Excerpt: "Europe’s political class promised prosperity through bigger government, mass immigration, and endless regulation. The results haven’t lived up to the promise of socialism. They never do. Rome is burning, and Europe’s political class is still arguing over how many regulations, subsidies, and government programs it will take to put out the fire.
For decades, Europe’s “progressive” establishment has promoted an increasingly expensive social contract: more government services, generous benefits, shorter working hours, greater regulation, and the promise that someone else will pay for it all. Meanwhile, businesses are expected to absorb the costs, entrepreneurs are buried in paperwork, and governments increasingly look to imported labor to compensate for aging populations and persistent labor shortages.
But importing workers is not the same as creating prosperity. Immigration can strengthen an economy when newcomers possess needed skills, find productive employment, and contribute more than they consume in public resources. When immigration outpaces job creation, housing construction, education, and integration, the costs do not disappear. They are transferred to taxpayers, communities, and already strained public services.
Now look at Poland, France, and Belgium. In 2024, Belgium recorded approximately 116 robberies per 100,000 residents, France approximately 83, and Poland just 12. Meanwhile, the reported foreign-born shares of their populations in January 2025 were roughly 20 percent, 14 percent, and 2.6 percent, respectively. These statistics certainly justify asking harder questions about immigration policy, integration, policing, and public safety.
Meanwhile, Europe’s political establishment has developed another troubling habit: using the machinery of government against politicians who challenge its policies. In France, Marine Le Pen was initially barred from seeking office following an embezzlement conviction, although an appeals court subsequently restored her eligibility.
In Romania, authorities annulled a presidential election after nationalist candidate Călin Georgescu won the first round, then barred him from the rerun, citing electoral irregularities and foreign interference. None of which was proven.
In Germany, domestic intelligence authorities classified the opposition AfD as extremist, only to have a court suspend that designation.
Italy prosecuted Matteo Salvini over his decision to prevent a migrant rescue vessel from disembarking, before the courts ultimately acquitted him.
These cases have different legal circumstances, but collectively raise serious questions about political pluralism and the treatment of dissent. Meanwhile, European governments face real problems involving criminal gangs, failed integration, and Islamist extremism. Consider Brussels, the administrative capital of the European Union, where drug-related shootings have become a major public-safety problem, and authorities have had to increase security around railway stations. The British government specifically warns travelers about robbery and theft around Brussels-Midi and Brussels-North. There is something profoundly wrong when European governments appear more comfortable policing political dissent than ensuring that ordinary citizens can safely walk through their own cities."
“A Life Worth Living: Albert Camus on Our Search for
Meaning and Why Happiness Is Our Moral Obligation”
by Maria Popova
“To decide whether life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question of philosophy,” Albert Camus (November 7, 1913–January 4, 1960) wrote in his 119-page philosophical essay “The Myth of Sisyphus”in 1942. “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest – whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories – comes afterwards. These are games; one must first answer. And if it is true, as Nietzsche claims, that a philosopher, to deserve our respect, must preach by example, you can appreciate the importance of that reply, for it will precede the definitive act. These are facts the heart can feel; yet they call for careful study before they become clear to the intellect. Everything else… is child’s play; we must first of all answer the question.” One of the most famous opening lines of the twentieth century captures one of humanity’s most enduring philosophical challenges – the impulse at the heart of Seneca’s meditations on life and Montaigne’s timeless essaysand Maya Angelou’s reflections, and a wealth of human inquiry in between. But Camus, the second-youngest recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature after Rudyard Kipling, addressed it with unparalleled courage of conviction and insight into the irreconcilable longings of the human spirit.
In the beautifully titled and beautifully written “A Life Worth Living: Albert Camus and the Quest for Meaning” (public library), historian Robert Zaretsky considers Camus’s lifelong quest to shed light on the absurd condition, his “yearning for a meaning or a unity to our lives,” and its timeless yet increasingly timely legacy: If the question abides, it is because it is more than a matter of historical or biographical interest. Our pursuit of meaning, and the consequences should we come up empty-handed, are matters of eternal immediacy.
Camus pursues the perennial prey of philosophy – the questions of who we are, where and whether we can find meaning, and what we can truly know about ourselves and the world – less with the intention of capturing them than continuing the chase.”
Reflecting on the parallels between Camus and Montaigne, Zaretsky finds in this ongoing chase one crucial difference of dispositions: “Camus achieves with the Myth what the philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty claimed for Montaigne’s Essays: it places “a consciousness astonished at itself at the core of human existence.”
For Camus, however, this astonishment results from our confrontation with a world that refuses to surrender meaning. It occurs when our need for meaning shatters against the indifference, immovable and absolute, of the world. As a result, absurdity is not an autonomous state; it does not exist in the world, but is instead exhaled from the abyss that divides us from a mute world.”
Camus himself captured this with extraordinary elegance when he wrote in “The Myth of Sisyphus”: “This world in itself is not reasonable, that is all that can be said. But what is absurd is the confrontation of this irrational and wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart. The absurd depends as much on man as on the world. For the moment it is all that links them together.”
To discern these echoes amid the silence of the world, Zaretsky suggests, was at the heart of Camus’s tussle with the absurd: “We must not cease in our exploration, Camus affirms, if only to hear more sharply the silence of the world. In effect, silence sounds out when human beings enter the equation. If “silences must make themselves heard,” it is because those who can hear inevitably demand it. And if the silence persists, where are we to find meaning?”
This search for meaning was not only the lens through which Camus examined every dimension of life, from the existential to the immediate, but also what he saw as our greatest source of agency. In one particularly prescient diary entry from November of 1940, as WWII was gathering momentum, he writes: “Understand this: we can despair of the meaning of life in general, but not of the particular forms that it takes; we can despair of existence, for we have no power over it, but not of history, where the individual can do everything. It is individuals who are killing us today. Why should not individuals manage to give the world peace? We must simply begin without thinking of such grandiose aims.”
For Camus, the question of meaning was closely related to that of happiness - something he explored with great insight in his notebooks. Zaretsky writes: “Camus observed that absurdity might ambush us on a street corner or a sun-blasted beach. But so, too, do beauty and the happiness that attends it. All too often, we know we are happy only when we no longer are.”
Perhaps most importantly, Camus issued a clarion call of dissent in a culture that often conflates happiness with laziness and championed the idea that happiness is nothing less than a moral obligation. A few months before his death, Camus appeared on the TV show Gros Plan. Dressed in a trench coat, he flashed his mischievous boyish smile and proclaimed into the camera: “Today, happiness has become an eccentric activity. The proof is that we tend to hide from others when we practice it. As far as I’m concerned, I tend to think that one needs to be strong and happy in order to help those who are unfortunate.”
This wasn’t a case of Camus arriving at some mythic epiphany in his old age – the cultivation of happiness and the eradication of its obstacles was his most persistent lens on meaning. More than two decades earlier, he had contemplated “the demand for happiness and the patient quest for it” in his journal, capturing with elegant simplicity the essence of the meaningful life – an ability to live with presence despite the knowledge that we are impermanent: ”We must” be happy with our friends, in harmony with the world, and earn our happiness by following a path which nevertheless leads to death.”
But his most piercing point integrates the questions of happiness and meaning into the eternal quest to find ourselves and live our truth: ”It is not so easy to become what one is, to rediscover one’s deepest measure.”
“To create today is to create dangerously. Any publication is an act,
and that act exposes one to the passions of an age that forgives nothing.”
~ Albert Camus, "Resistance, Rebellion and Death: Essays" (1960)
The Paris of the South, Argentina - "With France still reeling after the weekend’s riots, the worst of which seemed to be perpetrated by those for whom liberté, égalité, fraternité stand as empty concepts in a world beyond their dim comprehension, we thought we might offer something a little different today…
Something rebellious. Something elevated. Something differentiated from the smash-and-grab philistinism of the hooting, clamoring mob. Herewith, some biographical Notes and philosophical insights from one of France’s most original modern thinkers. Trusting the reader will enjoy the myriad ironies at play here, we will refrain from any more introductory remarks, lest we give any of them away. Please enjoy…
"Rebel, Rebel"
By Joel Bowman
"On a bleak and misty day, a luxurious Facel automobile bound for Paris veered off a long, straight country road near Sens and collided with a plane tree. The driver, French publisher Michel Gallimard, died in hospital a few days later. His wife and daughter, in the rear seats, were unharmed. Found among the wreckage were 144 pages of handwritten manuscript, entitled "Le premier Homme" (The First Man). Their author, who believed this would be his finest work yet, had been riding in the passenger seat. He died instantly. Albert Camus was 46 years old. And that was 66 years ago.
In some ways, it was a small miracle that the Nobel prize-winning author made it even that far. Raised in a poor, working class town in his native Algeria, the precocious Camus was awarded a scholarship to study at a prestigious lyceum near the capital, Algiers, when he was just 10-years of age.
Alas, when he was 17-years old, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and was thus obliged to move from his family home to his uncle’s residence. Encouraged by Uncle Gustave and guided by his teacher, Jean Grenier, Camus began to read philosophy in earnest. The young man found himself particularly impressed by the ancient Greeks as well as Friedrich Nietzsche, a thinker many consider a precursor to the school of existentialism, with which Camus was later lumped (much to his own frustration and protest).
In a strange twist of fate, Camus’ diagnosis also saved him from a career in academia as a university lecturer and, arguably the more clear and present danger, being accepted into the French army, to which he volunteered shortly after Germany marched on France during the devastating Western Campaign of 1940. nIn lieu of the first scaffold – that of the frustrated college professor – Camus completed what he would call his “first cycle”; the novel "The Stranger", the philosophical essay "The Myth of Sisyphus", and the play "Caligula."
In lieu of the second fate – almost certain death, face down in Somme mud – he completed his second cycle; the novel "The Plague" the philosophical essay "The Rebel," and the play "The Misunderstanding."
The Paradox of the Absurd: As it happened, misinterpretation (either accidental or deliberate, as on the part of his adversaries) would feature prominently throughout Camus’ career. Though he spent much of his life passionately engaged in politics, particularly on the Algerian question, where he abhorred colonialism, his nuanced positions won him no shortage of enemies on both sides of the political aisle.
Briefly a member of the French Communist Party, he nevertheless disavowed Marxism, and was later an outspoken critic of Stalin’s post-war occupation of Eastern Europe and an avid supporter of the uprisings in cities trapped behind the Iron Curtain. He was equally critical of fascism at home in France and across the Continent, leaning instead toward a stripe of anarcho-syndicalism, in which he advocated for solidarity and brotherhood among freely associating, sovereign individuals in the face of governmental totalitarianism emanating from the left and the right.
Throughout his philosophical works, Camus sought to acknowledge, confront and eventually overcome the “Paradox of the Absurd” – as he saw it, the direct result of the “confrontation between human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.” Camus rejected spiraling nihilism in the face of the absurd, arguing that suicide was itself an affront to human values and freedom. Instead, one must live, one must create, one must in the end be, not because he is promised deliverance, but despite the knowledge that he is not. From "The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays":
“To work and create 'for nothing', to sculpture in clay, to know that one's creation has no future, to see one's work destroyed in a day while being aware that fundamentally this has no more importance than building for centuries – this is the difficult wisdom that absurd thought sanctions. Performing these two tasks simultaneously, negating on one hand and magnifying on the other, is the way open to the absurd creator. He must give the void its colors.”
- Albert Camus, "The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays" (1942)
Defiant Creation: Poetic irony, then, that a diagnosis of tuberculosis (a veritable death sentence for writers and thinkers down the ages, from Kierkegaard to Kafka... Whitman to Weil... Maupassant to Orwell... Rousseau to Shiller to Chekhov to Lawrence, et al. ...) should spare the young Camus a similar fate, delivering him instead to a life of letters and metaphysical contemplation.
Tragic irony, too, that he who rebelled against the absurdity of man’s ultimate fate, his unshakeable mortality, who met the “unreasonable silence” of an indifferent world with his own powerful, deliberate act of living, who created in the face of the nothingness he saw in waiting, should be delivered from the disease’s icy grip, from this world into the rushing void... through the windscreen of a speeding vehicle.
It was the great American author William Faulkner who wrote Camus’ obituary, underscoring the age-old epitaph when he observed: “When the door shut for him he had already written on this side of it that which every artist who also carries through life with him that one same foreknowledge and hatred of death, is hoping to do: I was here.” ~ William Faulkner, "Obituary for Albert Camus"
From his penetrating philosophical essay, "The Rebel" (L’Homme révolté, 1951), one can almost hear Camus calling down the ages to an afflicted nation, addled by despair, his message of solidarity. “I rebel - therefore we exist.”
Those who would tear down the Republic, who dare affront Western civilization, have but sticks and stones. But the West has ideas, culture and, above all, the enduring spirit of resistance. What was lost will be honored. What was torn down will be rebuilt again. And again. And again. For as long as the defiant act of creation demands. “The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart,” as Camus himself once wrote. “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” Stay tuned for more Notes From the End of the World…
Barbarians ravaging all that remains of beauty and civilization."
- Spanish Vox party leader Santiago Abascal
Ardmore, Ireland - "What to make of the riots in France...Italy...Portugal…Albania? What set them off? A temper tantrum by Millennials and Zoomers? Or the death rattle for Western civilization?
The media loves fires burning and cops swinging their truncheons. Especially in the streets of Paris, such a photogenic city. The rest of the world looks on in horror...and relief. ‘At least that’s not happening here,’ people tell themselves. The commentariat, meanwhile, struggles to make sense of it. The rioters, what’s their beef? And what does it mean for the rest of us?
As always, there are opinions on the ‘right’ and on the ‘left.’ Sympathy for the mob can be found in ‘leftish’ circles, based on envy. Some people have a lot of money. Many have little. Surely that is the cause of so many of our social ills. Crime, lack of medical care, substandard housing...and so forth...all can be traced back to an unfair distribution of wealth, no?
That is the explicit appeal of socialism, generally, and New York mayor Zohran Mamdani in particular. The solutions are obvious - transfer the wealth from the rich to the poor. The feds should be taxing the rich, they say...and spending more for better schools, environmentally-correct housing, free medical care, cradle to grave - the usual ‘liberal’ agenda, in other words, an ancient tree that has never actually borne fruit. Maggie Thatcher explained the problem with it, ‘you soon run out of other peoples’ money.’
The contrary of the ‘liberal’ agenda is the ‘conservative’ agenda. You don’t hear it very often, because there are few conservatives still compos mentis. But those few will tell you that the problem is not too little funding for the young and the poor, but too much.
While the ‘liberal’ point of view is based in materialism, the ‘conservative’ outlook leans heavily on traditional morality...as in ‘the moral of the story.’ ‘People should get what they’ve got coming to them,’ says the old-time conservative. The grumpy old fellow is ready to share the judgement of time, experience...and scraped knuckles: ‘as ye sow, so shall ye reap,’ he says. The French have spent so much on ‘social services,’ he believes, that they now have a substantial population that is idle and, naturally, discontented. ‘What do you expect,’ says the graybeard, ‘they don’t have to get up in the morning and go to work.’
He is about to tell us what use the devil has for idle hands, but he knows he’s said it many times already; we’re probably getting tired of hearing it. ‘Nobody feels good about sitting around all day,’ he says, speaking from the experience of a retiree. ‘You’ve got to learn a skill...and feel the satisfaction of a job well done. They’re cheating these people out of a decent life. No wonder they’re upset.’
There’s also a third interpretation. Neither liberal nor conservative, there are those who think the fault lies not in our stars nor in ourselves...but in immigrants. The Independent: "Trump and Kremlin both claim French riots caused by ‘mass immigration’ in similar statements. “Close your Borders and take control, before it is too late!” the US president added. Russia’s presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev, meanwhile, said he thought it was “Western civilisation’s suicide through migrant chaos.”
This is a popular explanation because it puts the blame squarely on others...and suggests a simple solution: deport them. That may or may not be a good idea, but it doesn’t explain the season’s riots all over Europe. Why are the immigrants rioting now? They’ve been in Europe for many years. Nor does it explain how France, for example, was able to field even larger mobs - in May 1968...in the Paris Revolution of 1848...and in the French Revolution of 1789 - with very few immigrants in sight. They - like Americans - are fully capable of burning down their own town halls; they don’t need foreigners to help them.
But the more dangerous and reckless the rioters become, the more voters will want to get rid of them. The Independent again: "Germany’s Alice Weidel, leader of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), described the clashes as an “attack on Western civilisation by migrant mobs and far-left agitators,” arguing that “open borders and mass immigration” were responsible for the destruction."
And back in France, Middle East Eye forecasts: "France is on the precipice of a far-right landslide." People don’t like to see shop windows smashed. Especially when it is an ‘immigrant’ doing the smashing. We don’t know if deporting whole groups of people will really make life better for those who are left. But there are several groups we’d like to propose. More tomorrow...including another explanation for Europe’s riots."
Excerpt: "Beef has become an occasion, the packages keep shrinking, and the old cheap staples are creeping back onto the plate. The grocery aisle has been telling this story for years - in small print, and almost nobody has been listening.
Editor’s Note: "Nobody will announce it. No president will stand at a podium and explain that the country has begun to eat differently, that the weekly shop has become a negotiation, that the meat counter is now a place where decisions get made rather than taken for granted. It will simply happen, the way most things happen here - one smaller bag, one cheaper cut, one modest substitution at a time - until the food on the table resembles what people ate in 1935 and nobody quite remembers when the change began.
What started this was small, a box of pasta that no longer weighed what it used to, and the argument widened from there. The drift runs back toward the habits of the Great Depression: meat rarer and cheaper, beans and potatoes and bread returning to the center of the plate, fat and preserving back in the kitchen, cooking once more from scratch, substitutions accepted as normal. Hunger is not the problem. The difficulty is more like a slow erosion of standards, and erosion is much harder to notice than famine. (In this video, we’ll go over a tool for this community that can mean the difference between life and death.) Length is part of the point. Read it the way such changes arrive: slowly, and with attention."
And Families Are Choosing Between Power And Food!"
"Electric bills are climbing again, and families are choosing between keeping the power on and putting food on the table. In this video, Americans show it from their side: a $325 Reliant bill in a Texas rental while sitting in the dark with the thermostat turned up, a bill that more than doubled since last summer to almost $400 a month for two people, an Ohio family using half the power and still getting the same bill, a $500 electric bill that doubled, Alabama Power bills over $400 for a 1,200 square foot home and a faulty meter, a $640 light bill in Texas, a Houston bill that went from $225 to nearly $500, a $450 Duke Energy bill every month even in winter, a $1,000 FPL bill, a $600 bill for an 800 square foot home with the heat off, a Georgia Power bill bigger than other people's rent, a $1,000 bill in Los Angeles where $350 used to be normal, and a light bill that jumped from $168 to $400. We look at why power bills keep climbing, and what actually helps: budget billing, assistance programs like LIHEAP, and cutting the hidden power hogs before the next bill lands."
"The Federal Reserve just issued a chilling warning to every American with a credit card and 3.1 million homeowners. Another interest rate hike is likely before year-end — and you have about 1 week until the October 28th decision. In this video I break down what the Fed actually said, why a 0.25% hike makes your credit card minimums go up while you pay down less principal, why 3.1 million adjustable-rate mortgages resetting now matters so much after 2008, and what to do if you're living off credit to pay rent, mortgage or other bills."
"Americans can't live on $15 an hour anymore, because rent takes the whole paycheck before anything else gets paid. In this video, hourly workers show it from their side: 40 hours a week at $16 to $17 an hour in North Carolina with rent over $1,200, a Kentucky worker on $7.25 bringing home about $1,100 while rent alone is about $1,500, $20 an hour and about $2,900 a month against $1,000 to $1,200 rent, $15 an hour full time in Georgia with about $700 a month for a used car and $1,200 rent, $16 an hour in small-town Texas leaving $60 for the month after rent, food and the car, $20 an hour with half of about $2,600 going to $1,100 rent, a move to Texas to save money with the minimum wage still at $7.25, Wisconsin stuck at $7.25 for 15 years, an hour of Alabama minimum wage buying a cold sandwich, a Madison server evicted on $7.25 an hour and weak tips, three jobs on Auburn's $17 minimum wage to pay the same rent as Seattle, the same $21 an hour while rent went from $700 to $1,200, and a single mom on about $19 an hour left with $194 for two weeks. We look at why the paycheck keeps losing to rent, and what actually helps: every employer benefit, local help with utilities and childcare, and a small emergency fund built a few bills at a time."
"The economy is starting to crack, and the financial pressure is showing up everywhere. Car payments are crushing household budgets, auto loan delinquencies are raising concerns, home sales are struggling, and homebuilders are pulling back. Meanwhile, inflation, rising housing costs, credit card debt, and everyday bills are leaving more Americans with little or nothing left at the end of the month. What happens when people can no longer afford the payments they’ve been making for years? In this episode of iAllegedly, Dan breaks down the growing financial squeeze across the auto industry, housing market, consumer debt, and small businesses. We look at the risks surrounding auto loan defaults and repossessions, the challenges facing homebuyers and builders, and the pressure on families trying to stay afloat. Is the economy approaching a breaking point, and how can you prepare your finances for what comes next? Watch, share your thoughts in the comments, and subscribe for more business news you can use."
"What happens if U.S. troops land in Iran? A new Bloomberg report says some of Washington's Gulf Arab allies want President Trump to escalate, deploy ground forces and possibly seize Kharg Island, Iran's crucial oil export hub. Retired U.S. Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor warns that such an operation could turn into a modern Gallipoli: small, light forces on waterless islands, exposed to precision missiles and drones, with every evacuation flight at risk. Macgregor reacts live to Trump's new threat to destroy one Iranian bridge or power plant for every ship attacked in the Strait of Hormuz. He explains why Iran has no incentive to accept another ceasefire, how strikes on radars across Jordan, Kuwait and Bahrain may be designed to blind regional early warning, and why he expects $150 oil within weeks. He also discusses reports of a hidden interceptor shortage, the danger of nuclear escalation, and the return of General Surovikin in Ukraine."
"Evictions just exploded all over America, and renters are getting a notice on the door and a few days to pack. In this video, renters show it from their side: a Houston student appealing their own eviction on $13 an hour, a $3,142 judgment due by July 15 for a renter out of work since September 2024, rent paid in pieces with the full balance due by the weekend, a Dallas family who paid the rent and still got a 30-day pay-or-vacate notice, a Los Angeles sheriff handing over a notice to vacate by August 8, a family fighting their landlord in eviction court, an Atlanta renter whose rent went from $2,200 to over $3,000 and who was still filed on after moving out, a Fulton County filing while rental assistance had a six-week wait, a same-day sheriff lockout and a rented U-Haul, a widow fired for going to her husband's funeral and then evicted, a 30-day notice the morning after rent came out, a roommate who stopped paying and a complex now demanding the full $5,000, an eviction notice on the door while the rent was paid, an eviction court day with no ride and the kids in tow, a sold apartment with three days to leave and Section 8 gone, a hotel eviction over $7,000 and three months in a tent, an eviction court so packed the tenant got two more weeks, two college degrees and $7.25 an hour in Iowa against $1,500 rent, and a 24-hour notice in Las Vegas with a newborn. We look at why evictions keep piling up, and what actually helps: opening every court letter the day it arrives, showing up to the hearing, calling legal aid about emergency rental assistance, and keeping every rent receipt in one folder."
"The housing market in the United States has never been more paralyzed than it is right now. For years, the Federal Reserve kept interest rates at artificially low levels, and during that time most homeowners in this country were able to lock in fixed mortgage rates that were extremely low. Now that mortgage rates are soaring, many of those same homeowners feel trapped because selling would also mean getting a mortgage on a new home at a much higher rate. Meanwhile, most prospective homeowners feel like they are on the outside looking in because a combination of ridiculously high prices and painfully high mortgage rates has made homes more unaffordable than ever before.
There are only two ways that the housing market will get unfrozen. Either mortgage rates have to come way down or home prices have to come way down. Of course neither of those two things is likely to happen any time soon. So we have a real mess on our hands. The following are 5 signs that the housing market will be deeply frozen for the foreseeable future…
#1 Pending home sales are trending in the wrong direction very rapidly. According to the NAR, pending home sales were 11.3 percent lower in September 2026 than they were in September 2025…Fast-rising mortgage rates in September took a harsh toll on the housing market, according to new monthly data released today. Pending home sales, a measure of signed contracts on existing homes, dropped 7.3% from August and were down 11.3% year-over-year, according to the National Association of Realtors.
This count reflects buyers out shopping in September, when the average rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage rose sharply. It started the month around 6.8% and hit 7.6% by the end of the month, according to Mortgage News Daily.
This isn’t just a downturn. This is a historic disaster. At this point, pending home sales have fallen to the lowest level on record…
#2 Just like we witnessed just prior to the Great Recession, foreclosure filings are way up. In the month of August, they were a whopping 13 percent higher than last year…ATTOM’s August report showed 40,277 properties with foreclosure filings, up 13 percent from a year earlier. Foreclosure starts rose 7 percent. Completed bank repossessions jumped 42 percent to 5,794 homes. South Carolina, Nevada, Florida, Texas, and Maryland posted the highest rates.
#3 We desperately need more homes to be built, but home construction numbers are just dismal. Last month, single family housing starts and building permits were both down a lot more than the experts were anticipating…Home construction also took a hit in September. Both single-family housing starts and building permits fell much more sharply than analysts had predicted. Starts were down 4.56% to 859,000 annualized, according to the U.S. Census. That is the lowest level since September 2025. Building permits, which are a measure of future construction, fell 4% for the month.
#4 Homebuilders are not optimistic about the future at all. In fact, homebuilder confidence just dropped to the lowest level in 14 years… The mood among America’s homebuilders is grim. Homebuilder sentiment fell three points to 29 in October, according to the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index.
October’s reading marks the lowest homebuilder sentiment the US has seen since June 2012, the NAHB said, when the housing market was still moving through the aftermath of the 2008 crisis. It shows just how much builders have soured on the housing landscape amid rising costs and a record-breaking slowdown in home sales.
#5 The housing market has already been in a depressed state for an extended period of time, and now economist Jim Paulsen is warning that his “Walmart Recession Signal” is peaking just like it did before the start of the Great Recession… Economist Jim Paulsen calls his theory the “Walmart Recession Signal” (WRS). When Walmart’s stock goes up and shares of luxury companies in the S&P Global Luxury Index go down, it’s a sign that the country may be headed for a recession.
“As economic activity slows and recession risk builds, retailing purchasing patterns tend to gravitate toward discounters like Walmart and away from overall or luxury retailers,” Paulsen wrote in a Substack post Monday. “Consequently, a rise in the WRS could warn of a potential recession or at least a significant economic slowdown.” And that warning is getting louder, he said. Just as it did before the Great Recession and two recessions in the 90s, the WRS is peaking.
What we are experiencing now reminds me so much of the middle of 2008. Except this time around those on the bottom rungs of the economic food chain are in far worse shape. As I discussed the other day, 44 percent of all Americans struggle to even pay for the basic necessities each month. And millions upon millions of Americans are now living either on the streets or in their vehicles.
For example, in the Bronx there is a very long corridor known as the “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” where large numbers of homeless Americans have been living in “old RVs, trailers and trucks”… Residents along an unsightly stretch of the Bronx are fed up with an eyesore corridor where the homeless have been bedding down in old RVs, trailers and trucks for years, The Post has learned. The “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” along a section of Webster Avenue has been a headache for locals for at least two years - but the desperate folks calling the rundown vehicles home said they were driven to a bare-bones existence by the Big Apple’s sky-high rents.
These people aren’t living there because they want to live there. These people are living there because they can’t afford a real home… Those people told The Post they were driven to live in RVs and trucks by the city’s rents - which left them a choice between the streets, risky city shelters or the vehicles they now call home.
“We need housing,” said Rita Freeman, who said she’s lived in her RV since last November. “I mean, this is absurd. This is bizarre. There’s so many of us. “I went into hotels, I maxed out my credit card for the first time since I had it since 1994,” she added. “Because I did not want to go to a shelter or the street. It’s very dangerous.”
This is happening all over the nation. Every single day, even more Americans fall out of the middle class and into poverty. We need affordable homes, but the housing market is not properly responding to market forces any longer because the Federal Reserve’s insane policies have thrown everything out of whack.
It has been said that if you play stupid games, you should expect to win stupid prizes. Sadly, the Federal Reserve has been playing stupid games for a very long time. Foolish actions have foreseeable and predictable consequences. Now we are reaping what they have sown, and there will be no easy way to fix this mess. There is a reason why I have been ranting about the Federal Reserve for nearly two decades. The choices that they make have a very real impact on all of us. Now we are steamrolling toward a major economic downturn, and they are actually thinking of raising rates again. So much pain is ahead, and much of it could have been easily avoided."
“M13 is one of the most prominent and best known globular clusters. Visible with binoculars in the constellation of Hercules, M13 is frequently one of the first objects found by curious sky gazers seeking celestials wonders beyond normal human vision.
M13 is a colossal home to over 100,000 stars, spans over 150 light years across, lies over 20,000 light years distant, and is over 12 billion years old. At the 1974 dedication of Arecibo Observatory, a radio message about Earth was sent in the direction of M13. The featured image in HDR, taken through a small telescope, spans an angular size just larger than a full Moon, whereas the inset image, taken by Hubble Space Telescope, zooms in on the central 0.04 degrees.”
"Welcome to Gengu AI – your ultimate destination for AI-generated music and next-generation sound experiences. This channel is dedicated to creating unique, high-quality tracks powered by artificial intelligence, blending creativity and technology to deliver music that feels fresh, emotional, and immersive. AI was the tool. The story came from human feeling. If this film gave you a quiet breath, a memory, or a moment of peace, thank you for being here."
"Some people can see every flaw in everybody else’s house… while tripping over the mess in their own. "Sweep Your Own Porch" is a dry-humored Delta blues reflection about hypocrisy, humility, judgment, pride, and the old wisdom of cleaning up your own life before trying to inspect someone else’s. The resonator guitar walks with a sly front-porch swagger, carrying that old Southern attitude between truth and laughter. The harmonica answers with playful bends and knowing phrases, like an old friend who has seen enough nonsense to smile before speaking. The groove stays witty, grounded, and honest… like somebody telling the truth without raising their voice. This is the blues of humility. Not silence. Not weakness. Just the simple reminder that judgment gets dangerous when self-awareness goes missing."
:Welcome to The Delta Old Lantern - a home for deep Delta Blues, Southern Gothic storytelling, old soul music, and timeless blues wisdom. Here you’ll find dark Delta Blues inspired by dusty backroads, front porch memories, aging souls, quiet struggles, and the changing world around us. Every song carries the spirit of old acoustic blues, slide guitar echoes, worn-out roads, and stories carved by time. The Delta Old Lantern creates atmospheric blues music for listeners who appreciate raw emotion, old-world storytelling, lonely highways, weathered hearts, and the beauty found in growing older. These songs are inspired by the spirit of classic Delta Blues legends while bringing a modern cinematic sound for today’s listeners. This is music for old souls, late-night thinkers, weary travelers, and anyone who still believes stories matter."
"When one cannot be sure that there are many days left, each single day becomes as important as a year, and one does not waste an hour in wishing that that hour were longer, but simply fills it, like a smaller cup, as high as it will go without spilling over."
“If we had to put some of the stuff that’s happening today into the film back when we were making it, the studio would have told us we were being ridiculous,” James McTeigue, the director of the 2006 film "V for Vendetta", tells Big Think. “But V almost seems tame now, a bit like child’s play.” McTeigue sees the film as prophetic: “It was definitely pointing the way to where we ended up.”
Few movies leave a legacy as large as "V for Vendetta". Although it was met with mixed reviews and modest commercial success upon its release, McTeigue’s adaptation of Alan Moore’s graphic novel of the same name has never truly left the zeitgeist - and there are a couple of reasons.
The first has to do with the film’s themes. Moore’s graphic novel - written in the 1980s and illustrated by David Lloyd - attacked the Conservative government of “Iron Lady” Margaret Thatcher. When the film version came out, many viewed it as a critique of Bush-era illiberalism in the wake of 9/11. And with today’s anxieties about mass surveillance, authoritarian tendencies, and national leaders attempting to control media, it’s not hard to see why the film still resonates with audiences two decades after its release.
The second reason has to do with the film’s audience and imagery. A testament to the eponymous vigilante’s iconic exclamation that “ideas are bulletproof,” his grinning, mustachioed Guy Fawkes mask has become a popular sight at demonstrations across the globe, from the U.S. and Venezuela to Saudi Arabia and Hong Kong. But how did this happen, and what does it mean?
Guy Fawkes Day: To understand what the Guy Fawkes mask means to real-world rebels, we first have to understand what it means to V the character. As the film briefly calls upon us to “remember,” Fawkes was executed for his involvement in the 1605 Gunpowder Plot: an unsuccessful attempt by Catholic conspirators to blow up the House of Lords and assassinate the Protestant King James.
To commemorate its failure, the day the plot would have taken place - November 5th - was later declared a public holiday. Fawkes, who had been assigned the job of lighting the gunpowder, was not only burned in effigy, but over time, people also started wearing masks that caricatured his distinct appearance.
The meaning of this holiday changed. What began as a sober commemoration of a solemn event evolved into a night of bonfires and fireworks, and feelings associated with Fawkes shifted from negative to positive. By the time the Industrial Revolution rolled around - and English Catholics had been officially emancipated - Fawkes was seen less as a villain than as a folk figure.
This is also how V seems to see Fawkes. Though the character never really explains why he chose this particular figure as his revolutionary alter ego, his preoccupation with Fawkes’ larger-than-life (and, frankly, different-from-life) reputation rather than the man himself underscores his belief that symbols are more powerful than people.
Behind the mask: If certain members of Anonymous - the hacking group first credited with adopting the Guy Fawkes mask for real-world demonstrations - are to be believed, V for Vendetta largely owes its political currency to circumstance. Since the hackers decided they would all wear the same kind of mask, they had to pick one that was readily available in stores, and instead of Batman’s, they ended up settling for V’s. (Interestingly, Moore has listed Batman as one of his many, many inspirations for the revolutionary.)
The primary purpose of the masks was to provide anonymity. Anonymous is, as the name implies, anonymous. Used to striking from the shadows of the internet, the group took to the streets in February 2008, when thousands of members protested outside Church of Scientology buildings in dozens of cities. Showing up in person put them at risk of identification - a danger, given the church’s history of surveilling and harassing its critics.
At the same time, people were not unaware of the masks’ cultural connotations. Thanks to the film, Guy Fawkes was now thoroughly and explicitly linked to revolution, anarchism, and vigilante justice. In the graphic novel, V’s methods and motives are questionable. But on screen, he is presented as a more or less conventional superhero: someone dedicated to fighting the good fight, and turning the world into an unquestionably better place as a result. In short: someone many strive to emulate.
If picked for unrelated reasons, the film seemed to inspire the demonstrators. Gathering and posing for photographs, they intentionally mirrored one of the film’s last and most memorable scenes, where ordinary Londoners take up V’s call to action and march across the street wearing his mask: a single force, united behind a single purpose.
The power of symbols: The masks provide other advantages, too, most of which are likewise explored in the film. For both Anonymous and the Occupy Wall Street movement, which started using them in 2011, they reflect the fact that the demonstrations are decentralized and leaderless, making them difficult to break apart. (Masks obviously also make criminals more difficult to identify, which is why some nations have criminalized wearing masks in certain contexts: Some allow them only in lawful protests, not riots; others ban them during any public protest.)
Because symbols are abstract, they can mean different things to different people. “There’s value in abstracting away from what you’re trying to comment on,” McTeigue says. “With the film, we sprinkled enough in there that although the story is set in the U.K., you believe it could happen anywhere.”
According to one scholarly article on V for Vendetta, the citywide adoption of V’s Guy Fawkes mask is especially powerful because it signifies the people challenging the monopoly on representation held by the state, which the philosopher and political theorist Thomas Hobbes defined as the “sole actor of the body politic.”
If image and narrative are two of the primary tools that the film’s fascist government uses to ensure the loyalty (or docility) of its citizenry, then V uses those same tools to dismantle that relationship. Early in the film, he hijacks the state broadcast network to announce a visual spectacle of his own: the destruction of Parliament. In the end, the symbol of government - the building - makes room for the symbol of the people: the masks.
How fiction changes the world: Popular music, books, films, shows, video games, and other media do not simply reflect society’s problems and aspirations back at itself. According to French historian Patrick Boucheron, who covers this subject in his 2025 book "Political Fictions," they also - in a way - predict the future by exploring how those problems and aspirations could play out over time.
"V for Vendetta" is hardly the only piece of pop culture to work its way into real-world demonstrations. Recently, another image of fictional origin - the pirate flag of a Japanese manga and anime franchise called One Piece - became a prominent protest symbol in countries like Indonesia, Nepal, and India.
Like the Guy Fawkes mask, the One Piece flag does more than create a feeling of solidarity between protesters. By identifying their own struggles with those of a well-known fictional hero, they not only tap into a narrative that their opponents cannot easily control, but also generate sympathy abroad: anyone familiar with One Piece - the manga alone has sold more than 600 million copies globally - may be predisposed to sympathize with protesters waving the pirate flag, regardless of what the protests are actually about.
“All fiction is an escape from the everyday,” McTeigue says. “But when you escape, you are able to imagine a lot more than when you’re in the drudgery of ordinary life, trying to figure out whether someone on the news is actually telling you the truth, or whether they’re in their own echo chamber.”
Ends and means: V’s strategies may be effective, but are they also justifiable? Reading the graphic novel, one could make a strong case that they are not. Moore presents V as mentally unstable, and frequently frames his use of violence as being little different from the violence of the state. Moore also leaves his ending ambiguous, leaving readers to wonder whether V’s actions actually made Britain a better place.
The film version of V, though more traditionally heroic, also has his share of moral ambiguity. At some point in V for Vendetta, V’s protégé Evey (played by Natalie Portman) is imprisoned and tortured by the fascist police. Or at least, so it appears. After refusing to give up information about V - even under threat of execution - Evey is unexpectedly let go, at which point she discovers that her torturer was none other than V himself. He didn’t want to do it, he tells her, but he had no other choice: To pick up his revolutionary cause, she first had to be put to the test.
Movies - especially Hollywood movies - are full of characters who have convinced themselves that the ends justify the means, however horrible. They’re great for storytelling, imbuing scenes with drama and tragedy. But in real life, such lessons arguably risk glorifying and legitimizing political violence, something many Americans fear has become more common and accepted today than it was in the past, even if certain experts have their doubts. (A recent survey found that about one-third of Americans reported that political violence is at least sometimes justified to advance a political cause - a share that didn’t change much from mid-2024 to 2026.)
Less controversial is V’s belief in the dynamics and potential of mass protest itself. Reflective of real-world research showing that the biggest protests start because of some sudden, unexpected event (such as a scandal or accident) rather than long-standing grievances, V shows that one domino can set off a chain reaction. “It does not do to rely too much on silent majorities, Evey,” he says in the graphic novel, “for silence is a fragile thing, one loud noise, and it’s gone.”
“And when they found our shadows (grouped ‘round the TV sets), they ran down every lead; they repeated every test; they checked out all the data in their lists. And then the alien anthropologists admitted they were still perplexed, but on eliminating every other reason for our sad demise they logged the only explanation left: This species has amused itself to death.” - Roger Waters
“Apathy and indifference are nurtured in the modern age as most peoples’ free time is frittered away with worthless trivia like ball games, computer games, movies and soaps, and fiddling with their mobile phones. These distractions might be fun, but after most of them you’ve learnt nothing of any value, and remain ignorant, malleable and suggestible, which is just how the elites want you.” – Clive Maund
“A truth’s initial commotion is directly proportional to how deeply the lie was believed… When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker, a raving lunatic.” – Dresden James
“A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”
– Winston Churchill
"30 years ago (1985) Neil Postman (a professor of communications arts and sciences at New York University – until his death in 2003) wrote the best-selling book “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business”. (Free download below.) The book exposed, among other things, the subtle but profound dangers to the developing mind from the mesmerizing (and addictive) commercial television industry.
The lessons from that book have essentially been ignored by the amoral and corrupted sociopathic capitalist system that says “damn the torpedoes/full steam ahead” and blindly and greedily promotes unlimited growth no matter what the costs and who or what gets hurt long–term in the resource-extractive, exploitive and permanently polluting processes.
But Postman’s thesis applies even more strongly today to the current internet/computer/ age-inappropriate, pornographic sex and pornographic violence-saturated televangelist/political-contaminated media reality with which the prophetic Postman was properly alarmed.
SOMA, the Drug That Predicted Prozac by 50 Years: In the classic “Brave New World” (1932) Aldous Huxley wrote about the new form of totalitarianism that has now come to pass in the developed world, thanks to the privatized profit-driven, drug, medical and psychiatric corporations whose practitioners were once (naively or altruistically?) mainly concerned with relieving human suffering and trying to holistically and permanently cure their distressed patients’ ailments (rather than lucratively “managing” said “clients” as permanently paying consumers of unaffordable prescription drugs). Nearly 30 years after he wrote the book, Huxley said,
“And it seems to me perfectly in the cards that there will be within the next generation or so a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda, brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods.” Neil Postman’s very last sentence of his book concerned the prescription drug-infested victims of the new form of totalitarianism that Huxley had described in “Brave New World”.
Of course, Huxley’s book was all about his imaginary psychotropic drug SOMA that Prozac’s makers and promoters in the late 1980s to falsely claim to make its swallowers “feel better than well”. One of the characters in Brave New World said: “And if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there’s always Soma to give you a holiday from the facts. And there’s always Soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering. In the past you could only accomplish these things by making a great effort and after years of hard moral training. Now, you swallow two or three half-gramme tablets, and there you are. Anybody can be virtuous now. You can carry at least half your morality about in a bottle. Christianity without tears; that’s what Soma is.”
Postman ended his book by writing: “What afflicted the people in Brave New World was not that they were laughing instead of thinking, but that they did not know what they were laughing about and why they had stopped thinking.” A couple of years after the publication of Postman’s book, Roger Waters (of “Pink Floyd’s The Wall” fame) released a “concept” album that was inspired by the book. He titled the album “Amused to Death”. The lyrics of the title track are as follows:
