Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 12/16/23
"This Will Be 'The Biggest Event'
In the History Of Our Species"
Comments here:
So, we rise from the rubble...
Saturday, December 16, 2023
"Food Recalls Everywhere! This Is Unbelievable! What's Next!?"
Adventures With Danno, PM 12/16/23
"Food Recalls Everywhere!
This Is Unbelievable! What's Next!?"
"Food recalls are happening everywhere! We discuss how these food recalls are happening almost on a daily basis and that we have to be very mindful and prepare accordingly! Quaker granola bars are the latest on this list."
Comments here:
"A Look to the Heavens"
"A mere seven hundred light years from Earth, toward the constellation Aquarius, a sun-like star is dying. Its last few thousand years have produced the Helix Nebula (NGC 7293), a well studied and nearby example of a Planetary Nebula, typical of this final phase of stellar evolution. A total of 90 hours of exposure time have gone in to creating this expansive view of the nebula.
Combining narrow band image data from emission lines of hydrogen atoms in red and oxygen atoms in blue-green hues, it shows remarkable details of the Helix's brighter inner region about 3 light-years across. The white dot at the Helix's center is this Planetary Nebula's hot, central star. A simple looking nebula at first glance, the Helix is now understood to have a surprisingly complex geometry."
"The Poet: Wendell Berry, "Leavings"
"Leavings"
“In time a man disappears
from his lifelong fields, from
the streams he has walked beside,
from the woods where he sat and waited.
Thinking of this, he seems to
miss himself in those places
as if always he has been there.
But first he must disappear,
and this he foresees with hope,
with thanks. Let others come.”
- Wendell Berry
○
“Perhaps as he was lying awake then, his life may have passed before him – his early hopeful struggles, his manly successes and prosperity, his downfall in his declining years, and his present helpless condition – no chance of revenge against Fortune, which had had the better of him - neither name nor money to bequeath – a spent-out, bootless life of defeat and disappointment, and the end here! Which, I wonder, brother reader, is the better lot, to die prosperous and famous, or poor and disappointed? To have, and to be forced to yield; or to sink out of life, having played and lost the game? That must be a strange feeling, when a day of our life comes and we say, “Tomorrow, success or failure won’t matter much, and the sun will rise, and all the myriads of mankind go to their work or their pleasure as usual, but I shall be out of the turmoil.”
- William Makepeace Thackeray, “Vanity Fair”
"I Can't Convince Myself...
“I can’t convince myself that it does much good to try to challenge the everyday political delusions and dementias of Americans at large. Their contained and confined mentalities by far prefer the petty and parochial prisons of the kind of sense they have been trained and rewarded for making out of their lives (and are punished for deviating from them). What it costs them ultimately to be such slaves and infants and ideological zombies is a thought too monstrous and rending and spiky for them even to want to glance at.”
- Kenneth Smith
“If you want to tell people the truth,
make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.”
- Oscar Wilde
Greg Hunter, "Weekly News Wrap-Up"
"Weekly News Wrap-Up"
by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com
"A new survey done by top polling company Rasmussen reveals voter fraud in 2020 was “stunning.” One out of five surveyed admitted they committed voter fraud. This is not opinion but actual people admitting fraud by mail. The US Census Bureau said a record 154 million Americans voted in the 2020 Presidential Election. If this survey is correct, that means up 30 million votes were total fraud. This also means the Biden Administration cheated themselves in, and we can all see how this has turned out for America.
Donald Trump’s so-called “document” case is headed for the Supreme Court. The Court can rule in Trump’s favor, and the entire Jack Smith prosecution case against Trump can be thrown out. The two big issues the High Court is considering are: Does Donald Trump have 1st Amendment rights, and does former President Trump have immunity for this type of prosecution? Let’s hope the answer to both are a resounding YES.
The Fed looks like it is ready to surrender to inflation. A few weeks ago, Fed Head Jay Powell was saying there is a possibility interest rates could go higher. This week, he basically said interest rates could go lower. Is this what happens in an election year to help out President Biden win a second term? Or is this some sort of trial balloon that took gold and silver prices higher and the dollar lower. If rates really are going lower, bank on inflation to go much, much higher. There is much more in the 55-minute newscast."
Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he talks about these
stories and more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up.
"Regret..."
"Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time;
it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable."
~ Sydney J. Harris
o
"The 25 Biggest Regrets In Life.
What Are Yours?"
by Eric Jackson
"We are all busy. Life happens. There's always something to distract us from getting around to certain things we know we should do. Soccer practice. Work. Home renovations. Getting that next big promotion. And with the explosion of always-on smartphones and tablets delivering a fire hose of urgent emails, not to mention Twitter and Facebook (FB), in recent years, things have only gotten busier. In the backs of our minds, we know we're neglecting some stuff we should do. But we never get around to it. Then, something happens. A good friend or loved one - maybe close to us in age - drops dead unexpectedly. We begin to think about what our biggest regrets would be if we were suddenly sitting on our death bed.
Here is a list of the 25 biggest ones we'll probably have. The question is, are you going to change anything this afternoon or tomorrow in light of this list? Or are you going to go back to your busy life?
1. Working so much at the expense of family and friendships. How do you balance meeting that short-term deadline at work and sitting down for dinner with your family? It's tough. There are always worries. "What will my boss and co-workers think? It's not a big deal if I stay late this one time. I'll make it up with the family this weekend." But the "making up" never seems to happen. Days turn to months and then years and then decades.
2. Standing up to bullies in school and in life. Believe it or not, a lot of our biggest regrets in life have to do with things that happened to us in grade 4 or some other early age. We never seem to forget - or forgive ourselves - for not speaking up against the bullies. We were too scared. We wish we had been more confident. And by the way most of us have also met up with a bully in our work life. Maybe he was our boss. We remember that one time we wish we'd told him off - even if it cost us our job. We usually take some small solace in hearing that that bully later on made some unfortunate career stumble.
3. Stayed in touch with some good friends from my childhood and youth. There's usually one childhood or high school friend who we were best buddies with. Then, one of us moved away. We might have stayed in touch at first but then got busy. Sometimes, we thought to pick up the phone, but maybe we don't have their number or email any more. We always wonder what it would be like to sit down with them again for a coffee.
4. Turned off my phone more/Left my phone at home. Many of us can't get off our phone/email addiction. We sleep with it next to us. We carry it with us constantly. It's right next to us in the shower, just in case we see a new email icon light up through the steamed up shower glass. We know constantly checking email and Twitter in the evenings and on weekends takes us away from quality time with family and friends. Yet, we don't stop.
5. Breaking up with my true love/Getting dumped by them. Romance is a big area of regret for most of us. Maybe we dumped someone that we wish we hadn't. Maybe they dumped us. Most play a never-ending game of "what might have been" for the rest of their lives. It is tough to simply be happy with the love that you've found and takes away from the special moments you have today, if you're constantly thinking back to what you once had -- which actually might not have been half as good as we think it was.
6. Worrying about what others thought about me so much. Most of us place way too much importance on what other people around us think about us. How will they judge us? In the moment, we think their opinions are crucial to our future success and happiness. On our death beds, none of that matters.
7. Not having enough confidence in myself. Related to the previous point, a big regret for most of us is questioning why we had such little confidence in ourselves. Why did we allow the concerns of others to weigh so heavy on us instead of trusting our own beliefs? Maybe we didn't think we were worth having what we wanted. Maybe we just thought poorly of ourselves. Later on, we wish we could have been more self-confident.
8. Living the life that my parents wanted me to live instead of the one I wanted to. Related to that lack of confidence, a lot of us get sucked into living the life that we think a good son or daughter should live. Whether because we're explicitly told or just because we unconsciously adopt it, we make key life choices - about where to go to school, what to study, and where to work -- because we think it's what will make our parents happy. Our happiness is derived through their happiness - or so we think. It's only later - 1o or 20 years on - where we discover that friends around us are dying and we're not really doing what we want to do. A panic can start to set in. Whose life am I living any way?
9. Applying for that "dream job" I always wanted. Maybe we didn't apply for that job we always wanted to because of a child, or because our spouse didn't want to move cities. It might not have been the perfect job for us, but we always regret not trying out for it. Sometimes you swing and you miss, but you have no regrets later on.
10. Been happier more. Not taken life so seriously. Seems strange to say, but most of us don't know how to have fun. We're way too serious. We don't find the humor in life. We don't joke around. We don't think we're funny. So, we go through life very serious. We miss out on half (or maybe all) the fun in life that way. Do something a little silly today. Crack a joke with the bus driver - even if he ends up looking at you weird. Do a little dance. You'll probably smile, on the inside if not the outside. Now keep doing that, day after day.
11. Gone on more trips with the family/friends. Most folks stay close to home. They don't travel all that much. Yet, big trips with friends and family - to Disney World, to Paris, or even to the lake - are the stuff that memories are made of later in life. We're all thrown in to some new unfamiliar situation together. We've got to figure it out as a group - and it's fun, even when it rains. We really remember trips.
12. Letting my marriage break down. Back to romance now. More people will divorce than stay together. If you ask these folks, they'll tell you that it was for the best. They couldn't take it any more. And, of course, there are some marriages that shouldn't go on and where divorce is the best for all parties involved. However, if you talk to many people privately, they'll tell you they regret their marriage breaking up. It's never just one thing that ends a marriage - even if that one thing is infidelity. There are usually lots of signs and problems leading up to that. The regrets most of us have is that we didn't correct some or most of those "little things" along the way. We can't control our spouse but we can control our actions and we know - deep down - we could have done more.
13. Taught my kids to do stuff more. Kids love their parents, but they love doing stuff with their parents even more. And it doesn't have to be a vacation at the Four Seasons. It could be raking leaves, learning how to throw a football, or cleaning up a play room together. We learned all the little habits that we take for granted in our own behavior from mimicking our parents. If we're not making the time to do stuff with our kids, we're robbing them of the chance to mimic us.
14. Burying the hatchet with a family member or old friend. I know family members that haven't talked to a brother or sister for 30 years. One's in bad health and will probably die soon. But neither he nor the other brother will make an effort. They've both written each other off. And there's blame on both sides - although I take one's side more. But these were two guys that were inseparable as kids. They got washed in a bucket in their parents' kitchen sink together. Now, neither one will make a move to improve things because they think they've tried and the other one is too stubborn. They think they've done all they can and washed their hands of the relationship. They'll regret that when one of them is no longer around.
15. Trusting that voice in the back of my head more. Whether it's as simple as taking a job we weren't really thrilled about or as complex of being the victim of some crime, most of us have had the experience of a little voice in the back of our heads warning us that something was wrong here. A lot of times, we override that voice. We think that we know best. We do a matrix before taking that job and figure out a way to prove to ourselves that, analytically, this makes sense. Most of the time, we learn later that voice was dead right.
16. Not asking that girl/boy out. Nerves get the best of us - especially when we're young. We can forgive ourselves that we didn't screw up enough courage to ask that boy or girl out on a date or to the prom. But that doesn't mean that we still won't think about it decades later. Sometimes people regret seeing someone famous or well-known in real life and not going up to them and telling them how much they inspired them in our lives. It's the same underlying fear. We always we could have just said what we really felt at that moment.
17. Getting involved with the wrong group of friends when I was younger. We do dumb stuff when we're young. We're impressionable. We make friends with the wrong crowd, except we don't think there's anything wrong with them. They're our friends and maybe the only people we think that truly understand us. However, we can really get sidetracked by hooking up with this group. Sometimes it leads to drugs or serious crimes. We never start out thinking our choice of friends could lead us to such a difficult outcome.
18. Not getting that degree (high school or college). I've spoken with lots of folks who didn't graduate with a high school or college degree. When I met them, they were already well-known at their job. And there are many examples I can think of where their jobs were very senior and they were very well-respected. However, if the education topic ever came up in private conversation, almost universally, you could tell they regretted not getting their degree. It made them insecure, almost like they worried they were going to be "found out." Most of these folks will never go back to get it now. Whether they do or not, they're great at what they do and don't need to feel bad about not having that piece of paper.
19. Choosing the practical job over the one I really wanted. I was watching CNBC the other day and one finance guy was being asked for advice on what college kids should major in today. He said: "It sounds corny but they've got to do what they love." He's right. Of course, as a country, we need more engineers, scientists, and other "hard" science folks. But, at the end of the day, you've got to live your life, not the government's. There are many who think they need to take a "consulting job" to build up their experience before settling in to a job they love. Although there are many roads that lead to Rome, you're probably better off just starting immediately in the area that you love.
20. Spending more time with the kids. I had an old mentor who used to tell me, "when it comes to parenting, it's not quality of time that's important, it's quantity of time." When we get so busy at work, we comfort ourselves knowing that we're going to stay late at the office again with the idea that we'll make it up by taking our son to a ballgame on the weekend. As long as I spend some quality time with him, we think, it will all balance out. It probably won't. There are lots of busy executives who take control of their schedules in order to either be at home for dinners more or be at those special school events with the kids. Kids do remember that.
21. Not taking care of my health when I had the chance. Everyone doesn't think of their health - until there's a problem. And at that point, we promise ourselves if we get better we'll do a better job with our health. It shouldn't take a major calamity to get us to prioritize our health and diet. Small habits every day make a big difference here over time.
22. Not having the courage to get up and talk at a funeral or important event. I remember at an old Dale Carnegie class I attended, they told us more people were afraid of public speaking than dying. They'd rather die than give a speech apparently. Yet, when you're close to death, you're probably going to wish you'd gotten over those fears on at least a few occasions, but especially at a loved one's funeral or some important event like a wedding.
23. Not visiting a dying friend before he died. I had a buddy I went to high school with who died 3 years ago. He was in his late 30s with a great wife and 3 great boys. He had cancer for the last 3 years of his life. We'd talked off and on over that time. Two months before he died, he called me and asked if I could come by to visit. I was in the process of moving and too busy with my own family. I said I'd come soon. A month later, it was clear he had days to live. I rushed to the hospital and did get to visit at his bedside before he passed, but he was a different guy from the one I'd spoken to only a month earlier on the phone. He was just hanging on. We hadn't been best friends and we hadn't seen much of each other since high school, but I know I'll always regret not going to visit him earlier when I'd had the chance. What I'd give to have one last regular chat with him.
24. Learning another language. A lot of us travel a lot. Fewer still have studied a second language. And this is a big regret down the road for many of us, even though it might seem like a small thing next to family, career, and romance. A lot of us wish we'd made the time to learn a new language to open up a whole new culture to us.
25. Being a better father or mother. There's no bigger legacy than our children. Often, they turn out great. When our kids struggle though, there's nothing bigger than makes us feel guilty. Yet, when they start showing signs of problems - with school, or friends, or otherwise -- there's often been many years that have passed in which we could have and probably should have been spending more time with them. No situation is ever lost though. There is always time to improve our relationships with our kids. But, it can't wait another day, especially if it's a relationship that's been neglected for years.
We can all relate to most of these regrets. We can't change the past, so this list isn't meant for you to start a pity party. The question is what are we going to do with the rest of our lives to ensure we don't experience any of these regrets later on when we're in the hospital preparing to say goodbye. If you have some regrets you'd like to share, please leave them below in the comments for all to read. I'll call them all out."
"The World Rests In The Night..."
“The world rests in the night. Trees, mountains, fields, and faces are released from the prison of shape and the burden of exposure. Each thing creeps back into its own nature within the shelter of the dark. Darkness is the ancient womb. Nighttime is womb-time. Our souls come out to play. The darkness absolves everything; the struggle for identity and impression falls away. We rest in the night.”
- John O'Donohue,
"Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom"
o
“On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.
And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colors,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.
When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.
May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.”
o
John O'Donohue was an Irish author, poet, philosopher and former Catholic priest. He was born in County Clare on January 1, 1956. He died suddenly on January 4, 2008. He is best known for popularizing Celtic spirituality and is the author of a number of best-selling books on the subject.
"The Cloak Of The Past..."
“The cloak of the past is cut from patches of feeling, and sewn with rebus threads. Most of the time, the best we can do is wrap it around ourselves for comfort or drag it behind us as we struggle to go on. But everything has its cause and its meaning. Every life, every love, every action and feeling and thought has its reason and significance: its beginning, and the part it plays in the end. Sometimes, we do see. Sometimes, we see the past so clearly, and read the legend of its parts with such acuity, that every stitch of time reveals its purpose, and a kind of message is enfolded in it. Nothing in any life, no matter how well or poorly lived, is wiser than failure or clearer than sorrow. And in the tiny, precious wisdom that they give to us, even those dread and hated enemies, suffering and failure, have their reason and their right to be.”
- Gregory David Roberts, “Shantaram”
"And Like The Poet Said..."
"A sad fact, of course, about adult life is that you see the very things you'll never adapt to coming toward you on the horizon. You see them as the problems they are, you worry like hell about them, you make provisions, take precautions, fashion adjustments; you tell yourself you'll have to change your way of doing things. Only you don't. You can't. Somehow it's already too late. And maybe it's even worse than that: maybe the thing you see coming from far away is not the real thing, the thing that scares you, but its aftermath. And what you've feared will happen has already taken place. This is similar in spirit to the realization that all the great new advances of medical science will have no benefit for us at all, thought we cheer them on, hope a vaccine might be ready in time, think things could still get better. Only it's too late there too. And in that very way our life gets over before we know it. We miss it. And like the poet said: The ways we miss our lives are life."
- Richard Ford
"This Difficult Thing of Being Human"
"This Difficult Thing of Being Human"
by Bodhipaksa
"It's always good to remember that life isn't easy. I don't mean to say that life is always hard in the sense of it always being painful. Clearly there are times when we're happy, when things are going well, when we feel that our life is headed in the right direction and that even greater fulfillment is just ahead of us, etc.
What I mean is that even when we have times in our life that are good, that doesn't last. In fact, often the things we're so excited and happy about later turn out to be things that also cause us suffering.
For example, you start a brand new relationship and you're in love and it's exciting and fulfilling. And then you find yourself butting heads with your partner, and you hurt each others feelings. Maybe you even split up. Does that sound familiar?
For example, the new job that you're thrilled about turns out to contain stresses you hadn't imagined. Has that ever happened?
For example, the house you're so pleased to have bought inevitably ends up requiring maintenance. Or perhaps the house value plummets. Or perhaps your circumstances change and you find it a struggle to meet the mortgage. Maybe you've been lucky, or maybe you've been there.
Happiness has a way of evaporating. Unhappiness has a way of sneaking up on us and sucker-punching us in the gut.
On a deep level, none of really understand happiness and unhappiness. If we truly understood the dynamics of these things, we'd be happy all the time and would never be miserable. We'd be enlightened. But pre-enlightenment, we're all stumbling in the dark, and sometimes colliding painfully with life as we do so.
This being human is not easy. We're doing a difficult thing in living a human life. It's good to accept all this, because life is so much harder when we think it should be easy. When we think life should be straightforward, and that we think we have it all sorted out, then unhappiness becomes a sign that we've failed. And that makes being in pain even more painful.
We haven't failed when we're unhappy; we're just being human. We're simply experiencing the tender truth of what it is to live a human life.
So when you're unhappy, don't beat yourself up about it. Don't fight it. Accept that this is how things are right now. Often when you do that, you'll very quickly - sometimes instantly - start to feel better. By accepting our suffering, we start to move through it. And as you look around you, realize that everyone else is doing this difficult thing of being human too. They're all struggling. We're all struggling. We all want happiness and find happiness elusive. We all want to avoid suffering and yet keep stumbling into it, over and over.
Many of the things that bother you about other people are their attempts to deal with this difficult existential situation, in which we desire happiness, and don't experience as much of it as we want, and desire to be free from suffering, and yet keep becoming trapped in it. Their moods, their clinging, their anger - all of these are the results of human beings struggling to find happiness, and having trouble doing so.
If we can recognize that this human life is not easy - if we can empathize with that very basic existential fact - then perhaps we can be just a little kinder to ourselves and others. And that would help make this human life just a little easier to navigate."
"How It Really Was, Is, And Always Will Be"
Hey, they have something big for you too, Good Citizen...
Same as it ever was, same as it ever will be...
Dan, I Allegedly, "Wake Up and Smell the Recession"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 12/16/23
"Wake Up and Smell the Recession"
Comments here:
"Intentional Destruction: First Covid, Now Comes 'The Great Taking'"
"Intentional Destruction:
First Covid, Now Comes 'The Great Taking'"
by Matthew Smith
"The Great Depression was a well-executed plan to seize assets, impoverish the population, and remake society. What comes next is worse. A recent book by David Webb sheds new light on exactly what happened during the Great Depression. In Webb’s view, it was a set up.
Webb is a successful former investment banker and hedge fund manager with experience at the highest levels of the financial system. He published "The Great Taking" a few months ago, and recently supplemented it with a video documentary. Thorough, concise, comprehensible and FREE. Why? Because he wants everyone to understand what’s being done. The Great Taking describes the roadmap to collapse the system, suppress the people, and seize all your assets. And it includes the receipts.
You Already Own Nothing: Webb’s book illustrates, among other things, how changes in the Uniform Commercial Code converted asset ownership into a security entitlement. The "entitlement" designation made personal property a mere contractual claim. The "entitled" person is a "beneficial" owner, but not the legal one.
In the event a financial institution is insolvent, the legal owner is the "entity that controls the security with a security interest." In essence, client assets belong to the banks. But it’s much worse than that. This isn’t simply a matter of losing your cash to a bank bail-in. The entire financial system has been wired for a controlled demolition.
Webb describes in detail how the trap was set, and how the Great Depression provides precedent. In 1933, FDR declared a "Bank Holiday." By executive order, banks were closed. Later, only those approved by the Fed were allowed to reopen.
Thousands of banks were left to die. People with money in those disfavored institutions lost all of it, as well as anything they’d financed (houses, cars, businesses) that they now couldn’t pay for. Then, a few "chosen" banks consolidated all the assets in the system.
Centralization and Systemic Risk
As Webb shows, the cake has been baked for years. But this week came a sign it’s coming out of the oven. Last Monday, Bloomberg admitted that measures taken to ostensibly "protect the system" actually amplify risk.
In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, G20 ‘leaders’ mandated all standardized Over The Counter (OTC) derivatives be cleared through central counterparties (CCPs), ostensibly to reduce counter party risk and increase market transparency. The best known CCP in the US is the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC), which processes trillions of dollars of securities transactions each day.
Before 2012, OTC derivative trades were bi-lateral and counterparty risk was managed by parties to a transaction. When doing business directly with other firms, each had to make sure it was dealing with reliable parties. If they had a bad reputation or were not creditworthy, counterparties could consider them toxic and shut them out of trades. This, according to the wise G20 leadership, was too risky.
With the introduction of central clearing mandates, counterparty risk was shifted via CCPs away from the firms doing the deal to the system itself. Creditworthiness and reputation were replaced with collateral and complex models.
Brokers, banks, asset managers, hedge funds, corporations, insurance companies and other so-called "clearing parties" participate in the market by first posting collateral in the form of Initial Margin (IM) with the CCP. It’s through this IM and a separate and much smaller Default Fund (DF) held at the CCP that counterparty risk is managed.
To ‘Mutualize’ Losses: Shifting risk from individual parties to the collective is a recipe for trouble. But, as explained in a recent report from the BIS, it’s worse than that. The structure of CCPs themselves can cause "Margin Spirals" and "wrong-way risk" in the event of market turbulence. In flight-to-safety episodes, CCPs hike margin requirements. According to the BIS, "Sudden and large IM hikes force deleveraging by derivative counterparties and can precipitate fire sales that lead to higher volatility and additional IM hikes in so-called margin spirals."
We’ve already gotten a taste of what this can look like. Similar margin spirals "occurred in early 2020 (Covid-19) and 2022 (invasion of Ukraine), reflecting the risk-sensitive nature of IM models."
Government Bonds as a source of trouble: The second area of systemic risk is the dual use of government bonds as both collateral and as underlying assets in derivatives contracts. Volatility in the government bond market can lead to a demand for more collateral underlying the derivatives markets precisely when government bond prices are declining. Falling bond prices erode the value of the existing IM. Collateral demands skyrocket just as the value of current and would-be collateral is evaporating.
Again, the BIS: "Wrong-way risk dynamics appeared to play a role during the 2010–11 Irish sovereign debt crisis. At that time, investors liquidated their positions in Irish government bonds after a CCP raised the haircuts on such bonds when used as collateral. This led to lower prices of Irish government bonds triggering further haircuts, further position closures and ultimately a downward price spiral."
Designed to fail: The BIS doesn’t admit it, but Webb says the CCPs themselves are deliberately under-capitalized and designed to fail. The start-up of a new CCP is planned and pre-funded. When that happens, it’ll be the "secured creditors" who will take control of ALL the underlying collateral.
Once more, the BIS:" …to mutualize potential default losses in excess of IM, CCPs also require their members to contribute to a default fund (DF). As a result, CCPs are in command of large pools of liquid assets."
That "large pool of liquid assets" is the full universe of traded securities. In a market collapse, the stocks and bonds you think you own will be sucked into the default fund (DF) as additional collateral for the evaporating value of the derivatives complex. This is "The Great Taking". Buffett’s famous line rings true: "You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out." Most of us are on the verge of learning that we’re the ones without any clothes."
If you haven’t read "The Great Taking" or watched the documentary,
I recommend you pour yourself a stiff drink and watch it now:
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, "Strange Prices At Macy's! This Is Ridiculous!"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 12/16/23
"Strange Prices At Macy's! This Is Ridiculous!"
"In today's vlog, we are at Macy's and are finding some very expensive prices on clothing however, we are also finding some great holiday deals as well. We also give a bit of a walk-through at Florence Mall, in Florence Kentucky!"
Comments here:
Friday, December 15, 2023
"IDF Is Retreating From Gaza, They Are Afraid, Urban Warfare With Hamas Is Suicidal"
Full screen recommended.
Scott Ritter, 12/15/23
"IDF Is Retreating From Gaza, They Are Afraid,
Urban Warfare With Hamas Is Suicidal"
Comments here:
"Alert! Zelensky Evacuated! NYC Power Outage! Russia Hits NATO Bunker; Global Shipping Crisis!"
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 12/15/23
"Alert! Zelensky Evacuated! NYC Power Outage!
Russia Hits NATO Bunker; Global Shipping Crisis!"
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Musical Interlude: Justin Hayward, "I Dreamed Last Night"; "Celtic Heart"
Full screen recommended.
Justin Hayward, "I Dreamed Last Night"
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Full screen recommended.
Justin Hayward, "Celtic Heart"
"A Look to the Heavens"
Full screen recommended.
"Space Ambient Music,
Pure Cosmic Relaxation, Mind Relaxation"
Relaxation Ambient Music presents prefect Space Ambient Music. It was made for dreamers, also for persons which like to meditate, to imagine deep space with its nebulas and exoplanets. Fly between galaxies, nebulas and planets with our relaxing ambient space music. This music video will help you relax your mind, stop thinking and have a rest."
"It May Be Then..."
"Passion doesn't count the cost. Pascal said that the heart has its reasons that reason takes no account of. If he meant what I think, he meant that when passion seizes the heart it invents reasons that seem not only plausible but conclusive to prove that the world is well lost for love. It convinces you that honor is well sacrificed and that shame is a cheap price to pay. Passion is destructive. It destroyed Antony and Cleopatra, Tristan and Isolde, Parnell and Kitty O'Shea. And if it doesn't destroy it dies. It may be then that one is faced with the desolation of knowing that one has wasted the years of one's life, that one's brought disgrace upon oneself, endured the frightful pang of jealousy, swallowed every bitter mortification, that one's expended all one's tenderness, poured out all the riches of one's soul on a poor drab, a fool, a peg on which one hung one's dreams, who wasn't worth a stick of chewing gum."
- W. Somerset Maugham
"Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time;
it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable."
- Sydney J. Harris
Free Download: Viktor Frankl, "Man's Search for Meaning"
"Man's Search for Meaning"
by Viktor Frankl
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.”
"Some details of a particular man's inner greatness may have come to one's mind, like the story of a young woman whose death I witnessed in a concentration camp. It is a simple story. There is little to tell and it may sound as if I had invented it; but to me it seems like a poem.
This young woman knew that she would die in the next few days. But when I talked to her she was cheerful in spite of this knowledge. 'I am grateful that fate has hit me so hard,' she told me. 'In my former life I was spoiled and did not take spiritual accomplishments seriously.' Pointing through the window of the hut, she said, 'This tree here is the only friend I have in my loneliness.' Through that window she could see just one branch of a chestnut tree, and on the branch were two blossoms. 'I often talk to this tree,' she said to me. I was startled and didn't quite know how to take her words. Was she delirious? Did she have occasional hallucinations? Anxiously I asked her if the tree replied. 'Yes.' What did it say to her? She answered, 'It said to me, "I am here - I am here - I am life, eternal life."
Freely download "Man's Search for Meaning", by Viktor Frankl, here:
“Hannah Arendt on Time, Space, and Where Our Thinking Ego Resides”
“Hannah Arendt on Time, Space,
and Where Our Thinking Ego Resides”
“The everywhere of thought is indeed a region of nowhere.”
by Maria Popova
“In Lewis Carroll’s ‘Through the Looking Glass,’ the White Queen remembers the future instead of the past. This seemingly nonsensical proposition, like so many elements of the beloved book, is a stroke of philosophical genius and prescience on behalf of Lewis Carroll, made half a century before Einstein and Gödel challenged our linear conception of time.
But no thinker has addressed how the disorienting nature of time shapes the human experience with more captivating lucidity than Hannah Arendt (October 14, 1906–December 4, 1975), who in 1973 became the first woman to speak at the prestigious Gifford Lectures. Her talk was eventually adapted into two long essays, published as ‘The Life of the Mind’ (public library) – the same ceaselessly rewarding volume that gave us Arendt on the crucial difference between truth and meaning.
In one of the most stimulating portions of the book, Arendt argues that thinking is our rebellion against the tyranny of time and a hedge against the terror of our finitude. Noting that cognition always removes us from the present and makes absences its raw material, she considers where the thinking ego is located if not in what is present and close at hand:
“Looked at from the perspective of the everyday world of appearances, the everywhere of the thinking ego – summoning into its presence whatever it pleases from any distance in time or space, which thought traverses with a velocity greater than light’s – is a nowhere. And since this nowhere is by no means identical with the twofold nowhere from which we suddenly appear at birth and into which almost as suddenly we disappear in death, it might be conceived only as the Void. And the absolute void can be a limiting boundary concept; though not inconceivable, it is unthinkable. Obviously, if there is absolutely nothing, there can be nothing to think about. That we are in possession of these limiting boundary concepts enclosing our thought within (insurmountable) walls – and the notion of an absolute beginning or an absolute end is among them – does not tell us more than that we are indeed finite beings.”
Echoing Thomas Mann’s assertion that “the perishableness of life…imparts value, dignity, interest to life,” Arendt adds: “Man’s finitude, irrevocably given by virtue of his own short time span set in an infinity of time stretching into both past and future, constitutes the infrastructure, as it were, of all mental activities: it manifests itself as the only reality of which thinking qua thinking is aware, when the thinking ego has withdrawn from the world of appearances and lost the sense of realness inherent in the sensus communis by which we orient ourselves in this world… The everywhere of thought is indeed a region of nowhere.”
T.S. Eliot captured this nowhereness in his exquisite phrase “the still point of the turning world.” But the spatial dimension of thought, Arendt argues, is intersected by a temporal one – thinking invariably forces us to recollect and anticipate, voyaging into the past and the future, thus creating the mental spacetime continuum through which our thought-trains travel. From this arises our sense of the sequential nature of time and its essential ongoingness. Arendt writes:
“The inner time sensation arises when we are not entirely absorbed by the absent non-visibles we are thinking about but begin to direct our attention onto the activity itself. In this situation past and future are equally present precisely because they are equally absent from our sense; thus the no-longer of the past is transformed by virtue of the spatial metaphor into something lying behind us and the not-yet of the future into something that approaches us from ahead.”
[…]
In other words, the time continuum, everlasting change, is broken up into the tenses past, present, future, whereby past and future are antagonistic to each other as the no-longer and the not-yet only because of the presence of man, who himself has an “origin,” his birth, and an end, his death, and therefore stands at any given moment between them; this in-between is called the present. It is the insertion of man with his limited life span that transforms the continuously flowing stream of sheer change – which we can conceive of cyclically as well as in the form of rectilinear motion without ever being able to conceive of an absolute beginning or an absolute end – into time as we know it.”
Once again, it is our finitude that mediates our experience of time: “Seen from the viewpoint of a continuously flowing everlasting stream, the insertion of man, fighting in both directions, produces a rupture which, by being defended in both directions, is extended to a gap, the present seen as the fighter’s battleground… Seen from the viewpoint of man, at each single moment inserted and caught in the middle between his past and his future, both aimed at the one who is creating his present, the battleground is an in-between, an extended Now on which he spends his life. The present, in ordinary life the most futile and slippery of the tenses – when I say “now” and point to it, it is already gone – is no more than the clash of a past, which is no more, with a future, which is approaching and not yet there. Man lives in this in-between, and what he calls the present is a life-long fight against the dead weight of the past, driving him forward with hope, and the fear of a future (whose only certainty is death), driving him backward toward “the quiet of the past” with nostalgia for and remembrance of the only reality he can be sure of.”
This fluid conception of time, Arendt points out, is quite different from its representation in ordinary life, where the calendar tells us that the present is contained in today, the past starts at yesterday, and the future at tomorrow. In a sentiment that calls to mind Patti Smith’s magnificent meditation on time and transformation, Arendt writes: That we can shape the everlasting stream of sheer change into a time continuum we owe not to time itself but to the continuity of our business and our activities in the world, in which we continue what we started yesterday and hope to finish tomorrow. In other words, the time continuum depends on the continuity of our everyday life, and the business of everyday life, in contrast to the activity of the thinking ego – always independent of the spatial circumstances surrounding it – is always spatially determined and conditioned. It is due to this thoroughgoing spatiality of our ordinary life that we can speak plausibly of time in spatial categories, that the past can appear to us as something lying “behind” us and the future as lying “ahead.”
[…]
The gap between past and future opens only in reflection, whose subject matter is what is absent – either what has already disappeared or what has not yet appeared. Reflection draws these absent “regions” into the mind’s presence; from that perspective the activity of thinking can be understood as a fight against time itself.”
This elusive gap, Arendt argues, is where the thinking ego resides – and it is only by mentally inserting ourselves between the past and the future that they come to exist at all: Without [the thinker], there would be no difference between past and future, but only everlasting change. Or else these forces would clash head on and annihilate each other. But thanks to the insertion of a fighting presence, they meet at an angle, and the correct image would then have to be what the physicists call a parallelogram of forces.
These two forces, which have an indefinite origin and a definite end point in the present, converge into a third – a diagonal pull that, contrary to the past and the present, has a definite origin in the present and emanates out toward infinity. That diagonal force, Arendt observes, is the perfect metaphor for the activity of thought. She writes:
“This diagonal, though pointing to some infinity, is limited, enclosed, as it were, by the forces of past and future, and thus protected against the void; it remains bound to and is rooted in the present – an entirely human present though it is fully actualized only in the thinking process and lasts no longer than this process lasts. It is the quiet of the Now in the time-pressed, time-tossed existence of man; it is somehow, to change the metaphor, the quiet in the center of a storm which, though totally unlike the storm, still belongs to it. In this gap between past and future, we find our place in time when we think, that is, when we are sufficiently removed from past and future to be relied on to find out their meaning, to assume the position of “umpire,” of arbiter and judge over the manifold, never-ending affairs of human existence in the world, never arriving at a final solution to their riddles but ready with ever-new answers to the question of what it may be all about.”
“The Life of the Mind” is one of the most stimulating packets of thought ever published. Complement this particular portion with Virginia Woolf on the elasticity of time, Dan Falk on how our capacity for mental time travel made us human, and T.S. Eliot’s poetic ode to the nature of time.“
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Full screen recommended.
Hans Zimmer, "Time"
Stunningly beautiful...
The Poet: James Baldwin, "Amen"
"Amen"
"No, I don't feel death coming.
I feel death going:
having thrown up his hands,
for the moment.
I feel like I know him
better than I did.
Those arms held me,
for a while,
and, when we meet again,
there will be that secret knowledge
between us. "
- James Baldwin
"95 Questions to Help You Find Meaning and Happiness"
"95 Questions to Help You
Find Meaning and Happiness"
by Marc
"At the cusp of a new day, week, month or year, most of us take a little time to reflect on our lives by looking back over the past and ahead into the future. We ponder the successes, failures and standout events that are slowly scripting our life's story. This process of self-reflection helps us maintain a conscious awareness of where we've been and where we intend to go. It is pertinent to the organization and preservation of our long-term goals and happiness. The questions below will help you with this process. Because when it comes to finding meaning in life, asking the right questions is the answer.
1. In one sentence, who are you?
2. Why do you matter?
3. What is your life motto?
4. What's something you have that everyone wants?
5. What is missing in your life?
6. What's been on your mind most lately?
7. Happiness is a ________?
8. What stands between you and happiness?
9. What do you need most right now?
10. What does the child inside you long for?
11. What is one thing right now that you are totally sure of?
12. What's been bothering you lately?
13. What are you scared of?
14. What has fear of failure stopped you from doing?
15. What will you never give up on?
16. What do you want to remember forever?
17. What makes you feel secure?
18. Which activities make you lose track of time?
19. What's the most difficult decision you've ever made?
20. What's the best decision you've ever made?
21. What are you most grateful for?
22. What is worth the pain?
23. In order of importance, how would you rank: happiness, money, love, health, fame?
24. What is something you've always wanted, but don't yet have?
25. What was the most defining moment in your life during this past year?
26. What's the number one change you need to make in your life in the next twelve months?
27. What's the number one thing you want to achieve in the next five years?
28. What is the biggest motivator in your life right now?
29. What will you never do?
30. What's something you said you'd never do, but have since done?
31. What's something new you recently learned about yourself?
32. What do you sometimes pretend to understand that you really do not?
33. In one sentence, what do you wish for your future self?
34. What worries you most about the future?
35. When you look into the past, what do you miss most?
36. What's something from the past that you don't miss at all?
37. What recently reminded you of how fast time flies?
38. What is the biggest challenge you face right now?
39. In one word, how would you describe your personality?
40. What never fails to frustrate you?
41. What are you known for by your friends and family?
42. What's something most people don't know about you?
43. What's a common misconception people have about you?
44. What's something a lot of people do that you disagree with?
45. What's a belief you hold with which many people disagree?
46. What's something that's harder for you than it is for most people?
47. What are the top three qualities you look for in a friend?
48. If you had a friend who spoke to you in the same way that you sometimes speak to yourself, how long would you allow that person to be your friend?
49. When you think of home,what, specifically, do you think of?
50. What's the most valuable thing you own?
51. If you had to move 3000 miles away, what would you miss most?
52. What would make you smile right now?
53. What do you do when nothing else seems to make you happy?
54. What do you wish did not exist in your life?
55. What should you avoid to improve your life?
56. What is something you would hate to go without for a day?
57. What's the biggest lie you once believed was true?
58. What's something bad that happened to you that made you stronger?
59. What's something nobody could ever steal from you?
60. What's something you disliked when you were younger that you truly enjoy today?
61. What are you glad you quit?
62. What do you need to spend more time doing?
63. What are you naturally good at?
64. What have you been counting or keeping track of recently?
65. What has the little voice inside your head been saying lately?
66. What's something you should always be careful with?
67. What should always be taken seriously?
68. What should never be taken seriously?
69. What are three things you can't get enough of?
70. What would you do differently if you knew nobody would judge you?
71. What fascinates you?
72. What's the difference between being alive and truly living?
73. What's something you would do every day if you could?
74. At what time in your recent past have you felt most passionate and alive?
75. Which is worse, failing or never trying?
76. What makes you feel incomplete?
77. When did you experience a major turning point in your life?
78. What or who do you wish you lived closer to?
79. If you had the opportunity to get a message across to a large group of people, what would your message be?
80. What's something you know you can count on?
81. What makes you feel comfortable?
82. What's something about you that has never changed?
83. What will be different about your life in exactly one year?
84. What mistakes do you make over and over again?
85. What do you have a hard time saying "no" to?
86. Are you doing what you believe in, or are you settling for what you are doing?
87. What's something that used to scare you, but no longer does?
88. What promise to yourself do you still need to fulfill?
89. What do you appreciate most about your current situation?
90. What's something simple that makes you smile?
91. So far, what has been the primary focus of your life?
92. How do you know when it's time to move on?
93. What's something you wish you could do one more time?
94. When you're 90-years-old, what will matter to you the most?
95. What would you regret not fully doing, being, or having in your life? "
From the wonderful "Marc and Angel Hack Life" blog:
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