Wednesday, June 2, 2021

"Doug Casey on the 'Graveyard of Empires'”

"Doug Casey on the 'Graveyard of Empires'”
by Internationalman.com

"International Man: After almost 20 years, the US government announced it is officially leaving Afghanistan and is pulling its troops out of the country soon. What’s your take on this? Did the US government accomplish anything?

Doug Casey: The US presence in Afghanistan for 20 years is clinically insane. The place has long been acknowledged as one of the planet's most isolated, backward, and valueless regions. Its inhabitants belong to disparate groups which are mutually antagonistic. Afghanistan isn’t even a real country. It’s a region.

How stupid are US leaders that - on top of those points - they could learn nothing from the total failure of earlier British and Soviet invasions? Or our own experience in Vietnam? In Vietnam, a primitive country the US invaded on the pretext of propping up a very corrupt and unpopular government, war hawks said, "We can't withdraw because it would show that the commies beat us. We have a huge commitment. It's too hard." People like myself countered, "It's not hard at all. Cut your losses. You simply put the soldiers on the boats, you put the boats in reverse, and leave."

Of course, by the time the US left Vietnam, it was a chaotic emergency evacuation with people being kicked off helicopters from the top of the US Embassy. A desperate run for cover. But that’s the proper fate for invaders, no matter where they’re from. It’s sad in the case of the US, which betrayed its founding principles, however.

Who benefited from the US invasion of Afghanistan? It was a huge loss for the world in general, the common people in the US and Afghanistan in particular. The only winners were the various members of the military-industrial complex. The generals in the Pentagon, who got to play big shot, build their careers, and rack up brownie points with corporations who will hire them when they retire. Weapons manufacturers and members of the Deep State profit immediately and directly, however. They’re financed by government debt and money printing.

The Afghan adventure served absolutely no useful purpose whatsoever. There were zero benefits to either the US or the natives. In fact, not only were there zero benefits, but everything was a negative accomplishment. It resulted in the further bankruptcy of the US government and the American people, who are directly and indirectly being taxed to pay for it.

The trillions of new dollars floating around have resulted in massive new layers of corruption everywhere. And considerable new enemies for America - in Afghanistan, in the region, and around the world. The US has earned the contempt of people all over the world, who saw it as a giant bully pushing around primitive tribesmen. It amazes me that anybody tries to defend the US war in Afghanistan on any basis whatsoever. It was a total and absolute net loss.

International Man: The acknowledged and direct financial cost to the US taxpayer of the war in Afghanistan was nearly $1 trillion. (Conjecture. True figure, April 2021: "The Bill for the Afghanistan War Is $2.26 Trillion, and Still Rising" - CP.) The war also killed over 2,300 American soldiers, about 1,000 non-US NATO soldiers, and hundreds of thousands of Afghans. That is to say nothing of the indirect, delayed, and unacknowledged costs. What are your thoughts on the costs of this war?

Doug Casey: Direct deaths are just the tiniest tip of the iceberg. Not too many people die in combat today because of body armor, excellent medevac facilities, and medical technology. For every American soldier that died, there are probably 10 or 20 other soldiers who are severely and permanently maimed in some way. God knows what the numbers are for the psychologically maimed because of what they had to do to others and what was done to them in Afghanistan. The 2,300 dead US soldiers are actually the least part of the damage the war caused. Nobody can even count the Afghans.

The people responsible for this war - prominently George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, but everybody involved in their regime - should be tried for treason. If convicted - which they should be - they should not only serve time in prison but their assets should be confiscated and used to compensate the various victims of the war.

There was an excuse for the Afghan war, starting with the phony reasons given for 9/11. Attacking Afghanistan because of the attack on the Twin Towers was about as logical as it would have been for the US to declare war on China in 1941 because the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.

It appears that most of the hijackers were Saudis - assuming that's what really happened because nobody knows for sure. They certainly had nothing to do with Afghanistan. The Afghan government at the time said, "Act like a civilized country. Show us proof that Osama bin Laden was behind of this, and we'll render him to you."

Osama bin Laden said he approved of the attack on the Twin Towers, but he disavowed any responsibility for it. He would have been happy to take credit if he could have. The US invasion was a sham and unprovoked criminal aggression from beginning to end. Osama should have been pursued as a suspect in a crime, and it’s clear the Afghans would have cooperated. When (and if) he was captured in Pakistan in 2011, there was no excuse for executing him on the spot. It was like a mob hit to keep him from testifying.

International Man: Throughout history, many ancient and modern empires have had trouble conquering Afghanistan. Alexander the Great, Ghengis Khan and the Mongols, various Persian empires, the British Empire, the Soviet Union, and the Americans, among others, all bit off more than they could chew in Afghanistan. Afghanistan has earned its reputation of being "the graveyard of empires." Why do armies have such a hard time subduing Afghanistan? And why, given this obvious history, did the US empire think it would be any different?

Doug Casey: Stupidity and arrogance are fundamental reasons. Afghanistan is a totally alien culture to Americans. Even now, few can even find it on a map. Before we invaded, few had even heard of the place. It’s a place with totally different values, beliefs, language, religion, and ethnicity from Americans. What, therefore, are American soldiers doing running around killing natives in Afghanistan?

There’s no excuse for it whatsoever. As I said before, Afghanistan is an unorganized place - in fact, there really is no such thing as "Afghanistan." It’s a totally artificial construct, with a dozen major tribes and ethnic groups and hundreds of clans. The Afghans’ loyalty is not to their purported government in Kabul or the fictional concept of Afghanistan; it’s to their family, then to their clan, and then to their tribe. It’s impossible to conquer a country like that. The US would have had to conquer every single individual Afghan. With the exception of local quislings and opportunists, the Afghans hate the American invaders about as much as Americans would hate an army of invading Afghans.

There’s no reason why the US war should have gone any differently from the Soviet or the British wars. Insofar as these primitive people are tied together at all, it’s by a belief in a very militaristic religion, Mohammedanism. They take it very seriously and have a visceral hatred for infidel invaders.

But not only is it impossible to conquer a country like that - short of wholesale genocide -there’s no reason to be there. Elements in the US tried to fabricate an excuse that there was $3 trillion of mineral wealth in Afghanistan. Great. There's probably $3 quadrillion of mineral wealth on Mars. It’s a meaningless number apart from the fact that it’s a fraud that somebody sucked from thin air.

Even if economic deposits of unobtanium exist, the locals will make it impossible for foreigners to mine them. They'll see it as foreigners stealing their wealth. As I said, the whole Afghan adventure is a criminal fraud from beginning to end.

International Man: With the failure in Afghanistan, is there any doubt that the US empire is on the decline? If so, what are the investment and other implications of that?

Doug Casey: The only thing that really works in the US government now is the military. It’s certainly the only part of the government that Americans still respect or trust. The rest of it is increasingly being acknowledged as completely dysfunctional.

Since the US military is the only thing that works somehow, it's become the golden hammer in the US government's arsenal. If all you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail. Therefore, I suspect the military will become more important than ever in the years to come. That’s very dangerous because not many of the military are frontline types anymore. Future wars won’t be fought with divisions, corps, and armies, as things were in World War 2. The actual fighting will be done in small units by special operations guys. There are about 1.5 million individuals in the US Armed Forces. About 70,000 are Spec Ops of one kind or another, which is quite a large number for ultra-elite trained killers, who are reinforced by a million pencil pushers, administrators, and desk jockeys. In addition to the FBI, the CIA, and the NSA, they amount to a modern-day Praetorian Guard. That makes them very dangerous not only to real or imagined foreign enemies but to America itself.

It's been said that war is the health of the State. Having constant wars, and with combat soldiers in a hundred countries around the world, means the State is getting healthier. It's very much like what happened with Rome with the late empire. Defending borders against a hundred different tribes over thousands of miles was one cause of its implosion.

The same thing happened with the Athenian empire roughly 700 years earlier. They devolved from the shining city on the hill, freer than and different from any other entity in the world, into just another empire. War, a consequence of empire, destroyed them too. In their case, it was the Peloponnesian War.

The same thing is happening to the US, not just in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, but in dozens of other flyblown shitholes that few Americans have even heard of yet. We're imitating the Greeks and Romans in the worst possible way."
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The Daily "Near You?"

Wake Forest, North Carolina, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"An Insufficiency Of Data...

“Experience is a poor guide to man, and is seldom followed. A man really learns little by it, for it is narrowly limited in range. What does a faithful husband know of women, or a faithful wife of men? The generalizations of such persons are always inaccurate. What really teaches man is not experiences, but observation. It is observation that enables him to make use of the vastly greater experience of other men, of men taken in the mass. He learns by noting what happens to them. Confined to what happens to himself, he labors eternally under an insufficiency of data.”
- H.L. Mencken

"The Stink of Zombies"

"The Stink of Zombies"
by Bill Bonner

YOUGHAL, IRELAND – "The subject this week is transformation. And zombies. The Biden Bunch wishes to transform the government, making it bigger and better than ever. To make a long story short, what they are really doing is zombifying the whole country. But the transformers are on the march everywhere.

Path of Righteousness: Each group has its bugaboos… The “anti-racists” are trying to transform the human mind… No more shall we have the prejudices and inequalities that come so naturally to us all.

Vegans are trying to transform the human diet… Say goodbye to those beef steaks and “Got Milk” slogans… Not only would this stop the exploitation of animals, it would also stop all that cow flatulence that is destroying the planet.

Democrat activists seek to destroy the last vestiges of the Republican Party, giving themselves a permanent lock on power.

Republican activists hope to rise again… and put the country back on the path of righteousness… or, at least, Trumpeousness.

And activists wish to transform the oil companies into clean energy companies. For us, this is not just a matter of academic curiosity. Our Trade of the Decade features oil and gas on the long side (we’re short the U.S. dollar on the other side). [Paid-up Bonner-Denning Letter subscribers can find out all the details here. To subscribe, click here.] How are we doing? Keep reading…

Thriving Capitalism: Just because activists target an industry doesn’t mean it’s a bad investment. Capitalists connive… and capitalism survives. It goes about its business the best it can, swatting every curve ball that comes its way. Remember, government is inherently reactionary… always trying to protect the old elite who control it. So, the more the feds “transform” an industry, the more the insiders are likely to profit.

We looked at the tobacco companies yesterday. And our old friend Chris Mayer pointed out that the transformation wrought by activists and regulators didn’t harm investors in the Big Tobacco companies one bit. In 1998, the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement required America’s four major cigarette companies – Philip Morris, R. J. Reynolds, Brown & Williamson, and Lorillard – to pay a minimum of $206 billion over the next 25 years to settle the medical claims against them. Then in 2012, The Tobacco Atlas reported: “Tobacco Industry’s Profits Greater Than Ever.” How could that be?

Consequences of Activism: When activists or the feds target an industry, the first consequence is that money turns away from the sector. Fearing higher taxes, bad press, or stricter regulation, investors move on. Nobody starts a new cigarette company when the feds are trying to ban smoking. And few investors are going to put their money into building new oil rigs when the feds are insisting on going “green.”

This has the effect of making the existing capital – already invested in the industry – more valuable. No new competition, in other words; higher profits. The second consequence – which is why we are so bullish on energy – is that the lack of new investment means supply goes down. But today’s standard of living depends largely on the dense energy in oil and gas. Over time, uranium, hydrogen, solar panels, and windmills may play bigger roles. But for now, it’s oil and gas we use. And with new competition largely eliminated… and little growth or fresh investment… the oil companies will be more profitable than ever.

But they will be transformed, too – into zombies. Output will fall… Demand will continue to increase… And prices will rise. (Later, activists and the feds will blame the “greedy” oil companies for raising prices.) Gasoline use has already returned to pre-COVID levels in the U.S. And our oil and gas investments are up more than 50% since the beginning of the year. So far this year, oil is the best-performing sector. Not only are investors anticipating higher profits, they’re also looking to oil and gas to protect them from inflation. Once you’re pumping oil, your capital expense is “sunk.” You can keep pumping until the well goes dry. And you can easily keep up with inflation by adjusting prices upward.

Government Policy: Yes, that was a big story last week, too – inflation. When the supply of goods and services goes down (thanks to the zombification of the economy) and the supply of money goes up (in the 12 months of the COVID-19 hysteria, major central banks added nearly $10 trillion to their balance sheets)…Mr. Market rations those aforementioned goods and services by raising prices.

Which leads us to more footnotes in our Chronology of a Declining Economy. The U.S. budget deficit last year was $3.2 trillion… or 14.9% of GDP. (For comparison, Argentina, with 50% inflation, had a budget deficit last year of 8.5% of GDP.) And now, Joe Biden has proposed a $6 trillion budget. Inflation is now government policy – intentional… deliberate… and disastrous.

Inflation Herald: The Financial Times is on the story: "Key inflation gauge registers big jump in the US. A US inflation measure closely watched by the Federal Reserve posted its biggest year-on-year jump since the 1990s in April, rising more than expected and fuelling concerns about price increases. This is the Personal Consumption Expenditure Index (PCE) they’re talking about. It’s now going up at 3.1% year-on-year. (The Consumer Price Index, CPI, another important inflation measure, rose at a 5% annual rate during the first quarter)."

Which is not so alarming in itself. But it heralds the inflation trend we expect. Combining the latest figures for CPI and PCE, the statistical glop “gives off a faint whiff of stagflation,” said Paul Ashworth at Capital Economics. Even over here, drifting across the crystal sea on the North Atlantic wind to our current Diary headquarters in Ireland, the smell of zombies is unmistakable."

"Social Security, SSDI, SSI, VA, RRB & Low Income - What Is In It For You?"

Blind to Billionaire, AM 6/2/21:
"Social Security, SSDI, SSI, VA, RRB & Low Income - 
What Is In It For You?"

"These beneficiaries have been adversely affected with everything going on right now and additional Stimulus and support is definitely needed through a fourth stimulus check, monthly stimulus checks, and reform to Social Security and the SSI program."

Greg Hunter, "We Are at the Top of the Bubble"

"We Are at the Top of the Bubble"
by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"Finance and economic expert Alasdair Macleod says a new rule change at the Bank of International Settlements (BIS), aka the central bank of central bankers, is going to help drive the price of gold and many other commodities higher. The new rule is called “Net Stable Funding Requirement” (NSFR). It goes into effect by the end of June in Europe and by the end of the year in the UK where the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) operates the biggest gold trading platform in the world. The short story is this new BIS rule is going to stop paper contracts from conjuring supply of gold, silver and many other commodities out of thin air. Macleod says, “That’s what they do, and that is what is going to be stopped. For a long time I think the American government has encouraged the growth of paper alternatives to gold in order to take demand away from the real stuff. They said to the Bank of International Settlements that we can’t have another Lehman Brothers. So, what’s happened? They have come up with regulations to help insure we won’t have another Lehman. I think the real big, big change is going to be in the second half of this year.”

Macleod says couple this BIS rule change along with the out-of-control global spending and coming inflation and you have the perfect predictable storm. Macleod says, “With these two things coming together, only one thing can happen. The dollar goes down and down and down. Also, people are going to be frightened and think we have no gold, they are going to go out and try to buy gold. It’s going to be like squeezing a bar of soap in the bath, it will just shoot up. I can’t see any other outcome than that. Look at what is happening with the BIS and the new regulations that they are bringing in. From the gold point of view, you’ve got a falling dollar and you have sudden demand for gold being unleashed that was previously happy to sit in a bank on an unallocated basis.”

Macleod also says, “This has gotten to a point where we can’t go any further. We are at the top of the bubble. What happens when this market tops out? The dollar goes with it.”

Macleod predicts big corrections in bonds and stocks along with the dollar because despite what you are hearing, Macleod says, “Look at the fundamentals in the economy. They are talking about economic recovery, but look at all the shops that are closed and never to be reopened. This is not a healthy economy. This is a very bad economy. The reason why prices are rising is you’ve got all this money being put into the consumers’ hands. This is the middle class here, and they are spending this money, and where is the production to satisfy the spending? It’s not there, it’s closed down. There is no solution. We are getting to the point that there is actually no exit from this mess.”

In closing, a warning about revolutions. Macleod says, “This is part of the myth of a revolution. When you look at a revolution, it’s actually because the currency collapses because the economy collapses. It’s not because there is no bread. Why is there no bread? Because there is no bloody money.”

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes One-on-One with Alasdair Macleod,
 Head of Research for GoldMoney.com.

Gregory Mannarino, AM 6/2/21: "Expect The Economic Collapse And US Dollar Meltdown To Get Worse, FASTER"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 6/2/21:
"Expect The Economic Collapse And 
US Dollar Meltdown To Get Worse, FASTER"

"What If..."

"What if when you die they ask, "How was Heaven?"
~ Author Unknown

A truly terrifying thought...

"How It Really Is"

No worries, this won't last long...

Tuesday, June 1, 2021

LALATE Evening 6/1/21: "Fourth Stimulus Check Update"

LALATE Evening 6/1/21:
"Fourth Stimulus Check Update; 
Lifetime Benefits Reform Monthly Increase SSI SSDI SA VA RB; 
 $50,000 Student Loan Debt Forgiveness; SNAP Food Assistance; 
Also covered: PUA, FPUC, LWA, EIDL, UI, Hazard Pay"

“Feeding The Housing Frenzy; Panic Buying; Plan For Uncertainty Now”

Jeremiah Babe,
“Feeding The Housing Frenzy; 
Panic Buying; Plan For Uncertainty Now”

Gerald Celente, "Trends Journal: I Watched the News Yesterday. They Must Think We Are All Morons"

Gerald Celente,
"Trends Journal: I Watched the News Yesterday. 
They Must Think We Are All Morons"

"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present Facts and Truth over hype and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for What’s Next in the increasingly turbulent times ahead."

"Rental Market Apocalypse Will Pop The Housing Bubble: Prepare Yourself For The Worst!"

Full screen recommended.
"Rental Market Apocalypse Will Pop The Housing Bubble: 
Prepare Yourself For The Worst!"
by Epic Economist

"With even Bank Of America predicting the US economy will face a period of hyperinflation due to a major spike in commodity prices, the prospect of a stagflationary blow up just as seen in the 70s is worrying economists that sooner rather than later we will see the housing market boom turn into an epic bust. Building material prices have been skyrocketing and on the other hand, the US housing inventory is still at a record-low level. The market imbalances have never ceased to get worse, and bubble deniers are having a hard time explaining why the steep price increases are somehow justifiable. In a recent article, experts with ZeroHedge argued that the home price surge can be mainly attributed to the trillion-dollar government response to the current recession, in addition to record-low mortgage rates and a mass exodus away from major urban areas. Redfin recently divulged a market update revealing that, in May, median home sale prices rose to an all-time high of 18%, with 58% of all houses selling within two weeks of listing, also a record.

In face of this grim "hyperinflationary" landscape, one of the few hopes that were still standing for those whose incomes did not similarly "hyperinflate" and who were at risk of becoming unable to afford a roof above their head was the fact that rent prices have been allegedly “tumbling” in recent months. The truth is that the official data does not represent what the market has been actually going through at the moment, as rent prices have actually started to soar. In the article, the experts disclosed that American Homes 4 Rent, which owns 54,000 houses, increased rents by 11% on vacant properties in the month of April.

Invitation Homes, the largest landlord in the industry, also raised rental prices by a similar amount, according to one of the company's executives on a recent conference call. A couple of days ago, Bloomberg also warned that "record occupancy rates are emboldening single-family landlords to hike rents aggressively, testing the limits of booming demand for suburban rentals". So while the housing price bubble has continuously expanded over the past year, and as result, it significantly worsened the affordability crisis, putting homeownership out of reach for most Americans, on the flip side, rents remained flat for most of that time, therefore, the new increases "may add to concerns about inflation pressures" as Bloomberg so eloquently puts it. “Companies are trying to figure out how hard they can push before they start losing people,” said Jeffrey Langbaum, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. “And they seem to be of the opinion they can push as far as they want.”

Apparently, those companies were right, because the nationwide rental price increase from April to May marked the largest single-month increase ever recorded, according to the June Apartment List National Rent Report, which goes all the way back to January 2017, with the national rent index jumping 2.3 percent. In May, we have hit an unprecedented level, as our national index has surpassed the level where economists projected it would have been if the health-crisis-related price declines of 2020 had never happened. That is to say, as the housing price bubble doesn't have much more room to keep growing, the effects of the market's woes are spilling over the rental market, a clear sign of the unsustainability of the current pace of home price appreciation, and of course, a major red alert that a notable real estate price correction is looming.

Surging rents were the missing piece needed to prove how extremely unbalanced is the current housing market, to the point of reverberating the effects of the home price bubble into a market that, for the most part, remained untouched by the health crisis. And as inflation grows across more and more sectors, the experts say we're about to see some truly epic numbers in the coming weeks. With Americans struggling increasingly more to either buy or rent a home, bubble deniers may overlook the risks as much as they'd like, but all the evidence is there. Prices have to face a reckoning, and the more inflation pressures mount, the more obvious it gets that a housing market crash is going to happen. Whether the bubble will burst unexpectedly or prices will continue to grow until the market reaches a point of complete breakdown, only time will tell. But week after week, we present you with more proof that things simply cannot stay as they're right now for much longer. So don't fall for those rosy forecasts, as it is much better to be prepared to handle the ugly truth."

Musical Interlude: 2002, "Falling Through Time"

Full screen recommended.
2002, "Falling Through Time"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Near the heart of the Virgo Galaxy Cluster the string of galaxies known as Markarian's Chain stretches across this deep telescopic field of view. Anchored in the frame at bottom center by prominent lenticular galaxies, M84 (bottom) and M86, you can follow the chain up and to the right. 
Near center you'll spot the pair of interacting galaxies NGC 4438 and NGC 4435, known to some as Markarian's Eyes. Its center an estimated 50 million light-years distant, the Virgo Cluster itself is the nearest galaxy cluster. With up to about 2,000 member galaxies, it has a noticeable gravitational influence on our own Local Group of Galaxies. Within the Virgo Cluster at least seven galaxies in Markarian's Chain appear to move coherently, although others may appear to be part of the chain by chance."

"What Does The Quote "Every snowflake pleads not guilty in an avalanche" Mean?"

"What Does The Quote
"Every snowflake pleads not guilty in an avalanche" Mean?"
by Tom Robinson

"No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible." 
- Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

"I have never actually heard this quote but I think it's brilliant and can easily infer the intended meaning. When a problem is the result of many people individually doing something only slightly wrong it is easy for each individual person to see themselves as having no part in it.

For example, everyone is against slavery. We all know that the conditions in the sweatshops that make so much of the clothing in stores are deplorable, and many westerners are aware that some of the clothing we wear may have been made by people who are effectively enslaved.

But we tend to be okay with it at the same time. After all, we don’t run sweatshops, we only buy some of the clothing that comes out of them. Even if you stop purchasing clothing made unethically, other people will continue to buy it and nothing will change. We are just going along with a system that exists independent of ourselves for our own benefit.

The same logic goes for electronics. Even if we are aware (most aren’t) that the tantalum in the transistors in a device was taken from a system that promotes violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, all we did was buy the thing. We didn't pay any rebels. We didn't force anyone to mine coltan for a few cents a day.

When I was in kindergarten, I was in a play called “Nobody Stole the Pie.” The premise was that the people of a town made a huge pie. Without telling each other, everyone in town takes a little piece. After all, the pie is so big no one would miss one piece. When the time comes to cut and serve the pie, lo and behold, it's gone and everyone tries to figure out who stole it. But even though nobody stole the pie, it has disappeared just the same. Oddly, I feel that my kindergarten play encapsulates this quote quite effectively.

Each snowflake is only a piece of the avalanche and cannot be held responsible for the destruction it causes. One snowflake can't tear down a tree or bury a skier, but a bunch of them can. This quote calls upon each piece of the behemoth to recognize that the part it plays, though minor, is still what leads to the result."

"Computational Aspects of the Murder Hornet"

"Computational Aspects of the Murder Hornet"
An Engineering Overview
by Fred Reed

"I have long been a partisan of insects in general, and hornets in particular, as exemplars of the most varied, imaginative and sometimes, in a correct use of an overused word, weird design and engineering in the live world. There is more of the unlikely, preposterous, and inexplicable in our six-footed cocitizens than in all the vertebrates combine. By comparison, we humans are a mundane and unimaginative lot.

None of this leaps immediately to consciousness. Think of hornets in terms of IT and mechanical engineering, optics, and aerodynamics, and they will concentrate the attention. A complete description of a murder hornet would be sufficient to allow an engineer of enough ability to construct one from the description alone. The description would consist of layer upon layer of great complexity, biochemical, molecular biological, cellular, and, subsuming all, genomic. We will today consider only the anatomical, physiological, and IT aspects.

The murder hornet represents a very high degree of precision, miniaturized, optimized, multidisciplinary integrated engineering with a autonomous maintenance and energy management. Human endeavor has produced nothing resembling the hornet’s elegance of design. Consider some of its systems individually:

First, the hornet perfectly controls six multi-jointed legs, allowing it easily to walk over uneven surfaces, even while hanging upside down. This requires coordination and sensory feedback. Any robotics engineer will attest to the difficulty of doing this.

Second, its flight system allows it to hover, engage in aerobatics, and fly at forty miles an hour. This requires adjusting the rate of wing beat and angle of attack of the wings. This is not simple. It also requires precisely located muscles anchored to the body and attached to the wings. These latter are seen to consist of a thin flight membrane reinforced by a network of supporting elements. The design produces a wing both strong but light.

Third, the sting. This consists of a biochemical mechanism to produce the venom, a sac to hold it, muscles to express the venom through the stinger, muscles to force the stinger into the victim, and the stinger itself. These must exist simultaneously and function in coordination in order to work. Absent any one, the system is useless

Fourth, the digestive system with its components and its complex biochemistry.

Fifth, vision. We tend to think of eyes as being of little interest since we all have them and most of us have a very simple idea of their function and complexity. This is illusory. The hornet’s compound eyes consist of large numbers of intricately designed ommatidia, I don’t know how many the hornet has—quite a few as its eyes are large–but the dragon fly has thirty thousand.

Here a point that could be made of any of the insect’s systems. On examination, the hornet’s eyes are complicated and exquisitely engineered. The description below largely is from the Wikipedia and heavily edited to remove technical details, which makes it a bit awkward. Follow the link for the whole thing.

“The compound eyes of… insects are composed of units called ommatidia (singular: ommatidium). An ommatidium contains a cluster of photoreceptor cells surrounded by support cells and pigment cells. The outer part of the ommatidium is overlaid with a transparent cornea. Each ommatidium is innervated by one axon bundle (usually consisting of 6–9 axons, depending on the number of rhabdomeres) and provides the brain with one picture element. The brain forms an image from these independent units…

Ommatidia are typically hexagonal in cross-section… At the outer surface, there is a cornea, below which is a pseudocone that acts to further focus the light. … Each ommatidium consists of nine photoreceptor cells (primary and secondary pigment cells and organized into a different tier. These “R cells” tightly pack the ommatidium. The portion of the R cells at the central axis of the ommatidium collectively form a light guide, a transparent tube, called the rhabdom. A hexagonal lattice of pigment cells insulates the ommatidial core from neighboring ommatidia to optimize coverage of the visual field…affecting the acuity."

The “…advantage of this arrangement is that the same visual axis is sampled from a larger area of the eye, thereby increasing sensitivity by a factor of seven, without increasing the size of the eye or reducing its acuity. Achieving this has also required the rewiring of the eye such that the axon bundles are twisted through 180 degrees (re-inverted), and each rhabdomere is united with those from the six adjacent ommatidia that share the same visual axis. Thus, at the level of the lamina – the first optical processing center of the insect brain – the signals are input in exactly the same manner as in the case of a normal apposition compound eye, but the image is enhanced…..”

Again, complex, miniaturized, optimized, integrated, elegant.

Sixth, the respiratory system consisting of spiracles, openings along the body, through which air enters and is pumped in and out by muscular contractions under control of timing and coordinating circuitry.

Seventh, the circulatory system, simple but requiring muscular contractions to pump hemolymph , as well as control circuitry.

Eighth, other sensory systems such as the antennae and auditory receptors, nerves detecting touch, three simple eyes (ocelli), etc.

Fitting all of these systems into an insect two inches long is a feat of engineering compaction orders of magnitude beyond current human possibility. Yet more astonishing, and hard to explain, is the IT aspect, the system integration and control to allow them to function seamlessly together.

To begin, the brain (for so we will call it) receives tens of thousands of what amount to pixels from two eyes and melds them to form an image. The brain must map this two-dimensional retinal information onto a three-dimensional world in real time since hornets do not characteristically run into things. This is not mathematically trivial. Then the brain must interpret this information to decide what is going on in its environment, decide what to do about it, coordinate the action of legs, wings, perhaps stinger, mouth parts, housekeeping tasks such as respiration and digestion, on and on. This is a lot of computation.

How hard is a hornet’s information processing? Programmers working in assembly language think of processing in terms of lines of code. How many assembly language instructions would be needed to control the six legs, wings, armament, respiration, etc., and the integration of all of these to adapt to differing circumstances? While a hornet doesn’t use assembly language, the question points to the level of computation needed.

Finally, information storage. These insects come out of the egg knowing a great many things: How to build a fairly complex nest in cooperation with others, to include knowing how to make wood paste and how to place it. How to care for young and the queen, quite complicated. How to hunt and what to hunt (honey bees, for example). When and how to react to perceived threats to the nest. Each of these breaks down into further complexity. The phrase, “Caring for the young and the queen” consists of seven words, but in practice involves many sub-tasks. Mating, done while flying (Think airline pilots and stewardesses) requires both agility and knowing how to do it. Further, the brain allows considerable learning. Hornets fly far from the nest, often through forests, and return, necessarily having learned the way.

In IT terms, how many bits would be required to hold this information? Note that much of it must be graphic. Hornets know what honey bees look like, for example, and what other hornets look like and many other things. The brain and nervous system must be a quite good graphics processing unit. How is this storage accomplished? Note that this information is not learned, though they can learn things, but inborn. Stored how?

We have all heard the expression, “He can’t walk and chew gum at the same time.” The hornet can fly complexly, walk, process visual inputs, control its respiratory rhythm, envenom enemies, process other sensory inputs, all effortlessly and in coordination to manage housekeeping. They clearly have something paralleling the human autonomic nervous system. Does it break, as ours does, into sympathetic and parasympathetic branches? The hornet clearly has a voluntary system, being able to decide what to do according to environmental inputs.

Now, hardware. A hornet’s brain, somewhat distributed, consists of very little tissue. Wikipedia: A hornet’s brain “may contain fewer than one million brain cells, compared with the 86,000 million that make up a human brain.”

Nerve impulses in any organism travel at speeds orders of magnitude lower than those found in computers. The insect has slow wiring and little of it. How does such a minor brain manage to manage a highly complex hornet? This is engineering way above our pay grade."

Gregory Mannarino, PM 6/1/21: "JP Morgan Warns Again! And Fed. Presidents Call For More Easy Money"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 6/1/21:
"JP Morgan Warns Again! 
And Fed. Presidents Call For More Easy Money"

The Daily "Near You?"

Bacolod City, Bacolod, Philippines. Thanks for stopping by!

“Mirror Neurons: Mirrors In Your Brain”

“Mirror Neurons: Mirrors In Your Brain”
by Casey Kazan

“A recent paradigm-shattering discovery in neuroscience shows how our minds share actions, emotions, and experience -what we commonly call "the monkey see, monkey do" experience. When we see someone laugh, cry, show disgust, or experience pain, in some sense, we share that emotion. When we see someone in distress, we share that distress. When we see a great actor, musician or sportsperson perform at the peak of their abilities, it can feel like we are experiencing just something of what they are experiencing.

Only recently, however, with the discover of mirror neurons, has it become clear just how this powerful sharing of experience is realized within the human brain. In the early 1990's Giacomo Rizzolatti and his colleagues at the University of Parma discovered that some neurons had an amazing property: they responded not only when a subject performed a given action, but also when the subject observed someone else performing that same action. These results had a deep impact on cognitive neuroscience, leading the the world's leading experts to predict that 'mirror  neurons would do for psychology what DNA did for biology'.

Vilayanur Ramachandran is a neurologist at the University of California-San Diego and co-author of "Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind" writes that "Giacomo Rizzolatti at the University of Parma has elegantly explored the properties of neurons- the so-called "mirror" neurons, or "monkey see, monkey do" neurons. His research indicates that any given cell in this region will fire when a test monkey performs a single, highly specific action with its hand: pulling, pushing, tugging, picking up, grasping, etc. In addition, it appears that different neurons fire in response to different actions."

The astonishing fact is that any given mirror neuron will also fire when the monkey in question observes another monkey (or even the experimenter) performing the same action. "With knowledge of these neurons, you have the basis for understanding a host of very enigmatic aspects of the human mind: imitation learning, intentionality, "mind reading," empathy- even the evolution of language." Ramachandran writes.

"Anytime you watch someone else doing something (or even starting to do something), the corresponding mirror neuron might fire in your brain, thereby allowing you to "read" and understand another's intentions, and thus to develop a sophisticated "theory of other minds."

Mirror neurons may also help explain the emergence of language, a problem that has puzzled scholars since the time of Charles Darwin, he adds. "Is language ability based on a specially purposed language organ that emerged suddenly 'out of the blue,' as suggested by Noam Chomsky and his disciples? Or did language evolve from an earlier, gesture-based protolanguage? No one knows for sure, but a key piece of the puzzle is Rizzolatti's observation that the ventral premotor area may be a homologue of "Broca's area"- a brain center associated with the expressive and syntactic aspects of language. Rizzolatti and Michael Arbib of the University of Southern California suggest that mirror neurons may also be involved in miming lip and tongue movements, an ability that may present the crucial missing link between vision and language."

To test his idea, Ramachandran tested four Broca's aphasia patients- individuals with lesions in their Broca's areas. He presented them with the sound of the syllable "da," spliced to a videotape of a person whose lips were actually producing the sound "ba." Normally, people hear the "da" as "ba" - the so-called "McGurk effect" - because vision dominates over hearing. To his surprise, he writes, "we found that the Broca's patients did not experience this illusion; they heard the syllable correctly as 'da.' Even though their lesions were located in the left frontal region of their brains, they had a visual problem- they ignored the lip movements. Our patients also had great difficulty with simple lip reading. This experiment provides a link between Rizzolatti's mirror neurons and the evolution of human language, and thus it calls into question the strictly modular view of language, which is currently popular."

Based on his research, Ramachandran predicted that mirror neurons will do for psychology what DNA did for biology: "they will provide a unifying framework and possibly even explain a host of mental abilities that have hitherto remained mysterious and inaccessible to experiments."

Related:
"The Mind's Mirror", Excerpts

"For years, such experiences have puzzled psychologists, neuroscientists and philosophers, who've wondered why we react at such a gut level to other people's actions. How do we understand, so immediately and instinctively, their thoughts, feelings and intentions?"

"The mirror neurons could help explain how and why we "read" other people's minds and feel empathy for them. If watching an action and performing that action can activate the same parts of the brain in monkeys- down to a single neuron- then it makes sense that watching an action and performing an action could also elicit the same feelings in people."

"This neural mechanism is involuntary and automatic," he says. "With it we don't have to think about what other people are doing or feeling, we simply know. It seems we're wired to see other people as similar to us, rather than different," Gallese says. "At the root, as humans we identify the person we're facing as someone like ourselves."

“Compassion..."

“Compassion is sometimes the fatal capacity for feeling what
it is like to live inside somebody else's skin. It is the knowledge
that there can never really be any peace and joy for me
until there is peace and joy finally for you too.”
- Frederick Buechner

"How It Really Is"


"The Next Stimulus Check Will Likely Look Like This..."

Blind to Billionaire, AM 6/1/21:
"The Next Stimulus Check Will Likely Look Like This..."

"Many people are wondering what the next stimulus check is going to look like, how much will it be, how much money will the next stimulus check be, cool will receive the next stimulus check, when will we get the next stimulus check, will there be a fourth stimulus check, when will we get the fourth stimulus check? These are many of the questions that we continue to see on a regular basis, many people are in need of a fourth stimulus check very badly during this time, we discuss what the next fourth stimulus check will likely look like based on three different scenarios as we outlined in this video. This video is in reference to the 4th stimulus check, otherwise known as $2000 stimulus check. This is also in reference to the proposals that are on the table right now calling for monthly stimulus checks and recurring monthly stimulus checks."

Update PM 6/1/21:

"We need to continue watching all of this very closely because the negotiations on the infrastructure Package and Stimulus Package are a major contributing factor to determine if or when we will receive the next stimulus check, also known as the fourth stimulus check, $2000 stimulus check, monthly stimulus checks and any additional payments going forward. We will continue to keep you updated with the negotiations on the infrastructure package, stimulus package, and any other information going forward with the negotiations. This video pertains to everybody including those people are receiving Social Security, SSDI, SSI, VA, RRB, low income, no income and everybody else."

"Economic Market Snapshot 6/1/21"

"Economic Market Snapshot 6/1/21"
"Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will
do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone."
- John Maynard Keynes
"Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...
Only the consequences are real - to you!
Your guide:
Gregory Mannarino, AM 6/1/21:
"UPDATES: Crude Oil Surging, Market, 
Stocks, MORE"
"The more I see of the monied classes,
the better I understand the guillotine."
- George Bernard Shaw
MarketWatch Market Summary, Live Updates

CNN Market Data:

CNN Fear And Greed Index:
A comprehensive, essential daily read.
May 31st to June 1st, Updated Daily
Financial Stress Index
"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI) is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: credit, equity valuation, funding, safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United States, other advanced economies, and emerging markets."
Daily Job Cuts
Commentary, highly recommended:
And now, the End Game...
Oh yeah...

"You Could Be Homeless - Millions Will Pay The Piper - Eviction Crisis; Economic Abyss; Debt Crisis"

Jeremiah Babe,
"You Could Be Homeless - Millions Will Pay The Piper - Eviction Crisis;
Economic Abyss; Debt Crisis"

Monday, May 31, 2021

"Inflation Will Destroy Real Estate Very Soon - Huge Challenges for the Economy in June"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly,
"Inflation Will Destroy Real Estate Very Soon - 
Huge Challenges for the Economy in June"

"A Great Depression For The 21st Century: 1930s Was Bad, But What We Are Facing Now Is Worse!"

Full screen recommended.
"A Great Depression For The 21st Century: 
1930s Was Bad, But What We Are Facing Now Is Worse!"
by Epic Economist

"Ever since the health crisis burst, plunging the world's economy with it, financial gurus have been warning of another great depression. While the United States struggles to avert yet another economic collapse, those warnings sounds have become louder than ever. They say the next Great Depression will be far greater than the one of 1929 to 1933. This time, the impacts will likely persist for much longer than before and they will be much more acute, considering our economy is now plagued by a massive national debt that only grows bigger and bigger with each passing day. At this point, most experts already know the current monetary policy is driving off the country to a financial cliff as it inflates asset bubbles to dangerously high levels, threatening to bring about unexpected disasters that will only aggravate our economic hardships even further.

There are so many determinants weighting upon our financial markets that it just takes one single failure to trigger a major meltdown, and when that happens, we will find ourselves into the early stages of the first great depression of our lifetime. Our economy is on very shaky ground already but that doesn't seem to bother our leaders, who intend to keep on spending trillions of dollars regardless of the consequences. However, by doing so, they are destroying the very foundations that have been keeping the country afloat. In other words, the only thing preventing America from descending into utter chaos is the dollar's leading position as the world's reserve currency. The vast majority of international business transactions are conducted in dollars, so pretty much all countries and international corporations around the planet have to buy dollars in order to trade their goods.

So, the more money the Federal Reserve creates, the more it dilutes the value of every existing dollar. And in face of rampant inflation and the formation of overblown market bubbles, international partners, traders, and investors are questioning if it's still worth it to hold on to their dollars and Treasury bonds. If they lose confidence in our nation and decide to massively dump their dollars, we will not only see the entire house of cards crashing down but also be doomed to decades of steep financial pain.

Once we hit that stage, our leaders cannot say they did not see it coming, because every day a new series of signs, alerts, and warnings continue to emerge, highlighting the dangers of our reckless monetary decisions. When policymakers insist nothing serious is going on, alleging that our economy can support high debt levels and affirming inflation will be a "transitory" thing, what they are actually saying is that they will not make any preventive changes and they will continue to rely on the misconception that the world will support holding onto a lot more US debt, which would supposedly allow our government to borrow and spend even more. Needless to say, in a time where most of the world's economies are completely exhausted from the recessions they have been facing on their own, this is definitely not a good strategy.

The big question is: for how much longer will they be able to get away with this spending binge before it turns into a major national crisis that will not only bring the US economy down but send the entire world into a global financial nightmare? One thing is certain, once the US goes down, no one will come to bail us out. Partner countries are also seeing their economic conditions sharply deteriorate, and after a financial collapse hits, they will be solely focused on healing their own wounds.

Just as during the Great Depression and the last housing bubble burst, when the entire world was affected by the financial troubles generated here in the US, our economic partners will try to bail themselves out, thanks to us and to our leaders' choice to overlook the dimension of our own problems. That's why we can't simply expect external help to rescue our nation from the mess we created ourselves. And with the certainty that another great depression is fast approaching, we need to prepare for the worst. For that reason, we listed a few simple measures you can take not to be caught by surprise by a financial catastrophe and risk losing your home or seeing your family go hungry. These are the very basics of disaster preparedness and as things are quickly spiraling out of control, you should start getting ready as soon as you can."

Musical Interlude: 2002, "An Ocean Apart"

Full screen recommended.
2002, "An Ocean Apart"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Like delicate cosmic petals, these clouds of interstellar dust and gas have blossomed 1,300 light-years away in the fertile star fields of the constellation Cepheus. Sometimes called the Iris Nebula and dutifully cataloged as NGC 7023 this is not the only nebula in the sky to evoke the imagery of flowers. Still, this remarkable image shows off the Iris Nebula's range of colors and symmetries in impressive detail. Within the Iris, dusty nebular material surrounds a hot, young star.
The dominant color of the brighter reflection nebula is blue, characteristic of dust grains reflecting starlight. Central filaments of the dusty clouds glow with a faint reddish photoluminesence as some dust grains effectively convert the star's invisible ultraviolet radiation to visible red light. Infrared observations indicate that this nebula may contain complex carbon molecules known as PAHs. The bright blue portion of the Iris Nebula is about six light-years across.”

"I Don't Pretend..."

  
“I don't pretend we have all the answers,
but the questions are certainly worth thinking about.”
- Arthur C. Clarke

The Daily "Near You?"

Hackney, United Kingdom. Thanks for stopping by!