Monday, September 4, 2023

"Who Wants to Live Forever?"

"Who Wants to Live Forever?"
by Mark Manson

"Each week, I send you three potentially life-changing ideas to help you be a slightly less awful human being. This week, we’re talking about topics that are a matter of life and death. No seriously, we’re talking about life and death this week: 1) the scientific progress in "treating" aging, 2) what a vastly longer lifespan would mean for culture and society, and 3) why do things die in the first place? Let’s get into it.

1. Can aging be reversed? - One of the more quietly controversial and interesting areas of scientific progress today is around the idea that biological aging can be treated as a disease and potentially be reversed. For years, researchers have been pioneering methods to limit cellular deterioration, stave off chronic diseases, and help older individuals stay healthy and independent as life expectancies rise.

A new study found that a cocktail of drugs not only slowed biological aging (measured by markers on the individual’s genome), it reversed it by approximately 2.5 years. To my knowledge, this is the first time an aging reversal has been shown in human subjects. This is a stunning result that even the researchers did not expect. (Note: it was a small study and had no control group, so don’t wet your panties just yet. As always, more studies need to be done.)

As with most bleeding-edge technologies, the idea that we can defeat aging, like most controversial ideas, has inspired reactions from experts that range from utopian to apocalyptic.

I was first exposed to the idea that aging could potentially be conquered by science in Ray Kurzweil’s book "The Singularity is Near." In it, Kurzweil's’ views are beyond utopian. They're like the religious rapture. In the book, Kurzweil makes the argument that not only will we cure death, but it will likely happen in most of our lifetimes.

Kurzweil points out that over human history, not only has life expectancy been increasing, but the rate at which it increases has been increasing as well. So, maybe centuries ago, life expectancy increased at a rate of 0.01 years per year. Then, it increased to 0.1 per year. Then 0.2 per year. Then 0.3 per year. He argues that eventually, life expectancy will hit a tipping point where it increases by at least one year per year, meaning that for every year that goes by, humans are expected to live at least one year longer. Ergo, we all become immortal. The end.

Maybe Kurzweil hasn’t spent much time investing in financial markets, otherwise, he’d be aware of the ubiquitous warning that accompanies every exciting chart: "Warning: Past performance is no guarantee of future results."

Indeed, there seems to be a "low-hanging fruit" effect on human longevity. It turns out that giving most of the world running water, sewage treatment, and, you know, food, vastly increases lifespan. So that "exponential curve" of increasing life expectancy that forever increases into the future is more likely an "S-curve" where life expectancy jumps massively as countries industrialize and modernize and then begin to level off at around 75-80 years old.

But regardless of the murky science and controversial implications, the lure of immortality is too strong for many to ignore. Companies have emerged that offer to cryogenically freeze your body when you die, promising to keep you frozen until the technology to "cure death" emerges in the future.

No, I’m not making this stuff up. Apparently, some notable people such as Larry King and Peter Thiel have signed up for it. But don’t get too excited. Freezing your body indefinitely after death starts at around $200,000 USD. Better start saving today!

2. Who wants to live forever? - In my book, "Everything is F***ed: A Book About Hope", I argued that one of the dangers of consumer culture is that we often equate "giving people what they want" with progress. Given that we so often want things that are terrible for ourselves (not to mention others), I point out that this is a pretty flimsy standard for measuring the social good.  

To me, curing aging (and maybe even death) is the ultimate question of, "Okay, we definitely want it… but should we?"

It’s hard to imagine the social and psychological repercussions of a population where the average life expectancy is, say, 250 years old. Would we overpopulate the planet? When would the retirement age be? Would our healthcare systems collapse? Would bridge and bingo become Olympic sports?

I joke, but I do think there are some serious philosophical questions here. Our ability to value things is driven by scarcity. We often care about things in our lives because we have an abiding sense that we will never experience them again. If we live forever, all experience becomes abundant, therefore much of it loses its meaning. Everything becomes more superficial—there’s no sense of legacy, no sense of, "I lived for that."

Or what about family? Will it become standard for everyone to have half a dozen marriages and a dozen kids? Will people have brothers and sisters 70 years younger or older than themselves? Will we appreciate our parents more or less knowing that we’re stuck with them for another two centuries and will end up sharing them with dozens of other people?

The perceived costs of things like traffic accidents, disease, and war would become much larger. Far fewer people would want to risk getting shot or dying in a car accident if they know they’re giving up hundreds of years of life. People would oddly become much more risk-averse. Pandemics would be waaaay scarier. The power of compound interest would become far more valuable, creating much more of a culture around saving and learning rather than spending and doing. Expertise would reach a point where people spend 30 or 40 years getting educated before starting their careers. Forty really would be the new twenty!

3. The evolutionary value of death - You might read all this and throw your hands up in the air and shout, "What are they doing? This isn’t natural!" But you’d be wrong.

Although they are rare, there are "immortal" species on the planet (in this case, "immortal" means that they do not biologically age.) The jellyfish Turritopsis dohrnii doesn’t die. Neither does the bristlecone pine tree. Many species of lobster technically don’t age and could theoretically live forever, the problem is that they outgrow their shells which then decay and fall apart, leaving them vulnerable to predators (talk about tragic).

Lifespans vary widely across the natural world. Some sharks and tortoises live for half a millennia. There are species of apes that only live to be about 15 years old. There are several species of flies that live for 24 hours or less.

It turns out that death is not inevitable. In fact, death exists for a specific evolutionary purpose. Ideally, by mixing and matching genetics, a species becomes more robustly adapted to its environment. The quicker individual creatures die, the faster they must procreate new generations, and the faster the rate of genetic mutation and adaptation within the species.

Therefore, each species has a "sweet spot" for lifespan based on the necessary evolutionary adaptation to its environment. If a species needs to adapt quickly and often, it dies quickly and often. If it needs to adapt slowly (or never), then it dies slowly (or never).

That "sweet spot" for humans seems to be every 2-3 generations, or every 80-100 years. The telomeres on our chromosomes appear to "run out" soon after that, effectively putting a limit on how long we can live naturally. This sweet spot probably exists because it’s short enough to stay ahead of the quickly mutating infectious diseases that threaten us, but long enough to have some grandparents around to help raise kids (for more on this idea, see Matt Ridley’s excellent book, "The Red Queen").  

A lot has been said about the scientific potential to alter our own species - genetic engineering, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, etc. But perhaps nothing would be so fundamental as altering our ability to age and die. Our psychology, our biology, and our societies seem to be largely based on it. Changing it could change everything. The question is, will we be around to see it?"

The Daily "Near You?

Wimberley, Texas, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Do You Wish To Know..."

“So you think that money is the root of all evil.
 Have you ever asked what is the root of all money?” 
- Ayn Rand

"Then you will see the rise of the men of the double standard - the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money - the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law- men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims- then money becomes its creators' avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they've passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.

Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion- when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing- when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors- when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you- when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - you may know that your society is doomed."
An excerpt from “Atlas Shrugged,” by Ayn Rand.
Full text of “Francisco’s Money Speech” is here:
o

"A September Stock Market Crash Is About To Burst And It Is Worse Than You Think"

Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 9/4/23
"A September Stock Market Crash Is About 
To Burst And It Is Worse Than You Think"

"Investors should fasten their belts for a volatile fall as September begins. This month is historically known as the cruelest for stocks, with data going all the way back to 1928 showing that Wall Street reports significant losses and enters into “correction mode” as soon as the autumn kicks off. The Nasdaq and the S&P 500 have been on a tear in the first half of the year, but since late August, the indexes started to falter. Anthony Denier, CEO of Webull, a commission-free trading platform, says that there are significant risks adding pressure on the September outlook. The period is considered the weakest for stocks as seasonal patterns come into play in a highly tense market environment.

Tech stocks still pose the greatest threats. With some, such as Nvidia and Tesla, reporting a valuation of 250 times earnings, it won’t take much bad news to frighten investors and spark a brutal sell-off this fall. Given that seven tech stocks, known as the Magnificent Seven, account for 30% of the S&P 500 market value, and 50% of the Nasdaq’s, downside risks are getting increasingly higher, and persistent losses are likely to trigger some nasty contagion this month.

On top of that, with bond yields rising and the lack of clarity from the Federal Reserve on interest rates, there is still a lot of uncertainty about the state of the U.S. economy. Another factor impacting the outlook for stocks is the inversion of the U.S. Treasury’s yield curve, which started to worsen in June. Inverted yield curves are an omen for economic meltdowns, and this particular inversion has “been screaming recession for over a year now”, highlights Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell.

Many other big names in the investing world made some gloomy statements about the stock market over the past few weeks. Citigroup actually predicted the S&P 500 would lose around 10 percent of its value by the end of the quarter. Notorious Wall Street strategists, including Mike Wilson from Morgan Stanley and Marko Kolanvovic from JP Morgan Chase, also shared downbeat forecasts for September.

More recently, Societe Generale’s chief global strategist Albert Edwards pointed to the rising number of bankruptcies as the next catalyst for the imminent S&P 500 downturn. In the face of all of these gloomy signs, Michael Burry, the “Big Short” investor who became famous for correctly predicting the historic collapse of the housing market in 2008, has bet more than $1.6 billion on a Wall Street crash. Insiders are aware of the systemic risks that can spark a September stock market crash unlike any other. They’re taking precautions right now because they know something big is about to break. Many determinants are creating a dangerous environment of risk exposure, and those who are still ignoring the emerging threats could face painful losses this month. An era of volatility is already upon us, and all that it takes to bring the Nasdaq and the S&P 500 down is the realization that the U.S. economy is doomed to fail.

"How It Really Will Be"

 

Happy Labor Day!

Happy Labor Day, folks! Hope you enjoy a peaceful,
 happy day, and thanks always for stopping by!

Bill Bonner, "The Fall of the Fourth Estate"

"The Fall of the Fourth Estate"
Where once a mighty pillar stood is now 
a cesspool of gossip, tattle and outright lies...
by Bill Bonner

“The American press exists for one purpose only, and that is to convince Americans that they are living in the greatest and most envied country in the history of the world. The Press tells the American people how awful every other country is and how wonderful the United States is and how evil communism is and how happy they should be to have freedom to buy seven different sorts of detergent.” - Gore Vidal

Poitou, France - "Have you noticed? The “news” no longer even pretends to be newsworthy. And surveys show that “journalism” is the college major most likely to be regretted. For years we’ve wondered: what’s going on? The headlines are often preposterous. The political accounts are absurdly partisan. And the ‘news’ stories have no news in them. Why?

It’s the logic of the electronic media. It tempts…lures…distracts, always trying to capture a person’s attention so it can sell some detergent. When we click on “She was a beauty in the ‘70s…but look at her now” or “fans were shocked when they saw her bank balance” – we know what we’re getting. But much of what passes for serious ‘news’ reporting is just as insipid.

Lies…There’s no guarantee of quality in a headline. Readers have no way of knowing whether it is serious or silly. Let’s look. Here’s a whopper from Alternet: "The Shocking Republican Plan To Dismantle The American Government." Whoa…hit the pause button for just a moment. Is there a ‘Republican plan to dismantle the government’? Of course not. But the headline entices Liberals – eager for more dirt on evil Republicans – and Republicans too, eager to see what jackassery the liberal press is getting up to. As Alternet develops the idea, we see that it is complete claptrap: "The modern administrative state, sometimes called the “welfare state” by Republicans, was largely created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in response to the Republican Great Depression of the early 1930s. And every day since FDR was sworn into office on March 4, 1933, the GOP has worked feverishly to dismantle his legacy."

Really? Did the American government only appear with Franklin Roosevelt? Would removing his add-ons ‘dismantle’ the entire government? And then, Eisenhower, Reagan, the Bushes, Trump…did these Republicans work “feverishly” to undo Roosevelt’s legacy? Well…they certainly weren’t very successful at it! The record shows that the government grew under Republicans as well as Democrats…with its biggest growth spurts under Reagan and Trump.

The narrative – Democrats as world improvers…Republicans as knuckle-dragging Neanderthals – is false and stupid. Both parties have worked to strengthen the power and wealth of the ruling elites.

Damned Lies…"And here’s Newsweek, which has lost all pretense of journalistic integrity: "Sudden Shifts From Drought to Floods Are Getting More Common in the U.S." The findings… also found that so-called feedback loops - a process that can either increase or decrease the effects of greenhouse gases - are likely contributing. Whoa…whoa…whoa…there are ‘feedback loops” that can either “increase or decrease” the effects of “greenhouse gases.” Well, that pretty well nails it down, doesn’t it? But wait…what is the evidence for these startling finds?

“Over time, from 1980 to 2020, researchers found that such whiplash trends in the weather increased approximately A QUARTER OF A PERCENT [you can guess where that emphasis comes from]…"Climate change is fueling back-to-back droughts and floods which have caused widespread devastation, resulting in loss of life and damage to property, infrastructure, and the environment," said co-author Shuo Wang, an associate professor at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. "Our findings provide insights into the development of early warning systems for mitigating the impacts of rapid dry-wet transitions."

Really? How? Perhaps the researches will give out a warning…something like this: ‘Hey ho…you’re having a dry spell. Watch out…you could have a wet spell soon.” “What are the odds?” “I don’t know…but a flood could be 0.25% more likely.” “You’re saying the odds of a flood are up by one quarter of one percent…that’s all?” “Well, they’re not really odds. We were just measuring recent past activity…past results may or may not be predictive.” “Oh…What should we do?” “Buy a boat? Or sun-screen. “ “Thanks.”

And the Mainstream News…And here’s another shocker: "Scientists Discover Continent That Had Been Missing For 375 Years." The article refers to a vast continent – connecting Australia, Antarctica and New Zealand – most of which sank under the ocean 500 million of years ago. Supposedly, Abel Tasman should have recognized its remnants when he explored the South Seas in the 18th century. But the whole idea – that it has been ‘missing for 375 years’ is just nonsense.

Wait. Here’s time-waster posing as financial analysis, from Fortune: "Morgan Stanley Analyst Predicts S&P 500 Could Leap Another 11% This Year, Boosted By Gains To ‘Magnificent Seven’ Stocks." "Despite a nightmarish cocktail of economic headwinds, the S&P 500 has enjoyed a surprisingly strong 2023 - up 18% for the year to date. And according to one expert that tally could go even higher, spiking again by as much as 11% as the summer season comes to a close. Morgan Stanley analyst Andrew Slimmon believes there's more growth to be had in the S&P 500, boosted largely by 'Magnificent Seven' stocks."

What is especially idiotic about this is the misleading precision. Eleven percent. Not 12%. Not 10%. The phrasing of it, too, – “could go [up]…as much as 11%” – is the kind of absurdity you find in advertising, not in honest reporting. Of course, it could go up 11%....or 150%. Or down 11%. Or not move at all. That’s the nice thing about ‘could;’ it doesn’t leave much out.

Oh, and A Hairdresser from Brooklyn: And here’s an example of a new clickbait genre – “I moved to Alabama, but I can’t stand rednecks.” Business Insider: "I regretted moving to France. The cost of living was too high for my low salary and I experienced xenophobia - so I moved back to the US.

Don’t expect the insights and amusements you find in “Innocents Abroad.” These writers are not Mark Twain. They are morons. But this one is particularly dim. She, working as a hairdresser, noted that the French were not very forthcoming with compliments; “receiving only critical comments (and never anything positive) didn't make me feel good at all.” It is a cultural difference. The French believe good work should be taken for granted. They reserve their comments for disappointments.

But then, she applies an American fantasy: “I experienced xenophobic comments made against me.” Do the French like Americans? Not particularly. Why should they? We were at a dinner party on Saturday. A companion made this remark: “Here in Europe, we are obsessed by climate change. It is our great bugaboo…our bete noire. But you Americans have your own délires; you think we should all like each other – gays, trans, blacks, Arabs, masons….Jews. It’s not going to happen.”

But the American can’t imagine that her ‘values’ are neither universal nor eternal. Asked why she decided to leave: “It was a hard decision: a part of me wanted to stay and be a part of some kind of change in Paris. But the truth is, I didn't love France enough to stay and try to change it.” She probably made the right decision. The last group to make a serious effort to change the city were the Germans, 1940 to 1944. They had thousands of troops…and machine guns. Still, Paris remained Paris. The French remained French. Brotchen did not replace croissants. The hair stylist from Brooklyn was not likely to succeed where the Wehrmacht failed.

One of our favorite recollections from the two decades we spent in France was when we visited an island off the coast of Brittany. Our car was registered in Paris…and each “department” is indicated on the license plate. Paris is “75.” In small town traffic, a man on the sidewalk yelled at us: “Dirty Parisians; go back where you came from.” It was then, after many years, that we finally felt accepted; we were treated just like the French treat each other."

"Adventures With Danno, 9/4/23"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 9/4/23
"Shopping At Ollie's! Bargain Hunting! 
Checking Prices! Grocery Discounts!"
"In today's vlog, we are at Ollie's and are seeking out some bargains on grocery items. With massive price increases continuing at grocery stores, we are searching for some good deals during these times of high inflation. We will go over quality and prices of items that we shop for in the store."
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Finance Daily 9/4/23
"Winter Food Shortages Are Going To Be Very Different"
"The U.S. shipping industry is facing major disruptions with 40% of its container traffic stalled, potentially rivaling the impact of a UPS strike. This paralysis is largely due to a labor dispute involving the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, causing significant cargo worth over $5.2 billion to remain undelivered. Additionally, there's significant concern over the Panama Canal's current situation due to low water levels, which might exacerbate the shipping delays. On the agricultural front, poor weather conditions from excessive rains in Quebec to droughts in the U.S. Midwest have led to failing corn yields and the potential for increased pasta prices. Canada's durum wheat reserves, crucial for pasta, have plummeted 47% from last year. These combined factors hint at possible food and goods shortages and significant price hikes, echoing scenarios of resource scarcity often depicted in dystopian narratives."
Comments here:

"Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 9/4/23"

Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 9/4/23
"Labor Day Special Edition: 
Then And Now - US Involvement In Ukraine"
Comments here:
o
Related, highly recommended:
o
Scott Ritter, 9/4/23 
"Game Over for Ukraine as 
Russia Defeats the Neocon Agenda"
Former UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter discusses what he learned traveling to Russia and how reality on the ground completely contradicts the neocons' narrative of Russia's weakness, spelling doom for their agenda in Ukraine.
Comments here:

Jim Kunstler, "Party! Party!"

"Party! Party!"
by Jim Kunstler

""The only difference between the Republican and Democratic parties is the velocities with which their knees hit the floor when corporations knock on their door. That's the only difference." - Ralph Nader

"If you are shocked and bewildered that totalitarian tyranny creeps through our country without opposition, the reason is simple: there is no official opposition. The capture of government looks nearly complete by a party that lusts to punish its citizens for the pleasure of watching them suffer, while it steals everything they’ve worked for and forecloses their future. At least half the country objects to this. Where is a party that stands for them?

In the natural order of the American system, a Republican Party would have stepped up to check the wretched excesses of a Democratic Party bent on breaking everything that has allowed people to thrive in this land: property law, economic liberty, free speech, now even your physical health. This Labor Day Monday is the last moment in this epic political psychodrama that the Republican Party has an excuse to kick back and do nothing about the parade of insults flung in the nation’s face by persons who believe in nothing, and who will stop at nothing.

These insults lately include especially the perversion of law to harass and hinder political opponents, the prosecution of a foreign war by proxy in a corner of the world where America has no explicable national interest, the deliberate failure to defend the country’s borders against hordes of invaders, the rigging of elections with ballot fraud and hackable machines, the censorship of information of all kinds, and the weaponization of public health authority against the people. These are all campaigns carried out by the Democratic Party.

This fall season will be a dreadful time of testing whether the country can endure any more of this. Congress is back in session this week. Congress is the only place in the federal government where an opposition party has the authority to direct events. Mr. Comer who chairs the House Oversight Committee has assembled enough evidence of bribery and treason for Speaker Kevin McCarthy to commence an impeachment inquiry right away into the conduct of President “Joe Biden.”

I’ve used quotation marks around Mr. Biden’s name since he ascended magically to this office in 2021 because it is obvious that he is only pretending to run the executive branch, and has been since day one on January 20, 2021. His March 5, 2020, Super Tuesday victories, after a drubbing in the Iowa Caucuses (4th place) and New Hampshire primary (5th place), had an odor of supernatural contrivance. His campaign from “the basement” was a joke, and it’s still entirely possible, despite three years of massive gaslighting, that his victory in the 2020 election was a fraud.

I believe the reason “Joe Biden” was installed in the White House was to allow Barack Obama to run the executive branch and all its agencies in secret from his headquarters across town in the DC Kalorama district, and the reason he is allowed to do this is because the Democratic Party has committed so many crimes against the country that a tremendous effort had to be made to cover them up, or else scores of figures in high places could have been subject to investigation and prosecution, including Mr. Obama.

It’s also possible that an impeachment inquiry in the House will lead to evidence of Mr. Obama’s role in the Biden family’s bribery adventures abroad, including the participation in one way or another of high diplomatic officials under Mr. Obama such as US Ambassadors to Ukraine Jeffrey Pyatt and Marie Yovanovitch - as well as their nefarious roles in the first impeachment of Donald Trump. Expect former Secretary of State John Kerry to surface in that mix, too. His stepson, Christopher Heinz was in business for a time with Hunter Biden and Devon Archer during the Burisma caper.

You might hear a lot about the coming fiscal year 2024 spending crisis again starting this week. It must be resolved by the end of the month or the government supposedly runs out of money to pay for all the things that government wastes our money on, from underwriting drag-queen story hours to paying the pensions of retired Ukrainian government officials. Wouldn’t that actually be a fine opportunity for some vigorous de-funding of government activities, such as the DOJ’s special prosecutor operation, Homeland Security’s censorship office, every dollar apportioned to Ukraine, the FBI’s continuing Jan 6 witch-hunt, the Department of Health and Human Services Covid-19 hoodoo, and probably a hundred other trespasses against the public’s sense of decency and good faith?

Or else, isn’t the country ripe for a new party that actually represents the interests of the country? More than a year remains before the 2024 election - if it is even allowed to happen. We can’t go on with no party opposed to the degeneration and destruction of the thing known as the USA. Take this final day-off of the summer to think about that. And think about the emblematic frozen face of Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell, a human deer-in-the-headlights waiting to collide with an implacable force. You are that force."
o
"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. For the traitor appears not a traitor - he speaks in the accents familiar to his victims, and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation - he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city - he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared. The traitor is the plague"
- Cicero

Dan, I Allegedly, "AM/PM 9/4/23

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly AM 9/4/23
"Reality Is About To Set In"
So much is happening in the corporate world. This will affect all of us because businesses are going to have a real problem refinancing debt. It’s just a matter of time until this goes public.
 Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly PM 9/4/23
"People Are Pulling Back"
The numbers do not lie. Durable goods purchases are down. People are not spending money on big purchases. Labor Day sales were out there, but people didn’t act.
Comments here:

Gregory Mannarino, "Markets, A Look Ahead"

Gregory Mannarino, 9/4/23
"Markets, A Look Ahead: 
A Loud And Clear Sign From The Debt Market"
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
The Atlantis Report, 9/4/23
"Bank Of America Runs Damage 
Control As Over 1100 Banks Close"
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Financial Talk 9/4/23
"Prepare For An Unprecedented Car Market Crash 
As a Historic Car Price Collapse Is Here"
Join us as we embark on a deep dive into the factors driving this impending catastrophe. We'll dissect market trends, scrutinize economic indicators, and decode shifting consumer behaviors. Get ready to weather the storm with us as we candidly discuss the potential repercussions on car manufacturers, dealerships, and buyers worldwide. This is a critical analysis of the automotive market that you simply can't afford to miss. We'll take you right into the heart of this crisis, revealing what it means for the future of the industry. Knowledge is power, and in these uncertain times, understanding the dynamics at play in the car market is essential.
Comments here:

"Economic Market Snapshot 9/4/23"

"Economic Market Snapshot 9/4/23"
Market Data Center, Live Updates:
Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...
Only the consequences are real - to you!
"It's a Big Club, and you ain't in it. 
You and I are not in the Big Club."
- George Carlin
A comprehensive, essential daily read.
Financial Stress Index

"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI) is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: creditequity valuationfunding, safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United Statesother advanced economies, and emerging markets."
Job cuts and much more.
Commentary, highly recommended:
"The more I see of the monied classes,
the better I understand the guillotine."
- George Bernard Shaw
Oh yeah... beyond words. Any I know anyway...
And now... The End Game...
o

Sunday, September 3, 2023

Jeremiah Babe, "Get Ready, Things Are About To Get Real'

Jeremiah Babe, 9/3/23
"Get Ready, Things Are About To Get Real;
 Is The Burning Man Disaster A Warning?"
Comments here:

Canadian Prepper, "Well... That Escalated Quickly"

Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 9/3/23
"Well... That Escalated Quickly"
Comments here:

Musical Interlude: Gov't Mule, "Forevermore"

Gov't Mule, "Forevermore"
Singer Warren Haynes

Some songs you just feel in your soul...

Musical Interlude: Moody Blues, "Land of Make-Believe"

Full screen recommended.
Moody Blues, "Land of Make-Believe"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"On an August night two friends enjoyed this view after a day's hike on the Plateau d'Emparis in the French Alps. At 2400 meters altitude the sky was clear. Light from a setting moon illuminates the foreground captured in the simple vertical panorama of images. Along the plane of our Milky Way galaxy stars of Cassiopeia and Perseus shine along the panorama's left edge.
But seen as a faint cloud with a brighter core, the Andromeda galaxy, stands directly above the two friends in the night. The nearest large spiral galaxy, Andromeda is about 2.5 million light-years beyond the stars of the Milky Way. Adding to the evening's shared extragalactic perspective, the fainter fuzzy spot in the sky right between them is M33, also known as the Triangulum galaxy. Third largest in the local galaxy group, after Andromeda and Milky Way, the Triangulum galaxy is about 3 million light-years distant. On that night, the two friends stood about 3 light-nanoseconds apart."

"What Might Have Been..."

“Space I can recover. Time, never.” 
-  Napoleon Bonaparte

“Lands can be reconquered, indeed in the course of a battle, a hill or a certain plain might trade hands several times. But missed opportunities? These can never be regained. Moments in time, in culture? They can never be re-made. One can never go back in time to prepare for what they should have prepared for, no one can ever get back critical seconds that were wasted out of fear or ego. Napoleon was brilliant at trading space for time: Sure, you can make these moves, provided you are giving me the time I need to drill my troops, or move them to where I want them to be. Yet in life, most of us are terrible at this. We trade an hour of our life here or afternoon there like it can be bought back with the few dollars we were paid for it. And it is only much, much later, as they are on their deathbeds or when they are looking back on what might have been, that many people realize the awful truth of this quote. Don’t do that. Embrace it now.”
- Ryan Holiday

The Poet: Theodore Roethke, "The Far Field"

"The Far Field"

I
"I dream of journeys repeatedly:
Of flying like a bat deep into a narrowing tunnel
Of driving alone, without luggage, out a long peninsula,
The road lined with snow-laden second growth,
A fine dry snow ticking the windshield,
Alternate snow and sleet, no on-coming traffic,
And no lights behind, in the blurred side-mirror,
The road changing from glazed tarface to a rubble of stone,
Ending at last in a hopeless sand-rut,
Where the car stalls,
Churning in a snowdrift
Until the headlights darken.

II
At the field's end, in the corner missed by the mower,
Where the turf drops off into a grass-hidden culvert,
Haunt of the cat-bird, nesting-place of the field-mouse,
Not too far away from the ever-changing flower-dump,
Among the tin cans, tires, rusted pipes, broken machinery,-
One learned of the eternal;
And in the shrunken face of a dead rat, eaten by rain and ground-beetles
(I found it lying among the rubble of an old coal bin)
And the tom-cat, caught near the pheasant-run,
Its entrails strewn over the half-grown flowers,
Blasted to death by the night watchman.
I suffered for young birds, for young rabbits caught in the mower,
My grief was not excessive.
For to come upon warblers in early May
Was to forget time and death:

How they filled the oriole's elm, a twittering restless cloud, all one morning,
And I watched and watched till my eyes blurred from the bird shapes,-
Cape May, Blackburnian, Cerulean,-
Moving, elusive as fish, fearless,
Hanging, bunched like young fruit, bending the end branches,
Still for a moment,
Then pitching away in half-flight,
Lighter than finches,
While the wrens bickered and sang in the half-green hedgerows,
And the flicker drummed from his dead tree in the chicken-yard.

- Or to lie naked in sand,
In the silted shallows of a slow river,
Fingering a shell,
Thinking:
Once I was something like this, mindless,
Or perhaps with another mind, less peculiar;
Or to sink down to the hips in a mossy quagmire;
Or, with skinny knees, to sit astride a wet log,
Believing:
I'll return again,
As a snake or a raucous bird,
Or, with luck, as a lion.
I learned not to fear infinity,
The far field, the windy cliffs of forever,
The dying of time in the white light of tomorrow,
The wheel turning away from itself,
The sprawl of the wave,
The on-coming water.

III
The river turns on itself,
The tree retreats into its own shadow.
I feel a weightless change, a moving forward
As of water quickening before a narrowing channel
When banks converge, and the wide river whitens;
Or when two rivers combine, the blue glacial torrent
And the yellowish-green from the mountainy upland,-
At first a swift rippling between rocks,
Then a long running over flat stones
Before descending to the alluvial plane,
To the clay banks, and the wild grapes hanging from the elmtrees.
The slightly trembling water
Dropping a fine yellow silt where the sun stays;
And the crabs bask near the edge,
The weedy edge, alive with small snakes and bloodsuckers,-
I have come to a still, but not a deep center,
A point outside the glittering current;
My eyes stare at the bottom of a river,
At the irregular stones, iridescent sandgrains,
My mind moves in more than one place,
In a country half-land, half-water.

I am renewed by death, thought of my death,
The dry scent of a dying garden in September,
The wind fanning the ash of a low fire.
What I love is near at hand,
Always, in earth and air.

IV
The lost self changes,
Turning toward the sea,
A sea-shape turning around,-
An old man with his feet before the fire,
In robes of green, in garments of adieu.
A man faced with his own immensity
Wakes all the waves, all their loose wandering fire.
The murmur of the absolute, the why
Of being born falls on his naked ears.
His spirit moves like monumental wind
That gentles on a sunny blue plateau.
He is the end of things, the final man.

All finite things reveal infinitude:
The mountain with its singular bright shade
Like the blue shine on freshly frozen snow,
The after-light upon ice-burdened pines;
Odor of basswood on a mountain-slope,
A scent beloved of bees;
Silence of water above a sunken tree:
The pure serene of memory in one man,-
A ripple widening from a single stone
Winding around the waters of the world."

- Theodore Roethke 

"And In That Very Way..."

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

"When I hear somebody sigh, "Life is hard,"
I am always tempted to ask, "Compared to what?"
- Sydney Harris

“Hustled Through Life”

“Hustled Through Life”
by Paul Rosenberg

“Most people, sad to say, are too rushed, frightened, and confused to think about what they really want out of life. They are hustled through school, forced into long-term decisions before they’re ready to face them, then held to those decisions by fear and shame. They choose from a limited set of options, and they know that change will be punished. Eventually they get old and find time to think, but by then they can’t bear to question too deeply; that would jeopardize their self-worth, and they haven’t time to rebuild it.

For an intelligent, creative, and expansive species like ours, this rush to nowhere is among the greatest of evils. And yet it continues, mostly unquestioned. At no point in the usual Western life do we stop, take some serious time for ourselves, and think about the overall:

• What’s life about anyway? What’s the point of what we do?
• What’s the purpose of a career? Why should I care about it above everything else?
• Why should I glorify the existing system? Why should I agree to support it?
• Who paid for everything I learned in school?
• Should I have a family? If so, why? If not, why not?
• What do I think is fun? Does it really coincide with the beer ads on TV?
• What’s the purpose of being like everyone else? Why am I so afraid to be different?

We don’t address such questions. Rather, we’re pushed past them. Even in a church or synagogue – places where larger questions are supposed to be addressed – the person in the pulpit wants us to become and/or remain a member of the congregation; their job depends upon it. There are true ministers and rabbis, but for most it’s all too easy to push their audience into what’s convenient. As a result, we see little motivation in the modern West, save for the basest of motivators: things that match a line from the Bible that says, “Whose god is their belly.”

Mind you, I'm not against wealth, good food, or sex. I think those are fine things. They are not, however, the whole of life. We are much bigger than that. We ought not be limited to belly-level aspirations. But when we’re rushed, that’s all we’re able to see.


Status and Fear: The two big motivators we face in this rush through life – fear and status – are both negative.

Fear is a manipulation technology; people who make you afraid are hacking your mind. They want you to ignore reason and obey them fast. (I wish I could cover this in depth here, but we haven’t space. When we’re afraid, we make our worst choices. Put plainly, fear makes us stupid. But we encounter it on a daily basis… and it destroys us by inches.

Status is the compulsion to compare ourselves with others, and whether we’re looking for the ways we’re better than others or looking for our shortcomings, it is deeply destructive. It’s also irrational, but the advertising business would crash without it and advertisers currently own the collective eyeballs of humanity.

Fear and status are, in a broad sense, drugs, and if you had a choice between smoking pot every day or being on fear and status every day, I’d definitely recommend the pot.

Confusion: Let’s be clear on something: Nearly every adult in the West will agree that politicians are liars and thieves… and yet they obey them without question. Is there any possibility we’d do such things if we weren’t harried and confused? When we are confused, we pass over our own minds and their deliberations. There’s an old joke: “Who are you gonna believe, me or your lyin’ eyes?” But that’s precisely what confusion does to us, and under the pressures of confusion and authority, most people will ignore their own eyes.

Such things do not happen to people who are calm and confident. But the existing hierarchies of the West couldn’t function with a calm and confident populace; their operations require people to be frightened, confused, and blindly chasing status.

As a Result… As a result, most of us hurry through life, never knowing why. We live as others do, simply because that path is streamlined for us, exposing us to a minimal level of fear and shame. But that path does something else: It keeps us from experiencing ourselves. Seldom has this problem been put more succinctly than in this quote from Albert Einstein: “Small is the number of them who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.”

Stop following the crowd. Turn your back on the popular script. Stop feeding at the same trough as everyone else. Break away and learn to see with your own eyes, to feel with your own heart. Don’t conform. Let people criticize you. Decide for yourself what your life will be about. Make it matter.”

The Daily "Near You?"

Portland, Tennessee, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Feeling Fed Up With Humanity, In The World And In Ourselves"

"Feeling Fed Up With Humanity, 
In The World And In Ourselves"
by Madisyn Taylor, The DailyOM

"We are all capable of the best and the worst that humanity has to offer and knowing this allows us to find compassion. From time to time, we may all feel fed up with humanity, whether it’s from learning about what’s going on around the world, or what’s going on next door. There are always situations that leave us feeling as if people are simply not capable of behaving in a way that is coming from a place of awareness. Often it seems as if people are actually geared to handle things in the worst possible way, repeatedly. At the same time, none of us wants to linger in a judgmental mood about our own species. As a result, we might tend to repress the feelings coming up as we take in the news from the world and the neighborhood.

It is natural to feel let down and disappointed when we see our fellow humans behaving in ways that are greedy, selfish, violent, or uncaring, but there are also ways to process that disappointment without sinking into despondency. As with any emotional response, we honor our feelings by feeling them fully, without judging or acting on them. Once we’ve done that -and we may need to do it every day, as part of our daily self-care - we can begin to consider ways that we might help the situation in which humanity finds itself.

As always, we start with ourselves, utilizing our awareness of the failings of others to renew our own commitment to be more conscious human beings. We are all capable of the best and the worst that humanity has to offer, and remembering this keeps us in check, as well as allowing us to find compassion for others. We may find ourselves feeling compelled to serve people who are suffering injustices at the hands of other people, or we may begin to speak out when we see something that we don’t think is right. Whatever the case, the only thing we can do is pledge to serve the best, rather than the worst, of what humanity has to offer, both in the world, and in ourselves."

"What Can We know?"

"What can we know? What are we all?
Poor silly half-brained things peering out at the infinite,
with the aspirations of angels and the instincts of beasts."
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle