Jeremiah Babe, 2/15/25
"This Ain't Funny, People Are Losing Everything;
Mass Layoffs; Political Demons"
Comments here:
So, we rise from the rubble...
Saturday, February 15, 2025
Musical Interlude: Liquid Mind, "Awakening (Cosmic Sea)"
Full screen recommended.
Liquid Mind, "Awakening (Cosmic Sea)"
"A Look to the Heavens"
“The beautiful Trifid Nebula, also known as Messier 20, is easy to find with a small telescope in the nebula rich constellation Sagittarius. About 5,000 light-years away, the colorful study in cosmic contrasts shares this well-composed, nearly 1 degree wide field with open star cluster Messier 21 (top right).
Trisected by dust lanes the Trifid itself is about 40 light-years across and a mere 300,000 years old. That makes it one of the youngest star forming regions in our sky, with newborn and embryonic stars embedded in its natal dust and gas clouds. Estimates of the distance to open star cluster M21 are similar to M20's, but though they share this gorgeous telescopic skyscape there is no apparent connection between the two. In fact, M21's stars are much older, about 8 million years old.”
“Addicted! Internet Dependency Alters the Human Brain”
“Addicted! Internet Dependency Alters the Human Brain”
by Jeremy Laurance
by Jeremy Laurance
“Internet addiction has for the first time been linked with changes in the brain similar to those seen in people addicted to alcohol, cocaine and cannabis. In a groundbreaking study, researchers used MRI scanners to reveal abnormalities in the brains of adolescents who spent many hours on the internet, to the detriment of their social and personal lives. The finding could throw light on other behavioral problems and lead to the development of new approaches to treatment, researchers said. An estimated 5 to 10 per cent of internet users are thought to be addicted - meaning they are unable to control their use. The majority are games players who become so absorbed in the activity they go without food or drink for long periods and their education, work and relationships suffer.
Henrietta Bowden Jones, consultant psychiatrist at Imperial College, London, who runs Britain's only NHS clinic for internet addicts and problem gamblers, said: "The majority of people we see with serious internet addiction are gamers - people who spend long hours in roles in various games that cause them to disregard their obligations. I have seen people who stopped attending university lectures, failed their degrees or their marriages broke down because they were unable to emotionally connect with anything outside the game."
Although most of the population was spending longer online, that was not evidence of addiction, she said. "It is different. We are doing it because modern life requires us to link up over the net in regard to jobs, professional and social connections - but not in an obsessive way. When someone comes to you and says they did not sleep last night because they spent 14 hours playing games, and it was the same the previous night, and they tried to stop but they couldn't - you know they have a problem. It does tend to be the gaming that catches people out."
Researchers in China scanned the brains of 17 adolescents diagnosed with "internet addiction disorder" who had been referred to the Shanghai Mental Health Centre, and compared the results with scans from 16 of their peers. The results showed impairment of white matter fibres in the brain connecting regions involved in emotional processing, attention, decision making and cognitive control. Similar changes to the white matter have been observed in other forms of addiction to substances such as alcohol and cocaine. "The findings suggest that white matter integrity may serve as a potential new treatment target in internet addiction disorder," they say in the online journal Public Library of Science One. The authors acknowledge that they cannot tell whether the brain changes are the cause or the consequence of the internet addiction. It could be that young people with the brain changes observed are more prone to becoming addicted.
Professor Michael Farrell, director of the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Australia, said: "The limitations [of this study] are that it is not controlled, and it's possible that illicit drugs, alcohol or other caffeine-based stimulants might account for the changes. The specificity of 'internet addiction disorder' is also questionable."
Case studies: Caught in the web:
Xbox addict killed by blood clot after 12-hour sessions: Chris Staniforth, 20, died of a blood clot after spending up to 12 hours at a time playing on his Xbox. Despite having no history of ill health, he developed deep vein thrombosis - commonly associated with long-haul flight passengers. Mr Staniforth, from Sheffield, had been offered a place to study game design at the University of Leicester. But he collapsed while telling a friend he'd been having pains in his chest.
Toddler starved to death while mother played online: A mother was jailed for 25 years after her daughter starved to death while she played an online game for hours at a time. Rebecca Colleen Christie, 28, from New Mexico in the US, played the fantasy game World of Warcraft while her three-year-old daughter, Brandi, starved. The toddler weighed just 23lbs when she was finally rushed to hospital after her mother found her limp and unconscious.
Woman jailed after gamble fails to pay off: A woman who stole £76,000 from a company to fund her internet gambling addiction was jailed this week. Lucienne Mainey, 41, from Cambridgeshire, was sentenced to 16 months in prison at Ipswich Crown Court after admitting fraud. The court heard she secretly paid herself by changing old invoices. Mainey turned to internet bingo following the breakdown of her marriage.”
- http://www.sott.net/
o
Wow, scared me for a second there... "internet addiction", oh my, that does sound scary. So happy I'm not addicted, nothing wrong with spending all kinds of hours reading and posting articles on a blog, right? All kinds of hours... hmmm, a lot of hours, actually. Oh no! lol - CP
o
John Wilder, "Be Bold. Life Is Too Short For Anything Else"
"Be Bold. Life Is Too Short For Anything Else"
by John Wilder
“That’s a bold statement.” – "Pulp Fiction"
"One of the problems with life in Modern Mayberry is that it often moves at a fairly slow pace. Especially in the time when an adult is focused on raising kids, the days tend to blur one into the next. If your life is good, this isn’t really a problem. When I was younger, my life was spent going to weddings. Now that I’m older, more time is spent going to funerals. It is important to not get mixed up as to which you’re at, although sometimes “My condolences,” is appropriate at a wedding and I’d almost be willing to bet $20 that at least one person will say “Congratulations!” after my funeral. However, in the event that I’m wrong, collecting on that bet might be a problem.
One thing that facilitates this blur is reading stuff on the Internet. One blogger I read (LINK) is giving up doomscrolling (or reading the unending list of negative stories that are available in the news) for Lent. I suppose you could leave him a comment, but you’d have to wait a few weeks to get a response.
But when it comes to doomscrolling, there are huge numbers of these stories available. The business model is simple: scary stuff attracts eyeballs, and eyeballs means revenue. As I look at my own past posts, I’m thinking that, even though I talk about a lot of scary stuff, that I’m mostly relentlessly positive. I can even recall a comment section or two where I’m called a Pollyanna because I’m so positive.
I can live with that. Being positive, being for things and knowing that, in the end it’s all going to work out keeps me positive. In most cases (most, not all!) the things I write about don’t make me angry, either. Again, stress on the “mostly”. And I try not to get worked up about events occurring half-a-world away that I can’t control or even much influence. Things are what they are. And, for most of us, things are generally pretty good on a day-to-day basis, even when things aren’t perfect. Even on a bad day, most parts of the day are good. The thing that gets us is built into the doomscrolling: spending time worrying about things that simply have not happened.
I write about the coming Civil War 2.0 not in hopes that it comes, rather to make people aware that it’s coming. Do I sit and worry about it daily? No! That would take away from the time I spend thinking about the Roman Empire.
In this moment, there are things that I could let bother me. However, I realize that letting them bother me gives them power over me when that’s the last thing I want. “Take not counsel of your fears,” is attributed to George S. Patton, Jr. I’m sure other people said the same thing in similar ways in the thousands of years that people have been saying things, but when Patton says it, well, it’s been said.
“Better to fight for something than live for nothing.”
– GSP
If I let my fears fill me up, I live a life of fear regardless of if it’s a perfect 63°F, and I have a wonderful cigar, and a great book beside me while sitting in a comfortable chair. I think fear comes to people as they age. I certainly saw Pa Wilder get more and more cautious as he aged. I could give a few examples, but it doesn’t much matter. I did notice. And when I saw the tendency to do it start to crop up in myself, at least I understood what was going on and I could choose to be cautious or choose to be bold.
I think, however, that as I get older it is precisely the time to be bolder. Life moves in a blur, and days stack up faster, so they should mean something. If I knew I had only a year? What would I do? Something to make that year worthwhile. If a month? A day? The shorter the time left, the more that boldness matters and the less caution should. If I only had an hour of my life left, you can damn sure bet I’d do something with it, as much as I could.
But life is built on compound interest. The more I try to write, the better I get. The more I lift, the stronger I get. The time to start is now. The actions should be bold. While my days may pass fast, the more I can do with them, the more I will do.
When I pass, what will be left are the lives I’ve touched, the children that I’ve raised, the ways I’ve made the world better, and the words that I have written. Since the restraining order dictates who I can touch, and the lessons to the children are mainly done, that leaves making the world better and writing.
Even a full human lifetime isn’t enough, because they are so very short. But I’ll make do. With the remaining decades (hopefully) of my life, how big a dent can I kick in the Universe? I guess I’ll see. And I’ll smile some, every day. And enjoy that cigar, and book, and chair when I’m not being bold. “L’audace, l’audace, toujours l’audace.”
"Our First Duty..."
"No one today likes truth: utility and self interest have long ago been substituted for truth. We live in a nightmare of falsehoods, and there are few who are sufficiently awake and aware to see things as they are. Our first duty is to clear away illusions and recover a sense of reality."
- Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev
"The Wisdom Of The Hippies"
"The Wisdom Of The Hippies"
by Paul Rosenberg
"Sadly, there are fairly few people left who understand what the Hippies were really about. Mostly people remember the Hollywood version: pot-smoking, political protesting and clumsy dancing. The actual Hippies, especially the early Hippies, were a much different group. They were interesting and brave people: people very much worth remembering.
Who Were The Hippies? The Hippies were preceded by the Beat movement, a decentralized and spontaneous movement of young people who rejected the conformity of the 1950s – a very “corporate” time. The Beats were, as one writer put it, “a whole bunch of people, of all different nationalities, who came to the conclusion that society sucked.”
Now, there are always people complaining about things, and there is always a stew of rehashed ideas simmering, but the early and serious Hippies were different, in that they believed that they could make life better, starting right now. And they went to work doing so. That was the great difference between the Hippies and most other movements – the Hippies acted.
Sure the Hippies grew their hair, painted their cars and wore strange clothing. And yes, a lot of them latched onto silly ideas, but their virtues were far more important. To start with, the Hippies, rather than cowering at the thought of being different, went out of their way to show their difference, and there’s something transformative about that. It opens doors in you.
Now, let’s forgo Hippie history and get right into their wisdom, beginning with the thoughts of two early Hippies. First, some thoughts direct from the early days, care of Bob Stubbs: "We have a private revolution going on. A revolution of individuality and diversity that can only be private. Upon becoming a group movement, such a revolution ends up with imitators rather than participants."
And another, written after the fact, from Debra Jan Bibel: "Yes, it was sex, drugs, and rock & roll, but it was also spirituality and consciousness studies that eventually led to environmental/ecology movements, cognitive neuroscience, and psychoimmunology… The hippie wannabes spoiled the scene, did not understand the ideologies nor the proper use of entheogens. The popular image of hippies was of them, not the more thoughtful, experimental, and realized post-Beats, the pioneers who led the way."
From the early hippie habit of action came many of the better developments of the 1960s: New thoughts, new perspectives, the belief that they could live and thrive as individuals, not as nameless insects in a giant hive. But, more important than anything else, the early hippies discovered that they could activate their own will… that they could live their way, create the things they loved, and ignore the expectations of the state-tribe. Once people reclaim their will, new, beneficial and interesting things tend to sprout up.
The Thoughts They Sought Out: The Hippies, and even though they were generally intelligent kids, were young, and knew they lacked perspective. And so they turned to older, experienced people. Perhaps the best of these older teachers was Buckminster Fuller. Here are some of his thoughts: "Politicians are always realistically maneuvering for the next election. They are obsolete as fundamental problem-solvers."
"I seem to be a verb."
"The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun."
You’ll see from this next one that Fuller makes up his own words. Bear in mind that he was a very serious engineer, so these odd word combinations are used with precision. You’ll have to read the passage slowly, but if you do, you’ll see that these are coherent thoughts. "The youth of humanity all around our planet are intuitively revolting from all sovereignties and political ideologies. The youth of Earth are moving intuitively toward an utterly classless, raceless, omnicooperative, omniworld humanity.
Children freed of the ignorantly founded educational traditions and exposed only to their spontaneously summoned, computer-stored and -distributed outflow of reliable-opinion-purged, experimentally verified data, shall indeed lead society to its happy egress from all misinformedly conceived, fearfully and legally imposed, and physically enforced customs of yesterday. They can lead all humanity into omnisuccessful survival as well as entrance into an utterly new era of human experience in an as-yet and ever-will-be fundamentally mysterious Universe."
You can also see that Fuller is deeply concerned with change in the world. Here are several more on that subject:
"We are powerfully imprisoned in these Dark Ages simply by the terms in which we have been conditioned to think."
"Dear reader, traditional human power structures and their reign of darkness are about to be rendered obsolete."
"Whether it is to be Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race right up to the final moment. Humanity is in ‘final exam’ as to whether or not it qualifies for continuance in Universe."
I’ll close with a practical thought from Fuller. This is one that the Hippies took seriously, and one that all of us should be taking seriously: "You never change anything by fighting the existing. To change something, build a new model and make the existing obsolete." So…Regardless of how we wear our hair and our clothes, we should all, like the Hippies, act to make life better: without permission and now."
Full screen recommended.
Scott McKenzie, "San Francisco"
“What Not to Believe”
“What Not to Believe”
by Chet Raymo
“In Stacy Schiff's biography of Cleopatra, I came across this epigraph from Euripides: "Man's most valuable trait is a judicious sense of what not to believe." I have no idea which of Euripides' plays the quote is from, but it strikes me as a suitable source for reflection. Credulity is the default state of a human life. Children are born to believe, to accept as true what they are told by adults. An innate credulity has survival value in a dangerous world. If a grown-up says "There are crocodiles in the river," it is probably best to stay out of the water.
Skepticism, on the other hand, must be learned. I was late in realizing that I didn't have to believe the received "truth." My best teacher was a somewhat older Panamanian secular Jew I went to graduate school with at UCLA. We took our brown-bag lunches together in the university's botanical garden, and spent the hour talking about physics, religion, and the "meaning of life."
Moises was the first person I had encountered after sixteen years of Catholic education who mentioned the word "skepticism." "Why do you believe that?" he would ask, and often I had no answer except that it was what my family and teachers told me was true. The idea that I might actually examine the basis for my beliefs was a rather new concept. In matters of religion, like almost everyone else in the world, I had embraced uncritically the faith story into which I was born.
And thus began my search for "a judicious sense of what not to believe." When later, as a teacher, I wrote a little column for each issue of the college newspaper, I called it "Under a Skeptical Star," from a line of the Scots poet/scholar William MacNeile Dixon: "If there be a skeptical star I was born under it, yet I have lived all my days in complete astonishment." A liberating sense of what not to believe opened the door to a vastly more interesting world whose diverse and astonishing riches I continue to explore to this day."
"Hope In a Time of Hopelessness"
"Hope In a Time of Hopelessness"
by Washingtons Blog
"Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage;
anger at the way things are, and courage
to see that they do not remain the way they are."
- Augustine of Hippo
"Several long-time activists have told me recently they are overwhelmed, worried, and think that we may be losing the struggle. One very smart friend asked me if there is any basis for hope.
Hope is an act of will, not a passive mood. Admittedly, things are easier when circumstances bring hope to us, and we can just receive the hopeful and inspiring news. But if we care about winning, we have to be able to decide to have hope even when outer circumstances aren't so positive.
I have children who are counting on me to leave them with a reasonably safe and sane planet. As I've said elsewhere, I care too much about my kids and my freedom to be afraid. I care enough about them that it gets my heart beating, connects me to something bigger than myself, and that gives me courage, even when the chips are down.
If I allowed myself to lose hope about exposing falsehoods, about protecting our freedom and building a hopeful future, I would be dropping the ball for my kids. I would be condemning them to a potentially very grey world where bigger and worse things may happen, where their liberties and joys are wholly stripped away, where every ounce of vitality is beholden to joyless and useless tasks.
Many of us may be motivated by other things besides kids, and only you can know what that is. But we each must dig down deep, and connect with our most powerful motivations to win the struggle for freedom and truth.
I don't know about you, but I don't have the luxury of giving up hope. When I get depressed, overwhelmed or exhausted by the stunning acts of savagery, treason, and disinformation carried out by the imperialists, or the willful ignorance of far too many Americans, I will myself into finding some reason to have hope. Because the struggle for life and liberty is too important for me to give up."
○
Full screen recommended.
Jason Mraz, "I Won't Give Up"
And don't you ever give up..
"Intel Fires 23,000 People as Their Factories Close"
Full screen recommended.
Market Gains, 2/15/25
"Intel Fires 23,000 People as Their Factories Close"
Comments here:
Dan, I Allegedly, "Buyers Fail to Show Up"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 2/15/25
"Buyers Fail to Show Up"
"The housing market is facing a collapse right before our eyes! In today’s video, I’m diving into why buyers are not showing up, homes are staying on the market longer, and cancellations are at their highest level since 2017. From the staggering number of listings being pulled to rising mortgage interest rates, we’re seeing the real impact on homeowners, buyers, and the economy. I’m walking through downtown Huntington Beach, California, sharing insights on everything from failing businesses like IHOP to the struggles of affording housing in today’s market. We talk about homeowners unable to get insurance, the skyrocketing debt-to-income ratio, and what it means for the future of real estate. Plus, I share some practical advice on managing your finances, staying prepared, and making smart decisions during these uncertain times. Don’t miss this honest conversation."
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Adventures With Danno, "Very Shocking Prices At Aldi"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 2/15/25
"Very Shocking Prices At Aldi"
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Friday, February 14, 2025
Musical Interlude: Matt Simons, "After The Landslide"
Full screen recommended.
Matt Simons, "After The Landslide"
Oh yeah, we're in the landslide alright...
Jeremiah Babe, "$25 For Breakfast, Restaurants Are Cracking Under Inflation"
Jeremiah Babe, 2/14/25
"$25 For Breakfast,
Restaurants Are Cracking Under Inflation"
Comments here:
"Alert! Direct Hit On Nuclear Plant! Chernobyl False Flag! NATO In Turmoil! Peace Talks Failing!"
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 2/14/25
"Alert! Direct Hit On Nuclear Plant! Chernobyl
False Flag! NATO In Turmoil! Peace Talks Failing!"
Comments here:
Judge Napolitano, "INTEL Roundtable w/Johnson & McGovern: Weekly Wrap"
Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 2/14/25
"INTEL Roundtable w/Johnson & McGovern: Weekly Wrap"
Comments here:
"A Look to the Heavens"
“While drifting through the cosmos, a magnificent interstellar dust cloud became sculpted by stellar winds and radiation to assume a recognizable shape. Fittingly named the Horsehead Nebula, it is embedded in the vast and complex Orion Nebula (M42). A potentially rewarding but difficult object to view personally with a small telescope, the above gorgeously detailed image was recently taken in infrared light by the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope in honor of the 23rd anniversary of Hubble's launch.
The dark molecular cloud, roughly 1,500 light years distant, is cataloged as Barnard 33 and is seen above primarily because it is backlit by the nearby massive star Sigma Orionis. The Horsehead Nebula will slowly shift its apparent shape over the next few million years and will eventually be destroyed by the high energy starlight.”
- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap130422.html
"The Hyphen..."
"Life is the hyphen between matter and spirit."
- A.W. and J.C. Hare, "Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers," 1827
Chet Raymo, "Exile "
"Exile "
by Chet Raymo
"Are we truly alone
With our physics and myths,
The stars no more
Than glittering dust,
With no one there
To hear our choral odes? "
"This is the ultimate question, the only question, asked here by the Northern Irish poet Derek Mahon. It is a poem of exile, from the ancient familiar, from the sustaining myth of rootedness, of centrality. A poem that the naturalist can relate to, we pilgrims of infinite spaces, of the overarching blank pages on which we write our own stories, our own scriptures, having none of divine pedigree.
Yes, we feel the ache of exile, we who grew up with the sustaining myths of immortality only to see them stripped away by the needy hands of fact. We scribble our choral odes. Who listens? We speak to each other. Is that enough? Having left the home we grew up in, we make do with where we find ourselves, gathering to ourselves the glittering dust of the here and now. Are we truly alone? Mahon again:
"If so, we can start
To ignore the silence
Of infinite space
And concentrate instead
on the infinity
Under our very noses -
The cry at the heart
Of the artichoke,
The gaiety of atoms. "
Better to leave the blank page blank than fill it with sentimental hankerings for home, with those prayers of our childhood we repeated over and over until they became a hard, fast crust on the page. Incline our ear instead to the faint cry that issues from the world under our very noses, from there, the tomato plant on the window sill, the ink-dark crow that paces the grass beyond the panes, the clouds that heap on the horizon - the dizzy, ditzy dance of atoms and the glitterings of stars. "
○
"I like the stars. It's the illusion of permanence, I think. I mean, they're always flaring up and caving in and going out. But from here I can pretend... I can pretend that things last. I can pretend that lives last longer than moments. Gods come and Gods go. Mortals flicker and flash and fade. Worlds don't last; and stars and galaxies are transient, fleeting things that twinkle like fireflies and vanish into cold and dust. But I can pretend...
- Olethros, in "Sandman"
"It's True Object..."
"The summit is believed to be the object of the climb. But its true object - the joy of living - is not in the peak itself, but in the adversities encountered on the way up. There are valleys, cliffs, streams, precipices, and slides, and as he walks these steep paths, the climber may think he cannot go any farther, or even that dying would be better than going on. But then he resumes fighting the difficulties directly in front of him, and when he is finally able to turn and look back at what he has overcome, he finds he has truly experienced the joy of living while on life's very road."
- Eiji Yoshikawa
Free Download: R.D. Laing, "The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness"
"The Divided Self:
An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness"
by R.D. Laing
"Ronald David Laing (7 October 1927 – 23 August 1989), usually cited as R. D. Laing, was a Scottish psychiatrist who wrote extensively on mental illness – in particular, the experience of psychosis. Laing's views on the causes and treatment of serious mental dysfunction, greatly influenced by existential philosophy, ran counter to the psychiatric orthodoxy of the day by taking the expressed feelings of the individual patient or client as valid descriptions of lived experience rather than simply as symptoms of some separate or underlying disorder. Laing was associated with the anti-psychiatry movement, although he rejected the label. Politically, he was regarded as a thinker of the New Left.”
"First published in 1960, this watershed work aimed to make madness comprehensible, and in doing so revolutionized the way we perceive mental illness. Using case studies of patients he had worked with, psychiatrist R. D. Laing argued that psychosis is not a medical condition but an outcome of the 'divided self', or the tension between the two personas within us: one our authentic, private identity, and the other the false, 'sane' self that we present to the world.”
Freely download “The Divided Self:
An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness”, by R.D. Laing, here:
o
"Insights Of R.D. Laing"
"Decades ago, psychiatrist R.D. Laing developed three rules by which he believed a pathological family (one suffering from abuse, alcoholism, etc.) can keep its pathology hidden from even its own family members. Adherence to these three rules allows perpetrators, victims, and observers to maintain the fantasy that they are all one big, happy family. The rules are: Rule A: Don't talk about the problems and abject conditions; Rule A1: Rule A does not exist; Rule A2: Do not discuss the existence or nonexistence of Rules A, A1, and/or A2."
“From the moment of birth, when the stone-age baby confronts the twentieth-century mother, the baby is subjected to these forces of violence, called love, as its mother and father have been, and their parents and their parents before them. These forces are mainly concerned with destroying most of its potentialities. This enterprise is on the whole successful.”
“Children do not give up their innate imagination, curiosity, dreaminess easily. You have to love them to get them to do that.”
“We are all murderers and prostitutes - no matter to what culture, society, class, nation one belongs, no matter how normal, moral, or mature, one takes oneself to be.”
“Insanity - a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world.”
“We are bemused and crazed creatures, strangers to our true selves, to one another, and to the spiritual and material world - mad, even, from an ideal standpoint we can glimpse but not adopt.”
"Life is a sexually transmitted disease and the mortality rate is one hundred percent.”
“Insanity - a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world.”
“We are bemused and crazed creatures, strangers to our true selves, to one another, and to the spiritual and material world - mad, even, from an ideal standpoint we can glimpse but not adopt.”
"Life is a sexually transmitted disease and the mortality rate is one hundred percent.”
"The Man Who Thought for Henry Ford"
"The Man Who Thought for Henry Ford"
By Onlyme
"Henry Ford, the first businessman of the modern world, was known for paying the highest wages in the market. One day, a journalist visited him and asked, "Who do you pay the most?" Ford smiled, picked up his coat and hat, and took the journalist to his production room. The room was bustling with activity - workers running around, bells ringing, and elevators moving up and down. Amidst this chaos, there was a small cabin. Inside, a man was lying back on a chair with his legs on the table and a hat covering his face.
Ford knocked on the door. The man lifted his hat slightly, looked at Ford, and in a tired voice said, "Hello, Henry. Are you okay?" Ford smiled, nodded, closed the door, and walked away. The journalist, baffled by what he had just witnessed, asked, "This man receives the highest salary in your company?" Ford laughed and replied, "Yes, he does." Curious, the journalist asked, "But what does he do?" Ford answered, "Nothing. He just comes in, sits back, and thinks all day."
Shocked, the journalist asked, "Then why do you pay him the most?" Ford responded, "Because he is the most valuable person to me. He is here to think. Every system in my company, every car design, comes from his ideas. He comes in, relaxes, thinks, develops an idea, and sends it to me. I work on those ideas and make millions."
Ford then explained, "The most valuable thing in the world is ideas. And to generate ideas, you need free time, peace, and freedom from distractions. If you are always busy, your mind cannot create new ideas or plans. That’s why I hired a wise person just to think. I have also given him financial freedom so that he can generate new ideas for me every day."
Hearing this, the journalist couldn't help but applaud. If you truly understand Henry Ford’s wisdom, you too will applaud. A laborer or a worker is always busy, but as one moves up in life, they gain more free time. The greatest inventors and industry leaders barely step out of their homes for an entire year.
In the business world, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are among the most "idle" people. Buffett reads for four and a half hours daily, while Gates finishes two books a week - about 80 books a year. They drive their own cars, stand in line for coffee and burgers, and don’t use smartphones. Yet, they remain among the wealthiest people in the world. How? Because of free time and the ability to think.
As long as our minds are occupied, they cannot work on big ideas. If you want to achieve something significant in life, you must give yourself the freedom to think. If you keep yourself entangled in small tasks, you won’t be able to think, and without thinking, you won’t accomplish anything great in life."
Dan, I Allegedly, "People Are Fatigued And Fed Up"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 2/14/25
"People Are Fatigued And Fed Up"
"Corporate lies exposed! In today’s video, I’m diving into the excuse being pushed by companies blaming "fatigued customers" for their failures. Whether it’s Denny’s, McDonald’s, retail giants like Kohl’s, or even major layoffs at Blue Origin and Chase Bank, the truth about these corporate decisions might surprise you. Are customers really “fatigued,” or are these businesses just dodging accountability? Let’s break it all down.
I also share some shocking updates about the economy, including massive layoffs, store closures, and even unbelievable government spending - like billions on migrant healthcare. From McDonald’s underwhelming profits to Joanne Fabrics shutting down hundreds of stores, the narrative seems clear: blaming customers is the trend, but the real issues run much deeper. Oh, and let’s not forget Jamie Dimon’s bold stance on remote work at Chase!"
Comments here:
"A Very Short History Of The F-word"
"A Very Short History Of The F-word"
Today, the F-word is enjoying a renaissance the
likes of which it hasn’t seen since, well, the Renaissance.
by Kevin Dickinson
"The first unambiguous use of the F-word comes from De Officiis, a treatise on moral conduct by Cicero. No, the Roman philosopher didn’t gift English its soon-to-be favorite obscenity. Rather, in 1528, an anonymous monk scrawled this parenthetical into the margins of a De Officiis manuscript: “O d f*ckin’ Abbot.”
It isn’t obvious whether the monk’s remark aimed to belittle the abbot or reference his less-than-celibate hobbies. Either way, it seems brazen to us today that a 16th-century monk would scribble such fresh language in a book like some edgelord middle schooler. And it was brazen, too, but not for the reasons you may think.
That lone “d” served as a stand-in for damned - as in “Oh, damned f*ckin’ abbot.” This bit of self-censorship reveals that in the Middle Ages, the unmentionable indecency wasn’t the F-word. It was flippantly evoking matters of religious significance. In fact, this medieval mindset still hangs on in our contemporary euphemisms for vulgar language, such as swearing, profanity, and curse words.
A century later, the roles would begin to reverse. One obscenity would transform into a PG-rated curse, while the other would ascend to become the naughtiest of naughty utterances. It’s all part of the weird and mysterious history of this infamous four-letter word.
Where did the F-word come from? Etymologists aren’t entirely sure where the word originated. It must have been in use for it to appear in our monk’s saucy marginalia, but if we push past 1528 and deeper into written history, things start to get blurry.
In 1503, for example, William Dunbar, a Scottish court poet and ordained priest, penned this dirty ditty: “He held fast, he kissed and fondled,/As with the feeling he was overcome;/It seemed from his manner he would have f*cked!/‘You break my heart, my bonny one.’” In the original Scots, Dunbar’s rhyme scheme was to pair chukkit (“fondled”) with fukkit (“f*cked”), showing the word had taken also root in English’s sister language.
Another early instance comes from a 1475 poem written in an English-Latin hybrid: “Non sunt in celi / quia fuccant uuiuys of heli.” Translation: “They [the monks] are not in heaven because they f*ck the wives of [the town of] Ely.”
The word certainly goes back further still and we see hints of its usage - and the more relaxed attitudes surrounding it - in the names of people and places. A favorite picnic spot could be labeled “F*ckinggrove” on the map and no one would think twice about it. And people from the 1200s signed documents with monikers such as “Henry F*ckbeggar” and “Simon F*ckbutter.” In fact, Chester County documents reveal that between September 1310 and May 1311, one “Roger F*ckebythenavele” was called to court three times before being “outlawed.” (Historians can only guess as to his crimes.)
From there, the etymological trail goes cold. People have proposed various theories regarding the word’s origin, some more absurd than others. One popular theory is that the word is an acronym for “fornicate under the command of the king.” But this idea supposes that everyone in Merrie England went around fornicating until the king commanded them to do it so often they had to coin a shorter term. Unlikely.
In "Nine Nasty Words: English in the Gutter," a book this article is greatly indebted to, linguist John McWhorter offers two more likely scenarios. The first is that our F-word comes from an Old English one now lost to us. Neither a gratifying nor surprising answer. As McWhorter points out, we only have about 34,000 Old English words, compared to the roughly 225,000 you’ll find in a standard desk dictionary. What’s more, the Old English texts that have survived are mostly official or religious documents.
Another possibility is that the word was on loan from another language. Various Germanic words have been floated as possible contenders, among them ficken (meaning “to make quick movements to and fro, or flick”). McWhorter suggests another candidate in the now obsolete Norwegian word fukka.
As this theory goes, the Vikings’ invasion of England wasn’t a hit-and-run operation. Many stayed and settled. They started farms, took English wives, and became part of the culture. Naturally, their word for such a common activity came with them and blended into the local vernacular. This theory may also explain Dunbar’s fukkit as the Vikings heavily settled Northumbria (a kingdom that once consisted of the North of England and south of Scotland).
“We will likely never be absolutely sure which of these origin stories is the right one,” McWhorter writes. “Overall, however, our word shall likely ever remain the mysterious little f*ck that it is, turning up off in a corner of the lexical firmament sometime after the Battle of Hastings.”
A big effing deal: Even after the 16th century, the English language doesn’t use the word much - in print at least. “In the 1500s and before, it was, to be sure, naughty,” McWhorter writes. “However, since the Renaissance, f*ck has been the subject of a grand cover-up, the lexical equivalent of the drunken uncle or the pornography collection, under which a word known well and even adored by most is barred from public presentation.”
For instance, the word didn’t appear in an English-language dictionary until 1966 when The Penguin Dictionary broke the taboo. The American Heritage Dictionary wouldn’t offer entry until 1969, and even then not without also printing a “clean” edition to compensate. A notable exception to this rule was Queen Anna’s New World of Words, an Italian-English dictionary printed by John Florio in 1611.
One reason for the word’s conspicuous absence has to do with the nature of the written word. For most of history, the majority of people could neither read nor write. Those who could were often the social elite, and they wrote for other elites. To further separate themselves from the bawdy riffraff, they coded their language to mark their status. One way to do that was to not use the obscene language associated with the lower classes - except maybe in omission, and always from the safe distance of the moral high ground.
As print and literacy became more widespread, these norms remained firmly entrenched. Most historical examples come to us from underground entertainment, such as folk songs, erotic comics, and pulpy literature. However, the social, cultural, and artistic aftershocks of the two World Wars began to slowly nudge profanity back into print. In the 1924 play "What Price Glory?" the soldiers swore like, well, soldiers, but without dropping a single F-bomb. Ernest Hemingway included damn in "The Sun Also Rises" (1926) but had to settle for the oblique muck in "For Whom the Bell Tolls" (1940). And Norman Mailer famously substituted fug in "The Naked and the Dead" (1948).
The watershed moment wouldn’t come until 1960, with the obscenity trial of "Lady Chatterley’s Lover." D.H. Lawrence’s now-revered novel was initially banned or censored across the English-speaking world for its use of the word and explicit sexual descriptions. In the U.K., Penguin Books, the novel’s publisher, was brought to trial for violating the Obscene Publications Act 1959. The prosecution argued the novel would “deprave and corrupt” readers, but the jury found Penguin not guilty on account that such literature fell under the act’s public good provision. Other courts soon followed, and the novel is today viewed as a milestone in the counterculture movements that would usher in our more permissive social mores.
Evolution of the F-word: Since then, things seem to have come full circle. Once unutterable in polite society, the word has lost much of its stigma and can now be heard in the office, on TV, and even at the family dinner table (assuming the kids are playing in the other room). (Or not - CP)
As linguist Valerie Fridland points out, it is 28 times more common in literature today than when Lawrence wrote of Lady Chatterly’s illicit affair - to say nothing of its marquee status in titles. It’s the most tweeted cuss word by Americans, and in a truly stunning upset, it recently surpassed bloody as the favored obscenity among the British “This suggests that something has changed over the decades that has made such language less offensive, at least to a significant portion of the population,” Fridland writes. “And, even more than just an uptick in use, what is especially striking is how omnipresent even more offensive ‘bad’ words have become.”
A 2023 study looked at the word’s usage among British teens over several decades. It found that the word has undergone “delexicalization,” the process by which a word expands its range of contextual uses different from its original meaning. In this case, the word has become more functional than definitional. Much like that anonymous monk of yore, we use it today for that kick of expressive spice.
Fridland, who was not involved in the research, offers the example, “It’s f*cking hot in here.” This usage no longer carries any literal meaning. It’s there to amplify and emphasize just how hot it is. She writes: “By picking a word that has some shock value and takes a bit of verbal risk owing to its associated taboo use, it carries more impact. […] As swear words get put to work in less traditional/literal ways, their negative connotations are less likely to be the first thing that comes to mind upon hearing them.”
Even so, in some settings or groups, the word hasn’t completely lost its edge, and that’s for the best. We need words that give our expressions that emotional oomph and inform others just how disgusted, ecstatic, or angry we are. We need to be able to signal when our social hair is down or that we’re part of the in-group. And sometimes, we just need an easy way to distinguish the pastors from the shock jocks.
Should the day ever come when the word no longer fulfills these roles - hitting instead with all the impact of a “golly gee” - you can bet another one will step up to take its place. Until then, it will continue to evolve in our language in ever-resourceful and interesting ways."
“The History of the Middle Finger”
“The History of the Middle Finger”
by pappy
“Well, now… here’s something I never knew before, and now that I know it, I feel compelled to send it on to my more intelligent friends in the hope that they, too, will feel edified.
Before the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, the French, anticipating victory over the English, proposed to cut off the middle finger of all captured English soldiers. Without the middle finger it would be impossible to draw the renowned English longbow and therefore they would be incapable of fighting in the future. This famous English longbow was made of the native English Yew tree, and the act of drawing the longbow was known as ‘plucking the yew’ (or ‘pluck yew’).
Much to the bewilderment of the French, the English won a major upset and they began mocking the French by waving their middle fingers at the defeated French, saying, “See, we can still pluck yew!” Since ‘pluck yew’ is rather difficult to say, the difficult consonant cluster at the beginning has gradually changed to a labiodentalfricative ‘F’, and thus the words often used in conjunction with the one-finger-salute! It is also because of the pheasant feathers on the arrows used with the longbow that the symbolic gesture is known as ‘giving the bird.’ And now you know..."
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