"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."
"As humans, our lives are completely intertwined with the cycles and rhythms of nature. Nature is a mirror, inspiring and teaching us, deepening our sense of belonging in the world. Wherever you look, you can see that our patterns and the patterns of the natural world are the same. You can find this resonance in every form, from molecules to plants and animals and to planets. We live our lives according to the same principles as the trees, the mountains, the clouds, and the birds.
We begin our lives in the womb, folded in on ourselves like the bud of a flower. We can see our whole lives in the mirror of this natural form. When we emerge from the womb, we slowly begin our unfolding, just as the flower begins to open its petals. At its prime, the flower draws many insects to it and also the eyes of appreciative humans. When the flower's petals begin to fade and its life cycle comes to an end, it ceases to hold itself upright and returns to the earth. Traditionally, we return to the earth, just as all plants and animals do. Like flowers, we leave behind seeds in the forms of children and other gifts only we could have given. They continue to unfold even after we are gone. Rebirth is encoded into our lives, and death is just one part of the cycle.
Look around you, and you will find connection and insight. Notice how your moods shift from one to another like the sky shifts from bright blue to turbulent grays. Your thoughts are like clouds, appearing, changing shape, passing through, and then disappearing without a trace. The rain cleanses the sky, just as an emotional release cleanses your mind. The sky itself is your eternal awareness, unchanging underneath all these permutations. Let it reflect back to you your own abiding perfection.
As you walk through the world, find your own metaphors for connectedness in nature. Flesh them out fully and follow them as they lead you through the mystery and intelligence of life."
"Isn’t it always? With the start of World War III by the United States “declaring” war against Russia by its actions in Ukraine, we have entered a time when the end of time has become very possible. I am speaking of nuclear annihilation.
I look down at my great-uncle’s gold Elgin pocket watch from the 19th century. His name was John Patrick Whalen, an Irish immigrant to the US who fled England’s colonialist created famine in Ireland. It tells me it is 5:15 PM on April 21, 2022, a date, coincidentally, with a history. No doubt John looked at his watch on this date in 1898 when the United States, after the USS Maine exploded from within in Havana harbor (a possible false flag attack), declared war on Spain in order to confiscate Spanish territories – Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. One colonial power replaced another and then proceeded over the long decades to wage war and slaughter these island peoples.
Imperialism never dies. It is timeless. One hundred and twenty-four years go by in a flash and it’s still the same old story. In 1898 the yellow press screamed Spanish devils and today it screams Russian devils. Then and now the press called for war. If the human race is still here in another 124 years, time and the corporate media will no doubt have told the same story – war and propaganda’s lies to an insouciant and ignorant population too hypnotized by propaganda to oppose them.
This despite the apocalyptic sense that permeates our lives because of demonic technology and its use to transform humans into machines who can’t think clearly enough to perceive reality and realize the threat posed by that quintessential technological invention – nuclear weapons.
This is not uplifting, but it’s true. The nuclear weapons are primed and ready to fly. The US insists on its first-strike right to launch them. It openly declares it is seeking the overthrow of the Russian government. Russia says it will use nuclear weapons only if its existence is threatened, which has become increasingly so because of US provocations over a long time period and its current expanding arming of Ukraine’s government and its neo-Nazi forces.
The Russian President Vladimir Putin and its Foreign Secretary Sergei Lavrov have just warned the US that such involvement has made nuclear war a “serious” and “real” risk, in Lavrov’s words “we must not underestimate it,” which is a mild form of diplomatic speech. Putin said that Russia has made all the preparations to respond if it senses a strategic threat to Russia and that response will be “instant, it will be quick.” The US response is to shrug these statements off, just as it has done so for many years with Putin’s complaints about NATO forces moving up to its border. Incredibly, Biden has said, “For God’s sake, this man (Putin) cannot remain in power.”
Despite endless media/intelligence anti-Russian propaganda – “a vast tapestry of lies,” to use Harold Pinter’s phrase – many fine writers have provided the historical details to confirm the truth that the US has purposely provoked the Russian war in Ukraine by its actions there and throughout Eastern Europe, which the mainstream media avoid completely. This US aggressive history against Russia is part of a much larger history of imperial hubris extending back to the 19th century.
I will therefore here follow Thoreau’s advice – “If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications?” – since how many times do people need to hear lies such as “Iraq has weapons of mass destruction” in order to justify wars of aggression around the world. The historical facts are very clear, but facts and history don’t seem to matter to many people. Pinter again, in his Nobel Address, bluntly told the truth about the US’s history of systematic and remorseless war crimes: “Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest.” Which is still the case.
So time is my focus, for the last days have arrived unless there occurs a radical awakening to the obvious truth that the US government is pushing the world to the brink of disaster in full awareness of the consequences. Its actions are insane, yet insanity has become the norm. Insane leaders and a catatonic, hypnotized public lead to disaster.
I write these words with an old fountain pen, a high school graduation gift, to somehow comfort and remind myself that when we were this close once before in October 1962, Kennedy and Khrushchev miraculously found a solution to the Cuban Missile Crisis; and to find hope now, and that when my time is up and I join John Patrick in the other world, things will have changed for my children and grandchildren. It is admittedly the hope of a desperado.
The last few years of the Covid-19 propaganda have served to further distort people’s sense of time, a distortion years in the making through the introduction of digital technology with its accompanying numerical time clicks and its severing of our natural sense of time that is tied to the rising and falling of the tides and the turning of the days and seasons, a feeling that is being lost. Such felt sense of time’s texture could be slow or faster, but it had limits. We now live in a world without limits, which, as the ancient Greeks knew, demands payback.
For years before Covid-19, the sense of speed time was dominant, supported by the politically-introduced state of a constant emergency after September 11, 2001 with the urgency to hurry and keep up or one would fall behind. Keep up with what was never explained. Hurry why?
Fast and faster was the rule with constant busyness that served the very useful social function of leaving no time for thinking, which was the point, but it made many feel as though they were engaged. And constantly alert for “terrorists” to come knocking. Thus the long wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, etc., all of which continue via various subterfuges. Then, presto, all this frenzied time sense came to a stop with the 2020 lockdowns, when time got very slow, but not slow in the natural sense but an enforced slowness. People were locked up. Not only was it stupefying but stultifying and an existential drag.
This went on for two years with the prisoners allowed short respites only to be rounded back up and locked down again. Jabbed and jolted was the plan. When will it ever end? was the common cry, as despair and depression spread and scrambled minds led to suicides and mindless screen entertainment. This was planned education for a trans-human future in which the cell phone will be central to totalitarian control if people do not rebel.
Those behind the Covid-19 and war propaganda are fanatical technocrats who seek total control of the world’s population through digital technology. Now they have temporarily let the people out of one type of cell and dramatically sped up time with frantic war propaganda against Russia. The great English writer John Berger said it perfectly: "Every ruling minority needs to numb, and, if possible, to kill the time-sense of those whom it exploits. This is the authoritarian secret of all methods of imprisonment."
Everyone is now doing time while scrolling messages on the walls of their cell phones. A twisted, convoluted, distorted, mechanical time in which it seems that there is no history and the future is an endless road of more of the same.
Some say we have all the time in the world. I say no, that we have entered a new time, perhaps the end-time, when the world’s end is a very real possibility. Hypnotized people can agree to anything, even mass-suicide, unless they snap out of it. This can only happen with a return to slowness in the old sense, when people once felt time in their hearts’ rhythms attuned to the rising and falling of nature’s reality. Time to think and contemplate the fate of the earth when nuclear war is contemplated. Yes, “We must not underestimate it.”
"Worldwide Stockpiling and Panic Buying Commences"
"Food prices expected to skyrocket 50% according to world bank, surplus is being panic bought, limits and price restrictions being put into place, a New leader may hold the nuclear briefcase, submarines are on the move and Moldova is next... get ready set go!"
“This colorful skyscape features the dusty, reddish glow of Sharpless catalog emission region Sh2-155, the Cave Nebula. About 2,400 light-years away, the scene lies along the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy toward the royal northern constellation of Cepheus.
Astronomical explorations of the region reveal that it has formed at the boundary of the massive Cepheus B molecular cloud and the hot, young, blue stars of the Cepheus OB 3 association. The bright rim of ionized hydrogen gas is energized by the radiation from the hot stars, dominated by the bright blue O-type star above picture center. Radiation driven ionization fronts are likely triggering collapsing cores and new star formation within. Appropriately sized for a stellar nursery, the cosmic cave is over 10 light-years across.”
"Consider the following. We humans are social beings. We come into the world as the result of others' actions. We survive here in dependence on others. Whether we like it or not, there is hardly a moment of our lives when we do not benefit from others' activities. For this reason it is hardly surprising that most of our happiness arises in the context of our relationships with others.
Nor is it so remarkable that our greatest joy should come when we are motivated by concern for others. But that is not all. We find that not only do altruistic actions bring about happiness but they also lessen our experience of suffering. Here I am not suggesting that the individual whose actions are motivated by the wish to bring others' happiness necessarily meets with less misfortune than the one who does not. Sickness, old age, mishaps of one sort or another are the same for us all. But the sufferings which undermine our internal peace- anxiety, doubt, disappointment- these things are definitely less. In our concern for others, we worry less about ourselves. When we worry less about ourselves an experience of our own suffering is less intense.
What does this tell us? Firstly, because our every action has a universal dimension, a potential impact on others' happiness, ethics are necessary as a means to ensure that we do not harm others. Secondly, it tells us that genuine happiness consists in those spiritual qualities of love, compassion, patience, tolerance and forgiveness and so on. For it is these which provide both for our happiness and others' happiness. A good motivation is what is needed: compassion without dogmatism, without complicated philosophy; just understanding that others are human brothers and sisters and respecting their human rights and dignities. That we humans can help each other is one of our unique human capacities"
Deepest Crisis Ever As Massive Disruptions Emerge"
by Epic Economist
"The container shipping supply chain remains in the deepest crisis it has ever seen. As the massive backlog of containerships stuck outside Chinese ports is cleared to start sailing again, disruptions are rippling globally, and industry executives are warning that it will take several months to unwind the catastrophic logjam that is now forming. US ports are already scrambling with record volumes of cargo, a shortage of manpower, and truck drivers to deliver the goods across the nation. So if you find empty shelves again in the coming weeks – don’t be surprised. They're making a comeback (with a vengeance). In fact, we’re also being told to expect a fresh round of price hikes all across the board – from food to consumer goods to energy. And those new increases will not only impact people’s monthly budgets, but they’re also threatening to leave over 20 million Americans without power and basic supplies over the next couple of weeks.
Authorities of the port of Shanghai, which has been running at about half of its capacity for a month due to a citywide lockdown, have announced that operations will be resumed this week. But congestion has already increased by 40% at the key exporting hub. Right now, it is taking an average of 111 days for goods to reach a warehouse in the U.S. from the moment they’re ready to leave an Asian factory, nearing the record of 113 set in January, and more than double the trip in 2019, according to freight forwarder Flexport.
And while US ports are getting crowded with imports once again, supermarket and grocery shelves are becoming increasingly emptier. According to Datasembly, a research firm that tracks grocery and retail pricing, roughly 30% of grocery products are out of stock, marking an 11% increase from November 2021 levels. In some states, out-of-stock rates are even higher. In Connecticut, Delaware, Montana, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Texas, and Washington, they surpassed 40%. Compounding the challenge for Americans, consumers are also spending more money on many of the same goods they're used to buying. To make things worse, as the global energy supply chain breakdown accelerates, skyrocketing prices for gas and diesel, coupled with labor shortages in the trucking industry, are also exacerbating supply-chain headaches that will only serve to increase food costs for Americans.
That means trouble for more than 20 million families in the United States. All across the country, many households are drowning in utility debt. Now, these households are about to face widespread power shutoffs. Advocates say that when a family is shut off from power, they cut back on food, medicine, and other essentials in order to get reconnected as quickly as possible. In many cases, they completely lose access to everyday goods and fall into a debt spiral.
All of these price hikes are eroding our purchasing power and leaving us with absurd energy and grocery bills. As port congestion intensifies and global supply chain problems compound, the simultaneous breakdown of our food and energy systems is likely to bring a lot more pain for American families in the near-term, and spark long-lasting damages that will stay with us for decades."
"Humanity today is like a waking dreamer, caught between the fantasies of sleep and the chaos of the real world. The mind seeks but cannot find the precise place and hour. We have created a Star Wars civilization, with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology. We thrash about. We are terribly confused by the mere fact of our existence, and a danger to ourselves and to the rest of life."
"95 Questions to Help You Find Meaning and Happiness"
by Marc Chernoff
"At the cusp of a new day, week, month or year, most of us take a little time to reflect on our lives by looking back over the past and ahead into the future. We ponder the successes, failures and standout events that are slowly scripting our life's story. This process of self-reflection helps us maintain a conscious awareness of where we've been and where we intend to go. It is pertinent to the organization and preservation of our long-term goals and happiness. The questions below will help you with this process. Because when it comes to finding meaning in life, asking the right questions is the answer.
1. In one sentence, who are you?
2. Why do you matter?
3. What is your life motto?
4. What's something you have that everyone wants?
5. What is missing in your life?
6. What's been on your mind most lately?
7. Happiness is a ________?
8. What stands between you and happiness?
9. What do you need most right now?
10. What does the child inside you long for?
11. What is one thing right now that you are totally sure of?
12. What's been bothering you lately?
13. What are you scared of?
14. What has fear of failure stopped you from doing?
15. What will you never give up on?
16. What do you want to remember forever?
17. What makes you feel secure?
18. Which activities make you lose track of time?
19. What's the most difficult decision you've ever made?
20. What's the best decision you've ever made?
21. What are you most grateful for?
22. What is worth the pain?
23. In order of importance, how would you rank: happiness, money, love, health, fame?
24. What is something you've always wanted, but don't yet have?
25. What was the most defining moment in your life during this past year?
26. What's the number one change you need to make in your life in the next twelve months?
27. What's the number one thing you want to achieve in the next five years?
28. What is the biggest motivator in your life right now?
29. What will you never do?
30. What's something you said you'd never do, but have since done?
31. What's something new you recently learned about yourself?
32. What do you sometimes pretend to understand that you really do not?
33. In one sentence, what do you wish for your future self?
34. What worries you most about the future?
35. When you look into the past, what do you miss most?
36. What's something from the past that you don't miss at all?
37. What recently reminded you of how fast time flies?
38. What is the biggest challenge you face right now?
39. In one word, how would you describe your personality?
40. What never fails to frustrate you?
41. What are you known for by your friends and family?
42. What's something most people don't know about you?
43. What's a common misconception people have about you?
44. What's something a lot of people do that you disagree with?
45. What's a belief you hold with which many people disagree?
46. What's something that's harder for you than it is for most people?
47. What are the top three qualities you look for in a friend?
48. If you had a friend who spoke to you in the same way that you sometimes speak to yourself, how long would you allow that person to be your friend?
49. When you think of home,what, specifically, do you think of?
50. What's the most valuable thing you own?
51. If you had to move 3000 miles away, what would you miss most?
52. What would make you smile right now?
53. What do you do when nothing else seems to make you happy?
54. What do you wish did not exist in your life?
55. What should you avoid to improve your life?
56. What is something you would hate to go without for a day?
57. What's the biggest lie you once believed was true?
58. What's something bad that happened to you that made you stronger?
59. What's something nobody could ever steal from you?
60. What's something you disliked when you were younger that you truly enjoy today?
61. What are you glad you quit?
62. What do you need to spend more time doing?
63. What are you naturally good at?
64. What have you been counting or keeping track of recently?
65. What has the little voice inside your head been saying lately?
66. What's something you should always be careful with?
67. What should always be taken seriously?
68. What should never be taken seriously?
69. What are three things you can't get enough of?
70. What would you do differently if you knew nobody would judge you?
71. What fascinates you?
72. What's the difference between being alive and truly living?
73. What's something you would do every day if you could?
74. At what time in your recent past have you felt most passionate and alive?
75. Which is worse, failing or never trying?
76. What makes you feel incomplete?
77. When did you experience a major turning point in your life?
78. What or who do you wish you lived closer to?
79. If you had the opportunity to get a message across to a large group of people, what would your message be?
80. What's something you know you can count on?
81. What makes you feel comfortable?
82. What's something about you that has never changed?
83. What will be different about your life in exactly one year?
84. What mistakes do you make over and over again?
85. What do you have a hard time saying "no" to?
86. Are you doing what you believe in, or are you settling for what you are doing?
87. What's something that used to scare you, but no longer does?
88. What promise to yourself do you still need to fulfill?
89. What do you appreciate most about your current situation?
90. What's something simple that makes you smile?
91. So far, what has been the primary focus of your life?
92. How do you know when it's time to move on?
93. What's something you wish you could do one more time?
94. When you're 90-years-old, what will matter to you the most?
95. What would you regret not fully doing, being, or having in your life? "
From the wonderful "Marc and Angel Hack Life" blog:
City Prepping, "Now is The Time To Get Busy and Act"
"With so much discouraging information being thrown at us daily, it's important to focus on what's important and utilize the time we still have. Start your preparedness journey today, download the free "Start Preparing! Survival Guide" here: https://bit.ly/3xWhVwZ
"We, humans, are fascinating beings. We show mesmerizing courage in the face of some of the most incredible challenges in life, and yet, we can be easily stopped by a simple emotion such as fear of failure. We do realize, logically, that failure to fail in life stands in the way of us executing on our full potential. And yet we allow someone else’s definition of success or a fear of being judged consume us and prevent us from realizing our dreams. I recently gave a short, TED-style talk on the topic. I’ve included both the video, and the full transcript of the talk below.
"An executive was on his way to see the CEO. All kinds of thoughts were going through his mind. What went wrong? Why did this project fail? What did he miss? He was entrusted with a multi-million dollar project. Everyone knew it was a risk… everything new that hasn’t been tried before usually is. But it was a bold move, which, if worked, could really pay off. What now? Standing in front of his boss, he extended his hand with the letter of resignation. The CEO looked surprised, then slightly irritated. “You cannot be serious,” he said. “I just paid 2 million dollars for all of us to learn a valuable lesson. Now let’s go apply that knowledge and get us on the right path!”
Positive outcome. Great leadership too, wouldn’t you say? But it’s the fear of the opposite outcome that usually stops us from truly innovating, from not holding back.
FAILURE. Scary word, isn’t it?
Recently I radically changed my career. I have worked for Fortune 500 brands most of my professional career and earlier this year I took on a role of leading a start-up. And this question of failure came rushing back into my life. I was excited out of my mind with the possibilities. I never much doubted my abilities to get stuff done, especially when I am passionate about something. But there are always defining moments in your life that, no matter how confident you are, make you ask “But what if I fail?” I happened to ask it out loud in a conversation with a friend. A question to which he replied: “What is failure?”
Really? What is failure? This question always fascinated me. John Lennon tells a story about when he was in school and his teacher gave the class the assignment to write down what the kids wanted to be when they grew up. He wrote down “happy.” The teacher told him he didn’t understand the assignment to which he retorted that they don’t understand life. Maybe some of us just don’t understand the assignment? Or life?
Like I said, the question always fascinated me. So I talked to people about it, trying to understand what failure meant to them, what role it played in their lives. While writing about business innovation in my book “Think Like Zuck” I asked my interviewees that question yet again. And yet again when I thought hard about changing my professional path. And what I found was profoundly simple. Our definition of failure, and our path in life, is shaped by three things: Passion, Purpose, and Attitude.
Passion fuels everything in life: our energy, our ambitions, who we want to be. It fuels our actions. It shaped the lens through which we see the world. That lens helps us see (or miss) the opportunities in front of us and help shape our purpose. You see, I believe that every single one of us is an entrepreneur. We are capable of amazing things. Our potential is unlimited. The way to realize that potential is to crank up our passion inside us on high and never let up.
Our passion shapes our purpose. We are all created to make an impact and our passions define us, mold us into who we are. Once a person knows her true purpose there is no stopping her. Purpose gives us confidence, makes us fearless. Having meaning in your life is one of the most powerful forces a human being can be driven by.
And those two in combination – passion and purpose – affect your attitude. When you know who you are and what you want to achieve, your attitude shifts. It makes you sure, unstoppable. At that point you know no failure, you accept no failure but the path that gets you to your goal. You don’t sit around fearing failure, you are forging the path forward even through mistakes along the way. Are there times when you are frustrated by your trials and errors? Absolutely. Are there times when taking a wrong path sets you back. Yes! But you keep on going, doing what truly matters to you. And that is what’s intriguing. When your passion and purpose collide, they become a strong aphrodisiac. And that is when failure becomes non-existent.
Consider this number. 5,126. That is the number of prototypes it took James Dyson to successfully create a bagless vacuum cleaner. Dyson created a fail-less environment in his company. He challenges all his staff, especially his engineers, to be naïve, curious, downright silly. He invites them to challenge conventional wisdom, turn what we know on its head, explore what at the first glance seems impossible. One of Dyson’s bestselling products, Airblade dryer, was created while working on a totally unrelated product and trying out crazy ideas.
It took Steve Jobs nine years of investing in Pixar to make the world see how amazing computer animation can be. As a matter of fact, he attributes his being fired from Apple as one of the best things that happened to him and a reason he succeeded as Apple’s CEO later in life.
Flicker was supposed to be a gaming company. They failed at that miserably, but noticed that photo-sharing among their community is rather high, so they shifted gears and we now know Flickr as one of the most popular photo-sharing sites.
And what about individuals? Well, let’s see:
• Henry Ford went broke five times before he finally succeeded.
• Beethoven was proclaimed by his teacher as hopeless as a composer.
• Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor for lack of ideas and creativity. Disney went bankrupt several times before it succeeded as a company.
• Albert Einstein did not speak until he was four years old and didn't read until he was seven. His teacher described him as "mentally slow.”
• The Beatles were rejected by many music labels.
• Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team.
• Winston Churchill failed the sixth grade.
• Marilyn Monroe was told by a producer that she was "unattractive" and could not act.
And if you think that you are not Marilyn Monroe or Walt Disney, you may be right. But I know every single one of you is passionate about something, no matter how small it may seem in comparison with someone else’s passion or achievement. You matter to somebody. You are someone’s inspiration, someone hope. And if you think you're too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito.
Doubts kill more dreams that failure ever will. When we are kids, we were able to create, imagine, dream with no limits. We don’t doubt ourselves or our purpose. But when we get older, we are taught about responsibility and that maybe becoming an artist isn’t exactly a “safe and secure” profession. We move away from our passions and tell ourselves that it’s just a part of growing up. It is reality, we tell ourselves. But in reality, multiple studies showed that people who followed their hearts and led with purpose were way more likely to become independently wealthy vs. those who followed money and security.
Michael Jordan once said: “I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot, and I missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
We need to define what failure means to us. As a matter of fact, we need to take the definition that was given to us by someone else and rip it up. And maybe you end up figuring out that that word doesn’t even exist and it’s just a series of small mistakes you make on the way to living your purpose. I encourage all of us to rip up what somebody else said we should be, think, do, and feel and throw it out.
And don’t doubt yourself. Heck, if you are going to doubt something, doubt your limits. Don’t settle. Find your passion, live your purpose, ignite a movement. Trust in who you are and walk the journey that is only yours. After all, if you don’t build your dream, someone else will hire you to build theirs. True failure is to not try at all. So I encourage you to let go of the fear and dare to fail, because you just might fail your way to amazing things."
"There are a multitude of fuses affixed to dozens of powder-kegs and little kids with matches are on the loose. I don’t know which of the fuses will be lit and which powder-keg will blow, but someone is bound to do something stupid, and then all hell will break loose. It could happen at any time. One military miscue. One assassination. One violent act that stirs the world. And the dominoes will topple, setting off fireworks not seen on this planet since 1939 – 1945. I can see it all very clearly."
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