Michael Bordenaro, 1/30/26
"The Inevitable Collapse That's Already Started"
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Michael Bordenaro, 1/30/26
"Historic Record Retail Collapse is Underway"
Comments here:
So, we rise from the rubble...
StatCounter
Friday, January 30, 2026
"Alert! Metals Bloodbath! Epstein Just Started WW3! Gov. Shutdown! Impeachment!"
Prepper News, 1/30/26
"Alert! Metals Bloodbath! Epstein Just Started WW3!
Gov. Shutdown! Impeachment!"
Comments here:
A Blues Musical Interlude, "Make It Rain"
Foy Vance, "Make it Rain"
The original, Ed Sheeran's version is the cover.
○
Ed Sheeran, "Make it Rain"
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Braided, serpentine filaments of glowing gas suggest this nebula's popular name, The Medusa Nebula. Also known as Abell 21, this Medusa is an old planetary nebula some 1,500 light-years away in the constellation Gemini. Like its mythological namesake, the nebula is associated with a dramatic transformation.
The planetary nebula phase represents a final stage in the evolution of low mass stars like the sun, as they transform themselves from red giants to hot white dwarf stars and in the process shrug off their outer layers. Ultraviolet radiation from the hot star powers the nebular glow. The Medusa's transforming star is near the center of the overall bright crescent shape. In this deep telescopic view, fainter filaments clearly extend below and to the left of the bright crescent region. The Medusa Nebula is estimated to be over 4 light-years across.”
The Poet: Barbara Crooker, "In the Middle..."
"In the Middle..."
"In the middle
of a life that's as complicated as everyone else's,
struggling for balance, juggling time.
The mantle clock that was my grandfather's
has stopped at 9:20; we haven't had time
to get it repaired. The brass pendulum is still,
the chimes don't ring. One day you look out the window,
green summer, the next, and the leaves have already fallen,
and a grey sky lowers the horizon. Our children almost grown,
our parents gone, it happened so fast. Each day, we must learn
again how to love, between morning's quick coffee
and evening's slow return. Steam from a pot of soup rises,
mixing with the yeasty smell of baking bread. Our bodies
twine, and the big black dog pushes his great head between;
his tail is a metronome, 3/4 time. We'll never get there,
Time is always ahead of us, running down the beach, urging
us on faster, faster, but sometimes we take off our watches,
sometimes we lie in the hammock, caught between the mesh
of rope and the net of stars, suspended, tangled up
in love, running out of time."
~ Barbara Crooker
"Maybe..."
"Maybe we accept the dream has become a nightmare. We tell ourselves that reality is better. We convince ourselves it's better that we never dream at all. But, the strongest of us, the most determined of us, holds on to the dream or we find ourselves faced with a fresh dream we never considered. We wake to find ourselves, against all odds... feeling hopeful. And, if we're lucky, we realize in the face of everything, in the face of life - the true dream is being able to dream at all."
- "Dr. Meredith Grey", "Grey's Anatomy"
"From Stars to Souls: The Science of What Made You You, with a Dazzling Poem Read by David Byrne"
Pillars of Creation, Eagle Nebula, Messier 16.
Infrared photograph. NASA /Hubble Space Telescope.
"From Stars to Souls: The Science of What Made You You,
with a Dazzling Poem Read by David Byrne"
by Maria Popova
"We are each a chance constellation of elements forged in long-dead stars assembled by gravity, which may be the other word for God - the weakest of the four fundamental forces, yet the great cosmic compactor that made the first atoms cohere into a common center to form the first star: an immense ball of gas, at the core of which was a hydrogen sphere that eventually reached pressures of millions of atmospheres and heated up to millions of degrees. These extreme conditions triggered a new phenomenon in the cosmos - the first nuclear fusion reactions: When two hydrogen atoms collide with immense force, neutrons are transferred from one nucleus to the other, making some atoms larger. After a series of such collisions, a nucleus with two protons forms and the second element - helium - is born. As the star ignites, illuminating the austere darkness of pure spacetime surrounding it, it keeps burning its hydrogen to make more helium. The fusion accelerates, forging carbon, then neon, then oxygen, and so forth across the periodic table, turning the star into a kind of onion with layers of fusion reactions.
Most of the first twenty-six elements in the periodic table - the elements composing almost everything we can touch and see - were created by nuclear fusion in individual stars. If you could tag any individual atom in your body and follow it backward in time, across all the other matter it composed before it became yours - your mother’s body, the food your mother ate, the soil in which that food grew, the geologic strata ground down by the oceans to make that soil - you could trace it all the way back to the core of a particular star that lived and died billions of years ago: an actual atom that is now in you, having prevailed over the infinite probabilities by which it could have ended up in someone else.
To this Rube Goldberg machine of chance you owe all of your particularity - alter any part of that cosmic genealogy, and you would have ended up as someone else.
The victory march of our particularity against probability comes alive in a short, dazzling poem by Ruth Stone (June 8, 1915–November 19, 2011). Stone was six and enchanted by her grandmother’s dictionary when she began writing poetry. She was eight-four and the grandmother of seven when she received major recognition as a poet. By the time she died, having lived nearly a century and survived her husband’s suicide, she had been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and won the National Book Award with her singular poems bridging the domestic and the cosmic, lensing the world of love and loss, of rapture and regret, through the world of galaxies and particles - poems shimmering with the spirit of The Universe in Verse (which is now a book).
This poem, found in "What Love Comes To" (public library) - Stone’s final poetry collection, published just before her death at age 96 - was read at the seventh annual Universe in Verse by David Byrne:
"Strings"
by Ruth Stone
"We pop into life the way
particles pop in and out
of the continuum.
We are a seething mass
of probability.
And probably I love you.
The evil of larvae
and the evil of stars
are a formula for the future.
Some bodies can
thrust their arms into
a flame and be instantly
cured of this world,
while others sicken.
Why think, little brother
like the moon, spit out like
a broken tooth.
“Oh,” groans the world.
The outer planets,
the fizzing sun, here we come
with our luggage.
Look at the clever things
we have made out of
a few building blocks -
O fabulous continuum."
Follow the continuum forward into the science of what happens when we die, then revisit David Byrne’s animated reading of Pattiann Rogers’s magnificent poem “Achieving Perspective,” with art by Maira Kalman, and Nick Cave’s animated reading of “But We Had Music.”
"A Much Needed Interlude From Reality"
"A Much Needed Interlude From Reality"
This is some of the most incredibly beautiful work
I've ever seen. Multiple pages, sound on.
View here, full screen:
"At Last..."
“At last, the answer why. The lesson that had been so hard to find, so difficult to learn, came quick and clear and simple. The reason for problems is to overcome them. Why, that’s the very nature of man, I thought, to press past limits, to prove his freedom. It isn’t the challenge that faces us, that determines who we are and what we are becoming, but the way we meet the challenge, whether we toss a match at the wreck or work our way through it, step by step, to freedom.”
- Richard Bach, “Nothing by Chance”
"Iran Warns of Overwhelming Retaliation to ANY U.S. Strike"
Seyed M. Marandi, 1/30/26
"Iran Warns of Overwhelming
Retaliation to ANY U.S. Strike"
"Seyed Mohammad Marandi is a professor at Tehran University and a former advisor to Iran's Nuclear Negotiation Team. Prof. Marandi argues that the US likely plans for a limited "bloody nose" attack on Iran with the expectation that Iran will not retaliate. Iran has warned that it will retaliate with overwhelming force. Trump has seemingly boxed himself in, and a disastrous war is in the making."
Comments here:
"There Are Simply No Answers..."
“How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one’s culture but within oneself? If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox. One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse. There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light.”
- Barry Lopez
Judge Napolitano, "INTEL Roundtable w/Johnson & McGovern - Weekly Wrap 30-JAN"
Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 1/30/26
"INTEL Roundtable w/Johnson & McGovern -
Weekly Wrap 30-JAN"
Comments here:
"How It Really Horrifyingly Is"
"At the beginning of June, our national debt was sitting at $31,467 trillion. Today, it has risen to $38.43 trillion.That means that we have added six trillion dollars to the national debt in just six months. It is the largest single debt in the entire history of our planet, and it will never be paid off."
View it if you dare...
o
Jethro Tull, "Locomotive Breath"
Bill Bonner, "Circus Maximus"
Engraved illustration of Rome’s Circus Maximus,
able to hold around 150,000 spectators.
"Circus Maximus"
by Bill Bonner
Rancho Santana, Nicaragua - "There’s no boom like a gold boom. And a gold boom happens when currency is debauched. MarketWatch: "Gold’s soaring so fast it’s topped Goldman target set only last week. Now a JPMorgan analyst plots path to $8,500. Analyst says households boosting allocations to the metal could send gold soaring." This comes even after the Fed refuses to lower interest rates. CBS: "Federal Reserve holds interest rates steady at its first FOMC meeting of 2026."
Poor Donald Trump. Nothing seems to go his way. He’s hoping for lower rates, to cheapen the dollar and light a fire under the economy before the mid-term elections. But the fire is not under the economy; it’s under the gold price. And it signals not strength but weakness.
Already, in terms of gold, over the last year, the flower of American capitalism - the Dow stocks - have lost more than 30% of their value. It sounds impossible. Because the Dow is still near an all-time high. What does it mean? Is gold too expensive? Are stocks too cheap? We don’t know either...but this is the trend we’ve been waiting for. And we’ll wait a little longer before we ‘pull the trigger’ and sell gold to buy stocks. But like a jittery ICE agent, we can barely control ourselves.
Meanwhile...more word from Baltimore. “It’s still freezing cold. It’s going down to seven degrees tomorrow...and it’s supposed to snow again next week.” “Well, it’s challenging here too,” we commiserated. “There were so many people drinking their pina coladas and martinis at the bar, we had to wait three minutes to get a cold beer. And this morning, a cloud - a cloud, dammit! - had the audacity to block the sun as we were enjoying our café con leche on the veranda. It quickly went away, but not before bombing our coffee with a single raindrop. Which just goes to show how rough things can get down here.”
But what is surprising about the winter weather in the US is that so many people appear to have been surprised by it, as if they forgot that winter happens. A woman quoted in a national newspaper: “We didn’t expect it. And when you’re used to things – like electricity – it is very distressing when you don’t have it.”
Donald Trump insists that the weather has never been better. They just “don’t get it yet,” he says. What they don’t get, according to POTUS, is how great his economy really is. Trouble is, people have eyes and ears. He may say it’s beautiful and balmy outside; but you still might get frostbite. MarketWatch: "‘Dollar tumbles to a four-year low as Trump claims it’s ‘doing great.’
A lower dollar means higher import prices. Leon Hadar: "Americans are experiencing economic pain in their daily lives. Households face between $1,300 and $2,100 in additional annual costs due to the combined effects of tariffs, deregulation, and persistent inflationary pressures. Unemployment has climbed to 4.6%, signaling a cooling labor market after years of post-pandemic expansion. Consumer sentiment continues to darken as families struggle with the cost of basic necessities."
Most damaging to Trump’s political standing is the public’s assessment of tariffs, his signature economic policy. A staggering 75% of Americans - including 56% of Republicans - believe tariffs are raising prices rather than protecting American workers. This represents a devastating repudiation of Trump’s core economic philosophy. When only 14% of Americans support imposing additional tariffs, the political foundation for Trump’s trade war has essentially collapsed.
Poor Mr. Trump claims that the economy is doing better than ever. And if not, it’s Joe Biden’s fault. But recent polls show that twice as many voters hold him, rather than Biden, responsible. Digging further into the figures, most people think his policies contribute to job losses...and have raised health insurance costs. And they’re right. Jobs continued to disappear from manufacturing as his tariff program was rolled out. The US automobile industry, for example, lost 28,000 jobs last year. And tariffs were meant to close the trade gap; but the gap just opened wider than ever. Reuters: "Trade deficit widens by the most in nearly 34 years
The Bureau of Economic Analysis and Census Bureau reported that the trade deficit widened by 94.6%, the largest increase since March 1992, to $56.8 billion... Consumer prices have continued to rise at least twice as fast as the Fed’s target. Food prices, for example, rose more in December than they had since 2022. Electricity rose 7% in 2025."
Poor Mr. Trump hopes he can overcome these problems with the old ‘bread and circuses’ technique. Distract the voters with circuses - Minneapolis, Greenland, Iran, et al. And bribe them with a barrage of giveaways before the mid-term elections - Trump Accounts, Warrior Dividends, Tariff Dividends, and a cap on credit card interest. Stimmies for everyone! Perhaps he will take a page from fellow New Yorker, Zohran Mamdani’s winning playbook, with a nationwide rent control program...and free childcare too! Stay tuned."
"Why Americans Have Lost Faith in the Economy"
Full screen recommended.
Michael Bordenaro, 1/30/26
"Why Americans Have Lost Faith in the Economy"
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Michael Bordenaro, 1/30/26
"92% of Americans Need To Cut Back on
Essentials Amid Cost of Living Crisis"
Comments here:
Adventures With Danno, "Stocking Up On Groceries At Meijer"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 1/30/26
"Stocking Up On Groceries At Meijer"
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Jay Reed, 1/30/26
"Amazon Just Shutdown All
Fresh Grocery Stores After Struggles"
"Amazon just shut down all Fresh and Go grocery stores after ongoing struggles - and it’s raising serious questions about the future of retail. In this video, we break down why Amazon is pulling the plug, what went wrong with these cashierless stores, and what this means for workers, customers, and the broader grocery industry. From high operating costs to weak demand and technical issues, Amazon’s ambitious experiment is coming to an abrupt end. This isn’t just an Amazon problem. It’s a warning sign for retail, automation, and the economy."
Comments here:
Jim Kunstler, "Now You Will Know"
"Now You Will Know"
by Jim Kunstler
“The ICE derangement syndrome is off the charts because we are amidst a pandemic of progressive leftist mental illness, which is an extremely disproportionately female problem.”
- JD Haltigan on "X"
"It has come into focus now and you no longer need to be perplexed, mystified, bewildered, or bamboozled by events unspooling in Minneapolis and other hotspots of Woke-Marxist-Jacobin delirium. You are seeing the infernal machine of a sponsored revolution. Its parts are visible. They can be named and clearly understood. I will tell you how this works.
You realize, of course, that there has been an ongoing effort by players outside the USA to destroy Western Civ. This is too obvious to be denied. It is coming from several different places. First, China, because China has sprung from a sink of immiseration to become an industrial behemoth in a mere forty years and sees itself as the next global hegemon. Neville Roy Singham, the wealthy American ex-pat living in Shanghai, exposed all over the Internet this past week, is fronting for the CCP with his web of NGOs that just now underwrite the Lefty-left rage-riots around our country, surely subsidized with extra money from his China handlers.
China sent countless thousands of its soldiers surreptitiously across the border during the “Joe Biden” years along with the UN’s millions-footed riffraff. They have yet to be activated, shall we say, in whatever mischief China has planned. That’s on top of all the college students China has seeded all over the US, and the babies hatched here, given US passports, and withdrawn back to China. It’s simple: they want North America and they have a long game-plan to get it. Resources. Food.
Then there’s the Globalist cabal made up of the WEF megalomaniacs, the buffoonish but sinister EU bureaucracy, and - surprise - the sticky residue of the British Empire’s managerial class, believe it or not. This cabal is George & Alex Soros’s platform for their Open Society and Atlantic Council shenanigans and all the NGOs they spawn. Altogether, the WEF-Globalist’s mojo is fading fast since Mr. Trump went to Davos this month and tossed a few grenades into the audience. Plus, of course, Germany, France, and the UK are going dark, both energy-wise and demographically. Doesn’t help.
Then there is less-well-known São Paulo Forum, founded in 1990 by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president today, back then a mere activist, and the late Fidel Castro. This outfit lurked in the deep background until recently when Mr. Trump plucked one of its components off the game-board: Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. The São Paulo Forum created the permission structure for the Western Hemisphere’s drug and trafficking cartels to thrive in. Both enterprises do immense harm to the USA, first with fentanyl deaths and then with all the second-order effects of illegal immigration - especially of criminals and the insane. It’s all too obvious to belabor.
Who is not in the Destroy Western Civ mix? Another surprise: Russia - apart from the usual boilerplate security apparatus that any major nation must maintain. In case you missed it, Russia is no longer communist. Didn’t work out for them. No, this will probably shock you, but Russia is actually doing what it can to preserve Western Civ, including Christianity, literature, music, philosophy, and domestic civility. They’re in Ukraine because of “Joe Biden.” Here is not the place to adumbrate that topic, so I will leave it for now.
Okay, those are the players outside the USA fomenting revolution among us. The picture, though, is woefully incomplete without America’s Democratic Party, which activates and amplifies the dynamic inside the USA. The Democrats are hostages of the outside forces, but they are not innocent hostages. They are hostage also to their own demonic greed - for power and riches. The Democratic Party has engineered itself into a colossal racketeering operation, a criminal organization, a mafia.
This is now seen garishly in Minnesota, where immigrants - both illegal and strategically placed earlier by Obama & Company - are lately revealed to run a fabulous matrix of fraud around various social services, extracting billions from US taxpayers in the process. This is accomplished with fake companies and NGOs which distribute the loot between the immigrant grifters, the politicians such as Governor Tim Walz, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, and finally the Democratic Party apparatus itself, to keep operations going. The mechanism is being studied in the US Department of Justice.
Mass illegal immigration serves two clear purposes for the party. They use it to boost census numbers so they can create more congressional districts and takeover existing ones. Also, the illegals are marshaled to provide votes for the party, one way or another. The millions let in under “Joe Biden” received lavish gifts on entry (courtesy of you) to cement their allegiance to the party. And that’s why the Democratic Party will do just about anything to prevent the deportation of their pet illegal immigrants. Also why the Dems have no interest in election reform.
And it is exactly why they have ignited an hysteria among the Democratic Party rank-and-file and sent them out into the streets to create chaos and become martyrs. Now, curiously, the women of the Democratic Party were pre-disposed for this madness by a half century of feminism which has managed to evolve - as JD Haltigan describes so well - into a florid Cluster-B group personality derangement. (Psychologist Gad Saad calls it “suicidal empathy.”) To put it bluntly, their desperate yearning to agree with each other and their maternal instincts to care for anything deemed needy (a baby, the homeless, any victim of something), these hard-wired states-of-mind have been hijacked to now send them into a rage delirium on the frozen streets of Minneapolis (and elsewhere). All that emotional distress is wrapped in a thin tissue of Marxist bullshit to make it appear political, but it’s all ragged emotion. Sometimes in history populations go crazy. Libs of TikTok@libsoftiktok Minnesota woman has a COMPLETE MELTDOWN while driving, screaming and crying over ICE operations. The ICE derangement syndrome is off the charts.
And so, American women - and not a few mentally feminized men - have become the foot-soldiers of the Democratic Party in its increasingly desperate campaign to keep its criminal rackets going - or, at least, not end up in prison over them - while the party has become the collective “useful idiot” of the Globalist/Marxist forces seeking to destroy Western Civ and hand North America over to China.
It’s reasonable to suppose that President Trump and his people understand how this works and aim to do what they can to disassemble the infernal machine behind it. They are going after the money supply lines, the many NGOs involved, and very probably a whole lot of politicians in on the grift. The winter uproar in Minneapolis that cost the lives of two feckless insurgents exposed the machinery of sedition. The Insurrection Act might have been in the president’s back pocket, but he knew it would be foolish to use it. The Dems might be a little concerned about what comes next. Hint: DNI Tulsi Gabbard showing up yesterday with the FBI at the Fulton County, GA, election storage warehouse to collect 700 boxes of documents and ballots.
One final angle on all this. There’s another player in the mix, and it’s really hard to tell exactly where they stand: that’s the so-called Deep State generally and its main handyman, the CIA, in particular. They have been behind all the “color revolution” action abroad for decades, and perhaps the election fraud in the USA. They appear to have been operating to some degree in Venezuela through all the years of Hugo Chavez and Maduro, with some nefarious involvement in the cartels. And no question they were behind the long-running coup in all its parts to defame, oust, jail, impoverish, defeat, and kill Mr. Trump since 2016. Their pals in the adjacent DC Lawfare industry are trying really hard to subvert and pervert the judicial system. CIA Director John Ratcliffe has some ‘splainin’ to do about what he managed to accomplish this year, cleaning up the agency. Or not."
Thursday, January 29, 2026
"Winter Storm Update - Huge Snow & Major Impacts Likely"
Full screen recommended.
Max Velocity - Severe Weather Center, 1/30/26
"Winter Storm Update -
Huge Snow & Major Impacts Likely"
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
USA Weather Pulse
"Monster Snowstorm Coming -
80 City Brutal Blizzard Alert"
"This is absolutely INSANE folks! A MONSTER snowstorm is barreling toward us and 80 major cities across multiple states are now under BRUTAL blizzard alerts as this beast threatens to unleash some of the most extreme winter weather conditions we've seen in years! What makes this MONSTER snowstorm so incredibly dangerous is the combination of MASSIVE snowfall totals potentially exceeding 2-3 FEET in hardest hit areas, BRUTAL wind gusts reaching 60-70mph creating complete whiteout blizzard conditions, and life-threatening cold with wind chills plunging to -30°F to -40°F making any outdoor exposure extremely dangerous. The latest GFS, Euro, and NAM models are all locked in showing this MONSTER intensifying rapidly as it approaches, with the kind of setup that produces the legendary snowstorms people talk about for decades - we're talking about explosive cyclogenesis, perfect moisture convergence, Arctic air masses colliding with Gulf moisture, and a track that puts the bullseye directly over the most populated corridor in America. I'm breaking down all 80 cities under blizzard alerts showing you exactly what this MONSTER snowstorm means for YOUR specific location with detailed snow totals, wind forecasts, timing breakdowns, and emergency preparation guidance!"
Comments here:
Adventures With Danno, "Do This Before It's Too Late"
Adventures With Danno, 1/29/26
"Do This Before It's Too Late"
Comments here:
"A Look to the Heavens"
“Beautiful island universe M94 lies a mere 15 million light-years distant in the northern constellation of the hunting dogs, Canes Venatici. A popular target for astronomers, the brighter inner part of the face-on spiral galaxy is about 30,000 light-years across.
Traditionally, deep images have been interpreted as showing M94's inner spiral region surrounded by a faint, broad ring of stars. But a new multi-wavelength investigation has revealed previously undetected spiral arms sweeping across the outskirts of the galaxy's disk, an outer disk actively engaged in star formation. At optical wavelengths, M94's outer spiral arms are followed in this remarkable discovery image, processed to enhance the outer disk structure. Background galaxies are visible through the faint outer arms, while the three spiky foreground stars are in our own Milky Way galaxy.”
"Children Of Hope..."
"Children of Hope, to life we fondly cling,
Though woe on woe bitter hour may bring;
the spirit shrinks, and Nature dreads to brave,
The doubt, the gloom, the stillness of the grave.
But what is death? – a wing from earth to fee –
a bridge o’er time into eternity."
- Michelle, in “The Fear of Death Considered”
"In The End..."
"What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end,
of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do."
- John Ruskin
"Alert! WTF Just Happened? Panic Buying Starts Soon!"
Full screen recommended.
Prepper News, 1/29/26
"Alert! WTF Just Happened? Panic Buying Starts Soon!"
Comments here:
"Grocery Prices Have Tripled! Americans Are Going Bankrupt To Afford Food"
Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 1/29/26
"Grocery Prices Have Tripled!
Americans Are Going Bankrupt To Afford Food"
"Grocery prices have absolutely exploded over the past few years, and I'm seeing families struggle in ways that just break my heart. In today's video, we're looking at some really eye-opening TikToks that show just how bad this situation has gotten for everyday Americans. I came across this video of someone who pulled up their old Walmart order from just two years ago - 45 items that cost $126 back then. When they tried to reorder those exact same items today, the bill came out to over $400. Four times more expensive. For the exact same groceries. That's not inflation, that's something else entirely.
What really gets to me is seeing people have actual anxiety attacks at the grocery store because they don't know if their card is going to go through. One woman talked about needing therapy sessions after every grocery trip because of how stressful it's become. That's just not normal, and it shouldn't be something families have to deal with.
We're also seeing people resort to some pretty desperate measures. Did you know that over 25% of "buy now, pay later" purchases are now for groceries? People are literally financing their food just to make it through the week. And some of these loans have interest rates of 600% or more. That's predatory, and it's going to trap families in debt cycles that could take years to escape.
The most shocking thing I saw was grocery stores putting security tags on meat because theft has gotten so bad. When families can't afford to feed themselves, something is seriously broken in our system.
I want to hear from you guys - what are you seeing in your area? Have you noticed these crazy price increases? Are you having to shop at multiple stores or change what you buy just to make your budget work? Because honestly, I think we're all trying to figure this out together.
Some of you have been asking about tips for dealing with these prices, and while I don't have all the answers, I think sharing our experiences and strategies could really help each other out. Maybe we can start building a community where we look out for one another during these tough times. Let me know in the comments what your grocery bills look like compared to a few years ago. Are you spending twice as much? Three times? Four times? And what are you doing to cope with it all? Thanks for watching, and I hope you're all doing okay out there. These are challenging times, but we'll get through them together."
Comments here:
"The Behavioral Sink: A Fable For Our Times"
"The Behavioral Sink: A Fable For Our Times"
by Hardscrabble Farmer
"Not long after the last of the last American soldiers returned home at the close of WWII, a little-known ethologist named John B. Calhoun set up a quarter acre pen somewhere on the outskirts of Rockville, Maryland and populated it with several dozen Norwegian rats. His experiment was meant to see just how large the population density would become if they were provided with adequate food, water, shelter and protection from predators so that all of their needs were met. Fellow researchers dubbed his experiment rat utopia and before long he had discovered the answer to his question.
When his research caught the eye of bureaucrats at the National Institute for Mental Health, they approached him with an offer of unlimited funding for another project along the same lines under stricter conditions than the bucolic environs of a pasture just north of Washington, D.C. By 1954 he had devised a complex interior setup for his rats to inhabit that divided the environment into four cells, each configured to provide a continuous supply of food, water and bedding with plenty of space for nests and open areas for social interaction. Into each of these he placed an equal number of both male and female rats and simply watched as they began to at first explore and then to colonize and dominate their surroundings.
There is very little material available about his research today, though at the time he was a media darling. During this period Americans had become concerned with the concept of overpopulation, due in large part to popular media and its constant focus on a “population bomb” that threatened to exhaust the Earth’s resources if something wasn’t done about it. As his research was just beginning to demonstrate the consequences of overpopulation the New York Times book review was pushing dystopian works such as "Stand on Zanzibar" and Paul Ehrlich’s "The Population Bomb."
Years before Mao began his enforced One Child Policy, American cosmopolitans were aggressively selling the concept of ZPG, or zero population growth in the pages of Time. Back in the government lab that housed the ever-growing population of rats, certain unpleasant realities were beginning to manifest themselves in the behavior of the colony. Calhoun was able to observe a recurring pattern, broken into four distinct phases that repeated itself each time he re-stocked his utopian environment; Exploration, Exploitation, Stagnation, and Death.
In the first phase the rodent experiment the numbers were such that the social order was rapidly established, hierarchies arose within days and the dominant males created harems of available females and guarded them against the lower ranking competitors. Feeding areas were designed so that no individual could eat alone but rather had to share communal trays. The choice nests were established at ground level while the lowest ranking members of the colony had to climb towers to their nesting spot.
With plenty of space and endless supplies with a small population resulted in a living space that was, as far as brown rats go, copacetic. During the exploitation phase two discernible differences arose- a rapidly growing population and an increasingly hostile environment. The dominant males controlled access to the quadrants where their harems lived while the lower ranking members turned to an endless cycle of violence towards each other as well as the younger generation of rapidly maturing rivals.
As the population grew to the point where no rat was able to find privacy, the third phase began in earnest. At this stage Calhoun observes that the rats have entered what he calls a behavioral sink, a situation where aberrant and destructive behavior becomes the norm and normal behavior is no longer possible. For example, the females abandoned their young, attacked them, or oddly enough, became sterile. Certain numbers of both male and female became- according to Calhoun- somnambulists.
They slept the majority of their lives emerging only to gorge themselves at the feeders while the rest of the colony slept, slowly becoming enormous and dying far earlier than the other rats. The subordinate males clustered together between the quadrants and controlled the access to food for the younger rats, violently attacking them and each other. They also turned into pansexuals, neither interested in mating but rather engaging in homosexuality and self-gratification in their nests for extended periods of time, often damaging and disfiguring their genitalia and pulling out their fur.
The remainder became probers, a constant source of irritation to the dominant males who used every available means to keep them away to the point of exhaustion and eventual submission to groups of predatory male rats who would kill them and raid their harems, killing the offspring and even the females. At the peak of the population which reached over 2,200 the entire colony entered the terminal phase and once reproduction ceased it was simply a matter of time until the natural cycle of rodent mortality ended the experiment yet again. Over and over for years until NIMH pulled the plug and ended its funding of Calhoun’s Mortality-Inhibiting Environment for Mice. Utopia, at least for rodents, remained elusive.
In the years following the release of his publication entitled "Population Density and Social Pathology" plenty of people jumped on the bandwagon and tried to turn the results into a commentary on modern urban living and overpopulation. Tom Wolfe’s final chapter of The "Pump House Gang" was originally a short essay entitled “Oh Rotten Gotham! Sliding Down Into the Behavioral Sink” followed by a novel, later turned into the children’s movie "The Secret of NIMH," by Robert O’Brien, a very dark and decidedly un-child friendly dystopian cartoon featuring scientists carrying out a rodent genocide. Calhoun continued on with his work, but never returned to the rats again, calling the outcome of his experiment ” a Malthusian dilemma born of a Utopian vision.”
One could reasonably conclude that all of those experiments done on the taxpayer’s dime so many years ago at the National Institute of Health would have made some kind of impression on the people who are paid to look at such outcomes. It could be safely assumed that they understand that by confining any living creatures in large numbers and in tight spaces, regardless of the necessities provided, would lead to certain consequences. Perhaps they have looked at the data and they do understand what occurs when a Utopian society is allowed to flourish and that is the endgame. But then we’re not brown rats."
"In The Time Of Your Life..."
“In the time of your life, live - so that in that good time there shall be no ugliness or death for yourself or for any life your life touches. Seek goodness everywhere, and when it is found, bring it out of its hiding place and let it be free and unashamed.
Place in matter and in flesh the least of the values, for these are the things that hold death and must pass away. Discover in all things that which shines and is beyond corruption. Encourage virtue in whatever heart it may have been driven into secrecy and sorrow by the shame and terror of the world. Ignore the obvious, for it is unworthy of the clear eye and the kindly heart.
Be the inferior of no man, or of any men be superior. Remember that every man is a variation of yourself. No man's guilt is not yours, nor is any man's innocence a thing apart. Despise evil and ungodliness, but not men of ungodliness or evil. These, understand. Have no shame in being kindly and gentle but if the time comes in the time of your life to kill, kill and have no regret.
In the time of your life, live - so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it.”
- William Saroyan,
"The Time of Your Life" (1939)
"It Matters..."
The sons - in the dungeon - think they hear Henry approach to kill them.
Richard: "He's here! He'll get no satisfaction out of me!
He isn't going to see me beg!"
Geoffrey: "Why, you chivalric fool - as if the way one fell down mattered!"
Richard: "When the fall is all there is, it matters.”
- James Goldman, "The Lion In Winter"
"What Not to Do When Your Husband or Wife Passes First"
Full screen recommended.
Elderly Wisdom Guide,
"What Not to Do When Your Husband or Wife Passes First"
"Losing a spouse is one of the most painful and life-altering experiences anyone can face, especially after decades of shared memories, routines, and love. In this deeply personal and reflective story, an 83-year-old widower shares heartfelt lessons learned in the years following the loss of his beloved wife. This is more than just advice - it’s wisdom passed down through lived experience.
If your husband or wife has recently passed away, or if you’re preparing for what life might look like someday without your partner, this video will offer guidance, comfort, and clarity. These 5 things you should never do after your spouse passes are based on real emotions, real mistakes, and hard-earned insight from a man who has walked the lonely road of grief and found meaning again. Whether you’ve been married 10 years or 50, losing your life partner can feel like losing a part of yourself. But there is a way to move forward without forgetting them. This story is a soft-spoken, heartfelt reminder that even in the shadow of grief, life still has meaning, and you still have a place in it. This video is where elders share timeless truths, life stories, and emotional insights to help others navigate the second half of life with grace, purpose, and understanding."
Comments here:
Rudi and Corlea, "Hoor Jy My Stem"
Haunting song by South Africans Rudi Claase and Corlea Botha,
sung in Afrikaans with subtitles in English.
Losing someone we love, as we all have and will, made me think of this...
The Psyche, "Carl Jung: The Forbidden Law the Awakened Dare Not Break"
Full screen recommended.
The Psyche, "Carl Jung:
The Forbidden Law the Awakened Dare Not Break"
"What if awakening wasn’t just insight - but responsibility? What if becoming conscious carried a hidden law that, once broken, slowly dissolves meaning, stability, and inner coherence? In this profound psychological and philosophical exploration inspired by Carl Jung, we uncover the forbidden law that governs awakening - a law that many seekers unknowingly violate. Jung warned that consciousness without integration is not enlightenment, but danger. And those who awaken without honoring this inner law often suffer not because life is cruel, but because the psyche demands balance. This is not a motivational video. It is a confrontation. A psychological initiation into what awakening truly demands. If you are drawn to Carl Jung, shadow work, individuation, and the deeper ethics of consciousness, this video will challenge how you understand growth, spirituality, and responsibility."
Comments here:
"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...
Bill Bonner, "Shots Fired"
"Shots Fired"
by Bill Bonner
Rancho Santana, Nicaragua - "Poor Donald Trump. His approval ratings keep falling. Yahoo!: "Trump’s approval rating on his favorite issue just dropped to a record low." And The Hill: "Trump approval among independent voters hits new low: Poll."
And now that his ICE agents shot dead Renee Good, he may have lost another supporter. USA Today: "President Donald Trump said he hopes the father of Renee Nicole Good, the woman who was shot and killed by an immigration officer in Minneapolis, is still a “Trump fan” after his daughter’s death."
Meanwhile...comes word from Baltimore. “It’s freezing cold. And there must be three inches of ice on the car.” We wonder how the weather affects Mr. Trump. It’s probably not just the Big Freeze that breeds discontent, but the fact that POTUS insists that we should thank him for the balmy weather!
Denying the evidence of our eyes and ears has not seemed to work in Minneapolis. Americans had come to expect certain standards of decency...or at least plausible hypocrisy...from their leaders. For example, they believed they could lawfully and peacefully carry firearms without being accused of terrorism (the 2nd Amendment). They thought they could make their opinions heard without being roughed up on the streets (the 1st Amendment). They didn’t think they needed to carry their birth certificates - their ‘papers’ - when they went to ‘Home Deport’ (the 4th amendment). And if they were picked up by the police, they thought they’d get a chance to confront their accuser and dispute the charges against them (the 5th and 14th amendments). It must have come as a shock to millions of voters that the rights they thought had been solemnly granted by the Constitution...and faithfully protected for more than 200 years...could be swept away without warning, debate, or vote.
But Mr. Trump says this is a ‘war’ and the Constitution doesn’t apply. Team Trump quickly branded the Minnesota Martyrs as ‘domestic terrorists.’ But everyone could see they were not what we think of as ‘terrorists.’
The Mirror: "Trump has ‘lost control’...as Minnesota ICE deaths spark MAGA revolt and White House chaos."
The poor old coot. He went all the way to Switzerland to deliver a rambling discourse that must have been almost incomprehensible to those whose native language was not New York-ese. Old. Tired. His ratings must have fallen minute by minute, like those of Joe Biden in his last debate with Trump.
And there’s an old rule in theater. When you bring a cannon onto the stage, sooner or later you’ve gotta fire it. Mr. Trump arrived with his heavy artillery - he was going to invade Greenland! - but then he turned around and took his cannon home with him. It made him look weak.. The poor old fellow. He went to all the trouble of taking out Maduro in Venezuela...and warning Vice President ‘Delcy’ in front of the whole world. The New York Post: "Trump threatens Venezuela’s new leader Delcy Rodriguez with a fate worse than Maduro if she doesn’t work with US." And now, bold as brass, ‘Delcy’ gives him the finger. The Hill: "Venezuela acting president says she’s had ‘enough’ of orders from Washington."
Poor Mr. Trump. His Trump Coin has lost 98% of its value. And even his wife’s hagiographic documentary, Melania, is said to be disappointing. Newsweek: Market researcher Boxoffice has projected it will gross between $1 and $2 million in opening weekend ticket sales. Both figures are well below the $40 million Amazon paid for the title.
Poor Mr. Trump. So eager to prove he is not the hopeless, low-IQ bumbler from Queens that he appears to be...so eager for the adulation of the sophisticated Manhattan crowd...so ready to throw his weight around to prove something. Even if they never admire him, at least they will learn to fear him. Right?
And then, there is the economy. But the anti-dollar, anti-bubble element, gold, is selling for $5,533 this morning. Poor Mr. Trump. More to come..."
o
"Alan Shore Closing Argument
On The Abuses Of Government"
"Epic closing argument from ABC's "Boston Legal" that illustrates the erosion of our Constitutional liberties and abusive government. This can no longer be defined as a Republican versus Democrat issue. Both parties are equally responsible, as are we, the electorate, for we continue to vote the same quality of politicians into office over and over."
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)