Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, 10/25/25
"It's About To Get Scary In America,
The System Is Breaking Down And Nothing Can Stop It"
Comments here:
So, we rise from the rubble...
StatCounter
Saturday, October 25, 2025
"Pick and Choose Your Own Truth"
"Pick and Choose Your Own Truth"
by Todd Hayen
"Here I go again. Getting perplexed by the sheep-types in my life. I seem to be in a constant state of cognitive dissonance. I’ve whacked my forehead so many times with the heel of my hand that I am surprised I have not seriously damaged my brain. Well, maybe I have!
It’s really crazy to me, how something can come forth that makes a point we have all made in the past into an incontrovertible truth, and these sheepsters will still not see it. I just got around to watching Mikki Willis’ "Follow the Silenced," and after getting 20 minutes into it, I said, “What could be better evidence of the truth that these vaccines were bad news?” I shared this with someone close, who is, believe it or not, a sheep, and they said, “That just isn’t true.”
What? They were quite casual about it, too. Like there wasn’t anything to argue about. It would be the same as if I showed them a movie of a human walking around with a rat’s head. They wouldn’t be freaked out wondering if it might be true; they would just know it wasn’t. No question. No second thoughts. “That just isn’t true.” Of course, this is different than a rat-headed human (although with AI these days it would be an easy “untruth” to pull off). I am talking about things that are facts, no question, clear and simple. Facts.
Sure, Willis’ film probably isn’t 100% factual. Or at least, what IS factual doesn’t necessarily prove it is widespread. But much of what is presented is factual. And the argument that what Willis is presenting is all play-acting just doesn’t cut it. Sure, that happens too, but there are times when that sort of manipulation is plausible. Willis’ film is not one of them.
And since when does something presented have to be 100% factual for it to be considered? We used to live in a time where we determined what was worth paying attention to by assessing its relevance, the percentage of accurate information compared to the whole, and the context of what was presented. Now, any idea at all must meet the “100%” test. This reminds me of the fact check that stated Paul Revere’s ride, where he is shouting “The British are coming, the British are coming!” was not a fact, because not ALL of the British Empire was invading the country, only a small military faction. So, the whole statement then is deemed incorrect. This is standard “fact-checking” on social media, and it is insane.
Still, there are many other examples of this demonstration of picking what you choose to believe. And there is something psychologically weird about how people respond to this stuff. So, what else is new? We truly have entered into a time where people are truly whacked. And I’m a psychotherapist! You can’t find this stuff in a textbook.
Take the whole climate change debacle, for instance. I’m not here to debate whether the planet’s getting hotter or if it’s all a cosmic prank - though I’ve got my suspicions about the latter. But watch how the sheep latch onto “their truth” like it’s the last lifeboat on the Titanic. On one side, you’ve got folks who swallow every alarmist headline hook, line, and sinker: polar bears drowning, cities underwater by next Tuesday, all because we dared to drive SUVs and eat steak.
Show them data suggesting natural cycles, solar flares, or even historical warm periods like the Medieval Warm Period (when Vikings were farming Greenland, for crying out loud), and they glaze over. “That’s denialism,” they say, as if the word itself is a magical shield against inconvenient facts. Why? Because it fits the narrative they’ve been fed - the one that makes them feel virtuous for recycling their plastic straws while ignoring the private jets of the elites preaching the gospel.
Flip the coin, and you’ve got the other crowd, convinced it’s all a hoax cooked up by globalists to slap carbon taxes on the little guy. Present them with satellite images of melting ice caps or rising sea levels, and they wave it away as manipulated data or “weather, not climate.” Both sides dig in their heels, not because the evidence is lacking, but because admitting the other side might have a sliver of validity would shatter their worldview. It’s tribalism on steroids, where “my truth” isn’t about seeking reality - it’s about belonging to the right club. Psychologically, this stems from confirmation bias, that sneaky brain trick where we cherry-pick info that strokes our ego and ignore the rest. Add in a dash of fear - fear of change, fear of being wrong, fear of the unknown - and voilà, you’ve got a recipe for intellectual stagnation.
Another prime example hits closer to home for me as a therapist: the mental health industry’s love affair with pharmaceuticals. I’ve seen clients come in, desperate for relief from anxiety or depression, and the first thing their doctor does is scribble a script for SSRIs like they’re handing out candy. Never mind the black box warnings, the withdrawal horror stories, or studies showing placebos work just as well in many cases. Show a sheep-type patient footage of people recounting their nightmare experiences - zombie-like side effects, suicidal thoughts, the works - and they’ll shrug it off.
“My doctor says it’s safe,” they insist, as if the white coat confers infallibility. Why do they cling to this? It’s easier. Popping a pill absolves them of the hard work: therapy, lifestyle changes, digging into root causes like trauma or diet. It’s the illusion of control in a chaotic world, wrapped in the comfort of authority. Question that authority, and suddenly you’re the crazy one, labelled an “anti-vaxxer” equivalent for mental health. But facts are facts: the overprescription epidemic is real, backed by whistleblowers and buried FDA reports. Yet, “their truth” prevails because facing the alternative means admitting the system might be broken - and who wants that headache?
Or consider the origins of COVID itself. Lab leak theory was once “conspiracy nonsense,” ridiculed by fact-checkers and banned on social media. Now? Even the FBI and DOE lean toward it, with emails showing scientists privately admitting it while publicly denying. But try telling that to the die-hards who still parrot “wet market” like it’s gospel. Why? Emotional investment. If it were a lab leak, funded by our own tax dollars no less, it would implicate heroes like Fauci and shake our faith in science. Easier to dismiss whistleblowers as cranks than confront the betrayal. This isn’t new; history’s littered with it - think Tuskegee experiments or MKUltra. People pick “their truth” to preserve sanity, avoiding the abyss of realizing power structures lie.
At its core, this “pick and choose” phenomenon signals a deeper malaise: the death of objective reality. We’ve traded shared facts for personalized bubbles, curated by algorithms and echo chambers. Why? Technology plays a part, sure - endless scrolling reinforces biases. But psychologically, it’s about vulnerability. In an uncertain world, clinging to “my truth” offers certainty, even if illusory. It’s a defence mechanism against overwhelm, a way to simplify complexity. As a therapist, I see it daily: clients rewriting personal histories to avoid pain, ignoring red flags in relationships because “love conquers all.” Scale that up societally, and you get mass delusion.
Yet, here’s the rub - and maybe a sliver of hope. If everyone’s got “their truth,” then mine’s as valid as any. So why not question everything? Peel back the layers, demand evidence, and risk being the odd one out. It’s exhausting, sure, but it beats forehead-smacking frustration. In the end, truth isn’t a buffet; it’s a hunt. And if we all stopped grazing like sheep and started tracking like shrews, we might just uncover something real. Wouldn’t that be a plot twist worth waking up for?"
Todd Hayen PhD is a registered psychotherapist practicing in To
ronto, Ontario, Canada. He holds a PhD in depth psychotherapy and an MA in Consciousness Studies. He specializes in Jungian, archetypal, psychology. Todd also writes for his own substack, which you can read here.
"The Buga Sphere Has Been Opened for the First Time -12,000 Year-Old Alien Tech Confirmed!"
Full screen recommended.
Uncovered X, 10/25/25
"The Buga Sphere Has Been Opened for the First Time -
12,000 Year-Old Alien Tech Confirmed!"
"For months, the world has been haunted by one impossible question - what is the Buga Sphere? A flawless metallic orb that fell from the sky over Colombia without a single trace of heat, impact, or fire. No crater. No entry trail. No explanation. When scientists examined it, they found something that defied physics itself - a material lighter than any known metal, yet stronger than steel, immune to heat, and pulsing every forty-seven seconds as if it were alive. Dr. Steven Greer’s team discovered organic resin sealed inside the sphere - a sample that could be dated. The result changed everything: both the Buga Sphere and the long-forgotten Betz Sphere from Florida shared the same age - 12,500 years old, dating back to the end of the Ice Age. That placed their creation thousands of years before Egypt, Sumer, or any known civilization. Inside, scientists found microscopic fiber-optic structures, atomic-level alloys, and plasma chambers that react to magnetic fields - evidence of an intelligence far beyond anything human.
From Graham Hancock’s lost civilization theories to Avi Loeb’s claim that the sphere might be part of an interstellar network known as 3I Atlas, this mystery now stretches from the ruins of the Ice Age to the edge of the cosmos. Some believe the sphere was left behind by an ancient culture destroyed by cataclysmic floods. Others believe it’s not of this Earth - a fragment of a larger system that may be awakening as 3I Atlas moves closer to our planet. Whatever it is, the Buga Sphere is not just an artifact. It’s a message - one that may prove we were never alone, or that our history is far older than we ever imagined."
Comments here:
"A Look to the Heavens"
“NGC 253 is not only one of the brightest spiral galaxies visible, it is also one of the dustiest. Discovered in 1783 by Caroline Herschel in the constellation of Sculptor, NGC 253 lies only about ten million light-years distant.
NGC 253 is the largest member of the Sculptor Group of Galaxies, the nearest group to our own Local Group of Galaxies. The dense dark dust accompanies a high star formation rate, giving NGC 253 the designation of starburst galaxy. Visible in the above photograph is the active central nucleus, also known to be a bright source of X-rays and gamma rays.”
Chet Raymo, "Into The Night"
“Into The Night”
by Chet Raymo
“I first became intimate with the night sky on the sleeping porch of my grandmother’s house on Ninth Street in Chattanooga, Tennessee, during the early 1940s. A screened sleeping porch might be found attached to any southern home of a certain vintage and substance, usually on the second story at the back. On sultry summer nights you could move a cot or daybed onto the porch and take advantage of whatever breezes stirred the air. I slept there when I visited because it was the only place to find a spare bed. I was usually alone in that big spooky space, with only a thin wire mesh separating me from the many mysteries of the night.
Far off in the house I could hear the muffled voice of the big Stromberg-Carlson radio in the parlor, where grown-ups listened to news of the war or the boogie-woogie tunes of the Hit Parade. Outside was another kind of music, nearer, louder, pressing against the screen, which seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, a million scratchy fiddles, out-of-key woodwinds, discordant timpani. These were the cicadas, crickets and tree frogs of the southern summer night, but to me at that time they were the sounds of the night itself, as if darkness had an audible element.
Some nights the distant horizon would be lit with a silent, winking illumination called “heat lightnin’.” And closer, against the dark grass of the badminton court, the scintillations of fireflies- “lightnin’ bugs”- splashed into brightness.
The constellations of fireflies were answered in the sky by stars, which on those evenings when the city’s lights were blacked out for air-raid drills, multiplied alarmingly. I would lie in my cot, eyes glued to the spangled darkness, waiting to hear the drone of enemy aircraft or see the flash of ack-ack. No aircraft appeared, no ack-ack tracers pierced the night, but soon the stars took on their own fierce reality, like vast squadrons of alien rocket ships moving against the inky dark of Flash Gordon space.
In time I came to recognize patterns, although I did not yet know their names: the Scorpion creeping westward, dragging its stinger along the horizon; the teapot of Sagittarius afloat in the white river of the Milky Way; Vega at the zenith; the kite of Cygnus. As the hours passed, the Big Dipper clocked around the Pole. And sometimes, in late summer, I would wake in the predawn hour to find Orion sneaking into the eastern sky, pursuing the teacup of the Pleiades.
One memorable Christmas of my childhood, my father received a star book as a gift: “A Primer for Star-Gazers” by Henry Neely. As he used the book to learn the stars and constellations, he included me in his activities. The book was Santa’s gift to him. The night sky was his gift to me.
That book, now long out of print, is still in my possession. A glance takes me back half a century to evenings on the badminton court in the back yard of our own new home in the Chattanooga suburbs, gazing upwards with my father to a drapery of brilliant stars flung across the gap between tall dark pines. He told me stories of the constellations as he learned them. Of Orion and the Scorpion. Of the lovers Andromeda and Perseus, and the monster Cetus. Of the wood nymph Callisto and her son Arcas, placed by Zeus in the heavens as the Big and Little Bears. No child ever had a better storybook than the ever-changing page of night above our badminton court. My father also taught me the names of stars: Sirius, Arcturus, Polaris, Betelgeuse, and other, stranger names, Zubenelgenubi and Zubeneschamali, the claws of the Scorpion. The words on his tongue were like incantations that opened the enchanted cave of night.
He was a man of insatiable curiosity. His stories of the stars were more than “connect the dots.” He wove into his lessons what he knew of history, science, poetry and myth. And, of course, religion. For my father, the stars were infused with unfathomable mystery, their contemplation a sort of prayer.
That Christmas book of long ago was a satisfactory guide to star lore, but as I look at it today I see that it conveyed little of the intimacy I felt as I stood with my father under the bright canopy of stars. Nor do any of the other more recent star guides that I have seen quite capture the feeling I had as a child of standing at the door of an enchanted universe, speaking incantations. What made the childhood experience so memorable was a total immersion in the mystery of the night- the singing of cicadas, the whisper of the wind in the pines, and, of course, my father’s storehouse of knowledge with which he embellished the stars. He taught me what to see; he also taught me what to imagine.”
"We Do Choose..."
"All men and women are born, live suffer and die; what distinguishes us one from another is our dreams, whether they be dreams about worldly or unworldly things, and what we do to make them come about... We do not choose to be born. We do not choose our parents. We do not choose our historical epoch, the country of our birth, or the immediate circumstances of our upbringing. We do not, most of us, choose to die; nor do we choose the time and conditions of our death. But within this realm of choicelessness, we do choose how we live."
- Joseph Epstein
○
"George Harrison knew something most of us didn't and still don't: there is a reality beyond the material world and what we do here and how we treat others affects us eternally. As he sings in "Rising Sun":
"But in the rising sun you can feel your life begin,
Universe at play inside your DNA.
You're a billion years old today.
Oh the rising sun and the place it's coming from
Is inside of you and now your payment's overdue."
Lyrics here:
○
"Death twitches my ear. 'Live," he says, 'I am coming.'"
~Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro)
The Poet: Rod McKuen, “A Cat Named Sloopy”
“A Cat Named Sloopy”
“For awhile
the only earth that Sloopy knew
was in her sandbox.
Two rooms were her domain.
Every night she’d sit in the window
among the avocado plants
waiting for me to come home,
my arms full of canned liver and love.
We’d talk into the night then,
contented,
but missing something.
She the earth she never knew,
me the hills I ran
while growing bent.
Sloopy should have been a cowboy’s cat,
with prairies to run,
not linoleum,
and real-live catnip mice,
no one to depend on but herself.
I never told her,
but in my mind
I was a midnight cowboy even then.
Riding my imaginary horse
down Forty-second street,
going off with strangers
to live an hour-long cowboy’s life.
But always coming home to Sloopy,
who loved me best.
For a dozen summers
we lived against the world.
An island on an island.
She’d comfort me with purring,
I’d fatten her with smiles.
We grew rich on trust,
needing not the beach or butterflies.
I had a friend named Ben
Who painted buildings like Roualt men.
He went away.
My laughter tired Lillian
after a time,
she found a man who only smiled.
But Sloopy stayed and stayed.
Winter,
Nineteen fifty-nine,
Old men walk their dogs.
Some are walked so often
that their feet leave
little pink tracks
in the soft snow.
Women, fur on fur,
elegant and easy,
only slightly pure,
hailing cabs to take them
round the block and back.
Who is not a love seeker
when December comes?
Even children pray to Santa Claus.
I had my own love safe at home,
and yet I stayed out all one night,
the next day too.
They must have thought me crazy
screaming SLOOPY!
SLOOPY!
as the snow came falling
down around me.
I was a madman
to have stayed away
one minute more
than the appointed hour.
I’d like to think a golden cowboy
snatched her from the window sill,
and safely saddlebagged
she rode to Arizona.
She’s stalking lizards
in the cactus now perhaps,
bitter, but free.
I’m bitter too,
and not a free man anymore.
But once upon a time,
In New York’s jungle in a tree,
before I went into the world
in search of other kinds of love,
nobody owned me but a cat named Sloopy.
Looking back,
perhaps she’s been
the only human thing
that ever gave back love to me.”
- Rod McKuen
"Crabs in a Bucket"
"Crabs in a Bucket"
by Sarah Robinson
"When I was a little girl, I lived very close (an hour and fifteen minutes) to the Florida panhandle beaches. Which meant we spent a TON of time there. Early evening was one of my favorite times to walk the beach with my mom and my older brothers. We were all clean and fed and slightly sun weary but still desperate to be outside. So, we would grab flashlights, dip nets and a bucket and search the ocean’s edge for crabs. We would catch a bucket full in an evening and drag them back home where my mom or my grandmother would cook them up into something delicious. (Yes, I was traumatized by the crabs being put into boiling water, but that story is for another day.)
The problem was that as we made that long walk home carrying crabs, there were always one or two who figured out how to climb up to the edge of the bucket in an attempt to escape. Every now and then we would have to tap the edge of the bucket to knock them back down. Because I was too little to carry the bucket very far, I got the job of watching for potential escapees. And I noticed something... well… odd. More often than not, as a crab would begin to inch its way higher to the edge of the bucket, the other crabs would latch on to him and pull him back down. I watched this scenario play out again and again, year after year.
Fast forward to this morning. As I was drinking my coffee and perusing my twitter stream, and up pops this gem from @paulocoelho (He wrote "The Alchemist", one of my all time favorite books): “Only mediocrity is safe. Get ready to be attacked, and be the best.” Maybe it was the early hour. Maybe it was my post-event mushy brain. I don’t know. But the minute I read Paulo’s tweet, I thought of those crabs in a bucket. So I sent him this tweet: “I’m thinking of crabs in a bucket. They always try to pull down the one who’s figured out how to escape.”
Paulo liked my analogy so much that he retweeted it and I’ve spent my morning connecting with people all over the world who liked it, too. It resonated deeply for a lot of people. I did a quick Google search and discovered that “Crab Mentality” is actually an official phrase that roughly means “if I can’t have it, neither can you.” And it is talked about. A lot.
There will always be people who will subtly or not so subtly try to keep us from escaping. Why? Because our escape threatens their mediocre existence. Pulling us down, sabotaging our efforts, picking apart our brilliant ideas – all of that keeps them feeling safe. And living undisturbed mediocre lives.
So what if we added a new piece to the crab mentality picture? Imagine a crab, or a group of crabs on the other side of the bucket building a ladder to aid your escape. They managed to crawl out of the bucket in spite of all the energetic attempts to pull them backwards. Because they’ve tasted freedom and they know your struggle, they are putting energy into aiding and abetting your escape.
I believe that for those of us determined to get out of the bucket, such a group exists. It may take some time to find them, but they are there, ready to throw a safety rope over the edge and pull us out. Start listening for them. Start looking for them. They are there. Reach just a little further and they’ll meet you at the edge of the bucket."
“Albert Camus on Strength of Character and How to Ennoble Our Minds in Difficult Times”
“Albert Camus on Strength of Character
and How to Ennoble Our Minds in Difficult Times”
by Maria Popova
“In 1957, Albert Camus (November 7, 1913–January 4, 1960) became the second youngest laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature, awarded to him for work that “with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times.” (It was with this earnestness that, days after receiving the coveted accolade, he sent his childhood teacher a beautiful letter of gratitude.)
More than half a century later, his lucid and luminous insight renders Camus a timeless seer of truth, one who ennobles and enlarges the human spirit in the very act of seeing it – the kind of attentiveness that calls to mind his compatriot Simone Weil, whom he admired more than he did any other thinker and who memorably asserted that “attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”
Nowhere does Camus’s generous attention to the human spirit emanate more brilliantly than in a 1940 essay titled “The Almond Trees” (after the arboreal species that blooms in winter), found in his “Lyrical and Critical Essays” (public library) – the superb volume that gave us Camus on happiness, despair, and how to amplify our love of life. Penned at the peak of WWII, to the shrill crescendo of humanity’s collective cry for justice and mercy, Camus’s clarion call for reawakening our noblest nature reverberates with newfound poignancy today, amid our present age of shootings and senseless violence.
At only twenty-seven, Camus writes: “We have not overcome our condition, and yet we know it better. We know that we live in contradiction, but we also know that we must refuse this contradiction and do what is needed to reduce it. Our task as humans is to find the few principles that will calm the infinite anguish of free souls. We must mend what has been torn apart, make justice imaginable again in a world so obviously unjust, give happiness a meaning once more to peoples poisoned by the misery of the century. Naturally, it is a superhuman task. But superhuman is the term for tasks we take a long time to accomplish, that’s all.
Let us know our aims then, holding fast to the mind, even if force puts on a thoughtful or a comfortable face in order to seduce us. The first thing is not to despair. Let us not listen too much to those who proclaim that the world is at an end. Civilizations do not die so easily, and even if our world were to collapse, it would not have been the first. It is indeed true that we live in tragic times. But too many people confuse tragedy with despair. “Tragedy,” [D.H.] Lawrence said, “ought to be a great kick at misery.” This is a healthy and immediately applicable thought. There are many things today deserving such a kick.”
In a sentiment evocative of the 1919 manifesto “Declaration of the Independence of the Mind” - which was signed by such luminaries as Bertrand Russell, Albert Einstein, Rabindranath Tagore, Jane Addams, Upton Sinclair, Stefan Zweig, and Hermann Hesse – Camus argues that this “kick” is to be delivered by the deliberate cultivation of the mind’s highest virtues: “If we are to save the mind we must ignore its gloomy virtues and celebrate its strength and wonder. Our world is poisoned by its misery, and seems to wallow in it. It has utterly surrendered to that evil which Nietzsche called the spirit of heaviness. Let us not add to this. It is futile to weep over the mind, it is enough to labor for it.
But where are the conquering virtues of the mind? The same Nietzsche listed them as mortal enemies to heaviness of the spirit. For him, they are strength of character, taste, the “world,” classical happiness, severe pride, the cold frugality of the wise. More than ever, these virtues are necessary today, and each of us can choose the one that suits him best. Before the vastness of the undertaking, let no one forget strength of character. I don’t mean the theatrical kind on political platforms, complete with frowns and threatening gestures. But the kind that through the virtue of its purity and its sap, stands up to all the winds that blow in from the sea. Such is the strength of character that in the winter of the world will prepare the fruit.
Elsewhere in the volume, Camus writes: “In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.” Each time our world cycles through a winter of the human spirit, Camus remains an abiding hearth of the invisible summer within us, his work a perennial invitation to reinhabit our deepest decency and live up to our most ennobled nature.
Complement this particular excerpt from the thoroughly elevating “Lyrical and Critical Essays”, with Nietzsche on what it really means to be a free spirit, and Susan Sontag on how to be a moral human being, then revisit Camus on happiness, unhappiness, and our self-imposed prisons and our search for meaning.“
"Every Day..."
“Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans to gain or maintain power. What is more, those who choose not to empathize may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it through our own apathy. If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.”
– J. K. Rowling, Harvard Commencement, June 5, 2008
"The Collective Stupidity That Stops You From Thinking – The Fall of Consciousness"
Full screen recommended.
The Psyche,
"The Collective Stupidity That Stops You From Thinking –
The Fall of Consciousness"
"We live in an age of endless information - yet true wisdom is disappearing. People talk more than ever, but say almost nothing. Opinions have replaced understanding, and the crowd has replaced the mind. This video exposes one of the greatest dangers of our time: collective stupidity - the fall of human consciousness. Discover how society, media, and the illusion of belonging have hijacked your ability to think for yourself. Learn why questioning has become rebellion, why truth no longer depends on facts but on popularity, and how this mass hypnosis keeps humanity asleep.
Drawing on the ideas of Schopenhauer, Jung, Plato, and Nietzsche, this video reveals the hidden psychology of conformity and how it disconnects us from our inner intelligence - our soul. More importantly, you’ll learn how to break free from it. If you’ve ever felt like something is deeply wrong with the way people think, this video will confirm what you’ve sensed all along - and show you the way out. Awaken your mind. Reclaim your consciousness. See beyond the illusion."
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
,
"The New Mind of the Masses:
How We Are Manipulated, Deceived, and Divided"
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Steve Cutts, "Are You Lost In The World Like Me?"
Dan, I Allegedly, "This Economy Is Breaking Us!"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 10/25/25
"This Economy Is Breaking Us!"
Comments here:
"The Fragility Of The Digital Age"
"The Fragility Of The Digital Age"
by Jeffrey Tucker
"The outage is “catastrophic.” So arrived the message from a server that hosts a service that is important to my life. Seemingly out of nowhere, the world came to an end for a full day until power was restored. What was the reason? I don’t know the particulars but it is usually always the same. An update in one software was inconsistent with another. A line of code got through that didn’t work as planned. Some third-party software stopped communicating with the main server. A cascade of effects followed that messed up everyone’s lives.
This is becoming more and more common. Two days earlier, all the servers hosted by Amazon went down. This wrecked countless social sites, financial services, airline reservations, and banks. Whole industries ground to a halt, and for exactly the same reasons.
Everything about the digital age works great until it doesn’t. Neither you nor I can fix it when it does break. We don’t likely know people who can. We are all vulnerable. Our hands are tied. We can only sit and wait for the administrators of the services to kick the machines, tug on the wires, revert the codes, reboot this and that, and otherwise somehow find out what’s wrong.
I was a server administrator in the early days so I have my experiences with outages. You are staring at black screens. So the mind begins to wander. The problem could trace to one of dozens of possible causes. Or maybe hundreds or thousands. Or millions. The only way to get through it is to be very calm and rational. It’s a process of elimination and that requires disciplined logic. And quiet.
Meanwhile, everyone around you is screaming for a fix. The boss is freaking out. Emails and phone calls are flying everywhere. Online communications are blowing up. It’s like the world is ending. And yet you have to be the clear-headed one, even as the heat is on. When you find out the real issue, it seems perfectly obvious. Then people wonder what took you so long.
Here is the real problem we face. The whole of civilization embraced digital technology as the new shiny object. It seemed like the thing to do. Mostly it worked. But there has been a tremendous neglect of basic principles of engineering such as creating redundancy. When things go wrong, you need a backup plan. In principle, code architects know this. In practice, creating redundancy is the most neglected feature of the digital age, because doing so does not pay the bills.
Think of how centralized the Amazon servers are. Millions of businesses and connections rely on them, and they are mostly very reliable. Indeed, they have a near-perfect record. But the trick is the “near” part. You never know what part will break and when, and what the consequences will be.
The key problem is that the people most affected by breakage are powerless to do anything about it. We are completely at the mercy of the digital masters. And with artificial intelligence (AI) it is even worse. The digital masters are themselves machines that absolutely no one fully understands. When AI starts to break, we are going to rue the day that everyone and his dog threw themselves into this without so much as a thought.
Often I think back to when I was a kid. My brother and I took apart a 1963 Volkswagen Beetle. Yes, I was too young to participate much but I helped. Every piece of the car was disassembled, reassembled, and put back together again. True, it never really started well after that but you could roll it with your foot and give it a kick. The point is that we were able to do it. That is not possible these days.
To be sure, that cannot be the whole standard by which we judge technology. The division of labor is real and meritorious. In a market society, we are always going to take advantage of the ability to cooperate with providers of goods and services that we cannot, even in principle, replicate. That said, surely there is a balance here. Do we really want to live in a world where no one can fix anything? When all the services you need are down and there is no one to call?
Keep in mind that these digital systems control your ability to open your front door, start your car, heat your home, and have access to your money. When they go, you are without a home, transportation, and money. This is a terrifying reality and yet here we are.
More and more, it is not possible even to navigate the world around you without a cellphone. Personally, I cannot stand this. I will always ask for a real menu, use a printed out ticket, and even try to figure out directions to places without the aid of GPS (which is a serious challenge in my case). But doing all of this is essential now that the world is so fragile.
This is hardly my own opinion, by the way. I’m not a lone crank. I’ve spoken at length with top engineers at major companies and universities. They express the same worries. The problem is that no one really knows what to do about it.
Meanwhile, outages are increasing even as systems are growing more complex, thus increasing the intensity of consequences. Our lives are ever more dependent on systems that no one controls. This happened recently at the airport when I had a physical ticket but the system listed me as not having fully checked in. Everyone in charge wanted me on the plane but the gods of technology said no. Guess who won the struggle: the machines. I had to miss my flight, leaving me stranded and missing appointments.
That was only the beginning of the problems on that trip. Every single one of them traced to the same source: technology that was not cooperating with the wishes of the employees and the managers of the system. Everyone has stories like this. It is getting alarming. You take for granted that something works. Suddenly and seemingly out of nowhere, it does not work. You never quite recover your sense of security once you face this.
What can be done? Systems administrators can eschew total dependence on clouds and AI and adopt technology more slowly, building in redundancy at every stage. As consumers, we can be more attentive to preparing for the worst by reducing our reliance on digits. I will always choose analog over digital when possible.
A scene pops into my mind when thinking about this subject. It is the cobbler in my neighborhood who is still repairing shoes with machines made back in the 1920s. These machines have lasted 100 years and still get the job done. Nothing today is built this same way. We are on three-year cycles of buy and throw away. This is not a sign of genuine progress but the way the world ends. Stock up on silver dimes and firewood. Meet some real farmers. Go back to physical locks. The time could come when you need them."
"The Rise and Fall of the American Mall - $1.5 Trillion Retail Space Turning to Ghost Towns"
Full screen recommended.
Rise and Fall America, 10/25/25
"The Rise and Fall of the American Mall -
$1.5 Trillion Retail Space Turning to Ghost Towns"
"Once the beating heart of suburban America, the shopping mall is now disappearing. In this video, we explore The Rise and Fall of the American Mall and how a $1.5 trillion retail empire is turning into abandoned space and fading memories. We begin by examining the retail apocalypse in America, and how changes in technology, e-commerce, and lifestyle are accelerating the decline of once-thriving malls. These centers were once temples of consumption, but now many are empty - ghost towns of U.S. retail.
We dive into the evolution of shopping mall business models, why anchor stores are closing, and how malls failed to adapt fast enough. From suburban growth to urban decay, this is a case study in the fall of physical retail spaces. As American mall foot traffic declines, questions arise: What replaces the mall? Who is buying these properties? And what does it mean for the future of retail real estate in the U.S.?
We highlight shifts in consumer behavior in malls, the impact of e-commerce vs traditional retail, and the role of economic factors like inflation, debt, and changing generational preferences. While some malls are being reinvented into mixed-use spaces, many remain vacant, waiting for revival - or demolition. This is not just about buildings. It's a story about economics, psychology, and society. Understanding why shopping malls are failing in the U.S. reveals more than commercial trends - it reflects how Americans shop, socialize, and spend. Whether you remember mall culture or are tracking retail investment trends, this video helps make sense of the transformation underway."
Comments here:
o
Snyder Reports, "Days Away From MASS Chaos, Shutdown Hurting Millions"
Full screen recommended.
Snyder Reports, 10/25/25
"Days Away From MASS Chaos,
Shutdown Hurting Millions"
Comments here:
"Gen Z's Grim Economic Prospects"
"Gen Z's Grim Economic Prospects"
by Jeffrey Tucker
"The generation of young people just starting out in their careers faces an uphill battle unlike anything confronted by their parents and grandparents. For them, the promise of the American Dream is elusive at best. Everything is more expensive. The job market is frozen for pay for which they were hoping. Industry is changing so fast that educational credentials are ever less valuable. There is real panic in the air among them, which is why so many have turned to substance abuse and far-flung hopes of making it rich in crypto or the influencer economy.
A new survey on the expenses faced by this generation has appeared that frames it up in alarming terms-:
• Over 20 years from 2005 to 2025, the cost of all essentials has soared:
• Housing (rent) is up 120 percent.
• Transportation is up 86 percent.
• Education is up 133 percent.
• Groceries are up 79 percent.
• Entertainment is up 100 percent.
• Utilities are up 53 percent.
• Time to save for house down payment has gone from 8 to 14 years.
• The average student debt burden has moved from $20K to $30K.
• The real increase in salaries is 12 percent.
Health insurance these days is a killer of living standards, averaging $27,000 from the business side and that’s without using it. Housing ownership seems largely out of the question. In general, this whole generation has a delayed wealth curve that is 7 to 10 years relative to prior generations. In other words, it’s a lost generation, with a financial challenge that is matched by the trauma of pandemic lockdowns, ill-education, and digital addiction.
Behind all this is a hidden force at work, the dramatic devaluation of the currency over five years. During this time, the dollar lost 25-35 percent of its value, depending on the service or good in question. Salaries simply are not keeping up.
All this began to unfold in 2020 when the Federal Reserve accommodated the wildest spending binge by Congress in American history. The result was debt, which the Fed purchased with newly printed cash, which was then dispersed to the public in the form of stimulus payments.
Anyone with a modicum of economic knowledge could foresee the problem. This was not like the quantitative easing of 2008 which deployed an accounting trick to keep the new money locked up in bank vaults. The monetary expansion of 2020-2023 resulted in hot money on the street, which translates directly to higher prices and a lower purchasing power.
Click image for larger size.
There are many ways to represent the impact on income but consider what has happened in the world center of markets for a century, New York City. What we see is a picture of massive disruption over five years, to the point of absolute calamity. Real median household income is lower now than five years ago. Many businesses were driven out or died completely. Some of the most productive residents left.
Click image for larger size.
The reality on the ground is worse than it seems. The city is unaffordable for any regular income earned by a young person. Even worse, the physical conditions of the city have deteriorated dramatically. If you haven’t visited in 20 years, you will likely find the place unrecognizable. The same can be said of many U.S. cities, the very places where young people once depended upon for career starts.
All the political winds in D.C. right now are demanding lower and lower interest rates so as to make servicing the new debt more affordable. The problem with this strategy is that artificially lowered rates send distorted signals to industry. The message is borrow, expand, build in leverage or get wiped out by the competition. At some uncertain point in the future, the pattern breaks as consumers are completely tapped out.
The economy cannot operate as a perpetual motion machine. Prosperity cannot be maintained by endless cycles of fakery, with fresh money fueling higher financials and rewarding people on the other side of the divide. Anyone with a million in the bank can sit back and live off the proceeds forever while young workers just starting out can hardly pay the bills. This is combustible, politically and culturally.
What is the solution? As with every inflation in history, the first step is to stop the money printers. That is easier said than done simply because the entire financial system today is addicted to debt finance which in turn depends on a Fed forever cranking out the fiat. The fear here is that the fix will be worse than the disease.
Today, it is widely accepted that inflation should run hotter than it has normally been in the entire postwar period, so between 2 and 3 percent. Many suspect that the Fed has quietly changed the target to 2.5 percent. There is plenty of evidence that this is true, in which case there will be no real solution forthcoming.
The latest CPI data is running hot at 3 percent, further suggesting the possibility of a second wave. This would be a disaster, sealing the fate of a generation. Meanwhile, there is no mystery about the cause: it’s the money printing!
Click image for larger size.
It was four decades ago when I graduated from college without a thought about a job, debt, or paying the bills. I wasn’t irresponsible. These were not issues my generation confronted. We just assumed that if you had skill and will, everything else would fall into place. You found a place to live, worked hard, and everything worked out.
We had no idea at the time that we were living in a rare moment of history. Low inflation, low unemployment, high growth, freedom and ebullience all around. Now that moment is entirely gone, replaced with anxiety that is mutating to panic and despair. Old people don’t care much because they are doing just fine - perhaps the last American generation that can count on being comfortably well off.
The only way that Gen Z can battle this problem is by a big change in spending habits. The same survey cited above reports that young workers are spending on average $300 per month on restaurants and bars. Maybe that doesn’t sound like much but simply changing that habit - cooking at home instead of throwing away money on expensive dining - would make a big difference.
A major problem here is that Gen Z needs to change its expectations, all of which are rooted in class fears fueled by social media nonsense. They have to be at the right spots, wear the right clothes, live in the best places, and drive fashionable cars. These are extremely powerful psychological pulls. Corporate finance is there to seem to make it all possible for a while.
In the last three years, myriad companies have sprung up to give cash advances by linking one’s bank account on the spot while shopping. The fees are high because they are not classified as interest, and they evade regulatory controls. What these companies are doing is exploiting class insecurity and pillaging the people who can least afford it.
The only real solution here is the traditional value of frugality. It’s possible to buy groceries from less-fashionable places, dial back amenities in apartment living, buy used clothing from online marketplaces, and forgo vacations and entertainment. You can cut the bills, with the goal of having zero debt. This is the only way to live as a young person if you have any hope of building a secure future.
Economic headwinds are leaning hard against Gen Z and this has produced a kind of demoralization. Nothing works as it once did. Policymakers and parents can help but the ultimate solution is going to come down to a change of priorities."
"If The Economy Is Good Why Does It Feel Like Everything Is Falling Apart?"
Full screen recommended.
Michael Bordenaro, 10/25/25
"If The Economy Is Good Why Does
It Feel Like Everything Is Falling Apart?"
Comments here:
Adventures With Danno, "Shocking Prices At Walmart"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 10/25/25
"Shocking Prices At Walmart"
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Travelling with Russell, 10/25/25
"Why Is There Still A
German Supermarket in Russia?"
"I discovered a German-owned Supermarket in Moscow, Russia. Why is a German Supermarket in Russia in 2025? With such extensive sanctions imposed on Russia, how is this supermarket still open and trading? Let's find out together."
Comments here:
Friday, October 24, 2025
"Alert! Russia Declares 'We Are At War with USA'; Troops Deploy Near Venezuela; Tomahawks Soon"
Full screen recommended.
Prepper News, 10/24/25
"Alert! Russia Declares 'We Are At War with USA';
Troops Deploy Near Venezuela; Tomahawks Soon"
Comments here:
"NASA's AI Just Decoded Messages From 3I/ATLAS - The Truth Is Horrifying"
A Terrifying Must-View!
Full screen recommended.
RevVolt, 10/24/25
"NASA's AI Just Decoded Messages From 3I/ATLAS -
The Truth Is Horrifying"
"NASA’s secret AI program has just decoded strange signals coming from the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS, and what it uncovered is nothing short of terrifying. The data transmission - once thought to be random cosmic noise - has revealed structured patterns and language-like sequences that suggest intelligent origin. Insiders are claiming that the decoded messages contain warnings about planetary cycles, energy disruptions, and something approaching our solar system that defies known physics. NASA has refused to release the full transcript, but leaked portions describe a message so unnerving that several scientists allegedly walked away from the project entirely. What NASA’s AI found changes everything we thought we knew about space - and who might be watching us."
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Michio Kaku, 10/24/25
"3I/ATLAS Was The Scout. This Is The Fortress"
"Something enormous has entered our Solar System and it’s not just another comet. SWAN R2. Astronomers and NASA are stunned as this object, SWAN R2, dwarfs everything we’ve seen before. Michio Kaku, the mind behind the 3I/ATLAS investigation, now calls it “the fortress.” Could SWAN R2 be connected to 3I/ATLAS or something even more mysterious? From alien engineering to cosmic intelligence, this could rewrite what we know about space and life beyond Earth. Join me, Michio Atlas, as we explore this cosmic mystery that has scientists and maybe even civilizations watching us back. SWAN R2 isn’t just an object… it might be a message."
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Michio Kaku, 10/24/25
“3I/ATLAS Just Sent a Warning
Signal That Put NASA In Panic Mode”
"Something unprecedented just happened in deep space - and NASA isn’t ready for it. Astrophysicist Michio Kaku has revealed new data suggesting that 3I/ATLAS, the mysterious interstellar object speeding through our solar system, may have just emitted a signal unlike anything we’ve ever detected before. NASA scientists were reportedly caught off guard, as monitoring systems picked up a strange pulse pattern moments before the object changed trajectory. Now, Michio Kaku says this could be a cosmic “warning” - or a natural phenomenon we still don’t understand. Is 3I/ATLAS trying to tell us something? Or are we witnessing the first real contact event in history?"
Comments here:
o
A Summary Comment: So they've just discovered a second 3I/ATLAS, named 3I/ATLASII, identical in every way and entering the solar system on the exact same vector and speed, with unverified but strong indicators of 2 more identical objects incoming from further out. Additionally there are 9 objects around 3I/Atlas, in perfect formation alignment surrounding 3I/ATLAS, which may be a scout ship for a larger fleet arriving in strength. The 2 known 3I/ATLAS vessels will connect in the orbit space near Venus on November 1. If all are verified and have the same escorts we'd have 4 3I/ATLAS vessels and 36 escort vessels. Each of the escort objects generate 20 gigawatts of energy. The incoming enormous C/2025 R2 (SWAN) mothership is 100 times the size of I3/ATLAS, and is generating 10,000 gigawatts of energy. (Earth's total global nuclear power capacity totaled 396 gigawatts, with 439 reactors operating across over 30 countries as of July 2024. An Earthly nuclear power plant generates 1 gigattatt at full power.) As the astronomer/physicist Avi Loeb states, if 3I/ATLAS is the "scout" ship SWAN is the "fortress" mothership to which 3I/ATLAS is sending reports. My guess is that it was the sudden massive energy signatures of using the atomic bombs in the 1940's that caught their attention. Their purpose unknown, all conjecture at this point, but data repeatedly verified. What does all this mean for Humanity, for you and me? If Humanity has a future... We shall see... We can't fight, and there's nowhere to escape to. - CP
o
"I can never look now at the Milky Way without wondering from which of those banked clouds of stars the emissaries are coming. If you will pardon so commonplace a simile, we have set off the fire alarm and have nothing to do but to wait. I do not think we will have to wait for long." - Arthur C. Clarke, "The Sentinel"
Apparently our waiting is over...we are not alone.
Jeremiah Babe, "The FED Is About To Turn The Money Printers Back On At Full Speed"
Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, 10/24/25
"The FED Is About To Turn The
Money Printers Back On At Full Speed"
We've got a lot of not-so-good economic news today for America, as the US national debt just exceeded 38 trillion for the first time. The debt has reached its "blowout" phase where new trillions will be added every 30 days in the near future.
Comments here:
o
Debt to the penny.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)