Monday, May 24, 2021

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Large galaxies and faint nebulae highlight this deep image of the M81 Group of galaxies. First and foremost in the wide-angle 12-hour exposure is the grand design spiral galaxy M81, the largest galaxy visible in the image. M81 is gravitationally interacting with M82 just below it, a big galaxy with an unusual halo of filamentary red-glowing gas.
Around the image many other galaxies from the M81 Group of galaxies can be seen. Together with other galaxy congregates including our Local Group of galaxies and the Virgo Cluster of galaxies, the M81 Group is part of the expansive Virgo Supercluster of Galaxies. This whole galaxy menagerie is seen through the faint glow of an Integrated Flux Nebula, a little studied complex of diffuse gas and dust clouds in our Milky Way Galaxy."

The Poet: James Broughton, "Quit Your Addiction"

"Quit Your Addiction"

“Quit your addiction
to sneer and complaint.
Try a little flaunt,
Call for comrades
who bolster your vim
and offer you risk.
Corral the crones,
Goose the nice nellies,
Hunt the bear that hugs
and the raven that quoths.
Stay up all night
to devise a new dawn...”

- James Broughton,
“Little Sermons of the Big Joy”

"Eventually You Understand..."

"That's where it all begins. That's where we all get screwed big time as we grow up. They tell us to think, but they don't really mean it. They only want us to think within the boundaries they define. The moment you start thinking for yourself- really thinking- so many things stop making any sense. And if you keep thinking, the whole world just falls apart. Nothing makes sense anymore. All rules, traditions, expectations- they all start looking so fake, so made up. You want to just get rid of all this stuff and make things right. But the moment you say it, they tell you to shut up and be respectful. And eventually you understand that nobody wants you to really think for yourself.”
- Ray N. Kuili, “Awakening"

"25 Basic Skills You Should Master To Prepare For The Imminent Economic Collapse"

Full screen recommended.
"25 Basic Skills You Should Master To 
Prepare For The Imminent Economic Collapse"
by Epic Economist

"Wildfires, storms, floods, pest infestations, supply chain disruptions, and economic collapse can all happen unexpectedly. A disaster - whether is natural or a result of human actions - can turn life upside down and change society as we know it in a blink of an eye. Here in the United States, we have experienced all of those calamities over the past year and we became unpleasantly aware of how our leaders are unprepared to handle a national emergency. Threats of economic collapse continue to emerge as our country's vulnerabilities have been exposed to the whole world. And this might be particularly dangerous at a time of growing tensions with other economic superpowers because now they know where our blind spots are at. And as the entire globe is fragilized and leading economies are facing steep recessions, our resource-rich country becomes an obvious target. The last thing you want to do is to wait until things have gone wrong to start acting.

We have been facing exceedingly tough challenges over the past 17 months, and we've learned the hard way how much a single disaster or disruption can impact everyone's lives. And there are many more challenges ahead as we approach another season of extreme weather conditions, while widespread shortages are getting even worse, civil turbulence continues to erupt across major cities and our power grid and water systems remain vulnerable to external attacks. But something we do not need to learn the hard way is how life can radically change in a snap of fingers. It's possible to prepare in advance and to set our minds into learning skills that can ensure our survival. So that when things go south you won't get desperate trying to do everything you postponed all at once, you will only have to readapt your mindset, grab your essentials and head out.

Developing the mental and emotional capabilities needed to make it through times of crisis are also survival skills that can be learned. Many may think that this sort of ability will come naturally, as we often adapt to situations that arise unexpectedly. However, when a disaster occurs, it might become extremely hard to keep calm and to think clearly amid the rising chaos. Having some techniques of situational awareness in mind will allow you to assess the situation you're in with more care and will definitely be of great advantage to you.

We have previously discussed about the supplies you will need to ensure your survival after the imminent economic catastrophe, but just as important are the skills you need to develop to adapt to any situation and any place you're in. Supplies may be incredibly helpful, but they can be stolen, burn, or lost in a storm, but the knowledge and skills you have will stay with you no matter what. That's why today, we listed 25 basic skills you need to master before the next economic collapse or any type of disaster. Take some time to learn them and also stimulate your family members or your group members to learn them as well.

The time to get ready for the next economic collapse is not after it has already happened. It’s right now. So don't wait until it's too late, check out this list and start preparing today."

The Daily "Near You?"

Koln, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany. Thanks for stopping by!

"How They Use Fear to Control You"

Full screen recommended.
Sofo Archon, 
"How They Use Fear to Control You"
"Whether you know it or not, fear is constantly being used against you."

"Happy Birthday"

"Happy Birthday"
by Jim Kunstler

"We step back from the disorders and idiocies of the moment to wish Bob Dylan a happy 80th birthday. He entered the scene in a previous moment of national disorder, the Sixties, as we call that wild era when we Boomers came of age and turned the world inside out for a while, flinging our ids into a raging zeitgeist. Bob was actually a little older, not quite a boomer, born seven months before the US entered World War Two.

This is important because he was poised perfectly on the front end of that breaking wave in a particular way that I will try to explain. When he stole into New York City from his Midwest Nowheresville in the winter of 1961, he was unformed, ambitious, intelligent, cunning, and not yet grown up. He did his growing up in public over the next decade. He acted it out in the songs he wrote. It was the essence of what he meant to those of us who trailed behind him. He instructed us in the mystery of what it means to come through adolescence into consciousness, and he did it with a matchless artistry that, once he got traction, made his competitors look barely adequate. It’s easy to understand how being cast in that role irked him, but that’s how it was.

It was Bob who turned the long-playing record album into the art-form of my generation. Before that, the pop music scene in America just amounted to different sorts of adolescent fluff, clichéd hormonal yearnings of boys and girls for each other. It was a long way from the Everlys’ “Wake Up Little Susie” to Bob’s “Visions of Johanna.” He was twenty-four when he wrote it in late 1965 (and then recorded it in February, 1966). Twenty-four is about the age when the judgment region of the human brain finally develops, and the song spells out vividly the jarring wonder of becoming a fully-equipped adult - and recognizing it! The subject of the song isn’t a girl anymore, she’s a woman, with such cosmic ramifications that “the ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her face.”

Lyrics like that - and Bob generated them by the bale then - just made everybody else’s songs seem a little lightweight and silly. The Beatles came close around exactly the same time with their venture into songs of full-fledged adulthood in the album Rubber Soul, but they were not able to bring the focus of a single sensibility to it the way Bob did, and they knew it.

Anyway, Bob had been leading up to that for years lyrically. He had a comfortable childhood back in Minnesota, but it was a harsh place. He absorbed that and summed it up with dazzling concision and specificity in songs like “North Country Blues” about a failing family in a failing town where the iron ore mines are shutting down and there is no such thing anymore as the future. Similarly, “The Ballad of Hollis Brown,” which is the story of a despairing farmer who kills himself and his family of six out on the lonesome South Dakota prairie. These were stories about other people and other lives, reportage from the scene, with more resonance than Walter Cronkite could ever hope to bring to it.

When Bob wrote about himself and his own strange journey, more and more he populated that dreamscape with a hallucinatory cast of characters: dwarves, madonnas, hermit monks, cowboy angels, drunken politicians, Napoleon-in-Rags, the mystery tramp… Imagine how weird it was to be Bob in those few years. He barely had to struggle to become famous, was rolling in dough before he was twenty-five, and had every jerk-off workaday Johnny journalist tugging at sleeve whenever he left the house begging him to explain how the world worked. No wonder he played cute with them, claimed he was “just a song-and-dance man,” when everybody knew better. And amazingly, he pulled it off.

Once he completed that transformation into adulthood, he had pretty much done his duty, and everything after that has been a long coda, with not a few flashes of the old brilliance like these stupendous lyrics from his 1985 song “Dark Eyes”:

A cock is crowing far away and another soldier’s deep in prayer,
Some mother’s child has gone astray, she can’t find him anywhere.
But I can hear another drum beating for the dead that rise,
Whom nature’s beast fears as they come and all I see are dark eyes

Sounds like what’s going on ‘out there’ right now, don’t you think? He deserved that Nobel Prize. I’m glad he’s persevered through all these years and still goes on stage and keeps putting out tunes. I met him once back in 1975 when I worked for Rolling Stone Magazine. It was after a benefit concert in San Francisco in the Fairmont Hotel. I couldn’t help greeting him like an old friend, and was foolishly surprised to realize that he didn’t know me from a hole in the wall. Anyway, I’m glad we shared these decades together on this marvelous planet and I salute him on his birthday for what he gave that has lived inside me all these years."

"Here's A Question..."

“Here’s a question every angry man and woman needs to consider: How long are you going to allow people you don’t even like – people who are no longer in your life, maybe even people who aren’t even alive anymore – to control your life? How long?”
- Andy Stanley

“That goes for old wounds, too, you know. I really wish we’d had the chance to talk before this,” he says, cracking the window so the smoke can escape. “There’s a Longfellow quote I have stuck on my bulletin board at the church office – ‘There is no grief like the grief that does not speak’ – and it’s true. I’ve found that keeping pain inside doesn’t give it a chance to heal, but bringing it out into the light, holding it right there in your hands and trusting that you’re strong enough to make it through, not hating the pain, not loving it, just seeing it for what it really is can change how you go on from there. Time alone doesn’t heal emotional wounds, and you don’t want to live the rest of your life bottled up with anger and guilt and bitterness. That’s how people self-destruct.”
- Laura Wiess

Gregory Mannarino, AM 5/24/21: "Must Know Updates"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 5/24/21:
"Must Know Updates"

"Saving Civilization"

"Saving Civilization"
by Robert Gore

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed 
citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” 
- Margaret Mead

"Imagine you had been picked as a juror for the Derek Chauvin trial. Before you hear a shred of evidence, you very well might make a decision most people would not only admit was the better part of valor, but that harmonized perfectly with prevailing morality.

Your pretrial verdict? Guilty. There had been threats since Chauvin was charged with second and third degree murder and second-degree manslaughter that acquittals would provoke rampaging riots. After the riots last summer, no one could doubt the threats’ credibility. A guilty verdict on all counts could avoid injuries, deaths, and billions of dollars in property damage. Against those consequences, what do the rights or the life of a policeman matter? You’re predetermined verdict is for the greater good.

Even if such considerations never entered your head, you’d need extraordinary courage and independence to impartially hear the evidence and if you thought it warranted, vote for acquittal. You’d have to withstand pressure from your fellow jurors. You’d run the risk that your personal information was leaked by some mainstream or social media scumbag and mostly peaceful thugs showed up at your door. You might be canceled out of a job, your business network, and your social circle. Your privacy would be obliterated and reputation ruined in the wilting glare of nonstop publicity and odium. Politicians and other public figures would denounce you.

The chance that one such person would land on the jury was remote, the chance of twelve nonexistent. Under the inverted standard of justice that prevailed, the outcome was always going to be dictated not by the facts of the case, reasoned consideration of the evidence, deliberation, and the applicable law, but by “social considerations,” which is a polite way of saying the mob.

The mob hailed the verdict as justice. It’s the same justice as John Gotti’s three acquittals after his goons intimidated jurors. Chauvin was guilty unless proven innocent beyond a “reasonable” doubt as defined by the mob. In the same vein, the policeman who shot and killed Ashley Babbitt at the Capitol is not guilty—without a trial—because that’s what the mob demanded. Such blatant contradiction is mob justice.

A morality that confers “rights” on mobs and strips those of an individual is the morality of savages. Maxine Waters is a savage, but so too are the members of the Minneapolis City Council who agreed to pay George Floyd’s estate $27 million before Chauvin’s trial had begun, the judge who recognized the prejudicial unfairness of Waters’ inflammatory statements but passed the buck for doing anything about it to the appellate courts, and the political, media, and celebrity jackals from Joe Biden on down who’ve been howling for Chauvin’s conviction since Floyd’s death.

Whatever the justifications they cite for their pre-verdict demands, they are implicitly insisting that Chauvin’s rights are of no consequence. When the “rights” of some outweigh the rights of one, anything goes. There are people who call for reducing the world’s population to 500 million, which implies a genocide of over 7 billion. That such people are on university faculties rather than denounced and shunned as advocates of mass murder shows just how far the barbarism of collectivist justification has advanced, even when the collective embraced is a fraction of the number of individuals whose lives are to be canceled!

Service and sacrifice are the watchwords of government, the ultimate mob. Who’s served and who’s sacrificed? There has never been a government that has not arrogated to itself the privilege of using force and fraud to strip individuals of their production, their property, their rights, their liberty, and ultimately, their lives. That privilege is governments’ defining essence and is the privilege that has always threatened humanity. The rationales and rhetoric are invariably collective: the demands of the mob supersede individual rights and individual justice.

Is there any other kind of justice? Injustice to one cannot be justice for the many, no matter how many “warriors” stand with the many. It’s mob rule or individual rights—there is no other choice. The savages and cannibals denying individual rights can claim no rights for themselves; there will always be more violent savages and cannibals. It’s a race to the bottom when brutality reigns. The United States government, its foundational albeit imperfectly realized commitment to individual rights completely abandoned, is fast sinking to the nadir.

The high and mighty savages among us believe they can employ the brutality of more overt savages for their own ends. However, the overt savages, because they’ve abandoned even the facade of decency, are closer to the bottom and are therefore winning the race.. Spared the effort of pretense, those who nonchalantly bash store windows or heads won’t hesitate to bash high and mighty heads that hold mistaken notions of who’s the boss. In the race to the bottom, the most ruthless and bloodthirsty win.

Nothing will be fair about the coming fight. It’s no use whining about the other side’s lack of principles, its lies, hypocrisy, unfairness, ruthlessness, and control of virtually every important institution. They’re evil totalitarians, what the hell do we expect? Their principle is absolute power and they’ll do whatever is necessary to acquire and keep it.

Robert Gore, “The Gray Curtain Descends, Part 2,” SLL, January 14, 2021

The trial for Derek Chauvin and the lack of one for the Capitol Hill policeman (name still unknown) are another reminder—not that any are needed—that savages aren’t fair. It’s pathetic and ludicrous to expect an appellate court to grant Chauvin a new trial, although it would have ample grounds to do so in anything resembling a fair judicial system.

It’s like saying, “Wait until 22 and 24!” or, “Wait until the Arizona vote audit!” after last year’s blatant election theft. The savages have instituted corrupt arrangements that will enshrine their power in perpetuity. Expecting them to tolerate anything that would jeopardize those arrangements is like expecting water to run uphill. Fair or even quasi-fair elections would threaten their power. They are, like fair trials, but a memory.

Savages beget savagery and nothing else, until they are stopped or they stop themselves. Don’t count on them recognizing the production—a civilized and thereby forbidden act—and the producers—civilized and thereby forbidden people—that keep them fed and alive. And don’t count on them not making your weaponry, your last line of defense, a use it or lose it proposition.

They recognize no limits, certainly not the constraints imposed by reality. They may have to lay waste to the world before whomever remains of the honest and productive realize that their lives are a defend them or die proposition. For decades, America’s rulers and their accomplices have said about the enemies of the day: they only understand force. It’s projection, ascribing to others one’s own motivations. They’ve dressed it up in all sorts of verbiage, from Make the World Safe for Democracy to We’re All In This Together, but force is what they understand and to which they’ll always resort. The only thing that will stop them is superior force more competently wielded.

Abandon your mind and life is one big scary mystery. In their perpetual, pervasive fear of everything, savages will always respond to superior force. The civilized are abandoning savage strongholds, seeking refuge in states that still demonstrate a vestigial respect for individual rights, the font of civilization. These aren’t nirvanas of freedom, but they’re better than what’s left behind.

Live and let live are not options for savages; they have to prey on someone. The migrants may find relief in their new locales, but unless they’re prepared to defend them that relief will prove temporary. Having run out of victims at home, the savages will invade, plunder, and destroy any place that maintains a modicum of freedom, production, prosperity, and civilization.

Unless their would-be victims repel them. The U.S. is fracturing and that should be encouraged, as may it eventually lead to de facto political separation. However, as separatists found out in 1776 and 1861, it’s one thing to declare new political arrangements, it’s quite another to establish, maintain, and defend them. However, the separatists have most of the advantages.

Governments produce nothing, they mostly destroy. The U.S. government is destroying itself and the nation with debt, confiscatory taxation, redistribution, corruption, a blizzard of laws and regulations, and maintaining a crumbling global empire in the face of challenges from Russia and China.

Government of the savages, by the savages, and for the savages doesn’t have much to draw on, and decades of propaganda have told savages to look to the government for every need. Vegetarian stew in every pot, two Teslas in every garage, paid for diplomas on every wall, a band-aid for every scratch, and a kiss for every boo-boo are just the minimum of what they’ve been told to expect. If they don’t get them it’s the selfish civilized’s fault. But who will they blame when the selfish civilized skip town or quit? And who will feed them?

The separatists will have the productive capabilities. Many of the country’s honest entrepreneurs (as opposed to its crony socialists) have already migrated. They will also have military expertise, especially after the savages eliminate retrograde rightwingerism and transform the US military into the most diverse, empathetic, and politically correct conflict resolution force the world has ever seen. (Oh, how the world trembles!) Notwithstanding the many thanks they’ve received for their service to the savages’ government, many veterans will join the civilized.

After last year’s mostly peaceful riots and the January 6 Insurrection That Nearly Overthrew The Most Exceptional Government In History, many savages bought firearms for the first time. Unfortunately for them, there’s a big difference between buying a firearm and knowing what to do with it, and most of that knowledge (and millions of firearms) are on the side of the vets and the civilized.

Many of the vets have also received on-the-job training in guerrilla warfare, against which the US government is batting zero. The government has many scary weapons, but it has repeatedly demonstrated an inability to keep such weapons out of the hands of its adversaries. Perhaps the separatists will prove as clever and capable as the Vietnamese, al Qaeda, ISIS, Taliban, and Iraqis and other groups have been at capturing US government weaponry. Notwithstanding their diversity, empathy, and political correctness, the conflict resolution forces would then find their weapons turned against them.

Among the separatists it can be assumed there will be experts in drones, robots, artificial intelligence, computer hacking, remote-controlled munitions, biological warfare, and most other future-war technologies, ready, willing, and able to employ their skills for the cause. There might even be some experts in good old-fashioned fission and fusion. While those are legacy technologies, they still have their uses.

At this point, imagination is far more important than a deer-in-the-headlights’ fixation on present realities, because those realities are changing so quickly and chaotically. When the ground is continuously shifting under your feet, you can’t know where you are with any certainty. Your chance of saving yourself depends on knowing where you want to go and having an idea of how to get there.

Skepticism about imminent revolutionary change is understandable, but often betrays a misunderstanding of how revolutions in politics, science, culture, art, philosophy, learning, and all other fields of productive human endeavor work. The explosion visible to all is almost always preceded by a long, burning fuse visible to few and understood by fewer, only generally apprehended after the explosion.

The burning fuse in this case is the awesome force of decentralization sweeping the planet; the revolution is actually well underway. Centralization is a legacy idea and government is its legacy institution. After centuries of centralized, resource-devouring, and tyrannical government failures, and after the failure of the most centralized, resource-devouring, and tyrannical government in history, legions of intellectuals of impaired intellect and infinitesimal imagination still hail or fear a centralized, resource-devouring, and tyrannical global government. That’s not to say there aren’t plenty of people out there trying to institute such a government, but they’re building a three-foot-high wall of beach mud and sand against a tidal wave.

That wave will arrive, of that there can be no doubt. Afterwards people will point to some contemporaneous event as the catalyst, but the catalysts have been accumulating for decades, their leitmotif decentralization. Multi-volume sets could be written about them all. (Maybe someday I’ll give it a try, knowing multitudes of new ones will pop up after I’m gone.) Just a sampling: microchips, computer networks, 3D printing, nanotechnology, satellites, blockchains, personal computing, cell phones, cable television, GPS, charge-injecting fluids (4rysprays.com), the production and distribution of do-it-yourself video, publishing, and music, the fall of the Soviet Union, the irreconcilable tension between Chinese entrepreneurialism, brilliance, and free inquiry on the one hand and the Chinese government on the other, the bankruptcy of the welfare states, Trump, Brexit, the Yellow Vests, IEDs, shoulder-fired missiles, drones, hacking, blue-to-red-state migration, secessionism, the coming dissolution of the EU, and the coming collapse of governments and their fiat currencies, to name but a few.

Don’t get too attached to today; tomorrow it’s gone. The questions that will emerge from the chaotic maelstrom: Freedom or tyranny? Civilization or savagery? Anyone who chooses civilized freedom is going to have to fight for it, but it’s a fight that can and will be won."

"How It Really Is"

 

"How to Stop Caring About What Other People Think"

"How to Stop Caring About What Other People Think"
by Mark Manson

"Every few months, I sit down and answer about a dozen reader-submitted questions on video and upload them to my website. This quarter’s most popular question was a classic, a question I might get more than any other: "How do I stop giving a f*** what other people think about me?" Like an excellent burrito, I answered this question in three layers: the short answer, the long answer, and the unexpected answer. You can watch my full response on my YouTube channel. Watch: "How to Stop Caring What Other People Think".

I also answered questions regarding advice for young people in their 20s, why the self-help industry is so fucked up, what my views are on nature vs nurture, hard discussions about sex, and much more. You can watch all of the videos, including dozens of previous videos, on my website’s Ask Mark Anything page. Note that the AMA videos on the site are for site members only. You can learn about site membership, my courses, videos, and member’s articles here.

2. Hate is proportional to audacity - An unfortunate fact of life is that you will receive hate from others in proportion to the audacity of your goals. The more ambitious and unconventional your aims, the more people will try to deter you, tear you down, criticize you, and so on It’s easy to sit here and complain that this shouldn’t happen - but actually, it should. Humans are a social species, and we are strongly biased towards the status quo. That’s because the status quo is likely more stable and beneficial than most alternatives.

Therefore, when someone comes along with a big, bold idea that challenges the status quo, most people will instinctively look for reasons why it’s wrong or won’t work. They will challenge it, criticize it, ridicule it, and make lame jokes about it on Twitter. And I would argue this is a good thing. For one, most ideas are bad. Therefore, if an idea can’t survive being dunked on a few dozen times, then it’s better off being left for dead. But second, as the audacious-idea-haver, it forces you to have a deep conviction in what you're doing.

3. The uneven distribution of awareness - This will be the last installment of my ongoing discussion of whether or not today’s society is "too aware". To catch people up real quick, two weeks ago, I suggested that perhaps social media has caused an over-abundance of awareness of social issues, which has become counterproductive. Last week, after many reader responses, I wrote that perhaps it’s not that we’re too aware of the problems of the world, but not aware enough of the solutions.

Well, after another round of discussion with a lot of thoughtful readers, I think I’ve come to a firm conclusion on what I believe about this subject:

• In the social media age, we have transitioned from a few people knowing a lot about their own particular cause, to everyone knowing a little bit about every cause.



• For a few social causes, this might be beneficial. But for many social causes, it’s probably unhelpful at best, and deeply distracting and counterproductive at worst. Most social causes likely need highly dedicated, highly informed activists working for long periods of time. This is pretty much the opposite of what social media activism is.



• The unfortunate side effect of this shallow awareness of every issue is that large numbers of people have become incredibly and irrationally pessimistic about the future. They have a superficial understanding of the problem without really knowing the facts, history, or trade-offs involved with that problem. Therefore, the internet gets flooded with bad takes and lots and lots of angry people writing mean things to each other.



• This widespread pessimism and occasional hysteria occasionally erupts into large and often misguided political movements. Protesting becomes performative - more about signalling which crowd you identify with rather than any actual cause.



• The ineffectiveness of these political movements and protests eventually generates greater pessimism and frustration, and then it’s hello darkness, my old friend.

What can we do about this? As always, follow a strict attention diet. Choose better information sources - i.e., follow experts over influencers. Get comfortable with finding and thinking in terms of statistics rather than stories (most statistics show things getting better; most stories show things getting worse). Learn to ask yourself, "What if I’m wrong?"  - and then ask it all the damn time. Practice empathy, especially with those whom you disagree. Put the phone away and maybe go outside.

Eat a burrito. Pet a dog. Look at a sunset or something. You’re going to be fine."

Sunday, May 23, 2021

“Lucky Money Will Run Out; Crypto Currency Chaos; Unsustainable Lifestyles; Bitcoin Smashed”

Full screen recommended for scenic views.
Jeremiah Babe,
“Lucky Money Will Run Out; Crypto Currency Chaos; 
Unsustainable Lifestyles; Bitcoin Smashed”

Gregory Mannarino, 5/23/21: "Markets, A Look Ahead: The Fed. ADMITS U.S. Economy Is Slowing"

Gregory Mannarino, 5/23/21:
"Markets, A Look Ahead: 
The Fed. ADMITS U.S. Economy Is Slowing"

Musical Interlude: Giovanni Allevi, “Back To Life”

Full screen recommended.
Giovanni Allevi, “Back To Life”

"A Look to the Heavens"

“How many arches can you count in the below image? If you count both spans of the Double Arch in the Arches National Park in Utah, USA, then two. But since the above image was taken during a clear dark night, it caught a photogenic third arch far in the distance- that of the overreaching Milky Way Galaxy. Because we are situated in the midst of the spiral Milky Way Galaxy, the band of the central disk appears all around us.
The sandstone arches of the Double Arch were formed from the erosion of falling water. The larger arch rises over 30 meters above the surrounding salt bed and spans close to 50 meters across. The dark silhouettes across the image bottom are sandstone monoliths left over from silt-filled crevices in an evaporated 300 million year old salty sea. A dim flow created by light pollution from Moab, Utah can also be seen in the distance.”

"One Summer Night..."

"One summer night, out on a flat headland, all but surrounded by the waters of the bay, the horizons were remote and distant rims on the edge of space. Millions of stars blazed in darkness, and on the far shore a few lights burned in cottages. Otherwise there was no reminder of human life. My companion and I were alone with the stars: the misty river of the Milky Way flowing across the sky, the patterns of the constellations standing out bright and clear, a blazing planet low on the horizon. It occurred to me that if this were a sight that could be seen only once in a century, this little headland would be thronged with spectators. But it can be seen many scores of nights in any year, and so the lights burned in the cottages and the inhabitants probably gave not a thought to the beauty overhead; and because they could see it almost any night, perhaps they never will."
- Rachel Carson

"If You Do Not Know..."

"First of all, although men have a common destiny, each individual also has to work out his own personal salvation for himself in fear and trembling. We can help one another to find the meaning of life no doubt. But in the last analysis, the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for "finding himself." If he persists in shifting his responsibility to somebody else, he fails to find out the meaning of his own existence. You cannot tell me who I am and I cannot tell you who you are. If you do not know your own identity, who is going to identify you?"
- Thomas Merton

"Covid-19 Pandemic Update 5/23/21"

"Covid-19 Pandemic Update 5/23/21"
“When you don’t have the data and you don’t have
the actual evidence, you’ve got to make a judgment call."

SUN MAY 23, AT 2:00 PM: "Wuhan Lab Workers Were 'So Sick They Sought Hospitalization' According To US Intelligence" "They may represent 'the first known cluster...'"
May 23, 2021 10:08 AM ET:
The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 152,347,200
people, according to official counts, including 32,419,582 Americans.
Globally at least 3,194,600 have died.

May 23, 2021 10:08 AM ET: 
"The COVID Tracking Project"
Every day, our volunteers compile the latest numbers on tests, cases,
hospitalizations, and patient outcomes from every US state and territory.
"The individual comes face-to-face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists. The American mind has not come to a realization of the evil which has been introduced into our midst. It rejects even the assumption that human creatures could espouse a philosophy which must ultimately destroy all that is good and decent."
- J. Edgar Hoover
Related, highly recommended:
Related:

“The Stench of Political and Financial Corruption”

“The Stench of Political and Financial Corruption”
By Jesse

“Wall Street had been doing business with pieces of paper; and now someone asked for a dollar, and it was discovered that the dollar had been mislaid. It was an experience for which the captains of industry were not entirely prepared; they had forgotten the public. It was like some great convulsion of nature, which made mockery of all the powers of men, and left the beholder dazed and terrified. In Wall Street men stood as if in a valley, and saw far above them the starting of an avalanche; they stood fascinated with horror, and watched it gathering headway; saw the clouds of dust rising up, and heard the roar of it swelling, and realized it was only a matter of time before it swept them to their destruction... But it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon him not understanding it."
- Upton Sinclair, "The Moneychangers"

"You are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to rout you out, and by the grace of the eternal God, I will rout you out." - Andrew Jackson

It was discovered that in all that blizzard of corruption, and the paper that covered it up, that the very basis of the value of things had been 'mislaid.' And then the deluge came. If you listen to the reasoning of 'free market' types, and their paid mouthpieces and demagogues, this kind of thing could not happen, because companies, being rational and focused on the long term, would not allow tainted meat with their name on it to be sold into the markets.

They would not risk the lawsuits, and damage to their reputations. It is a similar argument that holds that financial markets need only light regulations because people will manage their own behavior for the ultimate good, with almost perfect rational and altruistic self-constraint.

But alas, we know this is not true, as anyone who ever travels on a major highway can tell you. People and their tendencies to greed and careless stupidity require a certain association of people in a society for their common good, to take on not only large tasks with common and broad benefits to the pubic, but also in order for the majority to protect themselves from criminals, cheats, sociopaths, and plain old ignorant selfishness. This is why we establish police and fire departments, and have health laws, for example.

Government is never perfect. But its occasional flaws and corruption are no reason to do away with it. The power of government must be held in balance, but so must the power of private wickedness.

If you bother to look into the history of certain types of laws, especially those designed to protect the public, and the often long progressive efforts of many dedicated souls to achieve them, from civil rights to basic food safety to voting rights to consumer protections against financial fraud, you can see what they have accomplished, and how their effectiveness must be upheld and occasionally renewed, since the corrupting power of easy money respects few if any boundaries.

Goodness may occasionally falter, but evil never sleeps. And as many are now discovering, telling the truth becomes a subversive act, in times of general deceit. Notice the patterns of smears and dehumanization of certain types of people. This is how it begins.

And so it seems that every other generation forgets the lessons learned by their grandparents, and casts off their protections in fits of foolishness fuelled by the sweet words and slogans of the pampered princes of easy money, and their puppets, who will say and do anything for power and position. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it, and this is surely the story of the last thirty years, especially in the area of financial regulation, and the political standards of oaths and stewardship.”

The Daily "Near You?"

Rio Grande, Puerto Rico. Thanks for stopping by!

"Maybe..."

“Maybe we’re not supposed to be happy. Maybe gratitude has nothing to do with joy. Maybe being grateful means recognizing what you have for what it is. Appreciating small victories. Admiring the struggle it takes to simply be a human. Maybe, we’re thankful for the familiar things we know. And maybe, we’re thankful for the things we’ll never know. At the end of the day, the fact that we have the courage to still be standing is reason enough to celebrate.”
- “Grey’s Anatomy”

Greg Hunter, "Inflation & Implosion – Hyperinflation in 2022"

"Inflation & Implosion – Hyperinflation in 2022"
by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

Economist John Williams, founder of ShadowStats.com, says the Federal Reserve has painted itself into such a tight corner with the economy it really has only two choices. Williams says it comes down to “Inflation or Implosion.” What would happen to the financial system if the Fed stopped printing massive amounts of money for stimulus and debt service? Williams explains, “You could see financial implosion by preventing liquidity being put into the system. The system needs liquidity (freshly created dollars) to function. Without that liquidity, you would see more of an economic implosion than you have already seen. In fact, I will contend that the headline pandemic numbers have actually been a lot worse than they have been reporting. It also means we are not recovering quite as quickly. The Fed needs to keep the banking system afloat. They want to keep the economy afloat. All that requires a tremendous influx of liquidity in these difficult times.”

So, is the choice inflation or implosion? Williams says, “That’s the choice, and I think we are going to have a combination of both of them. I think we are eventually headed into a hyperinflationary economic collapse. It’s not that we haven’t been in an economic collapse already, we are coming back some now. The Fed has been creating money at a pace that has never been seen before. You are basically up 75% (in money creation) year over year. This is unprecedented. Normally, it might be up 1% or 2% year over year. The exploding money supply will lead to inflation. I am not saying we are going to get to 75% inflation—yet, but you are getting up to the 4% or 5% range, and you are soon going to be seeing 10% range year over year. The Fed has lost control of inflation.”

And remember, when the Fed has to admit the official inflation rate is 10%, John Williams says, “When they have to admit the inflation rate is 10%, my number is going to be up to around 15% or higher. My number rides on top of their number.”

Right now, the Shadowstat.com inflation rate is above 11%. That’s if it were calculated the way it was before 1980 when the government started using accounting gimmicks to make inflation look less than it really is. The Shadowstats.com number cuts out all the accounting gimmicks and is the true inflation rate that most Americans are seeing right now, not the “official” 4.25% recently reported.

Williams says the best way to fight the inflation that is already here is to buy tangible assets. Williams says, “Canned food is a tangible asset, and you can use it for barter if you have to. Physical gold and silver is the best way to protect your buying power over time.” Gold may be a bit expensive for most, but silver is still relatively cheap. Williams says, “Everything is going to go up in price.”

When will the worst inflation be hitting America? Williams predicts, “I am looking down the road, and in early 2022, I am looking for something close to a hyperinflationary circumstance and effectively a collapsed economy.”
Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes One-on-One
 with John Williams, founder of ShadowStats.com.
Related:

“The Crash Is Not Stopping; Signs Of A Failing Economy; Worst Is Yet To Come”

Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe,
“The Crash Is Not Stopping;
Signs Of A Failing Economy; Worst Is Yet To Come”

"How It Really Is"

"Our True Friends..."

“Our true friends are those who are with us when the good things happen. They cheer us on and are pleased by our triumphs. False friends only appear at difficult times, with their sad, supportive faces, when, in fact, our suffering is serving to console them for their own miserable lives.”
- Paulo Coelho, "The Zahir"
"Positively 4th Street"

Saturday, May 22, 2021

Musical Interlude: Procol Harum, "A Salty Dog"

Procol Harum, "A Salty Dog"
"Ulysses"
...

"There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me -
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads - you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honor and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

- Alfred, Lord Tennyson

"A Look to the Heavens"

"From our vantage point in the Milky Way Galaxy, we see NGC 6946 face-on. The big, beautiful spiral galaxy is located just 20 million light-years away, behind a veil of foreground dust and stars in the high and far-off constellation of Cepheus. From the core outward, the galaxy's colors change from the yellowish light of old stars in the center to young blue star clusters and reddish star forming regions along the loose, fragmented spiral arms.
NGC 6946 is also bright in infrared light and rich in gas and dust, exhibiting a high star birth and death rate. In fact, since the early 20th century at least nine supernovae, the death explosions of massive stars, were discovered in NGC 6946. Nearly 40,000 light-years across, NGC 6946 is also known as the Fireworks Galaxy. This remarkable portrait of NGC 6946 is a composite that includes image data from the 8.2 meter Subaru Telescope on Mauna Kea.”

The Daily "Near You?"

Greenfield, Massachusetts, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"A Sad Fact..."

"A sad fact, of course, about adult life is that you see the very things you'll never adapt to coming toward you on the horizon. You see them as the problems they are, you worry like hell about them, you make provisions, take precautions, fashion adjustments; you tell yourself you'll have to change your way of doing things. Only you don't. You can't. Somehow it's already too late. And maybe it's even worse than that: maybe the thing you see coming from far away is not the real thing, the thing that scares you, but its aftermath. And what you've feared will happen has already taken place. This is similar in spirit to the realization that all the great new advances of medical science will have no benefit for us at all, thought we cheer them on, hope a vaccine might be ready in time, think things could still get better. Only it's too late there too. And in that very way our life gets over before we know it. We miss it. And like the poet said: The ways we miss our lives are life."
- Richard Ford

"We Have No Idea How Good We Can Get"

"We Have No Idea How Good We Can Get"
by Paul Rosenberg

"I can still remember the first time someone told me that they believed in the Calvinist doctrine of “the depravity of man.” It shocked me. To complain about human behavior I very well understood; there’s plenty of bad behavior in the world. But to flatly call the human species depraved... hopelessly unredeemable... that was, and remains, obscene to me.

The sad truth, however, is that the modern West swims in a sea of Calvinism. The corporate bullhorns feed everyone they can a steady diet of the bad, ugly, and if possible the bloody. Under their influence, we would believe that all is darkness, that truth is illusion, that the human path is ever-downward, and that all professions of goodness are scams.

In other words, the minds of millions of people (billions, probably), are continually pushed to imagine that human depravity is a fact. That strategy is terribly effective – there’s no better tool for manipulating humans than fear – but it is no less than obscene and evil. And it’s false. Humans are amazing creatures, and very often kind, gracious and loving creatures.

The Real Revolutionaries: I’ve used this passage from G.K. Chesterton’s "The Defendant" before, but it’s so important that I could use it once a month and feel fine about it: "Every one of the great revolutionists, from Isaiah to Shelly, have been optimists. They have been indignant, not about the badness of existence, but about the slowness of men in realizing its goodness."

The popular image of a revolutionary is of someone railing against the rulers of their place and leading a mob against them to bring in a new political regime. Notwithstanding the ridiculous notion of politics saving us from politics, this has always been a fantasy. It’s very dramatic of course, which is why it remains, but in real life it simply doesn’t happen [1].

The real revolution, certainly in our time, is not to bring anything down, but simply to realize that we’ve outgrown a dark and manipulative public order, and that it’s fit for no more than to be tossed aside, like the worn-out clothing of our youth.

Real revolutionaries don’t want to take over an outmoded and abusive status quo, but to transcend it... to leave it behind and build better things. Behind such a belief, as Chesterton noted, will stand a realization of the goodness of existence.

How Good Can We Get? Consider the millions of hours... billions of hours... wasted every year fighting the mostly-imaginary evils pumped through television, radio and social media. Then, please, consider that the problems so terrifyingly portrayed are seldom really solved. So, what if we spent that time (and energy and money) to improve ourselves instead?

How silly is it to spend our time and treasure fighting within a system that can never allow its problems to be solved – if the system solved them it would have no reason to exist – when we are quite able to improve ourselves instead?

Consider, please: We have no real idea of how good we can get, because we’ve never seriously focused on making ourselves better.

Or, said differently: Instead of endlessly imagining human evil, what if we started imagining human greatness? One is just as possible as the other. So why shouldn’t we take the bright path instead of the permanently dark path that’s proven not to work? And I will add that the progress we have seen in the world... science, medicine and the like... has mainly come from people who imagined better ways, better things,  and better lives.

This, then, is the radical and revolutionary belief that stands before us: That mankind is far better than we’ve imagined... that human life can be satisfying and rewarding... that we are capable of being far more than we’ve imagined. All we have to do is to lift up our eyes and start trying."

[1]  It’s probably worth adding that the American Revolution wasn’t a revolution per se. Rather, it was a new society, on a new continent, that grew in a condition of “salutary neglect,” after which the Crown attempted to drag it into submission. The Americans of 1776 fought to be left alone rather than to bring down the Crown.

The Poet: James Broughton,"Having Come This Far"

"Having Come This Far"

"I've been through what my through was to be,
I did what I could and couldn't.
I was never sure how I would get there.
I nourished an ardor for thresholds,
for stepping stones and for ladders,
I discovered detour and ditch.
I swam in the high tides of greed,
I built sandcastles to house my dreams.
I survived the sunburns of love.

No longer do I hunt for targets.
I've climbed all the summits I need to,
and I've eaten my share of lotus.
Now I give praise and thanks
for what could not be avoided,
and for every foolhardy choice.
I cherish my wounds and their cures,
and the sweet enervations of bliss.
My book is an open life.

I wave goodbye to the absolutes,
and send my regards to infinity.
I'd rather be blithe than correct.
Until something transcendent turns up,
I splash in my poetry puddle,
and try to keep God amused."

- James Broughton

Musical Interlude: Steppenwolf, "Monster"

Steppenwolf, "Monster"
More appropriately titled "Monster, Suicide, America."
Who knew this song, released in 1968, would 
be prophetic into the 21st century?

"Delusions and Truth..."

How Americans love to view themselves...

How the rest of the world sees us...
Any questions?