Chet Raymo, “Not Known, Because Not Looked For”

“Not Known, Because Not Looked For”

by Chet Raymo

“A reader shared with us those well-known lines of T. S. Eliot (“Little Gidding”). It is not quite what Eliot is up to, but I was reminded of some lines of Pascal that I shared here several years ago: “Scientific learning is composed of two opposites which nonetheless meet each other. The first is the natural ignorance that is man’s lot at birth. The second is represented by those great minds that have investigated all knowledge accumulated by man only to discover at the end that in fact they know nothing. Thus they return to the same fundamental ignorance they had thought to leave. Yet this ignorance they have now discovered is an intellectual achievement. It is those who have departed from their original condition of ignorance but have been incapable of completing the full cycle of learning who offer us a smattering of scientific knowledge and pass sweeping judgments. These are the mischief makers, the false prophets.” (“Pensees” V:327)

It took almost three centuries for Pascal’s remarkable insight to become the common opinion of scientists. The 20th-century philosopher Karl Popper expressed it this way: “The more we learn about the world, and the deeper our learning, the more conscious, specific, and articulate will be our knowledge of what we do not know, our knowledge of our ignorance. For this, indeed, is the main source of our ignorance- the fact that our knowledge can be only finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.”

It is an odd, unsettling thought that the culmination of the scientific quest- the long slow gathering of reliable empirical knowledge of the world- should be confirmation of how little we understand about the universe we live in. A willingness to say “I don’t know” is a prerequisite of scientific discovery. Only in the silence of acknowledged ignorance can we hear - half hear - the thing that calls us to attend.

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

Gregory Mannarino, "BE WARNED: Central Banks Are Deliberately Trying To Break The Global Economy"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 12/6/21:

"BE WARNED: Central Banks Are Deliberately 

Trying To Break The Global Economy"

- https://traderschoice.net/

The Daily "Near You?"

Mukwonago, Wisconsin, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"We Are Never Deceived..."

"We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves."

- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The Poet: Mary Oliver, “October”

“October”

"There’s this shape, black as the entrance to a cave.

A longing wells up in its throat

like a blossom

as it breathes slowly.

What does the world

mean to you if you can’t trust it

to go on shining when you’re

not there? and there’s

a tree, long-fallen; once

the bees flew to it, like a procession

of messengers, and filled it

with honey.

I said to the chickadee, singing his heart out in the

green pine tree:

little dazzler

little song,

little mouthful.

The shape climbs up out of the curled grass. It

grunts into view. There is no measure

for the confidence at the bottom of its eyes-

there is no telling

the suppleness of its shoulders as it turns

and yawns.

Near the fallen tree

something - a leaf snapped loose

from the branch and fluttering down - tries to pull me

into its trap of attention.

It pulls me into its trap of attention,

And when I turn again, the bear is gone.

Look, hasn’t my body already felt

like the body of a flower?

Look, I want to love this world

as thought it’s the last chance I’m ever going to get

to be alive and know it.

Sometimes in late summer I won’t touch anything, not

the flowers, not the blackberries

brimming in the thickets; I won’t drink

from the pond; I won’t name the birds or the trees;

I won’t whisper my own name.

One morning

the fox came down the hill, glittering and confident,

and didn’t see me - and I thought:

so this is the world.

I’m not in it.

It is beautiful."

- Mary Oliver

"Neuroscience Says Listening to This Song Reduces Anxiety by Up to 65 Percent"

Full screen recommended.

"Neuroscience Says Listening to This Song 

Reduces Anxiety by Up to 65 Percent"

By Melanie Curtin

"Everyone knows they need to manage their stress. When things get difficult at work, school, or in your personal life, you can use as many tips, tricks, and techniques as you can get to calm your nerves. So here's a science-backed one: make a playlist of the 10 songs found to be the most relaxing on earth. Sound therapies have long been popular as a way of relaxing and restoring one's health. For centuries, indigenous cultures have used music to enhance well-being and improve health conditions.

Now, neuroscientists out of the UK have specified which tunes give you the most bang for your musical buck. The study was conducted on participants who attempted to solve difficult puzzles as quickly as possible while connected to sensors. The puzzles induced a certain level of stress, and participants listened to different songs while researchers measured brain activity as well as physiological states that included heart rate, blood pressure, and rate of breathing.

According to Dr. David Lewis-Hodgson of Mindlab International, which conducted the research, the top song produced a greater state of relaxation than any other music tested to date. In fact, listening to that one song- "Weightless"- resulted in a striking 65 percent reduction in participants' overall anxiety, and a 35 percent reduction in their usual physiological resting rates. That is remarkable.

Equally remarkable is the fact the song was actually constructed to do so. The group that created "Weightless", Marconi Union, did so in collaboration with sound therapists. Its carefully arranged harmonies, rhythms, and bass lines help slow a listener's heart rate, reduce blood pressure and lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol.

When it comes to lowering anxiety, the stakes couldn't be higher. Stress either exacerbates or increases the risk of health issues like heart disease, obesity, depression, gastrointestinal problems, asthma, and more. More troubling still, a recent paper out of Harvard and Stanford found health issues from job stress alone cause more deaths than diabetes, Alzheimer's, or influenza.

In this age of constant bombardment, the science is clear: if you want your mind and body to last, you've got to prioritize giving them a rest. Music is an easy way to take some of the pressure off of all the pings, dings, apps, tags, texts, emails, appointments, meetings, and deadlines that can easily spike your stress level and leave you feeling drained and anxious.

Of the top track, Dr. David Lewis-Hodgson said, "'Weightless' was so effective, many women became drowsy and I would advise against driving while listening to the song because it could be dangerous." So don't drive while listening to these, but do take advantage of them:

10. "We Can Fly," by Rue du Soleil (Café Del Mar)

9. "Canzonetta Sull'aria," by Mozart

8. "Someone Like You," by Adele

7. "Pure Shores," by All Saints

6. "Please Don't Go," by Barcelona

5. "Strawberry Swing," by Coldplay

4. "Watermark," by Enya

3. "Mellomaniac (Chill Out Mix)," by DJ Shah

2. "Electra," by Airstream

1. "Weightless," by Marconi Union

I made a public playlist of all of them on Spotify that runs about 50 minutes (it's also downloadable)."

- http://www.stumbleupon.com/

“Chronic Stress: The Hidden Health Risks”

“Chronic Stress: The Hidden Health Risks”

By Meryl Davids Landau

“According to a recent American Psychological Association poll, nearly a quarter of Americans confessed to currently feeling under "extreme stress." Respondents especially blamed money, work, and the economy—a feeling 50-year-old Sue Wasserman knows all too well. In February, the public relations manager left Atlanta after her job was eliminated by a corporate restructuring and took a new post in Asheville, N.C. When that proved a bad fit, she struck out on her own as a freelance writer and publicist. Though Wasserman is thrilled some days to be living near the Blue Ridge Mountains, the uncertainty of her income overwhelms her. "There's a sense of foreboding—of 'What did I just do?' " she says.

Short periods of tension can actually be beneficial to people, sharpening thinking and heightening physical response in situations where performance counts, such as business meetings or athletic competitions. But experts are clear that when individuals are routinely under assault—over money, health woes, a daily freeway commute, whatever—a biological system that was designed to occasionally fight or flee a predator gets markedly out of balance. "The body's delicate feedback system starts to malfunction," says David Spiegel, director of the Center on Stress and Health at Stanford University.

Stress has been found to play a role in so many diseases of modern life—from asthma, depression, and migraine flares to heart attacks, cancer, and diabetes—that it likely accounts for more than half of the country's healthcare-related expenses, says George Chrousos, a distinguished visiting scientist at the National Institutes of Health. Chrousos spearheaded a conference on "The Profound Impact of Stress" in Washington, D.C., to educate policymakers and the public.

For decades, researchers have worked to unlock the scientific puzzle of how stress pervades and influences so many organ systems. In recent years, with an improved knowledge of biology and advanced laboratory techniques, they have produced a picture that identifies many more complex, and longer-lasting, effects than were previously understood.

One of the more disconcerting findings is that children (and perhaps even unborn babies) exposed to extreme emotional stressors may face a lifetime of consequences. "Children are extremely vulnerable to stress, because of their rapidly developing brain and their lack of prior experience with it," Chrousos says. In early March, Duke University scientists reported that twins ages 5 to 10 who had been targets of frequent bullying or physical assault or who watched their mothers become victims of domestic violence showed signs of premature aging in their cells, a risk factor for many diseases in adulthood.

Even more disturbing research reported in summer 2011 by German scientists and researchers at the University of California found that fetuses can be affected by their mother's emotional stress. Young adults whose mothers experienced a major event while pregnant with them, such as the loss of their home or the death of a relative, also had significant premature cell aging. Still, moms-to-be should not be too concerned, cautions Roberto Romero, chief of the Perinatology Research Branch of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, who was not involved with the research. For one thing, more studies are needed to confirm the findings. Moreover, these moms experienced highly traumatic events. "There's no evidence of a deleterious effect when pregnant women face the regular modern-life stressors of having 200 E-mails in their inbox," he says.

A chemical cascade. How does stress cause so much physical harm? In adults, at least, experts know that one route is its direct effect on the cardiovascular system. Lab studies confirm that blood pressure and heart rates rise in response to a stressor. Incidents of heart attacks also increase. After the big central California earthquake of 1983, heart attacks killed more people than the quake itself, says Noel Bairey Merz, director of the Cedars-Sinai Barbra Streisand Women's Heart Center in Los Angeles, who notes that victims likely already had some level of heart disease. Another mechanism: the poor habits people readily adopt during periods of prolonged tension. "People who are under stress are more likely to gain weight and to smoke, and are less likely to sleep well or exercise," which can lead to cardiovascular and other diseases, Bairey Merz says.

Researchers also blame stress's ability to impede the delicate dance of chemicals that keep the body functioning smoothly. Recent studies especially implicate chemicals involved in fat storage, the immune system, and the longevity of cells themselves. Among the most important findings for long-term health:

•Telomerase. Perhaps the most intriguing discovery focuses on this enzyme, which is so important to cell health that the researchers who discovered it were awarded the Nobel Prize in 2009. Likened to plastic shoelace tips, telomeres are caps on the ends of chromosomes that shorten each time a cell divides; when they become very small, the cell dies. An enzyme called telomerase adds some length back to the telomeres. Levels of telomerase seem to be enhanced by stress reduction techniques like yoga and meditation, while high levels of stress have been linked to premature telomere contraction. (This was the measure of cell aging used in the studies of stress in childhood and in utero.) In a landmark 2004 study by Elissa Epel and colleagues at the University of California–San Francisco, for example, women who felt the most stressed while caring for a chronically ill child had telomere lengths indicating their cells were 10 years older than those of the least stressed mothers. Shorter lengths predict a variety of the diseases of aging, from arthritis and diabetes to neurodegenerative diseases like dementia, says Epel, an associate professor of psychiatry.

•Cortisol. Scientists continue to uncover the myriad ways this key stress hormone damages the body. Chronically high levels are now known to trigger insulin resistance, a precursor to diabetes. Spiegel, who regularly works with cancer patients, says cortisol is thought to be involved in that disease as well by interfering with expression of tumor suppressor genes. "By inhibiting suppression of certain cancer-related genes, there is some evidence that abnormal cortisol can increase the rate of cancer progression," he says. Excess cortisol also affects the heart, and at least one study links it to premature death. When Dutch researchers followed more than 800 people 65 and older for six years, they found that those with the highest cortisol levels at the start of the study were five times as likely to die of cardiovascular disease in the subsequent years as those with the lowest levels, they reported in 2010. This was true even in people with no signs of heart trouble when the study began.

•Neuropeptide Y (NPY). A decade ago, UCSF researcher Epel made headlines when her lab discovered that chronic stress causes people to pack on dangerous deep belly or "visceral" fat, the kind linked to cardiovascular and other diseases. Since then, other researchers have identified NPY, a neurotransmitter in the brain and body that regulates energy use, as the prime culprit. Under stress, NPY sends messages to the abdomen to both store fat there and recruit other cells to transform themselves into fat. This makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint, Epel says, because substances in belly fat are more easily converted to the energy needed to outrun a predator than those in the fat stored around the thighs and buttocks. This effect often combines with the desire to seek out the dense calories of comfort food when unnerved, another adaptive stress response (this one to famine). It also at least partly explains society's expanding waistlines, Epel says.

•Inflammatory molecules. Bouts of stress also trigger proteins like cytokines that activate an inflammatory response in the body. "We think that happens to protect the body from injury that might occur while it is fighting or fleeing," explains Philip Gold, a senior investigator at the National Institute of Mental Health, who codirected the Washington conference. Short-term inflammation is actually a good thing, since it prevents infection and, by increasing blood flow and releasing numerous compounds, starts the healing process. But over a prolonged period, too much inflammation is believed to play a role in promoting a host of medical conditions, including heart disease.

What you can do. Psychologists use the term "resilience" to describe how quickly people tend to recover from emotional setbacks, whether getting cut off in traffic or losing a job. The more resilient you are, the more you can limit the impact of stress on your health. Genetics play only a small role, says Richard Davidson, founder and chair of the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. In fact, research spanning decades at Davidson's and other labs confirms that anyone can become more resilient with practice.

To help his own patients, Stanford's Spiegel coined an acronym, FACE. In short: Face or acknowledge stressors rather than running away from them; Alter perceptions to view these challenges in a more positive way, such as through cognitive therapy, hypnosis, or mindfulness training; Cope actively, by proactively heading off future stressors when possible; and Express your emotions rather than holding them in. "People under stress often view emotion as the enemy, but expressing it appropriately is important," Spiegel says. For example, you don't want to tell your boss he's a jerk, but you can say, "I felt negated when you said that at the meeting. " Or sound off instead to your partner, a friend, support group, or therapist.

Finally, help your body function at its optimum level: Eat regular, balanced meals; aim for the recommended daily seven to nine hours of sleep for adults; and, especially, exercise 30 minutes each day. Even gentle walking is sufficient to boost mood and lower stress, according to the NIMH. More vigorous exercise may provide additional protection. A 2010 study by Epel's lab found that those all-important telomeres were longer in highly stressed postmenopausal women who met the exercise goals outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which includes at least 150 minutes of brisk walking each week, plus two days of strength training. Sue Wasserman keeps her anxiety in check with daily treks along local hiking trails. "I may get stressed about an incoming check being late," she says, but as she starts moving, her worries and tension seem to ebb away.”

- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

○

Related:

“The Science of Stress and How Our Emotions 

Affect Our Susceptibility to Burnout and Disease”

"Ever Have One Of Those Days?"

 

"How It Really Will Be"

 

"America’s Nightmare Winter Gets More Nightmarish"

"America’s Nightmare Winter Gets More Nightmarish"

by Bill Bonner

“Well, my dear Pangloss,” Candide said to them, “when you were hanged, dissected, whipped, and tugging at the oar, did you continue to think that everything in this world happens for the best?”

– "Candide" by Voltaire

YOUGHAL, IRELAND – "You’ll recall that on Thursday last week, we began by wondering: What if, instead of being too negative in our outlook, we were too positive… too pollyannish and Panglossian? Shouldn’t we explore the possibility? And so, we’ve been looking at the dark side. Today, we continue our history of America’s Frigid Nightmare.

But first, an interruption with the latest news. The “jobs report” on Friday was pathetic. Here’s CNBC: "The U.S. economy created far fewer jobs than expected in November, in a sign that hiring started to slow even ahead of the new Covid threat, the Labor Department reported Friday." The real story is much worse. If you look at hours worked – the real measure of how much laboring is going on – you see that it has been increasing at the average annual rate of 0.3% for the last 14 years. That’s slower than population growth over the same period, which was roughly 0.8% per year, on average. In other words, the real economy has not been growing at all. Nor have real jobs. Where does this lead? That’s what we’re looking at in our “history” of the crisis ahead.

Fragile System: It began when the electrical grid collapsed. On paper, there was enough capacity to keep the juice flowing. But in practice, a centrally controlled mixture of highly manipulated solar, wind, and other “renewable” energy sources was more fragile than it looked.

Without honest price signals to guide them (everything was either subsidized or penalized)… and with inflation moving fast to confuse them… investors put little new money into the energy sector. And what was invested – incentivized by the government – was put into projects that were politically attractive, but often not very productive.

Then, push came to shove. A very cold winter. Cloudy skies. And no wind. The nation’s energy grid – or most of it – simply collapsed.

Systems Down: Homeowners had been pressured into switching to all-electric heat. It was “greener,” they were told. Electricity prices were controlled to help the “Great Transition.” Internal combustion engines were banned. Drilling for oil was curtailed.

And then… when the power went off… what could people do? Some huddled around open fires. Others took refuge in schools and public buildings. But they, too, soon grew cold. Back-up generators ran night and day. But they ran out of fuel. And with no electricity, the pumps wouldn’t work. Nor could their new electric cars be charged.

Practically all the nation’s output and delivery systems depended on software. Software ran on computers. Computers ran on electricity. And electricity now depended on the sun… and the wind… backed up by a woefully inadequate supply of energy from traditional sources. And until the grid lit up again, almost nothing moved.

From coast to coast, hungry mobs looted darkened stores. But it was not sneakers or big screen TVs they carried off; it was food. The mobs included people on Social Security as well as young hoodlums. And with electronically controlled inventory systems “offline,” and trucks sitting idle, the shelves were quickly cleared… and not restocked.

Cold and Miserable: Out in the country, it was better at first. Cows were slaughtered in the field. Locals drew on their farm tanks for emergency heating fuel. Many people still had wood-burning stoves. And they had guns. They used them to drive off refugees from the suburbs.

But even in the country, farms were no longer self-sufficient. Few had chickens in the yard or pigs in the sty. Instead, they grew cash crops, such as wheat or soybeans. And like their cousins in the suburbs, they relied on just-in-time deliveries at their local food stores, rather than just-in-case food at home.

And then, all over the country, pipes burst… toilets cracked open… pets went missing… basements flooded… and ceilings were ruined. People were hungry… cold… and miserable.

Gut Punch: After a couple of weeks, power was restored to most of the country… and people counted up their losses. Thousands had died – mostly elderly people – from “exposure”… stress… and from hunger. “Now we can get back to normal,” said President Buttigieg. But “normal” was no longer within reach. Something else had been broken. Something more important.

A headline from The Daily Beast from Saturday, December 4, 2021 put it this way: "America Is One Gut Punch Away From Throwing in the Towel on Democracy." Now, the gut punch had been delivered. And the whole nation trembled… doubled up in fear, pain, and anger. The Nightmare Winter was about to get much worse. Stay tuned."

- www.rogueeconomics.com

"The Economy is in Complete Turmoil - Nothing is Stable"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly, 12/6/21:

"The Economy is in Complete Turmoil - Nothing is Stable"

"From one day to the next we continue to get bad economic news about the economy. We are supposed to go about our days without a care for any of this. As the problems mount people act like it’s no big deal. It’s all getting worse."

"Economic Market Snapshot 12/6/21"

 

"Economic Market Snapshot 12/6/21"

○

"The more I see of the moneyed classes,

the more I understand the guillotine."

- George Bernard Shaw

○

MarketWatch Market Summary, Live Updates

- https://www.marketwatch.com/market-data

CNN Market Data:

- https://money.cnn.com/data/markets/

CNN Fear And Greed Index:

- https://money.cnn.com/data/fear-and-greed/

○

A comprehensive, essential daily read.

- http://www.shadowstats.com/

Dec. 3rd to 6th

○

Daily Job Cuts

- https://www.dailyjobcuts.com/

○

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

○

- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

○

- https://wallstreetonparade.com/

○

- https://www.whatreallyhappened.com/

○

- https://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/

○
Commentary, highly recommended:

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

○

And now, the End Game...

Gregory Mannarino, "TWO Wall Street Mega-Banks WARN On The Economy And Crypto. This Is What You Should Be Doing Now!"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 12/6/21:

"TWO Wall Street Mega-Banks WARN On The Economy

 And Crypto. This Is What You Should Be Doing Now!"

- https://traderschoice.net/

"A Brief History of Epic Mass Madness"

"A Brief History of Epic Mass Madness"

by Jim Kunstler

"The thesis called mass formation psychosis put forward lately by the Belgian psychologist Mattias Desmet - a good digest here in text - goes a long way to explaining the disgraceful mindf**kery that Western Civ has fallen for in our time, promulgated by a thinking class that descended into abject madness. It’s well worth reviewing.

The descent was provoked by the existential anxiety over the collapse of techno-industrial economies and the end of progress as-we’ve-known-it. (Have you noticed: it was the self-styled “progressives” who went the craziest?) As Dr. Desmet lays it out, the disconnectedness of contemporary life, its lack of meaning or purpose for many, leads to unendurable anxiety. All that inchoate fear seeks desperately to attach itself to some real object, some thing or some force that can be comprehended, fought, and triumphantly overcome. Finding such a target produces an intoxicating sense of communal connection, purpose, and meaning, driving actions that are often crazy and also absolutely impervious to rational debate.

The angst in America was well established by 2016. A beaten-down middle-class suspected that left-of-center politicians did not have their interests at heart after years of off-shoring their jobs, and they managed to elect their avatar, Donald Trump, over the obviously unsympathetic globalist, Hillary Clinton - who snootily tagged her opposition “the deplorables.” Even so, the polls had her ahead by a mile. Then, by some weird twist of fate, she lost a few crucial counties in midwestern states she hadn’t bothered to visit, and was reportedly too plastered after midnight on election night to come down and console the troops at campaign headquarters. The shocking election outcome instantly deranged the nation’s entire managerial class and its thinking-out-loud interlocutors in the news media and on campus.

The Golden Golem of Greatness, as I liked to call Mr. Trump, was the perfect target for their animus. Threatening to “drain the swamp,” he would shatter their hard-won power privileges and deprive them of their well-worn grifts - such as the various revolving doors between big money and its regulators. Plus, his rough personality offended their own pretense of decorum (in pursuit of that power and grift). They decided that he had to go, and fast, and the whole managerial class and their allies closed ranks to get it done, not least the vicious agents of the Intel “Community,” which force-fed all the federal legal machinery - the official instruments of punishment.

If they could only knock Mr. Trump off the game-board, America’s troubles would over. We could get back on track to becoming a utopia of inclusion, diversity, equity, and self-driving electric cars. For four years the FBI, the DOJ, and other distributed players (such as the CIA mole Eric Ciaramella and his NSA co-seditionist Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, and such ignoble rogues in Congress as Rep. Adam Schiff and Senator Mark Warner) beat President Trump like a piñata, casually breaking the very law that they supposedly represented in the process. This punishment was accompanied by a growing repertoire of cult-like rituals - especially around race-and-gender hustles - with rich opportunities for the new behavior called virtue signaling, which was essentially a game of collecting brownie points for status-seeking purposes in the new moral hierarchy of the “Woke.” The social networks, Facebook and Twitter, amplified every insane strand in the Woke messaging. As Dr. Desmet says, “The more absurd the rituals, the more they buy into it.”

This demonic opposition to Mr. Trump, and all the games issuing from it, produced the characteristic intoxication of mass formation psychosis. That is, the Left became a big cozy community of people initiated into a catechism of sacred truths. The important part is that they felt united in their struggle. Folks in the grip of this belonged to something at last, a solidarity of certitude, a social organism one could lose one’s anxious, fretful self in. No more loneliness and ennui. They were imbued with a sense of purpose: the ritual killing of the monster called Trump - millions of heroic Captain Willards stealing up-river to behead the renegade Colonel Kurtz. The news media’s role was to reinforce all that, with as much bad faith and dishonesty as they could get away with, in the service of fashioning a consensus that was eventually named “the narrative” - a self-reinforcing catalog of approved thought. The anti-Trump news posse garnered brownie points galore, including Pulitzer Prizes for their completely mendacious reporting.

The trouble was, for all their epic exertions, they weren’t exactly winning. The whole RussiaGate extravaganza fizzled - and may even eventuate in some criminal convictions if independent counsel John Durham turns out to be for-real. The Mueller Report came up plumb empty, to thundering disappointment, embodied in Rachel Maddow’s frantically bobulating Adam’s apple. The UkraineGate impeachment flopped. It was nice to have a sense of purpose and feel like a member of an exclusive club, but the Wokesters were unable to “nail that ol’ coonskin to wall” (as Lyndon B. Johnson once put it about winning the Vietnam War, which we lost). By January of 2020, it looked like Mr. Trump might even win re-election - the horror indeed! - considering the Democratic Party primary candidates were the most forlorn pack of has-beens, nobodies, kooks, and damaged goods ever assembled for such a contest. But whaddaya know? Along came Covid-19.

What a lifesaver the ‘Rona was for wobbling Wokedom, a cornucopia of boons, the gift that kept on giving! It provided an opportunity for perhaps the most craven public-private cartel in all the land, the CDC/FDA /NIH /NIAID /Big Pharma gang, to work some amazing hoodoo on the Golden Golem of Greatness and eventually all the nations of Western Civ. It put the perfidious, money-grubbing, and medically incompetent Dr. Anthony Fauci at the elbow of Mr. Trump as, in effect, the National Covid-19 Coordinator. He played the President like a Flugelhorn through most of 2020 - and, as the year ground on, Mr. Trump looked like he painfully suspected as much in all those ghastly televised daily briefings.

We will not go into the appalling mRNA vaccine boondoggle in detail here, except to say it reaped zillions for those with a stake in the patents, including Dr. Fauci. But Covid-19 also provided an excuse to relax the election regulations and pave the way to colossal ballot fraud in November, with Marc Elias of the Lawfare gang (and also a partner in the DNC’s pet law firm, Perkins Coie) scurrying from state to state tuning the electoral machinery in key swing precincts for a “Joe Biden” victory - and with hundreds of millions of dollars in help from Facebook’s Marc Zuckerberg. Till then, nothing in all the weaponized legal machinery across the land had succeeded in expelling the hated object of the managerial class’s loathing, but the election would git’er done.

Remember: the Progressive-Woke-Marxist-Jacobins liked nothing better than inflicting punishment. In fact, when you swept away all their ideological bullshit and the associated hustles, the movement was strictly about coercion, about pushing other people around, making them do as the Woke commissars willed. And there was a clearly sado-masochistic edge to all that. They relished cancelling people, wrecking careers, destroying reputations, livelihoods, marriages, families. Their political leaders had no qualms about exterminating hundreds of thousands of small businesses in Covid-19 lockdowns orchestrated by Woke heroes like Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York City and Governors Gavin Newsom of California and Jay Inslee of Washington State. And, of course, their darlings of the streets, BLM and Antifa, bashed-in shopfronts, looted all the merch, and burned down the buildings with mad glee.

But, most importantly, Covid-19 gave the political Left something else to focus its angst on once Mr. Trump was finally swept off the scene in the janky election. And until just the last few weeks of 2021, the virus has furnished endless opportunity for ever greater enactments of coercion and tyranny. Except now, suddenly, it’s all falling apart. In America, the claque behind the phantom president “Joe Biden” pulled the trigger on mandating vaccinations — complete with harsh punishments for the vaxx-averse - but then two things happened: 1) Federal Judge Terry Douglas in Louisiana issued an injunction against the mandate that applies in all fifty states; and 2) the news finally started leaking out - despite every effort of the US public health officialdom to hide it - that the vaccines carried an unprecedented risk of harm for medicines enlisted so casually into emergency use among so many millions of people, in addition to their negligible efficacy in preventing illness and contagion.

The Europeans, on the other hand, slid ever-deeper into despotic measures not seen since the Gestapo terrorized the continent. The Europeans face the same primal source of anxiety that the Americans do: the running down of their techno-industrial economies, except their predicament is arguably a little bit keener than ours is, since they have hardly any oil and natural gas of their own to run things on, and suffer terrible uncertainty about who will furnish it for them. If they had not gone out of their minds over what has turned out to be a pretty punk-ass virus - when treated early with a menu of cheaply available drugs - and hadn’t deified the false savior vaccines, they might be a whole lot more concerned about how they are going to heat their homes, fertilize their crops, and produce things of value - in short, remain civilized.

The catch is, they’ve given themselves until February to enforce their foolish vaccine mandates. The Omicron variant may help, too, since it is proving so far to be a grossly over-hyped development, discrediting the paranoia ginned up in the media. Can their courts act as ours have and put a stop to the madness? Between now and then we’re likely to see the defeat of the mass formation psychosis in America, at least, as the country is forced to face the truth of what it has done to itself.

Or, at least it will be the end of this chapter of that story. Perhaps the Europeans will snap out of it, too, as they see the narrative collapse in America. Or are they just too far gone? Standing by on developments."

- https://kunstler.com/

○

Related:

"Mattias Desmet on Our Grave Situation"

○

"A Killing Of The Mind: Mass Psychosis and Totalitarianism"

"The Stock Market Bubble Has Finally Burst: The December Crash Cannot Be Stopped Anymore!"

Full screen recommended.

"The Stock Market Bubble Has Finally Burst: 

The December Crash Cannot Be Stopped Anymore!"

by Epic Economist

"Wall Street's leading stocks are taking a major beating in recent days, with some trader favorites collapsing up to 50 percent over the past few weeks. The bubble has reached its peak, and it seems that it's all downhill from here. The market's highest flying stocks, such as Tesla and Facebook, have experienced the worst downfall since last year's market sell-off. Netflix and Nvidia also sharply dropped, resulting in hundreds of billions in losses.

On Friday, the selloff gained force amid renewed fears of widespread lockdowns, pushing the NYSE FANG+ Index of the tech-industry’s giants to correction territory. Some stocks are aggressively plunging from their highly-inflated peak. These so-called momentum stocks, which including big tech names, were among the market's top performers in 2021, with their high 'prospects of growth' sparking a panic buying frenzy for stocks.

According to Bank of America's weekly fund flow statistics, investors on the top levels of the market are already rushing to the ultimate safe-havens like cash, gold, silver and U.S. Treasuries.

Only on Friday, giants like Tesla plunged by 6.4%, while Nvidia fell 4.5%. Both companies were leading the market's rally and weighed heavily on the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 Index. Swings in shares of companies that couldn't justify growth or valuations have been even more extreme: Rivian Automotive faced a 40% crash from its all-time highs.

Still, many valuations are at sky-highs, so the carnage is far from over. In fact, some market veterans say it has just begun. In fact, in a recent interview, Warren Buffett's deputy, Charlie Munger, said that markets are "even crazier" right now than they were during the dot-com bubble. Just like in the late 90s, today's boom was fueled by a period of breakneck growth in technology stocks, with investors pouring giant piles of money into companies that had little to no prospects of real growth, or made no revenue or profits.

It's undeniable that today's bubble is much bigger, and that's a very worrying indicator. Particularly because, the huge 2000s stock market crash led the Nasdaq to fall as much as 9% in one day and 25% in a week. This means that the coming collapse is going to be considerably more hurtful. Sadly, many are still choosing to learn the hard way. Despite the series of warnings issued over this year, investors kept on fueling the meme stock bubble and now they're facing some exceedingly painful losses.

A sudden slide in the market is mercilessly pounding online Reddit traders' favorite shares, such as AMC Entertainment, GameStop, Peloton Interactive and Digital World Acquisition. Those are just some of the hardest hit, highlights the Investor's Business Daily analysis of data from S&P Global Market Intelligence and MarketSmith. In some cases, the pain can be brutal.

From the 25 meme stocks fueling the current bubble, 24 of them are down on average by 25%, which represents a damaging $44.5 billion loss on them in just a couple of weeks. Evidently, at some point, all bull markets come to an end. But sometimes, the ending can be unexpectedly dramatic. The problem is - with some many new players in the market - the vast majority of investors on a retail level right now is seeing the recent downward trend as a mere dip, not as the start of a bigger decline.

At this stage, volatility is taking over the crypto market too. The price of Bitcoin on early Friday was around $56k. By the time markets closed, Bitcoin suffered a massive liquidation and crashed down to the $42k level, effectively tumbling into a bear market. Over 410K crypto accounts were liquidated since then, totaling $2.6 billion in losses, with the largest liquidation being $27 million, according to Coinglass data.

Such dramatic losses are a sign that the U.S. stock market has reached a turning point as global equities sink in markets all over the world. The risk of aversion is going to be unbearable for most people, and the fact that spiking inflation is forcing the Federal Reserve to tighten monetary policy in the coming weeks, reducing liquidity for risky assets, actually means that there's no way to reverse this trend. Those who have seen it happening before can tell that we're on the same ruinous path right now. The losses we've seen so far are just hinting what is coming next. Get ready for 70 to 80% stock market crash this month. A financial meltdown like no other is right at the corner."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com​

Musical Interlude: Gnomusy, "Dolmen Ridge"

Gnomusy, "Dolmen Ridge"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Most star clusters are singularly impressive. Open clusters NGC 869 and NGC 884, however, could be considered doubly impressive. Also known as "h and chi Persei", this unusual double cluster, shown above, is bright enough to be seen from a dark location without even binoculars. Although their discovery surely predates recorded history, the Greek astronomer Hipparchus notably cataloged the double cluster. 

The clusters are over 7,000 light years distant toward the constellation of Perseus, but are separated by only hundreds of light years. In addition to being physically close together, the clusters' ages based on their individual stars are similar - evidence that both clusters were likely a product of the same star-forming region."

- https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap201118.html

"Never..."

”Never explain. Never apologize.

 Have it done and let them howl.”

- Winston Churchill

Chet Raymo, “In Wildness Is The Preservation Of The World?”

“In Wildness Is The Preservation Of The World?”

by Chet Raymo

“In earlier times, when I was still teaching, it was my habit to occasionally take a wildflower, or piece of rotten bark, or pinch of oil into a biology lab where I had access to a high-quality dissecting microscope. I'd put my sample on the stage of the scope and go exploring. A hawkweed blossom, say, became the concise equivalent of a tropical jungle, teeming with wildlife.

We bemoan the loss of wilderness, and rightly so I suppose. But there are vast tracks of wilderness that we do not despoil, on a scale too small for annihilation by our marauding hand. Elephants and gorillas may be in danger of extinction, but the ants are doing just fine.

In fact, they seem to find my kitchen countertops entirely to their liking. A paradise of crumbs. An Eden of spilled nutrition. Just look at them, armies of them, as small as the period at the end of this sentence, scampering in gleeful forays.

To my eye they are only featureless specks. But I know that they have legs, antennae, mouth and anus. Sense organs. Reproductive strategies. In other words, we have a lot in common, the ants and me, including common ancestry. It's all a matter of scale. For me the wilderness is mostly gone. For the ants, it's just changing form.

In "The Creation", E. O. Wilson writes: "Ants alone, of which there may be 10 thousand trillion, weigh roughly as much as all 6.5 billion human beings." In the kitchen, I still outweigh the interlopers, but take the whole island and I suppose they might outweigh me. In any case, they don't seem to be aware of a loss of wilderness.

And while we are on the subject of scale, consider the nematodes, mostly tiny, threadlike worms whose millions of species make up four-fifths of all animals on Earth. A handful of loam might contain a thousand. They live virtually everywhere- soil, water, desert sand, arctic ice, hot springs, and as parasites of plants and animals, including humans. Pinworms and hookworms are nematodes. For the nematodes, we are part of the wilderness.”

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

White House, Tennessee, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"I Can't Convince Myself..."

“I can’t convince myself that it does much good to try to challenge the everyday political delusions and dementias of Americans at large. Their contained and confined mentalities by far prefer the petty and parochial prisons of the kind of sense they have been trained and rewarded for making out of their lives (and are punished for deviating from them). What it costs them ultimately to be such slaves and infants and ideological zombies is a thought too monstrous and rending and spiky for them even to want to glance at.”

- Kenneth Smith

“If you want to tell people the truth,

 make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.”

- Oscar Wilde