals worth checking out. Some of these offers may not last, so start making your shopping list now and compare prices before you buy. #blackfriday
Don't miss the deals. Don't pay more than you have to! Sign up now! https://theblackfridayguide.com Black Friday deals are already arriving, and we've done the homework for you! Get access to our FREE Black Friday Shopping Guide featuring 120+ retailers, advertised deals, shopping tips and money-saving opportunities. Here's the best part: It's 100% FREE. No purchase necessary. Sign up just ONCE. https://t.ly/5OWZ2 We'll continually update the guide as new deals and advertisements are released. We'll email you when important updates are available, so you won't miss out! One signup. Ongoing updates. More opportunities to save! Enter your information below and get your FREE guide. Let's make this the year you shop smarter and keep more money in your pocket! https://t.ly/5OWZ2"
Comments here:
Adventures With Danno, "Stocking Up At Aldi"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 11/13/26
"Stocking Up At Aldi"
Comments here:
"I Know What's Coming..."
Full screen recommended.
Martin Armstrong, 11/13/26
"I Know What's Coming..."
"Martin Armstrong warns of growing political polarization, rising geopolitical tensions, and the risk of major economic instability. He discusses the potential breakup of nations, Europe's political divisions, tensions surrounding Russia, and the uncertain future of U.S. foreign policy. Armstrong also shares his concerns about inflation, stagflation, political conflicts, and escalating tensions in the Middle East, warning that the coming months could bring serious surprises. Watch until the end for his analysis of global political shifts and the growing risks facing the world economy."
Comments here:
" Let the Real Chaos Begin"
"Let the Real Chaos Begin"
by Martin Armstrong
"The same motive power that propelled Donald Trump’s electoral victories in 2016 and 2024 propelled his disastrous midterm repudiation - fear and loathing of government. There is no unconditional love in politics. Trump was elected to upend the ruling caste, which, among his supporters, is even more despised than the government. He didn’t do it, and has repeatedly demonstrated that he’s just another paid-up member. Many of his former supporters either protest-voted for the Democrats or stayed home.
The Epstein case continues to rankle because it so clearly involves prominent members of that caste. Here was an opportunity to not just disgrace some of them, but perhaps send them to prison. At the heart of it lies one crime that most Americans still find repellent - nonconsensual sex with underage victims. Trump repeatedly vowed to get to the bottom of it, then reversed himself and dismissed the whole matter. That not only enraged people, particularly his supporters, it also fueled suspicion that his involvement with Epstein’s depravity was far greater than he had admitted.
Wars have been the health of the ruling caste, and Trump broke his promise not to involve the U.S. military in any new ones, particularly in the Middle East. Trump partisans tend to forget that it was Trump who first got the U.S. involved in the Ukraine-Russia war, sending arms to Ukraine during his first term (a step Obama wouldn’t take), even before Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. That’s been swept under the rug, but the disastrous U.S. and Israeli kinetic war against Iran can’t be. Nor can its disastrous economic effects.
What also can’t be hidden is that the war was launched at the behest of Benjamin Netanyahu and the Jewish lobby. They have an extraordinarily powerful and unhealthy influence on Trump. We’ll probably never find out how much of it boils down to natural affinity on the one hand, and bribes, blackmail, and bullets - the specter of assassination - on the other. Whatever the case, Trump’s subservience clearly fueled voter disgust.
The epic backlash against Israel began with Israel’s effort to eradicate the Palestinians. Even stepped up hasbara and massive campaign spending in both the primaries and midterm elections has done nothing to turn the swelling tide. Ominously for Israel and the Jewish lobby, their influence is waning most markedly among the younger generations of Americans. Just to close an ugly circle, there is also widespread suspicion that Epstein’s detestable honeypots were a Mossad operation, perhaps in conjunction with American intelligence.
There is no unconditional love in equity markets, either, and it looks like their long love affair with the AI industry is coming to an end. They are finally noticing their amour’s circular financing, huge debt loads, Chinese competition, immense demand for power and water, rising political opposition, and highly speculative revenue and profit projections. Those should be enough to end the AI mania, and probably bring down the rest of the market as well.
Still to come is general recognition of the flawed premises underlying the mania. Artificial intelligence (or super intelligence for the remaining Trumpists out there) is a misnomer. Human intelligence (HI) rests on curiosity and asking questions. Those are individual, not consensus phenomena.
At root, the problem is that although AI can answer a seemingly infinite number of questions, it can’t ask a single one. It can be programmed to spot and attempt to resolve conflicts within data, but it doesn’t autonomously ask questions. From birth, the human mind is an autonomous question generator; it’s how we learn. That’s not confined to our species. Anyone who’s ever watched puppies or kittens can see that they have something akin to human curiosity. They explore their environments and are interested in anything new (if they’re not afraid of it). Curiosity and questions are the foundation of learning and intelligence. Reading even a page of something interesting or provocative will generate questions. Generative AI “reads” trillions of pages without an iota of curiosity. No one who either hails or warns of AI surpassing HI has explained how it will do so while bypassing the foundation of HI.
"AI output essentially represents consensus “knowledge” as measured by AI’s data surveying and statistical capabilities. What is defined as consensus may be an average weighted by the credentials and output of the various propagators of the data. It may, when it’s spitting out “answers,” note that the data conflicts and list alternative interpretations. However, aside from the fact that consensus, even weighted average consensus, is often wrong, there is a graver danger. Consensus wisdom is frequently the sworn enemy of innovation. Consensus-based AI may, on balance, retard more than it promotes innovation." “AI is a Crock,” Robert Gore, SLL, 12/13/25
Innovation is rarely, if ever, imposed from the top. AI is the ultimate from-the-top “innovation.” It has governments, huge corporations, and trillions of dollars of capital behind it, pushing it for all they’re worth. What it doesn’t have is much of a use case for ordinary people. It’s nice to be able to ask a computer a question and get a seemingly plausible answer. AI can save a little time and impart some organization to mundane tasks like scheduling and record keeping. However, as it is gets incorporated into almost everything, it can also be downright intrusive and annoying.
What remains to be seen is whether AI can perform tasks for which ordinary people and businesses will fork over enough money to cover its huge costs of production and capital. Especially because so much of what it’s doing now is available for free, if not from U.S. AI purveyors, then from Chinese ones. In business applications, the price of tokens - the cost of AI usage - has dropped precipitously. There’s still no hard evidence that even reduced cost AI pays for itself in productivity gains. AI may well share the disappointing (to their promoters) uptake of other “great,” officially promoted technologies: solar and wind power, electric vehicles, and mRNA vaccines.
"Most of the hyperbole of what is supposedly to come are a diversion. The real goal of AI has already been achieved - to enable the surveillance state, which is why it’s being pushed so hard from the top. And like climate change and COVID, AI has the totalitarians and would-be totalitarians drooling. Collecting, assimilating, and manipulating data is the technological foundation of a surveillance state. That’s all the technototalitarians (See “Technototalitarianism,” Parts One, Two and Three) require of AI - all-encompassing data that can be sorted by every available metric, including ones for which citizens might pose a threat, rhetorically or otherwise, to the government. Some of them must know AI will never get close to HI, but that’s a useful claim, a selling point, to attract massive amounts of capital from Wall Street and support from the technototalitarian Trump administration." “AI is a Crock”
There is no unconditional love in bond markets, either. Not only is the debt supporting AI faltering, so too is the big kahuna - sovereign debt. If equity markets crash, government bonds, particularly U.S. government bonds, may well catch a flight-to-quality bid and rally (interest rates would fall). However, quality isn’t what it used to be. The U.S., most European, and Japanese governments are in debt up to their eyeballs. While buying their bonds as a short-term trade may work out, as a long-term investment, they are a guaranteed loser. Those governments cannot support their debt loads, especially when unfunded liabilities for pensions and medical care are included. That much of the world seems to be headed towards World War Three, which would undoubtedly be a costly fiasco, greatly magnifies the problem.
Governments and their central banks have two choices: implicit repudiation of their debt via devaluation of their fiat currencies, or explicit repudiation. They’re already trying the former, but it’s a good bet bond markets won’t let them get away with it. Devaluation to zero produces interest rates to infinity. Governments are already feeling the squeeze of interest rates which are no longer zero, but are still in historically unexceptional single digits. Double-digit rates would force explicit repudiation and probably topple governments.
France is the preview of coming attractions. Its government spends more than half the gross domestic product on expensive welfare and warfare states. The national debt exceeds 119 percent of the GDP, and debt service is the largest item in the national budget. The government involves itself heavily in the sputtering economy (there is cause and effect between the two). The bond market has been marking up the interest rates on its debt, not just in absolute terms but relative to other nations’ debt.
As France joins the rest of European NATO in costly preparations for a war with Russia that Russia doesn’t want, the country has been engulfed in riots. Rioters employ the usual means - violence and destruction - have the usual ends - more this, that, and the other thing, paid for by someone else - and are covered by the usual media obfuscation about the identities of the rioters and their string pullers.
The French government and its would-be destroyers face the same problem - there’s not only no money, but the future has essentially been spent as well. On present course, debt service will consume an ever larger share of production until the inevitable debt repudiation and economic collapse. The same problem confronts most of the developed world’s governments - including the U.S.’s - and their would-be destroyers. The French are merely the first in line.
The world can’t pay for the huge, centralized governments it already has. It certainly won’t be able to pay for still more government if the destroyers have their way. Replacing myriad governments with one big government - the globalist dream - will produce an expensive, unproductive, ultimately unsupportable slave state. Its rulers will be almost as miserable as their subjugated subjects. From the delusional demands of the rioters, looters, and arsonists to the fever dreams of the globalists, the end result is the same - chaos, not utopian order.
That these outcomes are, in light of history and logic, glaringly obvious only highlights another obvious truth. The means of both the globalists and their stooges - violence and destruction - are their true end. A cautionary note for the globalists: violence is always a race to the bottom. The stooges, once unleashed, will engage in depraved torture and murder their putative masters can’t control, and eventually that depravity will be trained on them. The only “order” that emerges from this chaos will be the order of demented savages - torture chambers and firing squads - not the advertised utopia of the “enlightened” totalitarians.
Government is obviously the cause and is just as obviously not the solution to the problems confronting the world’s welfare-warfare states. Plenty of people recognize this truism. In the U.S., it has been the impetus for MAGA. Fear and loathing of government and rulers is not only here to stay - regardless of what happens to Trump - they will continue to grow as governments’ failures mount.
Which will be—other than the fact that the U.S. government is already bankrupt - the biggest problem for the Democrats, the party of government, and their always-on-call stooges. Constrained by reality, the ultimate constraint, the blue team will be unable to deliver on their promises to further expand the welfare state. Indeed, ever-rising debt will render both the current welfare state and the warfare state - the red team favorite - unaffordable. It will also crowd out funding for productive investment, destroy savings, further devalue the dollar against “Real Money” (gold and silver), and crash the economy and financial markets. In some future election, perpetually disappointed voters will wash away the blue team with a red tsunami.
And so it will go, back and forth, until the general realization dawns that no matter who’s elected, a government that’s flat broke, fundamentally broken, riddled with corruption, and obsolete can’t be fixed at the ballot box. At which point, bullets replace ballots. Uncontrollable violence and mayhem will be the order of the day.
Historians may look back on the 2026 midterms as the end of the beginning of the end of the centralization and control exercised by governments in the centuries-long epoch of government. The mounting chaos, confusion, and deterioration since the apotheosis of that epoch - the U.S. government’s post-World War II dominance - is just a foretaste of what’s to come and will last longer than any of us. Buckle up."
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"$19,100,000,000,000: Americans Are Drowning In The Largest Ocean Of Consumer Debt In The History Of The World"
by Michael Snyder
"Total household debt in the United States just hit a brand new all-time record high. For a large portion of the U.S. population, debt is a suffocating financial reality that never goes away. Millions upon millions of Americans found themselves drowning in debt the instant that they left college, and a very large percentage of them will still be deep in debt when they die. The entire system is designed to get us into debt and keep us there. Because a college education has become so expensive, most Americans have to go into debt to get one. Once you get out of school, you rapidly discover that you are going to have to go into more debt to get a vehicle or buy a home. And don’t even get me started on medical debt. Most Americans, and this is especially true for those under the age of 40, are carrying mountains of soul-crushing debt. This is one of the primary reasons why young adults seem to be so angry all the time.
Many Americans that purposely tried to stay out of debt by living a frugal lifestyle have now been forced to take on debt by the rising cost of living. At this stage, approximately 63 percent of all U.S. adults are living paycheck to paycheck, and 44 percent of Americans struggle to pay for even the most basic necessities.
When you are living right on the edge, it is so easy to go into debt when an unexpected expense suddenly arises. You tell yourself that you are going to pay it off right away, but then something else comes up next month. Of course if you end up getting sick and have to go to the hospital, that can set you back financially for years. I can understand why millions of young people say that they are sick and tired of playing the game.
This week, we learned that total household debt in the United States has reached an all-time record high of 19.1 trillion dollars… Total household debt rose $334 billion in the third quarter, to $19.1 trillion, according to new data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Even if we added nothing to that total from now on, it would take us approximately 52,293 years to pay off 19.1 trillion dollars of household debt at a rate of 1 million dollars per day.
Of course we are never going to pay off all that debt, are we? The system is designed to keep increasing the total amount of household debt so that financial institutions can get even wealthier. Credit card debt is among the most insidious forms of debt. Last quarter, the total amount of credit card debt in the U.S. rose to a new record high of 1.29 trillion dollars. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s latest Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit, released November 10, credit card balances increased by $22 billion during the third quarter, reaching $1.29 trillion. That’s a 1.7% increase from the previous quarter and approximately 4.2% more than a year earlier.
The increase comes as American households continue to struggle with the cumulative effects of inflation, elevated borrowing costs, and other pressures on family budgets. This should deeply alarm all of us. According to Consumer Affairs, credit card balances have “increased by approximately 61% over the past five years”… Credit card balances have increased by approximately 61% over the past five years, according to an analysis of the Fed’s data by American Banker. The total first crossed the $1 trillion threshold in 2023.
Sadly, we owe even more than that on our auto loans and our student loans…Auto loan balances increased by $21 billion to $1.73 trillion, while student loan balances rose by $5 billion to $1.66 trillion. Home equity lines of credit increased by $23 billion to $481 billion, the largest quarterly increase in that category since 2005.
The average length for a loan on a new vehicle is now 69 months. The reason why payments are being stretched out for so long is because the average price of a new vehicle has hit $51,109… The average price of a new vehicle in the US has climbed to a record $51,109, according to a new Cox Automotive report citing Kelley Blue Book data. Combined with new-car loan rates near their highest levels since the mid-2000s, record sticker prices are putting vehicle ownership increasingly out of reach for many working-class folks, even before insurance, fuel and maintenance costs are factored in. The vast majority of Americans cannot afford to purchase a new vehicle. In fact, used vehicles are now out of reach for much of the population.
Our standard of living is declining right in front of our eyes, and that should be obvious to everyone. When I was growing up, homes were being rapidly constructed all over the country and they were quite affordable. But now homes are insanely expensive and home sales just fell to their lowest level in 16 years as a result… Home sales declined in October to their lowest level since 2010, a new trough for a housing market that has been hovering near rock bottom for more than four years. Sales of existing homes fell 5.5% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.75 million, the National Association of Realtors said Thursday, marking the steepest decline since January. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal expected a decline of 3.8%.
This is not what prosperity looks like. Decades of very foolish decisions have destroyed our standard of living, and the outlook for the future is exceedingly bleak. U.S. households are 19 trillion dollars in debt, and the federal government is 40 trillion dollars in debt. How can anyone possibly claim that this is going to end well?
Earlier today, I came across an article about the sinking of the SS United States…The historic SS United States, once the fastest ship on the seas, made a slow final journey beneath the waters Wednesday. The famous ocean liner - which is longer than the Titanic and crossed the Atlantic more than 800 times - was deliberately sunk Wednesday to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, where the once-luxurious behemoth was set to begin a new chapter as the world’s largest artificial reef. It was a long goodbye. Hours after the sinking began on a cloudy afternoon, much of the hulking ship could still be seen in the dark waters off the coast of the Florida Panhandle by nightfall.
Just like that ship, our economy was once a magnificent vessel. But now it is also sinking. Previous generations handed us the keys to the most robust economy in the history of the world and we wrecked it. We obviously did not learn anything from our mistakes, because we just elected the worst group of lawmakers that I have ever seen.
It has been said that debt is the worst form of poverty. In other words, owing money is worse than simply having nothing at all because you are starting below zero. Our leaders were able to keep the party going for a long time, but now a moment of reckoning is at hand and the collapse that is starting to unfold is going to be incredibly painful."
"Screwing in a Mirror While the World Smokes"
"Screwing in a Mirror While the World Smokes"
by Edward Curtin
"We were screwing in a mirror when we realized our mistake. Since the handyman was unavailable, we had to do it ourselves. Certainly it was very pleasurable to know that we could, but we screwed-up.
Lurid sexual news is common these days; it grabs people’s attention. It titillates the public’s imagination like nothing else, even murders and celebrity scandals. Forget wars and genocide and a world teetering on the edge of nuclear annihilation when there is sexual news to keep you focused. The bombs smoke the air with the smell of death rising everywhere. It’s the air we breathe.
But back to the screwing. Maybe I have reeled you in and you want more details. Okay, let me tell you. As we were screwing in the mirror, we realized we had placed the drywall anchor too low, so it was behind the mirror and not slightly above. A simple measuring mistake. So relax. Perhaps you were getting too excited.
Let’s get to the smoke. No, we had not been smoking an intoxicant, we were just a bit incompetent. Smoke comes from many directions; it’s usually meant to shroud our ability to see the truth of our situation, as in the phrase “smoke and mirrors” – the magician’s trick. Who are the magicians running our show? Sometimes it’s innocent smoke that turns day to night, such as the smoke that’s drifted down from Canada that has just forced me to turn lights on at midday.
Sexual titillation is not innocent smoke. That it is everywhere is obvious; it has been so for decades now. The German-American sociologist Herbert Marcuse posited this in 1964 in his book, "One-Dimensional Man," in which he argued that a new totalitarianism was developing in the USA and Western Europe that “manifests itself precisely in a harmonizing pluralism, where the most contradictory works and truths peacefully coexist in indifference.” This was happening both culturally and politically. This unification of seeming opposites – “democratic unfreedom” that prevents qualitative change – was facilitated by what he called “repressive modes of desublimation.”
One important aspect of this method of social control was the offer of increased satisfaction of the sexual variety that would draw off instinctual energy from significant social change in societies where technological rationality was the underlying fact. Localized sexuality and the sexualization and titillation of everyday life would reduce genuine erotic living.
This faux-sexuality would seem to many people like liberation from the then fading traditional religiously-based forms of sublimation, which were also repressive. But rather than freedom, Marcuse argued, it was the commodification of sex as another commercial product to keep people gratified and happy with their condition in a society of growing inequality and technical control.
This “Happy Consciousness” has prevailed, and today we find ourselves incapable of imagining significant political change as the latest American president, Donald Trump, “of grab them by the pussy” fame, presides over multiple wars and growing internal repression.
Once many people smoked one or more packs of cigarettes a day. Doctors recommended them as good for your health. One of my sisters used to smoke in the shower and our family doctor smoked as he examined us kids. He was the team doctor for a major university’s basketball team. In times past, many a man went out for Lucky Strikes or Camels and never came back. Do they still go out? For what? Do they ever come back?
In my little town of Great Barrington in western Massachusetts there are ten or so pot shops, which is approximately one shop for every 700 people. I wonder if they have read Baudelaire’s “Be Drunk”?
“You have to be always drunk. That’s all there is to it—it’s the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk. But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.” Simon and Garfunkel once asked:
"Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?
A nation turns its lonely eyes to you,
wo wo wo.
What’s that you say, Mrs. Robinson
‘Joltin Joe’ has left and gone away,
hey hey hey."
Joe, the mythical man, is long dead. Yet dreams of mythical men perdure and they will be dredged up with the next elections. Sexual scandals will follow. What’s new pussycat?
We think we have come to our senses, that the smoke does not get in our eyes. But that’s an extreme form of mental myopia. The neo-fascist vulgar Trump is our present nightmare, but his presence has a past and a future, which Chris Hedges correctly notes in “Requiem for America on the Fourth of July” [emphasis added]:
"Neoliberals peddle their own form of magical thinking. Neoliberalism is as absurd and infantile as the Christian Rapture and Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement. Trump lies like he breathes, but so did previous presidents including Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. Trump embraces fantasies, but so did they. Trump, like his Democratic predecessors, enriches himself and his family, although with far more ostentation and greed. He, like them, facilitates the ongoing pillage by the billionaire class. Trump is the fascist iteration of the neoliberal con."
This is Marcuse’s point about the unification of ostensible opposites. But most people still don’t get it, for one-dimensional thinking is the norm. And in a digital world the tyranny of the moment dominates peoples’ attention, even as the moment itself is immediately superseded by the next.
As the Red Queen said to Alice in "Through the Looking-Glass," “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!” So we rush on, getting nowhere fast, forgetting that we are all getting screwed in a looking-glass world."
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Simon and Garfunkel, "Mrs. Robinson"
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Freely download "Through The Looking Glass,
And What Alice Found There", by Lewis Carroll, here:
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Edward Curtin: Sociologist, researcher, poet, essayist, journalist, novelist….writer – beyond a cage of categories. His new book is "AT THE LOST AND FOUND: Personal & Political Dispatches of Resistance and Hope" (Clarity Press)
"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."
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