Jeremiah Babe, 2/7/26
"The Everything Bubble:
Crypto, Housing And Paper Wealth At Risk"
Comments here:
So, we rise from the rubble...
StatCounter
Saturday, February 7, 2026
Musical Interlude: Dire Straits, "Private Investigations"
Dire Straits, "Private Investigations"
Lyrics:
"It's a mystery to me, the game commences,
For the usual fee, plus expenses.
Confidential information, it's in a diary.
This is my investigation, it's not a public inquiry.
I go checking out the reports, digging up the dirt.
You get to meet all sorts in this line of work.
Treachery and treason, there's always an excuse for it,
And when I find the reason, I still can't get used to it.
And what have you got at the end of the day?
What have you got to take away?
A bottle of whiskey, and a new set of lies,
Blinds on the windows and a pain behind the eyes.
Scarred for life, no compensation,
Private investigations..."
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Big, beautiful spiral galaxy NGC 1055 is a dominant member of a small galaxy group a mere 60 million light-years away toward the aquatically intimidating constellation Cetus. Seen edge-on, the island universe spans over 100,000 light-years, a little larger than our own Milky Way galaxy. The colorful, spiky stars decorating this cosmic portrait of NGC 1055 are in the foreground, well within the Milky Way. But the telltale pinkish star forming regions are scattered through winding dust lanes along the distant galaxy's thin disk.
With a smattering of even more distant background galaxies, the deep image also reveals a boxy halo that extends far above and below the central bulge and disk of NGC 1055. The halo itself is laced with faint, narrow structures, and could represent the mixed and spread out debris from a satellite galaxy disrupted by the larger spiral some 10 billion years ago."
The Poet: William Stafford, “Starting With Little Things”
“Starting With Little Things”
“Love the earth like a mole,
fur-near. Nearsighted,
hold close the clods,
their fine-print headlines.
Pat them with soft hands -
Like spades, but pink and loving; they
break rock, nudge giants aside,
affable plow.
Fields are to touch;
each day nuzzle your way.
Tomorrow the world.”
- William Stafford
o
"We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, "O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?" Answer. That you are here - that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play *goes on* and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?"
- "Dead Poets Society"
"Americans Are Living in Cars, Sheds, and Hotels - Here’s Why"
Full screen recommended.
Snyder Reports, 2/7/26
"Americans Are Living in Cars,
Sheds, and Hotels - Here’s Why"
Comments here:
"10 U.S. Cities Where Food Prices Are Hitting A Breaking Point For Families"
Full screen recommended.
Across The States, 2/7/26
"10 U.S. Cities Where Food Prices
Are Hitting A Breaking Point For Families"
"Food prices are rising fast in U.S. cities - and it’s changing the real cost of living for families. See how grocery inflation is affecting household budgets, food access, and everyday life in your city. In this video, I take a closer look at how higher grocery prices are reshaping daily expenses across major U.S. cities. We break down what’s driving food inflation, how it connects to wages, housing, transportation, and supply chains, and why many households feel more financial pressure at the checkout line than ever before. This is a straightforward, data-based look at how rising food costs affect families, local economies, and long-term affordability in American cities - without blaming people or pushing fear. If you follow cost of living trends, grocery prices, and the U.S. economy at the local level, this video will help you understand what’s really happening behind today’s higher food bills."
Comments here:
Dan, I Allegedly, "Nothing About This News Makes Sense Anymore"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 2/7/26
"Nothing About This News Makes Sense Anymore"
"Nothing about the news makes sense anymore - and today proves it. From insane crime stories and bizarre arrests to banks merging, layoffs piling up, and citizens doing things that sound fake but are 100% real, this episode is packed with stories you won’t hear anywhere else. These aren’t rumors, conspiracy theories, or social media nonsense - this is real news that feels stranger than fiction. We’re talking wild behavior, bad decisions, economic contradictions, and a system that looks completely upside down. The Dow is at record highs, people are getting laid off, taxes are rising, and common sense is nowhere to be found. Welcome to the timeline we’re living in. Let me know what you think in the comments."
Comments here:
"Sunspot AR4366 Final Strike! February 8 Aurora - Northern Lights Reach Seattle, Toronto, Boston"
Full screen recommended.
Horizon Feed, 2/7/26
"Sunspot AR4366 Final Strike!
February 8 Aurora - Northern Lights Reach Seattle, Toronto, Boston"
"After two weeks of relentless bombardment, sunspot region AR4366 has delivered its spectacular farewell performance. This video covers the complete story of the most active sunspot of Solar Cycle 25, which just produced ten X-class flares in nine days before rotating out of Earth-facing position.
The final CME impact arrived exactly on schedule, triggering stunning auroral displays across Seattle, Toronto, Boston, Chicago, and cities that rarely see northern lights. Green curtains danced overhead from the northern tier to unexpected southern latitudes as AR4366’s last Earth-directed plasma wall slammed into our magnetosphere.
We break down the incredible statistics: fifteen Earth diameters wide at peak, beta-gamma-delta magnetic complexity, over sixty significant eruptions including an X8.1 flare ranking as the third-largest of this solar cycle, and continuous radio blackouts affecting communications worldwide for two straight weeks.
Now solar rotation is carrying this beast away from Earth. The explosive growth has stopped. The region is shrinking. And any future flares will send CMEs harmlessly into space. But the story isn’t over - AR4366 could return on the sun’s eastern limb in late February if it survives its far-side transit.
This is space weather history in the making. From emergence to explosive peak to finale, this video documents the complete AR4366 chapter with scientific analysis, forecast verification, and what to expect next as we enter the calm after the storm. Perfect for aurora enthusiasts, space weather followers, and anyone wanting to understand the most intense solar activity period Solar Cycle ."
Comments here:
Adventures With Danno, "Is this The End of Dollar Tree?! Massive Price Increases!"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 2/7/26
"Is this The End of Dollar Tree?!
Massive Price Increases!"
Comments here:
"Is It True That Only Moral People Can Be Free?"
"Is It True That Only Moral People Can Be Free?"
by Paul Rosenberg
"People sometimes talk about freedom requiring morality and even religion. The famous quote along these lines is from John Adams, who wrote that the US constitution was made for “a moral and religious people,” going on to say that it’s unfit for any other kind. Nothing against Mr. Adams, but that passage is a mere assertion. It says nothing about why it might be true that freedom requires a moral populace. Such assertions really ought to be supported, and so far as I’ve seen, they haven’t been. Today I’ll address that void.
Civilization, Costs And Sustainability: Any group of people living together must maintain certain norms. If a civilization or society doesn’t suppress theft, murder, rape and so on, all the decent people will walk away from it, leaving behind a carnival of the damned. And so the question is how to keep bad conduct out of any given civilization. And there are fundamentally two ways to do this:
• Produce a populace that is safe and beneficial on the inside.
• Force people who are not internally reformed to behave well anyway.
And here’s the big difference between these two options:The first is cheap, requiring a minimal level of enforcement. It is a high-trust culture, featuring, as its fundamental units, people with civilization inside themselves.The second is immensely expensive, requiring massive enforcement. These are low-trust cultures. And since enforcement is its basic operation, enforcement will expand into one new area after another, until it chokes the society to death.
Civilizations of the first type may be overcome by violent neighbors, but aside from that, they are sustainable. Civilizations of the second type are not. They become predator-prey cultures, where armies of regulators overfeed, until the operation collapses. (Examples of the first type are the Minoans, Phoenicians, Hebrews, the Roman republic and Christian Europe. Examples of the second are the Roman Empire, the Athenian empire and the USSR.)
You can see the same thing at the family level: Healthy families treat each member as a distinct and valuable individual. Come what may, we know that we can trust members of our family. Despite our sometimes legitimate gripes, most families interact with consideration, or at least loyalty, and with no external enforcement required. We know, for example, that we can trust an older sibling (or aunt or grandparent) to take care of our infant. Because of such things, we can enjoy the benefits of high-trust living, where norms are held for internal reasons. Again, this embodies having civilization inside ourselves.
The alternative would be the enforcement of everything, which happens in unhealthy families, just as it does in troops of primates: Do what the leader says or be slapped down. You can also bear in mind that when we can’t trust others, we are forced into hyper-vigilance, with its debilitating mental overload. That’s not sustainable either.
So, we can either build civilization into ourselves and our children, or else we can attempt to enforce it, which leads inevitably to tyranny. While there can be any number of variations on these themes, and time-lags between one and the other, once you accept the model of paid enforcers making everyone obey rules created by a superior class, liberty is doomed. Mr. Adams, then, was correct in his implication that liberty requires morality, and the “cost of civilization” noted above is precisely why.
Okay, But Religion? Nothing we’ve said above establishes the necessity of religion. We’ve established that having civilization inside of us is necessary, but that’s all. That said, religion is a far more potent force in human affairs than enforcement. To make that clear, please consider this: People don’t commit suicide over breaking petty laws or stiffing the IRS. But they do commit suicide over their sins. Enforcements, then, threaten and affect the outer man. Religion affects the inner man, which is a far more powerful thing.
None of this is to say that religion is a pure and pristine thing. (Which is something religious people understand all too well.) But it is a powerful thing: It organizes and improves human interiors in ways that “do what we say or we’ll hurt you” never has and never will. And it’s of some interest that the religions of the West, Judaism and Christianity, differentiate themselves from the enforcement model quite overtly. This is often muddied in the present day, as religious leaders suck up to power, but as these religions formed it was quite otherwise.
Consider that Judaism was very clear that justice stood above the ruler (any ruler) and that God spoke to the humble, not to the mighty. Compare that to the assumptions of the enforcement model. And Christianity, in its early days, was fully committed to internal improvement and opposed to the enforcement of norms. Not only does St. Paul rage against people “going to law” with one another, but in another place he notes that “The law was not made for the righteous, but for the unrighteous.” In other words (and as he labors long to explain), those with goodness inside themselves are free from the law… are apart from the enforcement model.
More could be said here, but we’re straying from our primary point, which is this: When it comes to creating and sustaining a moral civilization, no one has found a better way than religion. Bear in mind that I’m not authorizing any specific religion, or even religion per se. I’m merely saying that to keep millions of people focused on morality, over generations and centuries, the only viable method we see in the historical record is religion. Could something better be found? Perhaps so, but we haven’t yet seen it in action.
A religious populace is a group of people who focus on the most fundamental issues, directly, and usually at least once per week. On top of that, the religions of the West, Judaism and Christianity, are centered around the emulation of, and approach to, a purely good deity. Whatever quibbles we may have with these religions (doctrine, implementation or whatever), the fact that they focus millions of people on virtues, and with great regularity, cannot be seriously challenged. Note also that enforcement-based civilizations inevitably oppose religions centered on internal improvement; or else they swallow them and turn them toward their own ends.
And So… In fairness, it must be said that the people who go about proclaiming the need of religion very often do it for self-serving reasons. That, however, is just a human problem: most of the people who proclaim the sanctity of enforcement do it for equally bad or worse reasons. Still, we’re left with two facts:
• Without pervasive morality, freedom cannot be built or sustained. (There can be a period of riding the coattails of previous generations.)
• Religion, while not essentially necessary, is the only long-term solution to the cost of civilization problem that we find in the historical record.
And so Mr. Adams was correct, even if he didn’t explain it: Consistent moral focus is what creates a moral populace. These will be more-moral or mostly-moral people, of course (not purely moral), but that’s enough to make freedom a practical arrangement."
o
Reality of course is another matter...
MORALS? This is 'Murica, fool! "Morals? We ain't got no morals.
We don't need no morals. I don't have to show you any stinking morals!"
Concept gleefully stolen from here:
"When That Day Comes..."
"If you had one last breath - what would you say? If you had one hour to use your limbs before you would lose the use of them forever - would you sit there on the coach? If you knew that you wouldn't see tomorrow who would you make amends with? If you knew you had only an hour left on this earth - what would be so pressing that you just had to do it, say it, or see it? Well there is something that I can guarantee - that one day you will have one day, one hour and one breath left. Just make sure that before that day that you have said, done and experienced everything that you dream of doing now. Do it now - that is what today is for. So pick up the phone and call an old friend that you have fallen out of touch with. Get out and run a mile and use your body and sweat. Seek out someone in your life to say you're sorry to. Seek someone In your life that you need to thank. Seek someone in your life that you need to express your feelings of love to. Then when that day comes you will be ok with it all."
- John A. Passaro
"If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make,
who would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting?"
~ Stephen Levine
"If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to
please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl."
- H. L. Mencken
"Thurber's Tail: How My Dog Brought Joy To My Elderly Dad"
How My Dog Brought Joy To My Elderly Dad"
by Tom Purcell
"My Lab puppy, Thurber, was born on Christmas Day, 2020 - the best Christmas blessing I ever received. But he bestowed even greater blessings on my mother and father. In his 87th year, my father was facing a series of health challenges. Waiting for the other shoe to drop - waiting for a middle-of-the night call to help pick him up from a fall - had become the norm. Visits to my parents’ house were becoming less joyful and more stressful as my dad, with limited mobility, needed help getting in and out of his chair and had to ask his kids to assist with the many daily tasks he used to do himself so effortlessly.
We gave my father endless support as his needs grew but his decline brought sadness, and the sadness began permeating my parents’ home, hitting us hard every time we entered the front door. That all changed the day I brought my puppy Thurber home.
Thurber's first visit: The day I picked Thurber up in Punxsutawney, Pa., my plan was to drive directly to my mom and dad’s house. I slipped into their house quietly through the garage and sneaked up the back steps. I knew they’d be in the family room watching an old movie. That’s what they often did in the afternoons - and, sure enough, that is what they were doing.
In I walked, a soft cuddly puppy in my arms - and the room lit up like a Christmas tree. The joy was immediate and, just like that, my mom and dad were transformed from their late 80s into giddy, 10-year-old children. I set Thurber on my father’s lap and the puppy was in his glory, his tail wagging wildly. Dogs always loved my father and sensed instantly, and correctly, that he was the alpha male in the room. The two played and cuddled a good long while as Thurber climbed all over my dad and found an especially comfortable spot between him and the arm of his recliner.
I brought Thurber over to my mom and she too was thrust into instant joy and affection. We never think of our parents as being children, but with a puppy in her arms my mother became a happy little girl. It was as if her father, who died when she was only 19, was watching over her again - providing her with the warmth and security he did so well in her childhood.
After a time, my mother set Thurber on the floor, where I lay enticing him to play with me. I laughed aloud as he jumped on me and showered me with his affection, but it was more than just puppy affection that brought me so much joy. It was wonderful to feel the undivided love and playfulness my puppy directed solely at me. Better yet, it made my mother and father happy to see their middle-aged son being made so happy by the puppy who would now be an integral part of his world.
An angel of joy: I stayed a few hours that Friday afternoon, the first time in months we were able to forget about my dad’s health woes - the first time we laughed in I don’t recall how long. The power of a puppy is transformative, and my transformation was just beginning then, and continues still.
There is a saying I came across in which God is talking to a puppy and he says, “I removed your wings so they won’t know you are an angel.” Well, on the day I brought Thurber home, he became an angel of joy to my father and mother.
I didn’t know that for the next year and a half I’d be able to bring him to my parents’ house for multiple visits that inevitably resulted in childlike happiness for us all - sadness left their home instantly every time Thurber visited. And when Thurber celebrated his first birthday on Christmas Day of 2021, we had the celebration in my parents’ home, and it was a grand event full of laughter and joy.
I didn’t know last Christmas that my father would leave us nine months later - he’d leave us a few days after we’d celebrated his 89th birthday. But I will treasure forever the many joyful visits Thurber and I made to my parents’ home, in which their difficult days were made so much brighter by a furry angel with hidden wings!"
Editor's note: This column is an excerpt from Tom Purcell’s book, “Tips from a New Dog Dad.” Read more chapters at ThurbersTail.com.
"We Gave Our All, Got Nothing; A Lesson After 79 Years"
Full screen recommended.
"We Gave Our All, Got Nothing;
A Lesson After 79 Years"
"I’m 79. My family spent their lives helping others… and yet, no one was there for them, but me. This isn’t theory - it’s the hard-earned wisdom of someone who’s lived long enough to see the patterns, mistakes, and truths we often overlook when we’re younger. If you’re hoping to save yourself years of frustration, this could help. This channel is about hearing directly from people over 60 who have lived long enough to know what matters most. We share stories of mistakes, regrets, successes, and the wisdom that comes from experience. Every week brings new perspectives, practical guidance, and reflections on life, love, family, career, and time. Learn from the experiences of others so you don’t have to make the same mistakes - and start living with intention today."
Comments here:
"Damned..."
“Damned is the soul that dies while the evil it committed lives on. And the most damned of all are those who see the evil coming for others and refuse to confront it. For it is not out of fear that heroes are born, but rather out of their selfless love that will not allow them safety bought from the torture, death, and degradation of others. It is better to die in defense of another than to live with the knowledge that you could have saved them but chose to do nothing. And to those who think that one person cannot make a difference, I say this… the deadliest tidal wave begins as an unseen ripple in a vast ocean. Live your life so that your integrity will motivate others to strive for excellence long after you’ve passed on, and know that no good deed or sacrifice, or offer of sincere friendship or love, is ever forgotten by the one who receives it.”
- Sherrilyn Kenyon
"It Is Starting! Layoffs Highest Since 2009, Job Openings Plummet And Bitcoin And Other Major Cryptocurrencies Are Crashing Hard"
by Michael Snyder
"Look out below, because the dam is beginning to break. Many of us were projecting that our economic problems would accelerate during the early portion of 2026, and that is precisely what has taken place. Employers are conducting brutal layoffs all over the nation, the number of job openings continues to decline, stores and restaurants are closing everywhere we look, and now cryptocurrencies are crashing hard. We haven’t seen anything like this since the Great Recession, and the worst is yet to come.
According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, so far in 2026 the number of announced layoffs is the highest that we have seen since 2009…"Employers announced 108,435 job cuts in January, the highest tally for the first month of the year since 2009, according to a report out Feb. 5, and a sign employers may be taking defensive steps against economic uncertainty.
The report, from global outplacement and executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, mirrored other data released Feb. 5 that suggested the labor market is cooling. Unemployment benefits claims rose in the most recent week, and job openings slipped in December. “Generally, we see a high number of job cuts in the first quarter, but this is a high total for January,” Andy Challenger said in a release accompanying his firm’s report."
We didn’t even experience a January this bad during the pandemic. Large companies are ruthlessly swinging the axe, and white collar workers are being hit particularly hard. And the fact that new applications for unemployment benefits are rising seems to confirm that the employment market is rapidly moving in the wrong direction…"Applications for jobless aid for the week ending Jan. 31 rose by 22,000 to 231,000 from the previous week, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That’s significantly more than the 211,000 new applications that analysts surveyed by the data firm FactSet had forecast." Applications for unemployment benefits are seen as representative of U.S. layoffs and are close to a real-time indicator of the health of the job market.
Those that have been laid off are discovering that it is not easy to find a new job in this very harsh environment. According to ABC News, the number of available job openings has dropped to the lowest level in over five years…"U.S. job openings fell to the lowest level in more than five years, another sign that the American labor market remains sluggish. The Labor Department reported Tuesday that vacancies fell to 6.5 million in December - from 6.9 million in November and the fewest since September 2020."
That sounds like a lot of job openings, but one recent study found that about a third of all job postings aren’t actually real. And most of the jobs that are actually available aren’t good paying jobs. These days, employers can be flooded with thousands of resumes for a single good paying job.
AI has been replacing white collar workers on a massive scale and that isn’t going to change any time soon. Could it be possible that many of us will soon end up working for AI? There is now a website where AI entities can hire humans to perform physical tasks for them…"The machines aren’t just coming for your jobs. Now, they want your bodies as well. That’s at least the hope of Alexander Liteplo, a software engineer and founder of RentAHuman.ai, a platform for AI agents to “search, book, and pay humans for physical-world tasks.” When Liteplo launched RentAHuman on Monday, he boasted that he already had over 130 people listed on the platform, including an OnlyFans model and the CEO of an AI startup, a claim which couldn’t be verified. Two days later, the site boasted over 73,000 rentable meatwads, though only 83 profiles were visible to us on its “browse humans” tab, Liteplo included. That sounds absolutely crazy. But this is the world that we live in now.
Yesterday, I posted an article entitled “Deep Cuts: We Are Witnessing A Tsunami Of Very Painful Layoffs And Closings In 2026”, and now we have learned that another major chain is planning widespread closures. Pizza Hut was once the most dominant pizza chain in the entire country, but now it intends to close somewhere around 250 more locations…"Pizza Hut will close about 250 locations in the U.S. through June as its parent company, Yum! Brands, moves to shut underperforming stores and reassess the brand’s long-term strategy, executives said. Yum! Brands Chief Financial Officer Ranjith Roy said during an earnings call that the closures will primarily target weaker-performing Pizza Hut restaurants as part of a broader effort to modernize the chain.
The closures are tied to the company’s “Hut Forward” initiative aimed at refreshing Pizza Hut’s marketing, updating its restaurant model and improving franchise performance. Yum! said it is also reviewing broader strategic options for Pizza Hut, signaling the changes could be part of a deeper reset for the brand."
My parents would often take me to Pizza Hut when I was a kid, and I really enjoyed their pizza in those days. So this is very sad news for me. Of course it isn’t just the real economy that is crashing. Cryptocurrencies are crashing too…"Digital assets, including bitcoin, have fallen deeper into the red as investors re-assess the practical utility of a token that has been championed not only as a hedge against inflation and macroeconomic uncertainties but also as an alternative to fiat currencies and traditional safe-havens such as gold."
That hasn’t panned out lately, since bitcoin peaked just north of $126,000 in early October. On Thursday, bitcoin was last down to $67,675, its lowest since since November 2024. The cryptocurrency broke below $70,000 earlier in the session Thursday and then the selling increased. The cryptocurrency is down 20% this week alone. We are witnessing a mad dash for the exits.
Overall, Bitcoin is now down more than 40 percent from last October’s peak… Bitcoin is acting weird. The world’s most famous cryptocurrency has tumbled 44% from its October peak, falling below $70,000 Thursday for the first time in 15 months. That decline is actually not unusual at all. Crypto is notoriously volatile, and it’s gone through numerous crashes that are bigger than this one. What’s strange is this: Bitcoin’s four-month slump has come at a time when, in theory, it had everything going for it. As I write this article, the price of Bitcoin is sitting at $65,187.99. Once it falls to $63,000 that will represent a 50 percent decline from last October. Other major cryptocurrencies have experienced even larger crashes. Needless to say, a lot of investors that got into cryptocurrencies recently are being wiped out.
We are also seeing turmoil in the stock market, bond prices are going nuts, and prices for precious metals have been flying all over the place. In so many ways, what we are witnessing reminds me so much of the Great Recession. The CFO of General Motors appears to be quite pessimistic as well, because he is saying that a major economic downturn is inevitably coming…"General Motors Co. is strategizing for an inevitable economic downturn by paring down dealer inventory and maintaining a cash safety net, Chief Financial Officer Paul Jacobson said Wednesday. Jacobson’s comments to a panel of auto insiders at the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank’s Detroit branch provide insight into industry leaders’ expectations for the broader economy, as well as reassurance that the Detroit company is taking steps to remain resilient in tougher times."
We all knew that this was going to happen. It was just a matter of time. The party wasn’t going to last forever. Anyone that thought that was just being delusional. Now a time of reckoning is upon us, and the pain that our society is about to experience will be absolutely excruciating."
"Lincoln’s Union Army Was More Evil Than the Israeli Defense Force"
"Lincoln’s Union Army Was More
Evil Than the Israeli Defense Force"
By Paul Craig Roberts
"Recently someone sent me a copy of Walter Brian Cisco’s book, "War Crimes Against Southern Civilians." Until I began reading this book, I had regarded Israel’s “defense force” as the ultimate in barbarism. The Israelis justify shooting mothers and babies in the head on the grounds that all Palestinians are terrorists, and that the babies will grow up to be terrorists and that the mothers will have more babies that will grow up to be terrorists, and that is better to kill the mothers and the babies before this happens. The Israelis acknowledge this, but if gentiles repeat it, they are dismissed as antisemites. So it remains knowledge that we know, but are not permitted to repeat.
Apparently, historians have the same policy toward the war crimes inflicted on Southern civilians by Lincoln’s Union Army that was nothing but an organized gang of plunderers, murderers, and rapists who make the Israeli “Defense Force” look like benevolent Christians.
Until Lincoln’s invasion of the Confederate States of America, war in the civilized Western world was confined to combatants. Lincoln broke the code of civilized warfare and conducted war against the civilian population of the South. The Americans and the British followed this practice in the war against Japan and Germany. The nuclear weapons of today mean that war is total and is conducted against all of humanity. Today we have this situation in which disagreement between the elites of two countries can result in the extermination of humanity.
The documented accounts in Cisco’s book of war against Southern civilians are horrific. In Missouri, for example, the populations of entire counties were forced on the penalty of death to leave their homes, businesses and properties and be relocated in Kansas. It was the precedent for Israel’s expulsion of Palestinians from Palestine.
In New Orleans, General Benjamin Butler, one of Lincoln’s many incompetent and hate-filled political appointees who had never commanded soldiers, responded to women who complained of the mistreatment of fathers, husbands, sons, and brothers by declaring the women “to be treated as a woman of the town plying her advocation.” Butler’s invitation to his troops to rape southern women astounded the British Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, who condemned it in a speech before the British Parliament.
Just as all Palestinians are terrorists, Southern men in towns under Union Army jurisdiction were shot or hung on the grounds that all Southern men were bushwackers aiding and abetting the Confederacy’s resistance.
When Union soldiers appeared in a Southern town, the town could expect to be totally looted and burnt to the ground. Cisco provides example after example. When Lincoln’s army appeared on a plantation, the black slave women were mercilessly raped for the failure of slaves to revolt against their masters, thereby supporting the South’s war effort.
Lincoln’s war against the South was a war of hate. Many Union officers and generals were indoctrinated products of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a propaganda publication that demonized the South as a society of slave owners mistreating slaves, as Union soldiers actually did. The hatred generated by Northern abolitionists resulted in the worst war crimes in human history. Corrupt historians busy at work feathering the official narrative have kept buried the true history of the so-called “Civil War” which was not a civil war, but an invasion of one country by another.
When I was growing up in the South we knew that our ancestors had suffered grievously at the hands of the Yankees, but we were left with monuments, such as statues of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, that told us we had made a stand against greed-driven aggression from the North. The North intended for the South to pay for its industrialization via the Morrill Tariff, and, therefore, would not allow the South to secede from the Union despite the South’s constitutional right to do so. But the statues have been taken down, erasing public references to the South’s resistance to invasion.
When the extraordinary war criminal Abraham Lincoln went to war against the Confederacy, he went to war against the American Constitution. It was Lincoln who destroyed the United States that was created by the founding fathers as a union of sovereign states who had under the Constitution most of the governing powers.
As Lincoln repeated over and over and over, his war against the South was a war to make the South pay the tariff necessary to finance the industrialization of the north. Lincoln never said that he went to war to free slaves, at least not during his war. The Emancipation Proclamation was a war measure designed to produce a slave rebellion that would result in Southern troops leaving the front lines and returning to their homes to protect their families. The proclamation only applied to slaves in areas under Southern control. As Lincoln’s Secretary of State noted, the proclamation did not apply to any areas under Union control.
Lincoln’s war against the South anticipated by a century the Israeli Defense Force’s war on Palestinians.
I have always thought that the collapse of American morality occurred in the 20th century, but Cisco’s book makes it clear that American morality collapsed during 1860-1865 and the following decade of Reconstruction during which everything in the South of value was stolen by the North. The South did not recover from its looting and gratuitous destruction until after World War II.
In view of the unprecedented harm Washington inflicted on Southern people, it is extraordinary that the military of the United States would not exist were it not for the voluntary enlistment of Southern men. These are men who know nothing of their history, or of the torment of their ancestors by the government to which they give their lives. If this is not the total failure of a historical consciousness, what is it?
In 1863 when General Robert E. Lee commander of the Army of Northern Virginia made the first Confederate invasion of Union territory, General Lee addressed his troops: “The duties exacted of us by civilization and Christianity are not less obligatory in the country of the enemy than in our own. The commanding general considers that no greater disgrace could befall the army, and through it our whole people, then the perpetration of the barbarous outrages upon the unarmed and defenseless and the wanton destruction of private property that have marked the course of the enemy in our own country. It must be remembered that we make war only upon armed men, and that we cannot take vengeance for the wrongs our people have suffered without lowering ourselves in the eyes of all whose abhorrence has been excited by the atrocities of our enemies, and offending against God, to whom vengeance belongeth.”
When Lee surrendered his starving and barefoot army that the Confederacy could no longer provision, Union general Philip Sheridan wanted to massacre the surrendering soldiers and had to be admonished by Union general Grant. As soon as the Confederacy was conquered, the Republican government in Washington sent the Union war criminals Sheridan and Tecumseh Sherman to destroy the Plains Indians. The buffalo herds were destroyed in order to deprive the Indians of food, and the Republicans used germ warfare against the starving Indians. Strange, isn’t it, that historians can be so utterly corrupt to claim the Union fought a war in behalf of blacks, and as soon it was over, turned to the destruction of another people of color.
A Union soldier from Illinois wrote home that the Union soldiers had so abused the Southern blacks that “many of them have learned to hate the Yankees as much as our Southern brethren do. The army is becoming awfully depraved. How the home folks will ever be able to live with them after the war, is, I think, something of a question. If we don’t degenerate into a nation of thieves, it will not be for lack of the example set by the Union army.”
The only civilization that existed in North America in the 19th century was in the South, and the evil war criminal Abraham Lincoln destroyed it. And the monument to Lincoln has not been taken down."
"Are You Not Entertained?"
"Are You Not Entertained?"
by Mark Manson
"In David Foster Wallace’s classic novel, "Infinite Jest", there’s a movie that is so entertaining that anyone who views even a small portion of it will give up all desire to do anything else in life in order to keep watching. Throughout the book, characters who see it give up family, friends, careers, even eating and sleeping, just to continue watching the film.
The overarching theme of "Infinite Jest" is that it’s possible, both as an individual and as a society, to be too entertained. And much of the book’s 1000+ pages are about the absurdity of such a society. Wallace wrote Infinite Jest in the early 1990s, a time when televisions were just starting to get dozens of channels, news was being broadcast 24 hours per day, video games were taking over the minds of young kids, and blockbuster movies were earning unheard of amounts of cash at the box office each summer.
At the time, Wallace had just gone through a recovery program for alcohol and drug abuse. Yet, despite getting clean for the first time in his adult life, he noticed something strange: he couldn’t stop watching television.
Wallace seemed to understand that as media multiplies, so does competition for attention. And as competition for our attention multiplies, content is no longer optimized for beauty or art or even enjoyment - but rather for its addictive qualities. When there are two TV channels, the channel doesn’t really have to worry about you clicking away, they just make the best show they can. But when there are 200 channels, suddenly that channel must do everything it can to keep you watching as long as possible. Wallace saw this problem coming decades in advance, and with his personal understanding of addiction based on his recovery experience, he seemed to grasp the addict culture we’d all soon be a part of.
Today, we regularly mistake this addictive media for entertainment. There’s some psychological function deep in our brains that tells us, “Well, I just spent six hours watching this show, I must like it a lot.” When, no, its script is actually a mediocre piece of hot trash and you’re being manipulated by cliffhangers and bad writing for hours on end to keep watching. The same way you get hijacked into scrolling through social media way more than you’d actually like to, your brain gets hijacked to watch “just one more episode” to find out if so-and-so really died or not.
In social media, this “it’s addictive, but I also kinda don’t like it” phenomenon has been recognized and discussed to death. But in other areas of media and entertainment, we haven’t caught on yet.
Streaming services and Hollywood are the obvious culprits here. How many more mediocre Marvel Universe movies do we need to prove this point? How many more bad Star Wars spin-offs? How many bad Netflix shows with every episode ending in a cliffhanger? Everyone complains about how Hollywood doesn’t have any new ideas anymore. Well, there’s a reason nothing new is getting made: endlessly adding content to the same well-worn storylines keeps people hooked. Constantly playing to people’s sense of nostalgia and remixing classic genres is a risk-free way of guaranteeing viewership.
Music is in a similar place. For a while now, market research on music streaming services has found that people spend more time listening to old music instead of new music and the trend on this is in the wrong direction. Music lovers are voting with their mouse buttons and those mouse buttons are going back in time, not forward.
Veteran music producer Rick Beato has made a number of videos lately talking about how popular music the past few years has gotten simplified to the point where it’s one or two chords and a single melody, repeated over and over for two or three minutes. No chorus. No bridge. No variation. No build-up or release. Just an endless hodgepodge of catchy sounds repeated, one after another.
Part of this is because the economics of music streaming is such that artists have incentive to not create the best songs or albums possible, but rather to create as many small, simple songs that prevent you from clicking away as possible. It’s created an artistic environment where it’s better to have 200 decent, listenable songs rather than 20 brilliant songs.
A similar problem plagues YouTube, where the biggest creators rack up millions of views doing inane things like opening a thousand Amazon boxes or giving away cars to their friends, over and over and over again. On the one hand, it’s not that interesting. On the other, you find yourself mindlessly clicking on the next video, and the next, and the next, and the next.
When everything is measured in terms of engagement, content will be optimized for addictiveness. Not entertainment or artistic merit. Not intellectual substance or creativity. Pure, plain addictiveness. That means we, the consumers, get a higher quantity of more predictable, less innovative, less interesting art in our lives.
In the realm of art and music and film and television, this is really annoying and frustrating. It requires each of us to sift longer and harder to find something new and great. But where this optimization for addictiveness gets dangerous is another part of culture that I want to talk about… *takes a deep breath*... politics.
I’ve written before about how most people in the United States agree about most things, yet somehow our political parties and government continually find ways to do things most people don’t like. Many pundits have attributed this inconsistency between the public’s desires and the government’s actions with theories about the primary system or entrenched special interests or polarizing social media.
But what about this? Politicians - like Hollywood executives, pop stars, and YouTube creators - are incentivized to generate more engagement. Not great results. Just more engagement, all the time. Therefore, their actions are not optimized to produce smart policy or common sense bills or a shrewd compromise, but instead to grab and hold our attention as long as humanly possible.
David Foster Wallace saw this coming too. The president of the United States in "Infinite Jest" is a former pop singer who obsesses over his television ratings, thinks policy discussions are too boring and considers war with Canada based on how good his photo ops would be in military camo fatigues. In the book, terrorist groups run rampant, as the battlefield is not for territory or resources, but for eyeballs and headlines.
Ultimately, nobody can manage our attention but ourselves. We can get mad at Netflix or Spotify or the Senate. But ultimately, these systems are loose reflections of our own attention habits shining back at us. Change our attention, change the systems. There’s an old saying that people “vote with their feet.” Well, today you need to vote with your eyeballs and mouse clicks. Don’t watch the next episode of that poorly written piece of garbage that keeps teasing you with characters almost dying. Don’t listen to the next half-assed album with 27 different two-minute tracks. Don’t click on clickbait. Don’t mindlessly scroll through TikTok and YouTube, rewarding people for attention-grabbing stunts. And don’t watch or respond to politicians and pundits who try to blather on and on about pet issues but never actually get anything done.
In the chaotic, entertaining mess of "Infinite Jest", there is the story of Don Gately, a recovered alcoholic who would literally rather die than relapse into his substance abuse. When I first read the book years ago, Gately’s storyline seemed out of place. Amid all this futuristic mayhem of short attention spans and insanely addictive entertainment and neurotic teenagers, Gately’s narrative seemed like an oddly conventional story of personal triumph over one’s demons and an ability to sacrifice oneself for others.
What I realize now is that Wallace wrote the character of Don Gately as an example of what we would all need to aspire to become: recovered addicts. People who can cut themselves off cold turkey, who can turn off the drug. People who can manage their own attention and not fall victim to endless streams of mindless engagement. People who can step above the fray of political addiction and demand substance over bluster. And not just for our own sake. For everyone else’s as well."
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Deeply concerned Americans, always fully aware and truthfully informed by their never-lying government and Main Stream Media about current economic, political and social issues, react as expected...
"Inside the Mind of the Outsider Who Sees Too Much"
Full screen recommended.
"Inside the Mind of the Outsider Who Sees Too Much"
"Ever felt like you don’t belong because you see too much? This video dives deep into the psychology of the lone wolf personality, those who walk alone, think too much, and feel even more. We explore the fine line between genius and madness, early childhood isolation, the cost of extreme independence, and the shadow side of being hyper self-aware. Whether you’re into psychology, philosophy, or just trying to understand your own mind, this video will hit something deep."
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"A Dangerous Place..."
"If I were to remain silent, I'd be guilty of complicity."
- Albert Einstein
"Wrong is wrong, even if everyone is doing it.
Right is right even if only you are doing it."
- Author Unknown
"A Lot Of People..."
“When science discovers the center of the universe,
a lot of people will be disappointed to find they are not it.”
- Bernard Baily
Friday, February 6, 2026
"AR4366 Dying Down? What Happens When Monster Sunspot Rotates Away"
Full screen recommended.
Horizon Feed, 2/6/26
"AR4366 Dying Down?
What Happens When Monster Sunspot Rotates Away"
"The massive sunspot region AR4366 has been captivating solar observers for weeks, but what happens as this monster active region rotates away from Earth-facing view? In this video, we explore the lifecycle of AR4366, one of the most impressive sunspot regions in recent years, and discuss what occurs when such powerful solar features move to the far side of the Sun. As AR4366 appears to be weakening or "dying down," we examine whether this is a natural decline in activity or simply the result of our changing perspective as the Sun rotates. Understanding sunspot evolution helps us better predict space weather and its potential impacts on Earth's technology and communications."
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"Employers Just Announced The Most Job Cuts Since 2009"
Full screen recommended.
Michael Bordenaro, 2/6/26
"Employers Just Announced
The Most Job Cuts Since 2009"
Comments are:
o
Full screen recommended.
Across The States, 2/6/26
"Why 2026 Layoffs Look Different -
U.S. Companies Quietly Cut Millions Of Jobs"
"U.S. job cuts are rising fast - and 2026 could be far worse than most workers expect.Here’s why layoffs are spreading across major U.S. companies and what it means for your future. In this video, we look at 10 U.S. companies expected to make some of the biggest job cuts in 2026. You’ll see what is pushing employers to reduce staff, slow hiring, and quietly reshape their workforces. We explain how higher costs, automation, weaker consumer demand, and growing debt are changing decisions inside large companies - and how those choices affect workers, families, and local communities across the country. Whether you’re worried about your job, planning a career move, or simply trying to understand where the U.S. economy is heading, this breakdown is designed to be clear, practical, and easy to follow. This is not just about layoffs - it’s about how work in America is changing."
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"This Silent Shift by Americans Is About to Trigger More Layoffs"
Full screen recommended.
Snyder Reports, 2/6/26
"This Silent Shift by Americans
Is About to Trigger More Layoffs"
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"Millions Will Freeze As Electric Bills Soar $1000 And Mass Shutoffs Begin"
Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 2/6/26
"Millions Will Freeze As Electric Bills
Soar $1000 And Mass Shutoffs Begin"
"Americans are facing an unprecedented utility bill crisis this winter, with families across the country receiving heating bills over $1,000 – and in some cases over $2,000. This isn't just about higher costs anymore; it's about families being forced to choose between staying warm and paying rent, putting children's safety at risk. In this video, I react to real TikTok clips from people sharing their shocking utility bills and the impossible situations they're being put in. From Maryland families getting $1,300 electric bills to North Carolina residents seeing their Duke Energy bills jump from $200 to $1,000 in a single month, this crisis is hitting working families hard across multiple states.
What makes this even more frustrating is that many of these rate increases aren't just about winter weather or aging infrastructure – they're connected to the massive power demands of AI data centers that are being built in communities nationwide. While tech companies profit from AI, regular families are subsidizing the enormous energy costs through their residential utility bills.
This isn't just about people complaining about higher bills – this is about a system that's failing working families while prioritizing corporate profits. When a high school student's teachers have to raise $3,000 just to get their family's heat turned back on during freezing temperatures, something is fundamentally broken.
What's most concerning is the safety aspect. We're seeing families resorting to propane heaters, space heaters, and other potentially dangerous methods to stay warm because they can't afford their regular heating bills. Children are going to school from cold homes, and parents are having to make impossible choices about basic necessities.
The solution exists – renewable energy is now the cheapest form of electricity available – but policies continue to favor fossil fuel industries while discouraging clean energy investments that could actually bring costs down for consumers.
Have you noticed your utility bills skyrocketing this winter? Are there data centers being built in your area? Share your experience in the comments below. If this video helped you understand what's happening with energy costs, please like and subscribe for more content about the real issues affecting everyday Americans."
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"The Tale of Mr. Scrap Metal"
"The Tale of Mr. Scrap Metal"
by Joel Bowman
“The years teach much which the days never know.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, from his essay "Experience" (1844)
Buenos Aires, Argentina - “After all these years, I am still amazed by the minds of men. I wish, just for one moment, that I too could think of absolutely nothing.” At 92-years young, Ana is wise beyond her years. She and her husband, Luis (who will celebrate his 94th lap around the sun next week) called in for coffee and cookies yesterday. Apparently unaware that “gender is a social construct,” Ana explicated freely on the differences between the sexes.
“I sometimes ask Luis what he’s thinking and do you what he says to me? ‘Oh, nothing dear.’ How I would love to experience such peace of mind! Alas, it’s not for us. We women are different,” she nodded knowingly to our own dear wife. “We can’t just ‘switch off’ like men can. Our brains are wired differently. We always have a million things going on. Now, whether or not all these thoughts are important, I am not at liberty to say...”
Knowing better than to take that bait, Luis turned instead to his favorite subject, his beloved Argentina, leaving the fairer sex to their busy minds.
The Tale of Mr. Scrap Metal: “I see that you’re following along with our great experiment here,” he began, making no attempt to hide the excitement in his eyes. “I have great hope for the future. And it grows everyday. Did you see the latest story in the newspapers, about Don ChatarrÃn?” We confessed we had not and that, in any case, we would prefer to hear it from our dear friend instead.
“That’s the nickname Milei gave to the country’s biggest steel tycoon, Paolo Rocca. It means ‘Mister Scrap Metal.’ I could hardly believe it when I read it, but this president is a different kind of man. He’s not really a politician, you know. But I’ll get to that...
This Señor Rocca, ‘Mister Scrap Metal,’ is the head of Techint, a large multinational based here in Argentina. They began when I was still in my twenties, beginning my career as an engineer. They won their first big contract to build an oil pipeline down in Patagonia, in Comodoro Rivadavia. That was back in forty-nine, I recall, not long after Peron came to power...
That was a different time, you must realize,” Luis continued. “Perón was a nationalist and a socialist, as you know, and in the very worst ways. His big three ideas, las tres banderas [the three flags], as he called them, were ‘political sovereignty,’ ‘economic independence’ and ‘social justice.’ A lot of his ideas he borrowed from his hero, Mussolini. People talk about these ideas today as though they are something new, as if Peron and men of his sort had not spent the past eighty years discrediting them, but that’s another issue...
Perón was a very charismatic man and a highly skilled orator, two characteristics that are very dangerous when found in a politician. He could charm a crowd into believing the most absurd things imaginable. And so he did. Regarding his so-called ‘economic independence,’ Peron promoted the idea of ‘import substitution industrialization,’ which sounds marvelous, provided one has no idea of how an economy actually works..."
Argentina First (to Last): “The basic premise – clear, simple... and wrong – was that Argentina could reduce its ‘dependency’ on foreign nations by manufacturing here at home what it had previously imported from abroad, even if it had to do so at higher cost to the consumer, which was almost always the case. Naturally, people don’t want to pay more for inferior goods, so the government would have to do what it does best: force them to do so... all in their own interest, of course, and in service of the ‘common good.’ So Perón levied tariffs and imposed strict quotas on imports, making them less competitive domestically. Thus, according to the big man’s ‘thinking,’ would home-grown industry be protected from the predations of evil foreign powers, who were really just our trading partners. In the meantime, our local manufacturers would be given ‘room to grow and flourish,’ delivering us a bounty of ‘Argentine First’ products. So went the idea, anyway...
The result was so predictable, so obvious, that almost nobody saw it coming. Far from delivering quality products for cheaper prices, local producers took advantage of the protections and raised prices to just below that of the artificially inflated prices imposed on imported goods. Meanwhile, free from outside competition and enjoying a captive market at home, our once-proud industry grew slack and lazy, such that the quality of our goods declined to the miserable state we find them in today. Innovation stalled. The much anticipated economic boom never materialized. Quite the reverse. Indeed, many of the companies that managed to survive at all did so because of tariff protections, not because they built better products. And so, Argentines who had happily marched along behind Perón’s fantastical ideas suddenly found their cost of living skyrocketing, while their store shelves were either stocked with products of embarrassingly poor quality, or left altogether empty. And that’s just for starters...
Luis shook his head, as though baffled even now by how such a cruel fate came to pass...“It was apparent even from the beginning that this was not going to work,” he went on, “at least not the way Perón had intended. For one thing, local industry still needed to import goods. Machinery, tools, spare parts, industrial inputs of various kinds and so on. Now these were suddenly much more expensive, a cost that was duly passed on to the customer. As local industry lagged, the state involved itself ever more, spending enormous sums to subsidize and prop up domestic production. Since our exports could not keep pace, and dollars were scarce as a result, the state took to printing money to cover its ever expanding expenses. The expanding monetary base meant wage-price spirals and persistent fiscal deficits. The government naturally responded to this disaster by turning it into a catastrophe, enacting currency controls and printing even more local currency. That’s when inflation, which had been a cyclical inconvenience, like a seasonal cold, turned into a chronic illness. Then came the most renewable resource in all of Argentina’s politics: corruption..."
Indian Giving: “With practically all power in the country now centralized unto the state, the economy became less about which businesses produced the most valuable goods and services and all about which industry was the most politically connected. Lucrative contracts were awarded not to the best companies, but to insiders who knew how to rig the system, to pay off the right people, to grease the right palms. The government was entongados [in cahoots], as we say, with the heads of powerful unions, the syndicalistas. In the end, the only people that benefited from Perón’s ‘economic independence’ were those working the system, the corrupt politicians and their corporatist cronies.
Which brings us back to Mr. Scrap Metal. When a large contract was offered for a major pipeline project down in the Vaca Muerta oilfields, Rocca probably thought he was a certainty. That his products, his steel pipes, are not the best in terms of price and quality would not have mattered in the past. He knows the right people in government and has the right political connections that such things were not a primary consideration. According to the papers, Rocca’s bid was 40 percent higher than the competition, an insult to the very concept of market competition...
You must imagine his surprise, then, when his company lost the contract – part of a $15 billion LNG project – to an Indian firm [Welspun Corp.]. It was the first major contract the firm has lost in over 70 years, since way back in the Perón era. This is a new way forward for us. A repudiation of the idea that the state alone knows what’s best and not the people, that it should dictate markets from the top down, that it should plan our economy and our lives. As we’ve seen here, that only ends in disaster. Not many people are around today who still remember when this all protectionist nonsense began. I’m glad to see it being repealed with my own eyes...
“Don ChatarrÃn,” Luis laughed again. “Remember Juan Perón. He was the politician. He was the one who set this country on its disastrous course. As for Señor Milei, he’s no politician. And thank goodness for that!”
We turned back to the ladies, deep in their own conversation, just in time to hear Ana declare, “We have only one rule in the family chat: no politics.” Seeing their menfolk once more attentive, Ana turned her smiling expression to Luis and asked what the two of us had been talking about all this time. To which her husband of seventy-something happy years replied, “Oh, nothing dear.”
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