"There Is No Christmas For The Homeless This Year - LA Edition"
"I am in Downtown Los Angeles, California. There is no Christmas for the Homeless this year. As the economy gets slammed there are tens of thousands of people sleeping on the streets."
"To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget."
"Americans consider abundance and ready availability as birthrights so basic they're like the air we breathe. The idea that shelves could become bare and stay bare is incomprehensible. yet that is the world we're entering, for a number of complex reasons.
One is that the world added not just another billion humans (now 7.9 billion), but one billion middle-class consumers, consumers who use about 100 times more energy per person than poor people. These additional billion middle-class consumers doubled the number of high-energy consuming humans in a few decades, and this enormous expansion of demand has consumed all the easy-to-extract resources of the planet. There are no cheap, easy-to-extract resources left; all that's left is expensive to reach, extract, transport, etc., and since energy is the master resource, as its cost rises, so does the cost of literally everything that depends on energy.
Consider a poor person in a rural village. Most of their food is grown locally, and their income is so limited they do not have the means to consume much energy or items shipped halfway around the world via the global supply chain. They might have a cheap mobile phone and a few consumer items gifted to them by relatives working in the developed world, but very little of their consumption depends on long global supply chains. If those chains break, the impact on the poor villagers is relatively modest.
Compare this relative self-sufficiency to the extreme dependence on long supply chains of the average American. Very little, if any, of their everyday consumption is sourced locally, i.e., within walking distance. Every item on the shelves requires immense consumption of energy to be manufactured/produced and shipped to the shelf, and every item has a long dependency chain of intermediaries, each of which is dependent on numerous components, specialty materials, machinery and processes.
Every intermediary, and every process and source used by each intermediary, is a potential source of failure of the entire supply chain. Complexity and supply chains are abstractions. To understand the intrinsic fragility of global supply chains, we must count the number of intermediaries in the chain from the resources extracted from the Earth to the end customer in the store aisle, and then count the intermediaries in each of those links.
Counting the intermediaries in every dependency chain between the source of what we need/ want and the item on the shelf (or in the UPS/FedEx/postal service vehicle) is a measure of our dependency: the more intermediaries, the greater our vulnerability and the greater the fragility of the dependency chain.
This chain of dependencies is poorly understood outside each specialized industry. Consider semiconductors, widely touted as “the new oil,” i.e., the essential component in global production. The process of manufacturing semiconductors is extremely complex and resource-intensive, and many of the solvents, machines and components are only manufactured by one or two firms globally. If any of these links are disrupted, the entire chain of production breaks, as each is irreplaceable.
If one firm produces 80% of the global supply of a specialty solvent, the smaller firm producing the other 20% cannot quadruple production for many reasons: its facilities are limited, adding capacity is a multi-year project, the equipment to expand isn’t available, the supply of the petrochemical feedstock cannot be increased due to limitations in the storage and delivery chain, and so on.
There are many limits which are excluded from consideration when the supply chains are functioning. If we consider a system Americans take for granted - the ample supply of gasoline and diesel fuels - there are many unseen limits in the delivery system: the number of tanker trucks is limited, the number of drivers credentialed to drive the trucks is limited, intermediate storage of fuels is limited, and so on.
The system is optimized for the average driver to have less than half a tank of fuel. Should the system break down and drivers start hoarding, i.e., constantly topping off their fuel tanks, then the system cannot recover its previous stability: the system has been optimized to a narrow range of storage, tanker trucks, drivers, etc., and once the system breaks out of that narrow window, the entire chain collapses.
This is the reality of long global supply chains with dozens or hundreds of intermediaries: every supply chain has been optimized to function within a narrow window, and once any intermediary is disrupted, the entire chain breaks and cannot be restored once hoarding (at the wholesale level, over-ordering) begins. Hoarding is our instinctive response to shortages, and once the awareness of systemic fragilities and vulnerabilities rises, so too will hoarding.
There is another source of fragility in long supply chains with many irreplaceable intermediaries. Each intermediary must make a profit or it will shut down. If price increases passed along to an intermediary cannot be passed along to the next link, then the firm absorbing the increase will lose money. Since many intermediaries are small, marginally profitable firms, they cannot absorb losses for long. Once they shut down, the chain cannot be restored without replacing them, and that is a major project, as many intermediaries have specialized skills and trusted networks which cannot be replaced without local connections and sources.
Lastly, many of the global supply chain’s numerous intermediaries depend on credit markets to function, as their receivables often exceed 90 days. In other words, they often receive payment months after they delivered the goods or services, and so they rely on credit to fund day to day operations. Should credit markets seize up - a typical occurrence in crises - these intermediaries will shut down due to lack of funding.
The price to be paid for stripping the domestic economy of productive capacity will be far higher than proponents of trade can even imagine, much less calculate. The price to be paid for becoming dependent on long, complex global supply chains with hundreds of intermediaries optimized for a narrow window of functionality will also be far higher than conventional analysts can imagine, much less calculate.
How vulnerable is your personal supply chain? For the average American, the answer is: very. How do we reduce that extreme vulnerability? One way is to consume less. Another is to reduce the number of intermediaries between the source of our essentials and our household. For example, a barrel that collects rainwater off your roof is a source of water that has no intermediary. Vegetables collected from your home garden have limited intermediaries (sources of fertilizer and seeds). A solar panel that can charge your mobile devices in daytime has no intermediary once the panel has been purchased and installed.
All the items that become sources of essentials - water barrels, solar panels, fertilizers - could become costly or scarce, as each requires massive amounts of energy to produce. Obtaining sources is different from stockpiling the end products. Both are worthy of consideration. So is moving to a less dependent locale and reconfiguring one's life to consume less and reduce the number of intermediaries between your household and the sources of what you need."
"Addictive 'Brain Hijacking': Methods Of Social Media
Platforms Harmful To Users, Especially Children: Insider"
by Isabel van Brugen and Joshua Philipp
"Addictive “brain hijacking” methods used by social media giants to keep users on their platforms have harmful effects, particularly on children, according to industry insider Rex Lee, who says the companies may be violating child protection laws and consumer protection laws by employing such techniques.
Lee, who has over 35 years of experience in the tech and telecom industry, recently testified before Congress, speaking to members about some of the deceptive practices used by social media networks - in particular, “brain hijacking.” “The first time I’d ever heard of brain hijacking, I thought it was something from a science fiction movie,” he recently told EpochTV’s Crossroads program.
He said that social media apps, including those developed by Google, Meta, and Bytedance, are intentionally developed to be addictive. Part of what makes these platforms addictive is associated with brain hijacking technologies, which involve suggestive and manipulative advertising, he explained.
Lee, who works in the tech industry for an enterprise app and platform developer, said that he was shocked after coming across an admission in a 2017 Axios interview by Sean Parker, who served as the first president of Facebook. In the interview, Parker said that Facebook was intentionally developed using addictive technologies associated with something he described as a “social validation feedback loop.”
“That in itself is what is at the heart of brain hijacking,” Lee said. “And what that does is that reassures the end user that what they’re posting on the platform is being accepted by a lot of people. In other words, a social validation feedback loop would be associated with a thumbs up, or confetti or emojis, and that sort of thing after they do a post.”
Lee said these are addictive qualities that developers put into their app and platform designs, which ultimately end up harming the user. “Sean Parker actually admitted this during the Axios interview when he said, ‘God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains,’” Lee said. “But it’s not only the brains of children, it’s the brains of the end user, whether it’s an adult, teen, child, or business and user. This is why people are checking their smartphones up to 150 times a day.”
Lee added that Parker expressly told Axios that the feedback loop was “exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you’re exploiting vulnerability in human psychology.” Lee has been providing to congressional committees, as well as senators and House members, insider information on how these platforms are developed.
The cybersecurity and privacy adviser also highlighted the harmful effects these social media platforms have on young teenagers, describing the platforms as “no different than tobacco companies making bubblegum-flavored cigarettes to sell to children.” “These social validation feedback loops are what’s at heart, and why young teen girls as well as boys who utilize this technology can be harmed by it - they get addicted to it, they never can find fulfillment in it,” Lee said. “And then, they end up depressed and they end up always constantly having to look for that validation, not only from the technology, but from the other end users on the platform.”
“This also is dangerous because it contributes to cyber bullying,” said Lee, explaining that cyberbullies themselves may become addicted to bullying others online. “They [cyberbullies] get a few thumbs up from that post where they’re bullying somebody and then more thumbs up comes. And then that person, the bully, becomes addicted to actually harming people, as well as the recipient starts getting harmed,” he explained. “And we all know what that leads to anxiety, self harm, as well as suicides. And all of those are up among teen and young adult adult users, especially young girls who utilize the platform.”
“Kids are being exploited,” he alleged, noting that social media giants may be violating a child online protection law - the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) enacted in 1998. “It’s actually illegal for a child under 13 to use any type of technology that’s supported by predatory apps that are developed to exploit the user for financial gain through methods such as data mining and surveillance,” Lee said of the law.
Lee said he analyzed the legal language on a Samsung Galaxy Note smartphone that was pre-installed with over 175 apps created or developed by 18 companies, including Chinese tech company Baidu. He explained that what’s often hidden from the user within the devices themselves is “the most important part of your terms of use.”
This includes the application permission statements and application product warnings “which describe in great detail how much surveillance and data mining that the tech companies can conduct on you. But they don’t want that online. They hide that within the devices, and some of those application permission statements actually contain product warnings,” Lee said.
“So again, another cigarette analogy would be, it would be like the warning for cigarettes being printed on the inside of the package,” he explained. “So that after you consume the product, you understand then that it commit that it can cause cancer, it’s the same thing.” He added, “They’re hiding the product warnings within the application permission statements, which can only be accessed from within the device and not online.”
Lee said the FTC should be taking action to investigate these companies for related harm reported by their consumers, and enforce existing customer laws, particularly since former senior executives, such as Parker, have admitted that they developed these technologies to be addictive, “even at the expense of the end user safety.” “We not only had these platforms weaponized against the end user to exploit them for financial gain through harmful technology, such as addictive apps, but now they’re using them to oppress people and spread misinformation, censorship, crush freedom of the press, and in other things,” Lee added. “It’s unbelievable.” The Epoch Times has reached out to Meta, ByteDance, and Google for comment."
"Only Second Coming Will Make Things Better in 2022"
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com
"Precious metals expert and financial writer Bill Holter says huge lies and massive money printing have held the financial system together. His big prediction for 2022 is that both the lies and money printing are going to get much worse. Holter explains, “The risk for a meltdown from these levels, the risk has never been higher or could be higher than it is right now. You have got everything going in the wrong direction. In the year 2022, I will say without the second coming of Jesus Christ, things are not going to get better. At this point, evil has its hand on too many controls. They control too many avenues. They control the media and just go right down the list. Evil has too much control at this point.”
Holter says forget what the Fed is saying about “tapering” the easy money policies and raising interest rates to fight inflation. Holter contends, “They just cannot do it. We have an economy that it’s clear it’s beginning to slow. It’s clear that inflation is raging. So, the Fed is stuck in a corner. They need to raise interest rates, and they need to fight inflation, but at the same time, if they do that, they will pop the debt bubble. That’s the rock and the hard place the Fed is in between. What they are saying is we are going to take the patient off life support, and with the biggest credit bubble of all time, they can’t do it. If they do, you will see a credit temper tantrum turn into a credit meltdown.”
Holter also sees the narratives of lies giving way to the truth. Holter says, “The narrative on so many things is blowing up. Senator Joe Manchin saying that he’s not going to go along with spending another $2.5 trillion. The White House is trying to pass off as truth that spending another $2.5 trillion is going to tame inflation. This is truly George Orwell "1984", "Animal Farm" or whatever you want to call this. Up is down, black is white and truth, well, you can’t find truth today.”
Holter is also predicting the vax injections and the narrative that they are working is going to collapse. Now, to be “fully vaccinated,” you need a booster. Even those people are getting Covid. Just ask triple vaxed Senators Booker and Warren, who both recently tested positive for Covid. Holter explains, “That’s one of the narratives that I believe will fail in 2022. The reason being is people can see with their own eyes what’s happening. They know people who have had adverse reactions. They know people who have died. You can tell someone it’s sunny outside, but when they walk outside, the moon is out. They know they are being lied to. That’s where we are headed, and I think we are really close. I think in the first quarter of 2022, the vax narrative is going to completely collapse. With it will go a great deal of misplaced confidence. Markets are held up by confidence. The dollar is held up by confidence. The credit markets are held up by confidence. Anything you do to ding or hurt confidence is going to have an adverse effect on assets, not hard assets, paper assets and all that runs on confidence.”
Holter is predicting the Fed is going to be forced to start another round of QE in 2022 and not cut back. Another 2022 prediction that Holter is seeing is “some type of failure to deliver in the of physical gold and silver markets because the stress in the gold and silver supply, I have never seen in my life.”
There is much more in the nearly 1 hour interview, including predictions on Donald Trump being President again, Senator Joe Manchin leaving the Democrat Party, a coming false flag and even war. In short, Holter says, “This is good versus evil. It’s really that simple.”
"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present Facts and Truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for What’s Next in these increasingly turbulent times."
"Global supply chains are facing a very chaotic crisis that only seems to get worse. While some bottlenecks ease others are just starting. With each passing day, new shortages emerge around the world due to delivery delays, shipping disruptions, and a record congestion of cargo ships at ports. The network of world trade is also being plagued by container backlogs, labor shortages, geopolitical tensions, energy shortages, travel restrictions, and lockdowns. The combination of these factors is creating a ripple effect all over the planet, but especially in the United States. For that reason, analysts at Capital Economics are predicting the supply chain crisis to last for at least another two years.
But have you ever wondered why supply chains have become so tangled up? Or what's the root of the supply chain collapse? In an article brilliantly written by the economist and financial commentator, James Rickards, which was recently published in his blog, the Daily Reckoning, the analyst explains that there's no simple answer for that question. In fact, he says that supply chains are so complex that the answer is essentially irrelevant. It is a very intricate network, whose scale and complexity can be compared to an ecosystem. That's why paying attention to the exact cause and effect to get to the root of the problem can be a dead-end. The processing power needed to understand the entanglement of supply chains exceeds our logic comprehension.
Even though most of us have a notion of how supply chains operate, only a few people in the world truly understand how elaborate, extensive and vulnerable they really are. That's why Rickards breaks down this complex explanation into a simple example to show us why one single failure can lead to a cascade of disruptions and cause unimaginable damages. Let's picture a single loaf of bread. For that loaf of bread to arrive at the store, a truck driver has to pick it up from the bakery. The bakery needs one or more suppliers to get all of the ingredients needed to make the bread. The ovens used to bake it and the packing used to wrap it when it's ready are also an essential part of the process that allows you to bring that loaf of bread home.
The manufacturer of the oven also needs its own supply chain to provide him with steel, tempered glass, semiconductors, electrical circuits, and other materials needed to build his product. The ovens can be handcrafted or mass-produced in a factory that requires production lines or manufacturing cells to assembly the product. For its part, the factory also needs its own supply chain of electricity, natural gas, heating, ventilation systems, and qualified labor to make its entire operation work. So the store that sells the bread needs only the receiver of a product that required numerous supply chains to exist. Every store requires warehouses or back rooms to keep their inventory, as well as loading docks, forklifts and conveyor belts to move their merchandise from truck to shelf
Now imagine all of the other items available at grocery stores: fresh produce, fruits, meat, pork, fish, poultry, canned goods, dairy, drinks, spices, and so on. Each of them requires the operations of several supply chains to be produced, processed, packed and transported to finally get to store shelves. Things are much more entangled than they seem.
The main turning point for the supply chain was the just-in-time model of production. The big problem is that the just-in-time model has made the whole system extremely fragile. One single disruption can compromise the operations of the entire global supply chain. The system is simply not prepared to handle external shocks. But those shocks are happening on an everyday basis. The health crisis, the Ever Given accident, trade conflicts, port shutdowns, financial swings and many more factors can weigh upon the system. That's why supply chains have collapsed.
The bottom line, as Rickards concludes, is that if the supply chains collapse, the economy starts to collapse as well. Every item, product, and service that keeps our economy running requires a series of supply chains to exist. And when the economy starts to fall apart, our social order begins to fall to pieces just as well. And the price to pay for social disorder is far higher than any savings the just-in-time model can offer. Sadly, our leaders are failing to assess the severity of this situation, and we are already feeling the impact of broken supply chains and a slumping economy. The global supply chain crisis is far from over. And the chaos that is about to emerge goes far beyond our imagination."
"There’s a debate going on among the disaffected/terrified over which dystopian novel we’re now living in. As John Rubino remarks, some point to social media addiction and designer drugs to suggest "Brave New World." Others see mass surveillance and pandemic lockdowns as putting us squarely in "1984". Still others cite online censorship and cancel culture as favoring "Fahrenheit 451".
Each of these opinions seems valid, which is confusing. A prisoner should know the shape of their cell. So it’s a relief to find out that someone (not sure who) has settled the argument by creating the following Venn diagram (Tweeted by our friend David Morgan).
Turns out we’re not in a single dystopian novel. We’re in all of them simultaneously."
"Stars are sometimes born in the midst of chaos. About 3 million years ago in the nearby galaxy M33, a large cloud of gas spawned dense internal knots which gravitationally collapsed to form stars. NGC 604 was so large, however, it could form enough stars to make a globular cluster.
Many young stars from this cloud are visible in the above image from the Hubble Space Telescope, along with what is left of the initial gas cloud. Some stars were so massive they have already evolved and exploded in a supernova. The brightest stars that are left emit light so energetic that they create one of the largest clouds of ionized hydrogen gas known, comparable to the Tarantula Nebula in our Milky Way's close neighbor, the Large Magellanic Cloud. "
“And when they found our shadows (grouped ‘round the TV sets), they ran down every lead; they repeated every test; they checked out all the data in their lists. And then the alien anthropologists admitted they were still perplexed, but on eliminating every other reason for our sad demise they logged the only explanation left: This species has amused itself to death.” – Roger Waters
“Apathy and indifference are nurtured in the modern age as most peoples’ free time is frittered away with worthless trivia like ball games, computer games, movies and soaps, and fiddling with their mobile phones. These distractions might be fun, but after most of them you’ve learnt nothing of any value, and remain ignorant, malleable and suggestible, which is just how the elites want you.” – Clive Maund
“A truth’s initial commotion is directly proportional to how deeply the lie was believed… When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker, a raving lunatic.” – Dresden James
“A lie gets halfway around the world before
the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”
– Winston Churchill
"30 years ago (1985) Neil Postman (a professor of communications arts and sciences at New York University – until his death in 2003) wrote the best-selling book “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business”. (Free download below.) The book exposed, among other things, the subtle but profound dangers to the developing mind from the mesmerizing (and addictive) commercial television industry.
The lessons from that book have essentially been ignored by the amoral and corrupted sociopathic capitalist system that says “damn the torpedoes/full steam ahead” and blindly and greedily promotes unlimited growth no matter what the costs and who or what gets hurt long–term in the resource-extractive, exploitive and permanently polluting processes.
But Postman’s thesis applies even more strongly today to the current internet/computer/ age-inappropriate, pornographic sex and pornographic violence-saturated televangelist/political-contaminated media reality with which the prophetic Postman was properly alarmed.
SOMA, the Drug That Predicted Prozac by 50 Years: In the classic “Brave New World” (1932) Aldous Huxley wrote about the new form of totalitarianism that has now come to pass in the developed world, thanks to the privatized profit-driven, drug, medical and psychiatric corporations whose practitioners were once (naively or altruistically?) mainly concerned with relieving human suffering and trying to holistically and permanently cure their distressed patients’ ailments (rather than lucratively “managing” said “clients” as permanently paying consumers of unaffordable prescription drugs). Nearly 30 years after he wrote the book, Huxley said,
“And it seems to me perfectly in the cards that there will be within the next generation or so a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda, brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods.”
Neil Postman’s very last sentence of his book concerned the prescription drug-infested victims of the new form of totalitarianism that Huxley had described in “Brave New World”.
Of course, Huxley’s book was all about his imaginary psychotropic drug SOMA that Prozac’s makers and promoters in the late 1980s to falsely claim to make its swallowers “feel better than well”. One of the characters in Brave New World said: “And if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there’s always Soma to give you a holiday from the facts. And there’s always Soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering. In the past you could only accomplish these things by making a great effort and after years of hard moral training. Now, you swallow two or three half-gramme tablets, and there you are. Anybody can be virtuous now. You can carry at least half your morality about in a bottle. Christianity without tears; that’s what Soma is.”
Postman ended his book by writing: “what afflicted the people in Brave New World was not that they were laughing instead of thinking, but that they did not know what they were laughing about and why they had stopped thinking.”
A couple of years after the publication of Postman’s book, Roger Waters (of “Pink Floyd’s The Wall” fame) released a “concept” album that was inspired by the book. He titled the album “Amused to Death”. The lyrics of the title track are as follows:
"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back."
- Carl Sagan
"'Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds" is an early study of crowd psychology by Scottish journalist Charles Mackay, first published in 1841. The book chronicles its subjects in three parts: "National Delusions", "Peculiar Follies", and "Philosophical Delusions". MacKay was an accomplished teller of stories, though he wrote in a journalistic and somewhat sensational style.
The subjects of Mackay's debunking include alchemy, crusades, duels, economic bubbles, fortune-telling, haunted houses, the Drummer of Tedworth, the influence of politics and religion on the shapes of beards and hair, magnetizers (influence of imagination in curing disease), murder through poisoning, prophecies, popular admiration of great thieves, popular follies of great cities, and relics. Present-day writers on economics, such as Michael Lewis and Andrew Tobias, laud the three chapters on economic bubbles. Scientist and astronomer Carl Sagan mentioned the book in his own discussion about pseudoscience, popular delusions, and hoaxes.
In later editions, Mackay added a footnote referencing the Railway Mania of the 1840s as another "popular delusion" which was at least as important as the South Sea Bubble. Mathematician Andrew Odlyzko has pointed out, in a published lecture, that Mackay himself played a role in this economic bubble; as leader writer in the Glasgow Argus, Mackay wrote on 2 October 1845: "There is no reason whatever to fear a crash."
