So, we rise from the rubble...
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Wednesday, April 12, 2023
"Humanity..."
"Humanity, I love you because when you're down
and out you pawn your intelligence for a drink."
- e.e. cummings
"Ukraine Firepower v Russian Firepower w/Scott Ritter"
Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 4/12/23
"Ukraine Firepower v Russian Firepower w/Scott Ritter"
Comments here:
"Rent is Coming Due"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly 4/12/23
"Rent is Coming Due"
"It is estimated that there are over $6 trillion in commercial real estate loans in the United States. The problem is that trillions of dollars is about to come due over the next few years."
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"Major Price Increases At Walmart! This Is Getting Ridiculous! What Now?"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danny, 4/12/23
"Major Price Increases At Walmart!
This Is Getting Ridiculous! What Now?"
"In today's vlog we are at Walmart and are noticing massive price increases! We are here to check out skyrocketing prices, and a lot of empty shelves! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"
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"Russia Just Hacked NATO; F-22s On Alert; N. Korea Dark For 5 Days; Global Nuke Drills"
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 4/11/23
"Russia Just Hacked NATO; F-22s On Alert;
N. Korea Dark For 5 Days; Global Nuke Drills"
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Tuesday, April 11, 2023
"Walmart Warning! Brace For Impact - Don't Worry About Recession, Worry About A Depression"
Jeremiah Babe, 4/11/23
"Walmart Warning! Brace For Impact -
Don't Worry About Recession, Worry About A Depression"
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Gerald Celente, "Danger Ahead, Banking Sector Crisis"
Gerald Celente, 4/11/23
Strong language alert!
"Danger Ahead, Banking Sector Crisis"
"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present facts and truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for what’s next in these increasingly turbulent times."
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Musical Interlude: Dan Fogelberg, "Nether Lands"
Full screen recommended.
Dan Fogelberg, "Nether Lands"
"A Look to the Heavens"
“This colorful skyscape features the dusty, reddish glow of Sharpless catalog emission region Sh2-155, the Cave Nebula. About 2,400 light-years away, the scene lies along the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy toward the royal northern constellation of Cepheus.
Astronomical explorations of the region reveal that it has formed at the boundary of the massive Cepheus B molecular cloud and the hot, young, blue stars of the Cepheus OB 3 association. The bright rim of ionized hydrogen gas is energized by the radiation from the hot stars, dominated by the bright blue O-type star above picture center. Radiation driven ionization fronts are likely triggering collapsing cores and new star formation within. Appropriately sized for a stellar nursery, the cosmic cave is over 10 light-years across.”
"Housing Market Faces Nightmare Scenario As Sales Collapse 74 Percent"
Full screen recommended.
"Housing Market Faces Nightmare Scenario
As Sales Collapse 74 Percent"
By Epic Economist
"Anxiety over a housing market disaster continues to rise all over America. Home sales are falling precipitously, double-digit price drops are already being reported in many major U.S. cities, and foreclosure rates are going through the roof right now. All that is thanks to the spike in mortgage rates that is causing an affordability crisis far worse than economists anticipated. Demand is cratering faster than ever before, which led a famous Big Short investor to warn about a “danger that households could come to lose a significant proportion of their property value overnight again”.
Existing home sales have gone down consistently every month for an entire year. The decline was fueled by recession fears, and more recently, by a backdrop of bank collapse and financial turmoil. It’s all creating a negative feedback loop between buyers and sellers, says Selma Hepp, chief economist at CoreLogic. Now, with rates hoovering 7% again, the cracks are growing wider in the U.S. housing market. In fact, Black Knight data shows that Between March 2021 and March 2023, total mortgage originations fell by 83%. Refinancings - which were more than 70% of the total at the beginning of the period - dropped by a stunning 95%, as soaring interest rates killed demand.
In March, U.S. home prices logged a ninth-straight monthly decline. In the eight months from June 2022 to February 2023, existing home prices fell 12%, from $413,800 to $363,000. S&P Market Intelligence data shows that 19 of the 25 major cities it analyzes registered a decline in home prices this year.
Currently, only 18% of homes listed for sale are affordable for the typical U.S. household, meaning that a buyer’s monthly mortgage payment is 30% or less of the buyer’s income.The last time the U.S. housing market looked so frothy was back in 2005 to 2007. Then home values crashed, with disastrous consequences, Seeking Alpha’s financial analyst Logan Kane highlights. The speed of the deterioration in fundamentals could be catastrophic. Conditions are becoming so extreme that even Goldman Sachs is admitting that 4 major cities are already facing a 2008-style housing crash, according to a note to clients obtained by the New York Post.
Meanwhile, ATTOM found that foreclosure filings rose by 36% in February. For 21 consecutive months, the rate of foreclosures has been surging all across the U.S. Over the past twelve months, there was a 115% increase in foreclosure fillings and a 67% rise in the number of properties repossessed by lenders. Adding fuel to the fire, in the last week of March, an $18.7 billion decline in real estate loans was recorded, but that was just a continuation of the $19.2 billion drop in the previous week. Combining the two weeks adds to a $37.8 billion plunge in real estate loans in the second half of March.
This is a very worrying number because it is the biggest since the collapse of the country’s then-second largest subprime lender, New Century Financial in March 2007 was the catalyst that ushered in the global financial crisis, and within the year led to the collapse of Bear Stearns and, eventually, Lehman. The pressure is on. It’s safe to say that the U.S. housing bubble won’t live for another year, and the coming months will be decisive for the market as prices continue to collapse. We have never seen so many similarities to the catastrophic event that rocked the world’s financial markets and plunged us into the worst economic recession in history. Only this time, we’re headed to an ever bigger downturn that will have disastrous consequences for all of us."
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Bill Bonner, "Under Attack!
"Under Attack!
Kamikaze dive bombers swarm the Calchaqui Valley"
By Bill Bonner
San Martin, Argentina - "Yesterday, for no apparent reason, our computer stopped working. It wouldn’t turn on. We pressed the button…we held it down…we punched it. We prayed. We rocked the computer back and forth…caressed it tenderly…then gave it a whack and made sure it was fully charged…But what could we do?
The tools of the modern age are black boxes. You can’t ‘open the hood.’ You can’t tinker with a silicon chip. You can’t do anything. If they don’t work, you are SOL. Back in the ‘60s…if something didn’t work, we would take it apart. In old cars, for example, you could disassemble the carburetor, clean it…and put it back together. So too, the ‘points’ could be bent a little…cleaned with steel wool…and returned to service. Spark plugs, same story. And you could take one out and see for yourself if it was sparking.
Then, you checked to see if the fuel was getting to the engine. Was the fuel pump working? It was easy to find out…just disconnect the fuel line and turn the key…the fuel should come spurting out. Were the filters clogged? Just take a look. If you had fuel…and you had spark…something was going to happen.
No Spark: But yesterday, we had neither fuel nor spark. Well, we didn’t know what we didn’t have; it just didn’t work…and there was nothing we could do about it. The tech fates were clearly against us. For not only did our computer refuse to do its job, the airwaves were suddenly empty too. No signal. No signal, no phone. No phone, no internet. No internet, no contact with the outside world. We had been ‘canceled,’…disappeared from active life on the worldwide web.
What could we do, but rejoin the real world? We went for a walk. Antonio was feeding the calves. The ‘chango’ (young man) who usually does the job was occupied with the cattle on the other side of the river. Antonio, the foreman, had to do it himself.
The rolls of hay are tightly wound. So, you have to dig at them with a pitchfork to break some of the hay off, then you put it into the concrete trough. It’s a lot of work, and it must be done twice a day.
“Why not just put the bales in the corral and let the calves eat them that way; that’s what we do with the horses?” “The vet says it is better this way. We don’t want the calves using their energy to fight with each other. The strong ones will circle the bales and the weak ones – the ones that need it – won’t get anything to eat. They gain almost a kilogram per day…if we feed them right. And then we can sell them.”
We continued our walk…kicking up dust…over a couple of small hills… picking our way through the thorns…and then, on a bluff not far from the main house, overlooking the valley, was what we were looking for -- the wreck of a modest dwelling.
We finished the little chapel on this visit. All that remained was the floor. And for that, we made a cross of super-hard quebracho…laid down a border of stones, set on end…and then filled in with flattish stones in cement. The effect is not as elegant as we had hoped. The sand was too coarse and left us with a gritty, uneven surface. No matter. We will either get to like it…or put a thin level of pure cement on top, profiled around the stones, next year. But now, we are ready for another project.
Sleeping Rough: When the family came this year, we were a little short on space. One couple…two sons and a grandson…a family friend – all came at the same time. And the nearest hotel is a half-an-hour away. If any more had come they would have had to sleep outside. So…on to the bunkhouse!
Bunkhouse?
We went to explore. Trashy. Holes in the roof. Bent beams. Crumbling adobe bricks. Dirt floor. Perfect! A nice place to turn into a bunkhouse for grandchildren. We have 7 of them so far…with another scheduled for the 21st of April. (Today, we begin our trip back to Dublin to lend support to the family.)
Poking our head into one of the rooms, we spied a huge, black growth on the wall. We were still wondering what it was…moving closer to the blob, which was about the size of a kitchen stove… when we realized we had made a mistake. There was a loud buzzing noise…and we were soon under attack. The bees came at us like kamikaze dive bombers…swooping down…grazing our cheeks and then circling around for another attack.
In a flash, we were on the move…followed by a swarm of bees. We flashed across the yard, like the British at the Battle of New Orleans, we ran through the briars and we ran through the brambles… using our hat as a rear guard, swatting at them to keep them away. We dove between two lines of wire fencing and then ran down the hill.
The bees kept after us; we remembered that we kept an emergency shot of epinephrine in the pickup. But none stung. It was as if they were just trying to run us off…to warn us not to come back. We had run about 50 yards, swinging at the air around us…until the last bee finally called off the chase.
First order of business: as soon as the temperature drops…the bees have to go. Then, when we return next March, we can get to work…preferably with at least one sturdy grandchild to help. We’ll keep it simple. Rustic. Authentic. Two bunks in one room. Two in the other. Stone floors. Unclad adobe walls. Cane on the roof, covered by mud. A bathroom. A little solar electricity. Piece of cake. But that is for next year.
With heavy hearts, we leave the valley this morning. Its bright sun…its eccentrics…its challenges – we will miss them all. We are headed for Buenos Aires. There, we will meet our old friend, Doug Casey, before leaving for Dublin. Stay tuned..."
"Something Like Reverence..."
"When I see the blind and wretched state of men, when I survey the whole universe in its deadness, and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in this corner of the universe without knowing who put him there, what he has to do, or what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying desert island, who wakes up quite lost, with no means of escape. Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair."
- Blaise Pascal
Ahh, but it does...
○
“When the pain of leaving behind what we know outweighs the pain of embracing it, or when the power we face is overwhelming and neither flight nor fight will save us, there may be salvation in sitting still. And if salvation is impossible, then at least before perishing we may gain a clearer vision of where we are. By sitting still I do not mean the paralysis of dread, like that of a rabbit frozen beneath the dive of a hawk. I mean something like reverence, a respectful waiting, a deep attentiveness to forces much greater than our own.”
- Scott Russell Sanders
Folks, I fear our time for such reverence is here.
God help us, God help us all...
"There Are Times"
"There Are Times"
"There are times the lies get to me, times I weary of battering myself against the obstacles of denial, hatred, fear-induced stupidity, and greed, times I want to curl up and fall into the problem, let it sweep me away as it so obviously sweeps away so many others. I remember a spring day a few years ago, a spring day much like this one, only a little more sun, and warmer. I sat on this same couch and looked out this same window at the same ponderosa pine.
I was frightened, and lonely. Frightened of a future that looks dark, and darker with each passing species, and lonely because for every person actively trying to shut down the timber industry, stop abuse, or otherwise bring about a sustainable and sane way of living, there are thousands who are helping along this not-so-slow train to oblivion. I began to cry.
The tears stopped soon enough. I realized we are not so outnumbered. We are not outnumbered at all. I looked closely, and saw one blade of wild grass, and another. I saw the sun reflecting bright off the needles of pine trees, and I heard the hum of flies. I saw ants walking single file through the dust, and a spider crawling toward the corner of the ceiling. I knew in that moment, as I've known ever since, that it is no longer possible to be lonely, that every creature on earth is pulling in the direction of life- every grasshopper, every struggling salmon, every unhatched chick, every cell of every blue whale - and it is only our own fear that sets us apart. All humans, too, are struggling to be sane, struggling to live in harmony with our surroundings, but it's really hard to let go. And so we lie, destroy, rape, murder, experiment, and extirpate, all to control this wildly uncontrollable symphony, and failing that, to destroy it."
- Derrick Jensen,
"A Language Older Than Words"
"There Is So Much Evil All Around Us…" (Excerpt)
"There Is So Much Evil All Around Us…"
By Michael Snyder
Excerpt: "Unless you are living under a rock, you can’t escape from all of the evil that is completely saturating our society right now. I know that a lot of people don’t like to use the word “evil”, but what else are you going to call it? Everywhere around us, people are doing absolutely horrible things to one another and to themselves. As I discussed a few days ago, our society has never been in worse shape than it is right now. Of course this shouldn’t actually be a surprise to any of us. If we really are living in “the end times”, we should expect that evil will flourish. But it should also greatly sadden us that the country that we love so much has fallen so far.
Since the beginning of April, there have been 15 mass shootings in the United States. And by the time that some of you read this article, that number will probably be even higher. Our society is absolutely teeming with insane people at this point. And as we have seen, it certainly doesn’t take much to push them over the edge."
Full article is here, if you dare read it...
While reading how horrifyingly, insanely disgusting America
has become you may need this...
"Price Increases At Meijer! What's Next?! What's Coming?
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danny, 4/11/23
"Price Increases At Meijer!
What's Next?! What's Coming?
"In today's vlog we are at Meijer, and are noticing some price increases on groceries! We are here to check out skyrocketing prices, and the empty shelves situation! It's getting rough out here as stores continue to raise prices on most food items!"
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Monday, April 10, 2023
"Apple Computer's An Ominous Sign of The Economy; West Coast Ports Closed. Another Shortage Crisis"
Jeremiah Babe, 4/10/23
"Apple Computer's An Ominous Sign of The Economy;
West Coast Ports Closed. Another Shortage Crisis"
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Musical Interlude: Juzzie Smith, "Blueberry Jam"
Full screen recommended.
Juzzie Smith, "Blueberry Jam"
An incredible one man band!
"A Look to the Heavens"
The constellation of Orion holds much more than three stars in a row. A deep exposure shows everything from dark nebula to star clusters, all embedded in an extended patch of gaseous wisps in the greater Orion Molecular Cloud Complex. The brightest three stars on the far left are indeed the famous three stars that make up the belt of Orion. Just below Alnitak, the lowest of the three belt stars, is the Flame Nebula, glowing with excited hydrogen gas and immersed in filaments of dark brown dust.
Below the frame center and just to the right of Alnitak lies the Horsehead Nebula, a dark indentation of dense dust that has perhaps the most recognized nebular shapes on the sky. On the upper right lies M42, the Orion Nebula, an energetic caldron of tumultuous gas, visible to the unaided eye, that is giving birth to a new open cluster of stars. Immediately to the left of M42 is a prominent bluish reflection nebula sometimes called the Running Man that houses many bright blue stars. The above image, a digitally stitched composite taken over several nights, covers an area with objects that are roughly 1,500 light years away and spans about 75 light years.”
Chet Raymo, "Free As A Bird"
"Free As A Bird"
by Chet Raymo
"All afternoon I have been watching a pair of hummingbirds play about our porch. They live somewhere nearby, though I haven't found their nest. They are attracted to our hummingbird feeder, which we keep full of sugar water. What perfect little machines they are! No other bird can perform their tricks of flight - flying backwards, hovering in place. Zip. Zip. From perch to perch in a blur of iridescence. If you want a symbol of freedom, the hummingbird is it. Exuberant. Unpredictable. A streak of pure fun. It is the speed, of course, that gives the impression of perfect spontaneity. The bird can perform a dozen intricate maneuvers more quickly than I can turn my head.
Is the hummingbird's apparent freedom illusory, a biochemically determined response to stimuli from the environment? Or is the hummingbird's flight what it seems to be, willful and unpredictable? If I can answer that question, I will be learning as much about myself as about the hummingbird. So I watch. And I consider what I know of biochemistry. The hummingbird is awash in signals from its environment - visual, olfactory, auditory and tactile cues that it processes and responds to with lightning speed.
How does it do it? Proteins, mostly. Every cell of the hummingbird's body is a buzzing conversation of proteins, each protein a chain of hundreds of amino acids folded into a complex shape like a piece of a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle. Shapes as various as the words of a human vocabulary. An odor molecule from a blossom, for example, binds to a protein receptor on a cell membrane of the hummingbird's olfactory organ - like a jigsaw-puzzle piece with its neighbor. This causes the receptor molecule to change that part of its shape that extends inside the cell. Another protein now binds with the new configuration of the receptor, and changes its own shape. And so on, in a sequence of shapeshifting and binding - called a signal-transduction cascade - until the hummingbird's brain "experiences" the odor.
Now appropriate signals must be sent from the brain to the body - ion flows established along neural axons, synapses activated. Wing muscles must respond to direct the hummingbird to the source of nourishment. Tens of thousands of proteins in a myriad of cells talk to each other, each protein genetically prefigured by the hummingbird's DNA to carry on its conversation in a particular part of the body. All of this happens continuously, and so quickly that to my eye the bird's movements are a blur.
There is much left to learn, but this much is clear: There is no ghost in the machine, no hummingbird pilot making moment by moment decisions out of the whiffy stuff of spirit. Every detail of the hummingbird's apparently willful flight is biochemistry. Between the hummingbird and myself there is a difference of complexity, but not of kind. If humans are the lords of terrestrial creation, it is because of the huge tangle of nerves that sits atop our spines.
So what does this mean about human freedom? If we are biochemical machines in interaction with our environments, in what sense can we be said to be free? What happens to "free will"? Perhaps the most satisfying place to look for free will is in what is sometimes called chaos theory. In sufficiently complex systems with many feedback loops - the global economy, the weather, the human nervous system - small perturbations can lead to unpredictable large-scale consequences, though every part of the system is individually deterministic. This has sometimes been called - somewhat facetiously - the butterfly effect: a butterfly flaps its wings in China and triggers a cascade of events that results in a snowstorm in Chicago. Chaos theory has taught us that determinism does not imply predictability. Of course, this is not what philosophers traditionally meant by free will, but it is indistinguishable from what philosophers traditionally meant by free will. If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's a duck.
I watch the hummingbirds at the feeder. Their hearts beat ten times faster than a human's. They have the highest metabolic rate of any animal, a dozen times higher than a pigeon, a hundred times higher than an elephant. Hummingbirds live at the edge of what is biologically possible, and it's that, the fierce intenseness of their aliveness, that makes them appear so exuberantly free. But there are no metaphysical pilots in these little flying machines. The machines are the pilots. You give me carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen and a few billion years of evolution, and I'll give you a bird that burns like a luminous flame. The hummingbird's freedom was built into the universe from the first moment of creation."
Further Reading:
• For a brilliant and provocative treatment of free will and determinism, read Daniel Dennett's "Freedom Evolves."
• A superb book on how the mind makes itself is Gary Marcus's "The Birth of the Mind: How a Tiny Number of Genes Creates the Complexities of Human Thought."
• The always provocative Roger Penrose looks for free will in quantum uncertainty in his "The Emperor's New Mind". Not an easy read, and, in my view, case not proved.
"A Major Credit Crunch Has Already Begun As $1.7 Trillion Unrealized Losses Aggravate Banking Crisis"
Full screen recommended.
"A Major Credit Crunch Has Already Begun As $1.7
Trillion Unrealized Losses Aggravate Banking Crisis"
By Epic Economist
"This is moving even faster than a lot of us thought that it would. For weeks, I have been warning my viewers about the worsening banking crisis. When banks get into trouble, they start getting really tight with their money. That means fewer mortgages, fewer commercial real estate loans, fewer auto loans and fewer credit cards being issued. So it should greatly concern all of us that U.S. banks are bleeding deposits at an absolutely staggering pace right now. During the week ending March 15th, 98.4 billion dollars was pulled out of U.S. banks. That was really bad, but we just learned that things got even worse the next week. During the week ending March 22nd, 126 billion dollars was pulled out of U.S. banks…When lots of depositors start pulling their money out, banks can be forced to sell assets in order to have enough cash.
Unfortunately, U.S. banks are sitting on a giant mountain of unrealized losses right now. And it turns out that small banks are getting particularly tight with their money… Commercial bank lending dropped nearly $105 billion in the two weeks ended March 29, the most in Federal Reserve data back to 1973. The more than $45 billion decrease in the latest week was primarily due to a a drop in loans by small banks. The pullback in total lending in the last half of March was broad and included fewer real estate loans, as well as commercial and industrial loans.
All of the bubbles have started to burst, and our entire system is beginning to tremble violently. So I would encourage you to hold on tight, because we have got a very bumpy ride ahead of us. A major credit crunch is already here, but most Americans still don’t understand that severe economic pain is dead ahead."
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"Massive Price Increases At Walgreens! Brace Yourself, This is Absolutely Ridiculous!"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures with Danno, 4/10/23
"Massive Price Increases At Walgreens!
Brace Yourself, This is Absolutely Ridiculous!"
"In today's vlog we are at Walgreens, and are noticing some massive price increases! We are here to check out skyrocketing prices, and find different ways to save money! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"
Comments here:
Free Download: Viktor Frankl, "Man's Search for Meaning"
“It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life – daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual…
There is also purpose in life which is almost barren of both creation and enjoyment and which admits of but one possibility of high moral behavior: namely, in man’s attitude to his existence, an existence restricted by external forces. When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task. He will have to acknowledge the fact that even in suffering he is unique and alone in the universe. No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place. His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden…
What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general, but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment…
Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way…
Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”
- Viktor Frankl, “Man’s Search for Meaning”
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"Man's Search for Meaning"
by Viktor Frankl
"Some details of a particular man's inner greatness may have come to one's mind, like the story of a young woman whose death I witnessed in a concentration camp. It is a simple story. There is little to tell and it may sound as if I had invented it; but to me it seems like a poem.
This young woman knew that she would die in the next few days. But when I talked to her she was cheerful in spite of this knowledge. 'I am grateful that fate has hit me so hard,' she told me. 'In my former life I was spoiled and did not take spiritual accomplishments seriously.' Pointing through the window of the hut, she said, 'This tree here is the only friend I have in my loneliness.' Through that window she could see just one branch of a chestnut tree, and on the branch were two blossoms. 'I often talk to this tree,' she said to me. I was startled and didn't quite know how to take her words. Was she delirious? Did she have occasional hallucinations? Anxiously I asked her if the tree replied. 'Yes.' What did it say to her? She answered, 'It said to me, "I am here - I am here - I am life, eternal life."
Freely download "Man's Search for Meaning", by Viktor Frankl, here:
"Our Task..."
“We have not overcome our condition, and yet we know it better. We know that we live in contradiction, but we also know that we must refuse this contradiction and do what is needed to reduce it. Our task as humans is to find the few principles that will calm the infinite anguish of free souls. We must mend what has been torn apart, make justice imaginable again in a world so obviously unjust, give happiness a meaning once more to peoples poisoned by the misery of the century. Naturally, it is a superhuman task. But superhuman is the term for tasks we take a long time to accomplish, that’s all.
Let us know our aims then, holding fast to the mind, even if force puts on a thoughtful or a comfortable face in order to seduce us. The first thing is not to despair. Let us not listen too much to those who proclaim that the world is at an end. Civilizations do not die so easily, and even if our world were to collapse, it would not have been the first. It is indeed true that we live in tragic times. But too many people confuse tragedy with despair. “Tragedy,” D.H. Lawrence said, “ought to be a great kick at misery.” This is a healthy and immediately applicable thought. There are many things today deserving such a kick.”
- Albert Camus
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