Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, 8/16/25
"Escaping Economic Doomsday And Living On A Ranch"
Comments here:
So, we rise from the rubble...
Saturday, August 16, 2025
"A Look to the Heavens"
“Here is one of the largest objects that anyone will ever see on the sky. Each of these fuzzy blobs is a galaxy, together making up the Perseus Cluster, one of the closest clusters of galaxies. The cluster is seen through a foreground of faint stars in our own Milky Way Galaxy.
Near the cluster center, roughly 250 million light-years away, is the cluster's dominant galaxy NGC 1275, seen above as a large galaxy on the image left. A prodigious source of x-rays and radio emission, NGC 1275 accretes matter as gas and galaxies fall into it. The Perseus Cluster of Galaxies, also cataloged as Abell 426, is part of the Pisces-Perseus supercluster spanning over 15 degrees and containing over 1,000 galaxies. At the distance of NGC 1275, this view covers about 15 million light-years.”
"It Is Inevitable..."
“We do not rest satisfied with the present. We anticipate the future as too slow in coming, as if in order to hasten its course; or we recall the past, to stop its too rapid flight. So imprudent are we that we wander in the times which are not ours and do not think of the only one which belongs to us; and so idle are we that we dream of those times which are no more and thoughtlessly overlook that which alone exists. For the present is generally painful to us. We conceal it from our sight, because it troubles us; and, if it be delightful to us, we regret to see it pass away. We try to sustain it by the future and think of arranging matters which are not in our power, for a time which we have no certainty of reaching.
Let each one examine his thoughts, and he will find them all occupied with the past and the future. We scarcely ever think of the present; and if we think of it, it is only to take light from it to arrange the future. The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means; the future alone is our end. So we never live, but we hope to live; and, as we are always preparing to be happy, it is inevitable we should never be so.”
- Blaise Pascal
Chet Raymo, “At Home In An Infinite Universe”
“At Home In An Infinite Universe”
by Chet Raymo
“They are questions that bedeviled thinkers for thousands of years: Is the universe infinite or finite, eternal or of a finite age? It is certainly hard to imagine a universe that extends without limit in every direction, or a universe without a beginning or end. It is equally difficult to imagine a finite universe; what is beyond the edge? Or a beginning or end in time; how can something come from nothing? How can what is cease to be?
The problems are so intractable philosophically that their resolution has generally been left to the theologians, which from a philosophical (or scientific) perspective offers no solution at all. Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for proposing a philosophical resolution (an infinite universe) that offended theology.
An escape from befuddlement is provided by Einstein's theory of general relativity, which- for example- can describe a finite universe without a boundary, as the "two-dimensional" surface of a sphere is finite and without an edge. Unfortunately, multi-dimensional curved space-time is so counterintuitive that it is difficult to get one's head around it without mastery of the mathematics. Given a choice between the ancient myths of your local preacher and the obtuse mathematics of the physics professor, it's not hard to guess what most folks will opt for.
Meanwhile, I'm reading a meditation on infinity by physics professor Anthony Aguirre, in a collection of essays called "Future Science." He discusses contemporary cosmological theories based on general relativity, and in particular the rehabilitation of the idea of an infinite and eternal universe, or, more precisely, that our universe might be just one of an infinity of infinite universes. He writes in conclusion: “What seems clear, however, is that infinity can no longer be safely ignored; beautifully constructed, empirically supported, self-consistent theories have brought infinity from idle curiosity to central player in contemporary cosmology. And if correct, the worldview these theories represent constitutes a perspective shift unlike any other: in comparison to the universe, we would be not just small but strictly zero. Well, I can't imagine many folks racing to embrace that conclusion.
Oh, but wait. Aguirre adds one final sentence: "Yet here we are, contemplating - if not quite understanding - it all.”
- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/
The Poet: Mark Jarman, "Coyotes"
"Coyotes"
"Is this world truly fallen? They say no.
For there's the new moon, there's the Milky Way,
There's the rattler with a wren's egg in its mouth,
And there's the panting rabbit they will eat.
They sing their wild hymn on the dark slope,
Reading the stars like notes of hilarious music.
Is this a fallen world? How could it be?
And yet we're crying over the stars again,
And over the uncertainty of death,
Which we suspect will divide us all forever.
I'm tired of those who broadcast their certainties,
Constantly on their cell phones to their redeemer.
Is this a fallen world? For them it is.
But there's that starlit burst of animal laughter.
The day has sent its fires scattering.
The night has risen from its burning bed.
Our tears are proof that love is meant for life
And for the living. And this chorus of praise,
Which the pet dogs of the neighborhood are answering
Nostalgically, invites our answer, too.
Is this a fallen world? How could it be?"
~ Mark Jarman
"Time, Life, And The Roller Coaster..."
"Life is truly a ride. We're all strapped in and no one can stop it. When the doctor slaps your behind, he's ripping your ticket and away you go. As you make each passage from youth to adulthood to maturity, sometimes you put your arms up and scream, sometimes you just hang on to that bar in front of you. But the ride is the thing. I think the most you can hope for at the end of life is that your hair's messed, you're out of breath, and you didn't throw up."
- Jerry Seinfeld
○
Remember when you were 10 years old, and summer felt like it lasted forever? Got a little older, not so bad, still plenty of time to do everything you wanted. Someone told me back then that time speeds up the older you get. Being young, and knowing everything as the young do, I of course ridiculed this idea. But guess what - it’s true. Now I view life, and time, as a roller coaster with just one enormous riser. Time is slower to pass at the beginning as you climb towards the top. At 30 or so you’re at the very top, then you start the fall towards the bottom. Faster and faster you go, as time goes by ever quicker. Weeks and months flash by, and you wonder where it all went, and as you descend ever faster you suddenly realize that somewhere on the tracks below there’s a solid brick wall or some other disaster awaiting your arrival. The only things you don’t know is where on the tracks ahead of you it is, or how soon you'll arrive. So, while you still can, you'd better appreciate even more the things you can enjoy, and the people whom you love and that love you, because the ride isn’t going to last forever... - CP
Of course, sometimes Life feels like this...
"Fast Time and the Aging Mind"
"Fast Time and the Aging Mind"
By Richard A. Friedman
By Richard A. Friedman
"Ah, the languorous days of endless summer! Who among us doesn’t remember those days and wonder wistfully where they’ve gone? Why does time seem to speed up as we age? Even the summer solstice — the longest, sunniest day of the year — seems to have passed in a flash. No less than the great William James opined on the matter, thinking that the apparent speed of time’s passage was a result of adults’ experiencing fewer memorable events: “Each passing year converts some of this experience into automatic routine which we hardly note at all, the days and the weeks smooth themselves out in recollection to contentless units, and the years grow hollow and collapse.”
Don’t despair. I am happy to tell you that the apparent velocity of time is a big fat cognitive illusion and happy to say there may be a way to slow the velocity of our later lives.
Although the sense that we perceive time as accelerating as we age is very common, it is hard to prove experimentally. In one of the largest studies to date, Dr. Marc Wittmann of the Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health, in Germany, interviewed 499 German and Austrian subjects ranging in age from 14 to 94 years; he asked each subject how quickly time seemed to pass during the previous week, month, year and decade. Surprisingly, there were few differences related to age. With one exception: when researchers asked the subjects about the 10-year interval, older subjects were far more likely than the younger subjects to report that the last decade had passed quickly.
Other, non-age-related factors influence our perception of time. Recent research shows that emotions affect our perception of time. For example, Dr. Sylvie Droit-Volet, a psychology professor at Blaise Pascal University, in France, manipulated subjects’ emotional state by showing them movies that excited fear or sadness and then asked them to estimate the duration of the visual stimulus. She found that time appears to pass more slowly when we are afraid.
Attention and memory play a part in our perception of time. To accurately gauge the passage of time required to accomplish a given task, you have to be able to focus and remember a sequence of information. That’s partly why someone with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder has trouble judging time intervals and grows impatient with what seems like the slow passage of time. The neurotransmitter dopamine is critically important to our ability to process time. Stimulants like Ritalin and Adderall, which increase dopamine function in the brain, have the effect of speeding up time perception; antipsychotic drugs, which block dopamine receptors, have the opposite effect.
On the whole, most of us perceive short intervals of time similarly, regardless of age. Why, then, do older people look back at long stretches of their lives and feel it’s a race to the finish? Here’s a possible answer: think about what it’s like when you learn something for the first time — for example how, when you are young, you learn to ride a bike or navigate your way home from school. It takes time to learn new tasks and to encode them in your memory. And when you are learning about the world for the first time, you are forming a fairly steady stream of new memories of events, places and people.
When, as an adult, you look back at your childhood experiences, they appear to unfold in slow motion probably because the sheer number of them gives you the impression that they must have taken forever to acquire. So when you recall the summer vacation when you first learned to swim or row a boat, it feels endless. But this is merely an illusion, the way adults understand the past when they look through the telescope of lost time. This, though, is not an illusion: almost all of us faced far steeper learning curves when we were young. Most adults do not explore and learn about the world the way they did when they were young; adult life lacks the constant discovery and endless novelty of childhood.
Studies have shown that the greater the cognitive demands of a task, the longer its duration is perceived to be. Dr. David Eagleman at Baylor College of Medicine found that repeated stimuli appear briefer in duration than novel stimuli of equal duration. Is it possible that learning new things might slow down our internal sense of time?
The question and the possibility it presents put me in mind of my father, who died a few years ago at age 86. An engineer by training, he read constantly after he retired. His range was enormous; he read about everything from astronomy to natural history, travel and gardening. I remember once discovering dozens of magazines and journals in the house and was convinced that my parents had become the victims of a mail-order scam. Thinking I’d help with the clutter, I began to bundle up the magazines for recycling when my father angrily confronted me, demanding to know what the hell I was doing. “I read all of these,” he said.
And then it dawned on me. I cannot recall his ever having remarked on how fast or slow his life seemed to be going. He was constantly learning, always alive to new ideas and experience. Maybe that’s why he never seemed to notice that time was passing.
So what, you might say, if we have an illusion about time speeding up? But it matters, I think, because the distortion signals that we might squeeze more out of life.
It’s simple: if you want time to slow down, become a student again. Learn something that requires sustained effort; do something novel. Put down the thriller when you’re sitting on the beach and break out a book on evolutionary theory or Spanish for beginners or a how-to book on something you’ve always wanted to do. Take a new route to work; vacation at an unknown spot. And take your sweet time about it."
- http://www.nytimes.com/
•
Richard A. Friedman is a professor of clinical psychiatry and the director of the psycho-pharmacology clinic at the Weill Cornell Medical College.
"Clinging To The Core When Our World Falls Apart"
"Clinging To The Core When Our World Falls Apart"
by The DailyOm
"When external factors shift we have an opportunity to rediscover our core which is the only truly safe place to call home. There are times when our whole world seems to be falling apart around us, and we are not sure what to hold onto anymore. Sometimes our relationships crumble and sometimes it’s our physical environment. At other times, we can’t put our finger on it, but we feel as if all the walls have fallen down around us and we are standing with nothing to lean on, exposed and vulnerable. These are the times in our lives when we are given an opportunity to see where we have established our sense of identity, safety, and well-being. And while it is perfectly natural and part of our process to locate our sense of self in externals, any time those external factors shift, we have an opportunity to rediscover and move closer to our core, which is the only truly safe place to call home.
The core of our being is not affected by the shifting winds of circumstance or subject to the cycles of change that govern physical reality. It is as steady and consistent as the sun, which is why the great mystics and mystical poets often reference the sun in their odes to the self. Like the sun, there are times when our core seems to be inaccessible to us, but this is just a misperception. We know that when the sun goes behind a cloud or sets for the night, it has not disappeared but is simply temporarily out of sight. In the same way, we can trust that our inner core is always shining brightly, even when we cannot quite see it.
We can cling to this core when things around us are falling apart, knowing that an inexhaustible light shines from within ourselves. Times of external darkness can be a great gift in that they provide an opportunity to remember this inner light that shines regardless of the circumstances of our lives. When our external lives begin to come back together, we are able to lean a bit more lightly on the structures we used to call home, knowing more clearly than ever that our true home is that bright sun shining in our core."
- http://www.dailyom.com/
"Decide..."
“We're all going to die. We don't get much say over how or when, but we do get to decide how we're gonna live. So, do it. Decide. Is this the life you want to live? Is this the person you want to love? Is this the best you can be? Can you be stronger? Kinder? More Compassionate? Decide. Breathe in. Breathe out and decide.”
- “Richard”, “Grey’s Anatomy”
"The Truth We Can’t Accept"
"The Truth We Can’t Accept"
by Paul Rosenberg
"There is a simple fact that people are unable to ingest. You can explain it with charts, graphs and documentation… and they may even like the sound of it… but it soon fades and is forgotten. This truth is simply too foreign to us; it doesn’t fit within our mental universe. Most of us don’t particularly fight it, but we’re very slow to integrate it. So please bear in mind that this may affect you too.
This truth is massively good news, by the way, which is strange too: Bad news people believe instantly; good news they doubt instantly. All that said, here’s the news: Scarcity upon Earth has been fundamentally overcome. We’ve been growing more food than we can eat for decades now, and we could grow much more if we needed to. Building houses for everyone would be no problem: we have the entire set of technologies and processes worked out, materials are available and there’s no lack of people who’d be glad to work as a homebuilder.
Likewise providing quality medical care to all is well within our reach, and of course cars and roads are no problem. So, before I get to support and objections, I’ll restate our main point: The doors to a golden age have swung open before us, but we’re having a hard time accepting that it’s real.
But Why Can’t We Believe It? Before I get to the details of our disbelief, let me tell you were you can find all the documentation you’d like:The work of Julian Simon, especially "The Ultimate Resource and The State of Humanity." You’ll find lots of hard data in these.The work of Stephen Moore and Johan Nordberg, particularly "It’s Getting Better All The Time and Progress."
And just to support this a bit, here’s part of a presentation from Norman Borlaug, the man who revolutionized modern agriculture (Nobel Prize, etc.) and saved a billion lives in the process. It was delivered in in September of 2000: "I now say that the world has the technology – either available or well advanced in the research pipeline – to feed on a sustainable basis a population of 10 billion people." You’ll find similar passages in the resources noted above. So, from a scientific standpoint, our main points are very solid, and on the production side, scarcity was overcome some decades ago. Why then is this non-believable?
First of all, we’ve been raised to believe in regimentation; to see it as the path to paradise and to treat it as a sublime invention. But regimentation is entirely focused on the bad: We believe that by suppressing evil we create a better world for ourselves. And so, anything that smells of a present golden age – a good age – is incompatible with our beloved regimentation. That means that our deep assumptions would have to be revised, and that’s uncomfortable. Beyond that sits the fact that scarcity is a psychological necessity to us. If we no longer need to fight over resources, how do we show ourselves superior?
Objections to this discussion tend to be indirect, dealing with things like “human desires are infinite.” These, however, are paper arguments: we’re discussing concrete things like food and houses. And, of course, there is a difference between wants and needs. Wants are bounded only by our imaginations, and so are unfit for a serious and this-worldly discourse. A comfortable home, good food and reliable transportation are needs. Ferraris, mansions and caviar are wants.
Likewise, arguments over finite resources are distractions: We have plenty of materials right now (including fuels for both fission and fusion). Additionally, there are planets and asteroid belts waiting for us in the not-too distant future. In actual fact there are fewer starving people all the time. Moreover, the cause of whatever starvation remains is almost wholly political, not technological.
So…What we need is to talk about these things: To review the sources, examine the graphs and start working this into ourselves as an actual possibility. We really are ready to step into a golden age, as impossibly foreign as that may seem. In fact, we’ve been doing precisely that, mostly by accident, for decades. If we worked at it, we might go down in history as the generation that transformed humanity forever."
While I'd love to be so optimistic, but considering all things the path Mankind is on,
extinction is a more likely end. A "Golden Age?" Most unlikely, but food for thought...
Dan, I Allegedly, "The End of America is Here! Here's Proof"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, AM 8/16/25
"The End of America is Here! Here's Proof"
"America’s farming crisis is worse than you think, and it’s hitting us all where it hurts most - our wallets. In this video, I break down the shocking truth about why 140,000 U.S. farms have disappeared in the past decade and how this is driving food prices through the roof. From small family farms being sold off to developers to the struggles of cattle ranchers, this is a wake-up call for all of us. Support your local farmers - whether it's buying fresh produce, fruit, or even corn from a roadside stand - it makes a huge difference in keeping these communities alive. We also talk about inflation, housing costs, and the outrageous challenges of health insurance. Plus, I share a wild story about Beyond Meat and why the faux meat industry is crumbling."
Comments here:
"What This Country Needs..."
"What this country needs... what this great land of ours needs is something to happen to it. Something ferocious and tragic, like what happened to Jericho or the cities of the plain - something terrible I mean, son, so that when the people have been through hellfire and the crucible, and have suffered agony enough and grief, they'll be people again, human beings, not a bunch of smug contented cows rooting at the trough."
- William Styron, "Set This House On Fire"
And what this country really needs is just beginning, watch and see...
God help us...
Joel Bowman, "State Capitalism"
"State Capitalism"
The government's big knowledge problem
and Hayek's familiar road to serfdom...
by Joel Bowman
“The more the state ‘plans’ the more difficult planning becomes for the individual.”
~ Friedrich Hayek, from "The Road to Serfdom" (1944)
Buenos Aires, Argentina - "When we left you earlier this week, we were reckoning over a paradox... a contradiction in terms... a riddle wrapped in a mystery tucked inside an oxymoron. The malformed figure of speech: “State Capitalism.”
Like a fire-breathing Chimera, the phrase sprang forth from an article in The Wall Street Journal: "The U.S. Marches Toward State Capitalism With American Characteristics." The article went on to detail how the United States Government, under the stewardship of Donald Trump II, has come to engage more and more directly in not only the broader economy, through tariffs, taxes and the like, but individual companies therein...from pressuring Intel to fire its CEO (and later backtracking after a private meeting in the Oval Office)... to the government carving out a “Golden Share” in US Steel as part of a takeover by Japan’s largest steelmaker, Nippon Steel Corp... to arranging for the state to take a cut of Nvidia and AMD’s chip sales to China...to issuing an Executive Order to establish a U.S. sovereign wealth fund (SWF), similar to those operated by petro-welfare states like Norway, the UAE and Kuwait. And plenty more besides...
Inquiring minds were set to wonder, “If it doesn’t look like capitalism, and it doesn’t smell like capitalism, and it doesn’t quack like capitalism...”
Command Economics: As we noted at the time, this is by no means the first time the federal government has presumed to know the inner workings of the market better than the hundreds of millions of individuals actually participating in it. Indeed, most of the 20th Century was spent wasting other people's money on one whacky, centrally-planned idea after another, usually under the guise of emergencies brought about by The State itself.
Continued the Journal..."The federal government has often waded into the corporate world. It commandeered production during World War II and, under the Defense Production Act, emergencies such as the Covid-19 pandemic. It bailed out banks and car companies during the 2007-09 financial crisis. Those, however, were temporary expedients.
Former President Joe Biden went further, seeking to shape the actual structure of industry. His Inflation Reduction Act authorized $400 billion in clean-energy loans. The Chips and Science Act earmarked $39 billion in subsidies for domestic semiconductor manufacturing. Of that, $8.5 billion went to Intel, giving Trump leverage to demand the removal of its CEO over past ties to China. (Intel so far has refused.)
Biden overrode U.S. Steel’s management and shareholders to block Nippon Steel’s takeover, though his staff saw no national-security risk. Trump reversed that veto while extracting the “golden share” that he can use to influence the company’s decisions. In design and name it mimics the golden shares that private Chinese companies must issue to the CCP.
Biden officials had mulled a sovereign-wealth fund to finance strategically important but commercially risky projects such as in critical minerals, which China dominates. Last month, Trump’s Department of Defense said it would take a 15% stake in MP Materials, a miner of critical minerals."
Doomed to Fail: One of the main problems with “State Capitalism” is functional. That is to say, it doesn’t work. The reasons for this are manifold, the primary one being what Friedrich Hayek called the “Knowledge Problem.” Hayek demonstrated that, in the real world, information is not concentrated, but rather dispersed among myriad individuals, thereby making it impossible for central planners to possess the specific knowledge needed to manage an economy from the top down.
The market, on the other hand, relies on signals from the aforementioned participants, each pursuing his own ends, thereby creating what Hayek termed Spontaneous Order; a system where vital information – price... time... supply... demand... quantity... quality... velocity... momentum... trend... etc. – is conveyed and interpreted in a way that no central politburo could ever hope to master. (Little surprise, then, that whenever the state does intervene in otherwise free markets, it creates such a predictable tsunami of unintended consequences... a Note for another time.)
The other problem with “State Capitalism” is definitional... as in, it doesn’t exist. That is to say, there is no such thing as “State Capitalism.” To understand this, we have to engage our old friend, Semantics.
What’s In A Word: To the chagrin of big state apologists on the left AND on the right, capitalism isn’t “the rich getting richer while the poor get poorer.” Nor is it “profits over people” or “greed is good” or any of the other mealy-mouthed misdirections and empty sloganeering employed by meddlers and do-gooders advocating for more public disservice and state intervention. Neither is capitalism some nebulous, esoteric concept... vague enough to find a place in a sophomore gender studies essay... subjective enough to carry no objective meaning at all. It is, quite simply, an economic system in which:
Private individuals own and control the means of production and prices are set by the free market (i.e., through voluntary exchange; absent coercion). That’s it. Nothing more. Nothing less. Or, to put it in the memetic language of marketing copy: “For every free and voluntary exchange of privately owned goods and services, there’s Capitalism. For everything else, there’s The State.”
Like the “living dead” or an “original copy” or an “honest politician,” the very term “state capitalism” is, itself, an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms. Likewise, there is no “hybrid” between socialism and capitalism, any more than there is a hybrid between being free and being incarcerated; either you can leave... or you cannot. Which brings us to capitalism’s opposing force: The State.
Equal and Opposite: In his famous 1919 lecture Politics as a Vocation, the German sociologist and political philosopher, Max Weber, defined The State as: “A human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.” Debates over the “legitimate” use of force aside, we can see here that The State cannot, by definition, act as a participant in something that relies on voluntarism as a core operating principle.
The very moment The State enters the economy in any way, shape or form – to tax one group and subsidize another... to set the price of a single good or service... to impose itself on a single contract... to claim a monopoly on the production of money, to demand its fiat be used, and that others be prohibited... to require a license, permit or other permission... to put its flabby finger on a single scale... – is to simultaneously render property contingent and the market subject to force. Where Capitalism ends, The State begins... and never the twain shall meet.
But where does that leave us, dear reader? Why, right here of course… at the end of today’s word count. Stay tuned for more Notes From the End of the World..."
"Coffee In Texas; Trump No Deal Until There's A Deal; AI Taking Over The World""
Jeremiah Babe, AM 8/16/25
"Coffee In Texas; Trump No Deal Until There's A Deal;
AI Taking Over The World"
Comments here:
Gerald Celente, "This Is Extremely Serious..."
Full screen recommended.
Gerald Celente, 8/15/25
"This Is Extremely Serious..."
Comments here:
Adventures With Danno, "Very Shocking Prices At Costco"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, AM 8/16/25
"Very Shocking Prices At Costco"
Comments here:
Friday, August 15, 2025
"WHOA... Putin Just Won. Prepare for War. US Nuclear Bluff Fails!"
Full screen recommended.
Prepper News, 8/15/25
"WHOA... Putin Just Won.
Prepare for War. US Nuclear Bluff Fails!"
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"Calculating My Move From California To Alabama; Now Is The Time To Get Out And Never Look Back"
Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, 8/15/25
"Calculating My Move From California To Alabama;
Now Is The Time To Get Out And Never Look Back"
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Musical Interlude: The Alan Parsons Project, "Sirius", "Eye In The Sky"
The Alan Parsons Project, "Sirius", "Eye In The Sky"
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Have you ever seen the Pleiades star cluster? Even if you have, you probably have never seen it as large and clear as this. Perhaps the most famous star cluster on the sky, the bright stars of the Pleiades can be seen without binoculars from even the depths of a light-polluted city. With a long exposure from a dark location, though, the dust cloud surrounding the Pleiades star cluster becomes very evident. The featured exposure, taken from Florida, USA, covers a sky area several times the size of the full moon.
Also known as the Seven Sisters and M45, the Pleiades lies about 400 light years away toward the constellation of the Bull (Taurus). A common legend with a modern twist is that one of the brighter stars faded since the cluster was named, leaving only six of the sister stars visible to the unaided eye. The actual number of Pleiades stars visible, however, may be more or less than seven, depending on the darkness of the surrounding sky and the clarity of the observer's eyesight."
"US Household Debt Skyrockets To Dangerous Levels"
Full screen recommended.
Michael Bordenaro, 8/15/25
"US Household Debt Skyrockets To Dangerous Levels"
"The average household debt in America just exploded to $152,000 which is the highest nominal value on record. The only time it was ever worse than this was in 2008 and we all know what happened back then."
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Dan, I Allegedly, "45% Can't Afford Their Lifestyle! Are You One of Them?"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 8/15/25
"45% Can't Afford Their Lifestyle!
Are You One of Them?"
"Nearly 45% of Americans say they can't afford their homes, and the financial strain is only getting worse! In today’s video, I’m breaking down the troubling stats about affordability, credit scores, and how inflation, job cuts, and rising living costs are leaving many strapped. From the shocking 67% drop in commercial real estate value to the growing role of AI in holiday shopping, there's so much to cover. Plus, I'll share some surprising updates about companies like Walmart, Target, and even Chili’s burger deal that’s driving insane sales growth!"
Comments here:
"The Pig Farmer"
"The Pig Farmer"
by John Robbins
"One day in Iowa I met a particular gentleman - and I use that term, gentleman, frankly, only because I am trying to be polite, for that is certainly not how I saw him at the time. He owned and ran what he called a “pork production facility.” I, on the other hand, would have called it a pig Auschwitz. The conditions were brutal. The pigs were confined in cages that were barely larger than their own bodies, with the cages stacked on top of each other in tiers, three high. The sides and the bottoms of the cages were steel slats, so that excrement from the animals in the upper and middle tiers dropped through the slats on to the animals below.
The aforementioned owner of this nightmare weighed, I am sure, at least 240 pounds, but what was even more impressive about his appearance was that he seemed to be made out of concrete. His movements had all the fluidity and grace of a brick wall. What made him even less appealing was that his language seemed to consist mainly of grunts, many of which sounded alike to me, and none of which were particularly pleasant to hear. Seeing how rigid he was and sensing the overall quality of his presence, I - rather brilliantly, I thought - concluded that his difficulties had not arisen merely because he hadn’t had time, that particular morning, to finish his entire daily yoga routine.
But I wasn’t about to divulge my opinions of him or his operation, for I was undercover, visiting slaughterhouses and feedlots to learn what I could about modern meat production. There were no bumper stickers on my car, and my clothes and hairstyle were carefully chosen to give no indication that I might have philosophical leanings other than those that were common in the area. I told the farmer matter of factly that I was a researcher writing about animal agriculture, and asked if he’d mind speaking with me for a few minutes so that I might have the benefit of his knowledge. In response, he grunted a few words that I could not decipher, but that I gathered meant I could ask him questions and he would show me around.
I was at this point not very happy about the situation, and this feeling did not improve when we entered one of the warehouses that housed his pigs. In fact, my distress increased, for I was immediately struck by what I can only call an overpowering olfactory experience. The place reeked like you would not believe of ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, and other noxious gases that were the products of the animals’ wastes. These, unfortunately, seemed to have been piling up inside the building for far too long a time.
As nauseating as the stench was for me, I wondered what it must be like for the animals. The cells that detect scent are known as ethmoidal cells. Pigs, like dogs, have nearly 200 times the concentration of these cells in their noses as humans do. In a natural setting, they are able, while rooting around in the dirt, to detect the scent of an edible root through the earth itself. Given any kind of a chance, they will never soil their own nests, for they are actually quite clean animals, despite the reputation we have unfairly given them. But here they had no contact with the earth, and their noses were beset by the unceasing odor of their own urine and feces multiplied a thousand times by the accumulated wastes of the other pigs unfortunate enough to be caged in that warehouse. I was in the building only for a few minutes, and the longer I remained in there, the more desperately I wanted to leave. But the pigs were prisoners there, barely able to take a single step, forced to endure this stench, and almost completely immobile, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and with no time off, I can assure you, for holidays.
The man who ran the place was - I’ll give him this - kind enough to answer my questions, which were mainly about the drugs he used to handle the problems that are fairly common in factory pigs today. But my sentiments about him and his farm were not becoming any warmer. It didn’t help when, in response to a particularly loud squealing from one of the pigs, he delivered a sudden and threatening kick to the bars of its cage, causing a loud “clang” to reverberate through the warehouse and leading to screaming from many of the pigs. Because it was becoming increasingly difficult to hide my distress, it crossed my mind that I should tell him what I thought of the conditions in which he kept his pigs, but then I thought better of it. This was a man, it was obvious, with whom there was no point in arguing.
After maybe 15 minutes, I’d had enough and was preparing to leave, and I felt sure he was glad to be about to be rid of me. But then something happened, something that changed my life, forever - and, as it turns out, his too. It began when his wife came out from the farmhouse and cordially invited me to stay for dinner. The pig farmer grimaced when his wife spoke, but he dutifully turned to me and announced, “The wife would like you to stay for dinner.” He always called her “the wife,” by the way, which led me to deduce that he was not, apparently, on the leading edge of feminist thought in the country today.
I don’t know whether you have ever done something without having a clue why, and to this day I couldn’t tell you what prompted me to do it, but I said Yes, I’d be delighted. And stay for dinner I did, though I didn’t eat the pork they served. The excuse I gave was that my doctor was worried about my cholesterol. I didn’t say that I was a vegetarian, nor that my cholesterol was 125.
I was trying to be a polite and appropriate dinner guest. I didn’t want to say anything that might lead to any kind of disagreement. The couple (and their two sons, who were also at the table) were, I could see, being nice to me, giving me dinner and all, and it was gradually becoming clear to me that, along with all the rest of it, they could be, in their way, somewhat decent people. I asked myself, if they were in my town, traveling, and I had chanced to meet them, would I have invited them to dinner? Not likely, I knew, not likely at all. Yet here they were, being as hospitable to me as they could. Yes, I had to admit it. Much as I detested how the pigs were treated, this pig farmer wasn’t actually the reincarnation of Adolph Hitler. At least not at the moment.
Of course, I still knew that if we were to scratch the surface we’d no doubt find ourselves in great conflict, and because that was not a direction in which I wanted to go, as the meal went along I sought to keep things on an even and constant keel. Perhaps they sensed it too, for among us, we managed to see that the conversation remained, consistently and resolutely, shallow. We talked about the weather, about the Little League games in which their two sons played, and then, of course, about how the weather might affect the Little League games. We were actually doing rather well at keeping the conversation superficial and far from any topic around which conflict might occur. Or so I thought. But then suddenly, out of nowhere, the man pointed at me forcefully with his finger, and snarled in a voice that I must say truly frightened me, “Sometimes I wish you animal rights people would just drop dead.”
How on Earth he knew I had any affinity to animal rights I will never know - I had painstakingly avoided any mention of any such thing - but I do know that my stomach tightened immediately into a knot. To make matters worse, at that moment his two sons leapt from the table, tore into the den, slammed the door behind them, and turned the TV on loud, presumably preparing to drown out what was to follow. At the same instant, his wife nervously picked up some dishes and scurried into the kitchen. As I watched the door close behind her and heard the water begin running, I had a sinking sensation. They had, there was no mistaking it, left me alone with him. I was, to put it bluntly, terrified. Under the circumstances, a wrong move now could be disastrous. Trying to center myself, I tried to find some semblance of inner calm by watching my breath, but this I could not do, and for a very simple reason. There wasn’t any to watch.
“What are they saying that’s so upsetting to you?” I said finally, pronouncing the words carefully and distinctly, trying not to show my terror. I was trying very hard at that moment to disassociate myself from the animal rights movement, a force in our society of which he, evidently, was not overly fond. “They accuse me of mistreating my stock,” he growled. “Why would they say a thing like that?” I answered, knowing full well, of course, why they would, but thinking mostly about my own survival. His reply, to my surprise, while angry, was actually quite articulate. He told me precisely what animal rights groups were saying about operations like his, and exactly why they were opposed to his way of doing things. Then, without pausing, he launched into a tirade about how he didn’t like being called cruel, and they didn’t know anything about the business he was in, and why couldn’t they mind their own business.
As he spoke it, the knot in my stomach was relaxing, because it was becoming clear, and I was glad of it, that he meant me no harm, but just needed to vent. Part of his frustration, it seemed, was that even though he didn’t like doing some of the things he did to the animals -cooping them up in such small cages, using so many drugs, taking the babies away from their mothers so quickly after their births - he didn’t see that he had any choice. He would be at a disadvantage and unable to compete economically if he didn’t do things that way. This is how it’s done today, he told me, and he had to do it too. He didn’t like it, but he liked even less being blamed for doing what he had to do in order to feed his family. As it happened, I had just the week before been at a much larger hog operation, where I learned that it was part of their business strategy to try to put people like him out of business by going full-tilt into the mass production of assembly-line pigs, so that small farmers wouldn’t be able to keep up. What I had heard corroborated everything he was saying.
Almost despite myself, I began to grasp the poignancy of this man’s human predicament. I was in his home because he and his wife had invited me to be there. And looking around, it was obvious that they were having a hard time making ends meet. Things were threadbare. This family was on the edge. Raising pigs, apparently, was the only way the farmer knew how to make a living, so he did it even though, as was becoming evident the more we talked, he didn’t like one bit the direction hog farming was going. At times, as he spoke about how much he hated the modern factory methods of pork production, he reminded me of the very animal rights people who a few minutes before he said he wished would drop dead.
As the conversation progressed, I actually began to develop some sense of respect for this man whom I had earlier judged so harshly. There was decency in him. There was something within him that meant well. But as I began to sense a spirit of goodness in him, I could only wonder all the more how he could treat his pigs the way he did. Little did I know that I was about to find out. . .
We are talking along, when suddenly he looks troubled. He slumps over, his head in his hands. He looks broken, and there is a sense of something awful having happened. Has he had a heart attack? A stroke? I’m finding it hard to breathe, and hard to think clearly. “What’s happening?” I ask. It takes him awhile to answer, but finally he does. I am relieved that he is able to speak, although what he says hardly brings any clarity to the situation. “It doesn’t matter,” he says, “and I don’t want to talk about it.” As he speaks, he makes a motion with his hand, as if he were pushing something away.
For the next several minutes we continue to converse, but I’m quite uneasy. Things seem incomplete and confusing. Something dark has entered the room, and I don’t know what it is or how to deal with it. Then, as we are speaking, it happens again. Once again a look of despondency comes over him. Sitting there, I know I’m in the presence of something bleak and oppressive. I try to be present with what’s happening, but it’s not easy. Again I’m finding it hard to breathe. Finally, he looks at me, and I notice his eyes are teary. “You’re right,” he says. I, of course, always like to be told that I am right, but in this instance I don’t have the slightest idea what he’s talking about. He continues. “No animal,” he says, “should be treated like that. Especially hogs. Do you know that they’re intelligent animals? They’re even friendly, if you treat ’em right. But I don’t.”
There are tears welling up in his eyes. And he tells me that he has just had a memory come back of something that happened in his childhood, something he hasn’t thought of for many years. It’s come back in stages, he says. He grew up, he tells me, on a small farm in rural Missouri, the old-fashioned kind where animals ran around, with barnyards and pastures, and where they all had names. I learn, too, that he was an only child, the son of a powerful father who ran things with an iron fist. With no brothers or sisters, he often felt lonely, but found companionship among the animals on the farm, particularly several dogs, who were as friends to him. And, he tells me, and this I am quite surprised to hear, he had a pet pig.
As he proceeds to tell me about this pig, it is as if he is becoming a different person. Before he had spoken primarily in a monotone; but now his voice grows lively. His body language, which until this point seemed to speak primarily of long suffering, now becomes animated. There is something fresh taking place. In the summer, he tells me, he would sleep in the barn. It was cooler there than in the house, and the pig would come over and sleep alongside him, asking fondly to have her belly rubbed, which he was glad to do.
There was a pond on their property, he goes on, and he liked to swim in it when the weather was hot, but one of the dogs would get excited when he did, and would ruin things. The dog would jump into the water and swim up on top of him, scratching him with her paws and making things miserable for him. He was about to give up on swimming, but then, as fate would have it, the pig, of all people, stepped in and saved the day. Evidently the pig could swim, for she would plop herself into the water, swim out where the dog was bothering the boy, and insert herself between them. She’d stay between the dog and the boy, and keep the dog at bay. She was, as best I could make out, functioning in the situation something like a lifeguard, or in this case, perhaps more of a life-pig.
I’m listening to this hog farmer tell me these stories about his pet pig, and I’m thoroughly enjoying both myself and him, and rather astounded at how things are transpiring, when once again, it happens. Once again a look of defeat sweeps across this man’s face, and once again I sense the presence of something very sad. Something in him, I know, is struggling to make it's way toward life through anguish and pain, but I don’t know what it is or how, indeed, to help him.
“What happened to your pig?” I ask. He sighs, and it’s as though the whole world’s pain is contained in that sigh. Then, slowly, he speaks. “My father made me butcher it.” “Did you?” I ask. “I ran away, but I couldn’t hide. They found me.” “What happened? “My father gave me a choice." “What was that?” “He told me, ‘You either slaughter that animal or you’re no longer my son.’”
Some choice, I think, feeling the weight of how fathers have so often trained their sons not to care, to be what they call brave and strong, but what so often turns out to be callous and closed-hearted. “So I did it,” he says, and now his tears begin to flow, making their way down his cheeks. I am touched and humbled. This man, whom I had judged to be without human feeling, is weeping in front of me, a stranger. This man, whom I had seen as callous and even heartless, is actually someone who cares, and deeply. How wrong, how profoundly and terribly wrong I had been.
In the minutes that follow, it becomes clear to me what has been happening. The pig farmer has remembered something that was so painful, that was such a profound trauma, that he had not been able to cope with it when it had happened. Something had shut down, then. It was just too much to bear. Somewhere in his young, formative psyche he made a resolution never to be that hurt again, never to be that vulnerable again. And he built a wall around the place where the pain had occurred, which was the place where his love and attachment to that pig was located, which was his heart. And now here he was, slaughtering pigs for a living - still, I imagined, seeking his father’s approval. God, what we men will do, I thought, to get our fathers’ acceptance.
I had thought he was a cold and closed human being, but now I saw the truth. His rigidity was not a result of a lack of feeling, as I had thought it was, but quite the opposite: it was a sign of how sensitive he was underneath. For if he had not been so sensitive, he would not have been that hurt, and he would not have needed to put up so massive a wall. The tension in his body that was so apparent to me upon first meeting him, the body armor that he carried, bespoke how hurt he had been, and how much capacity for feeling he carried still, beneath it all.
I had judged him, and done so, to be honest, mercilessly. But for the rest of the evening I sat with him, humbled, and grateful for whatever it was in him that had been strong enough to force this long-buried and deeply painful memory to the surface. And glad, too, that I had not stayed stuck in my judgments of him, for if I had, I would not have provided an environment in which his remembering could have occurred.
We talked that night, for hours, about many things. I was, after all that had happened, concerned for him. The gap between his feelings and his lifestyle seemed so tragically vast. What could he do? This was all he knew. He did not have a high school diploma. He was only partially literate. Who would hire him if he tried to do something else? Who would invest in him and train him, at his age? When finally, I left that evening, these questions were very much on my mind, and I had no answers to them. Somewhat flippantly, I tried to joke about it. “Maybe,” I said, “you’ll grow broccoli or something.” He stared at me, clearly not comprehending what I might be talking about. It occurred to me, briefly, that he might possibly not know what broccoli was.
We parted that night as friends, and though we rarely see each other now, we have remained friends as the years have passed. I carry him in my heart and think of him, in fact, as a hero. Because, as you will soon see, impressed as I was by the courage it had taken for him to allow such painful memories to come to the surface, I had not yet seen the extent of his bravery.
When I wrote "Diet for a New America," I quoted him and summarized what he had told me, but I was quite brief and did not mention his name. I thought that, living as he did among other pig farmers in Iowa, it would not be to his benefit to be associated with me. When the book came out, I sent him a copy, saying I hoped he was comfortable with how I wrote of the evening we had shared, and directing him to the pages on which my discussion of our time together was to be found. Several weeks later, I received a letter from him. “Dear Mr. Robbins,” it began. “Thank you for the book. When I saw it, I got a migraine headache.”
Now as an author, you do want to have an impact on your readers. This, however, was not what I had had in mind. He went on, though, to explain that the headaches had gotten so bad that, as he put it, “the wife” had suggested to him he should perhaps read the book. She thought there might be some kind of connection between the headaches and the book. He told me that this hadn’t made much sense to him, but he had done it because “the wife” was often right about these things.
“You write good,” he told me, and I can tell you that his three words of his meant more to me than when the New York Times praised the book profusely. He then went on to say that reading the book was very hard for him, because the light it shone on what he was doing made it clear to him that it was wrong to continue. The headaches, meanwhile, had been getting worse, until, he told me, that very morning, when he had finished the book, having stayed up all night reading, he went into the bathroom, and looked into the mirror. “I decided, right then,” he said, “that I would sell my herd and get out of this business. I don’t know what I will do, though. Maybe I will, like you said, grow broccoli.”
As it happened, he did sell his operation in Iowa and move back to Missouri, where he bought a small farm. And there he is today, running something of a model farm. He grows vegetables organically - including, I am sure, broccoli - that he sells at a local farmer’s market. He’s got pigs, all right, but only about 10, and he doesn’t cage them, nor does he kill them. Instead, he’s got a contract with local schools; they bring kids out in buses on field trips to his farm, for his “Pet-a-pig” program. He shows them how intelligent pigs are and how friendly they can be if you treat them right, which he now does. He’s arranged it so the kids, each one of them, gets a chance to give a pig a belly rub. He’s become nearly a vegetarian himself, has lost most of his excess weight, and his health has improved substantially. And, thank goodness, he’s actually doing better financially than he was before.
Do you see why I carry this man with me in my heart? Do you see why he is such a hero to me? He dared to leap, to risk everything, to leave what was killing his spirit even though he didn’t know what was next. He left behind a way of life that he knew was wrong, and he found one that he knows is right.
When I look at many of the things happening in our world, I sometimes fear we won’t make it. But when I remember this man and the power of his spirit, and when I remember that there are many others whose hearts beat to the same quickening pulse, I think we will. I can get tricked into thinking there aren’t enough of us to turn the tide, but then I remember how wrong I was about the pig farmer when I first met him, and I realize that there are heroes afoot everywhere. Only I can’t recognize them because I think they are supposed to look or act a certain way. How blinded I can be by my own beliefs.
The man is one of my heroes because he reminds me that we can depart from the cages we build for ourselves and for each other, and become something much better. He is one of my heroes because he reminds me of what I hope someday to become. When I first met him, I would not have thought it possible that I would ever say the things I am saying here. But this only goes to show how amazing life can be, and how you never really know what to expect. The pig farmer has become, for me, a reminder never to underestimate the power of the human heart.
I consider myself privileged to have spent that day with him, and grateful that I was allowed to be a catalyst for the unfolding of his spirit. I know my presence served him in some way, but I also know, and know full well, that I received far more than I gave. To me, this is grace - to have the veils lifted from our eyes so that we can recognize and serve the goodness in each other. Others may wish for great riches or for ecstatic journeys to mystical planes, but to me, this is the magic of human life."
- http://www.johnrobbins.info/blog/
Free Download: Viktor Frankl, "Man's Search For Meaning"
Full screen recommended.
Viktor Frankl, "Life Changing Quotes"
("Man's Search For Meaning")
"Viktor Emil Frankl was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist as well as a Holocaust survivor. Frankl was the founder of the logotherapy method and is most notable for his best-selling book "Man's Search for Meaning."
“The story of the 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.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, "Man's Search for Meaning"
Freely download "Mans Search For Meaning", by Viktor Frankl, here:
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Highest recommendation:
"Suffering Is Required"
"Suffering Is Required"
by Paul Rosenberg
"There’s no virtue in suffering itself, but suffering is required if you want to be more than mundane. If you can’t accept suffering, anyone with a pin and a threat owns you. So, let’s be clear on this: Living in any way except the one prescribed by authority requires suffering. If you hope to avoid all suffering and live a life that’s more than uninspired and compliant, you’re mistaken. And to make this point very clearly, I’ll restate it bluntly: If you can’t bear social pain, you’ll have to stay in line and do what Teacher says… for life.
If you care more about losing money than gaining liberty, you’re not going to get liberty. If truth isn’t something you’re willing to be hated for, you’re not going to get much truth. Entrenched hierarchies will always oppose progress, and they will bare their claws against new ways of doing things. So, if we can’t accept losses and rebuild… and then rebuild again… we’re not going to get past their pompous tyranny.
Please understand that I don’t expect anyone to enjoy suffering, or to suffer more than is necessary. But if a negative reaction stops you in your tracks, or if fear of some high-status poser paralyzes you, you won’t be pushing the world forward.
What Do We Value? In the end, our willingness to suffer comes back to a simple question: What do we want and how badly do we want it? We can “want liberty” or “want truth” all we like, but the systems of this world don’t agree: it undercuts their power. Within their structures, being different is routinely punished, and in ways ranging from the subtle to the gross. So the question remains: How badly do we want this?
Will being insulted at a cocktail party turn you away? Will the threat of losing a contract turn you back? Is putting your time and effort into something that might be torn down too big a risk? Too big an embarrassment? If we want to be better and live better, accepting such risks is not optional.
How It’s Done: Improving the world requires that we hold our ideas above the ideas of the powerful and the televised. We’ll have to do what we think is right, regardless of what the world thinks. Whether we’re believers or not, there’s a great deal to learn from Christians back in the early days, when they knew how to suffer. Jesus, as it happens, went out of his way to prepare them for just that, saying things like, “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’s sake,” and, “When they persecute you in this city, flee to another.”
The earliest Christians avoided suffering when they could but took it when they had to. And they did change the world for the better. Rome was built upon slavery, and the Christians of the West eradicated it, pop history be damned. Christianity, like Judaism, was never meant to be easy. A follower of Jesus was supposed to lead mankind “into the light,” thus angering those who remained in darkness.
So…For all practical purposes, and especially in any sort of pro-authority environment, independent progress is a punishable offense and anything unauthorized is suspicious at the least. Yet here we are, reasonably sane and healthy people, wanting to move forward and out of an obvious mess. But we’re stuck in a situation where forward movement is opposed, and so we have to accept pain. That stinks, but the alternative is a life-long, neutered stasis. What we’re really facing-off against is a system that enforces conformity, and the price of exit it is to suffer for your virtues.
Here’s one concluding thought: The centralized systems of this world survive by exploiting human weaknesses. Decentralized systems thrive upon human virtues. We are wise and brave to choose the latter."