Monday, December 4, 2023

"It Was Ironic..."

"It was the essence of life to disbelieve in death for one's self, to act as if life would continue forever. And life had to act also as if little issues were big ones. To take a realistic attitude toward life and death meant that one lapsed into unreality. Into insanity. It was ironic that the only way to keep one's sanity was to ignore that one was in an insane world or to act as if the world were sane."
- Philip José Farmer

The Poet: Carl Sandburg, "Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind"

"Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind"

“The past is a bucket of ashes.”

1
"The woman named Tomorrow
sits with a hairpin in her teeth
and takes her time
and does her hair the way she wants it
and fastens at last the last braid and coil
and puts the hairpin where it belongs
and turns and drawls: Well, what of it?
My grandmother, Yesterday, is gone.
What of it? Let the dead be dead.

2
The doors were cedar
and the panels strips of gold
and the girls were golden girls
and the panels read and the girls chanted:
We are the greatest city,
the greatest nation:
nothing like us ever was.

The doors are twisted on broken hinges.
Sheets of rain swish through on the wind
where the golden girls ran and the panels read:
We are the greatest city,
the greatest nation,
nothing like us ever was.

3
It has happened before.
Strong men put up a city and got
a nation together,
And paid singers to sing and women
to warble: We are the greatest city,
the greatest nation,
nothing like us ever was.

And while the singers sang
and the strong men listened
and paid the singers well
and felt good about it all,
there were rats and lizards who listened...
and the only listeners left now...
are…the rats…and the lizards.

And there are black crows
crying, “Caw, caw,”
bringing mud and sticks
building a nest
over the words carved
on the doors where the panels were cedar
and the strips on the panels were gold
and the golden girls came singing:
We are the greatest city,
the greatest nation:
nothing like us ever was.

The only singers now are crows crying, “Caw, caw,”
And the sheets of rain whine in the wind and doorways.
And the only listeners now are…the rats…and the lizards.

4
The feet of the rats
scribble on the door sills;
the hieroglyphs of the rat footprints
chatter the pedigrees of the rats
and babble of the blood
and gabble of the breed
of the grandfathers and the great-grandfathers
of the rats.

And the wind shifts
and the dust on a door sill shifts
and even the writing of the rat footprints
tells us nothing, nothing at all
about the greatest city, the greatest nation
where the strong men listened
and the women warbled: Nothing like us ever was."

- Carl Sandburg

Canadian Prepper, "WW3 Has Begun: CIA/Nuclear Expert Andrew Bustamante"

Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 12/4/23
"WW3 Has Begun: 
CIA/Nuclear Expert Andrew Bustamante"
"Today we talk with former CIA spy Andrew Bustamante about WW3 and the nuclear threats, a mindblowing conversation you wont want to miss."
Comments here:

The Daily 'Near You?"

Commerce City, Colorado, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"The Questions..."


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

"What Everyone Needs to Know About the Financial and Political Turmoil Right Now"

"What Everyone Needs to Know About
 the Financial and Political Turmoil Right Now"
by Jeff Thomas

"International Man: What types of risks - financial or otherwise - should people be aware of today?

Jeff Thomas: Well, much of the former free world, as we once knew it, is on the verge of collapse economically. You have the U.S. after World War II suddenly taking over the world in production, and they were the future. A lot of countries got onboard: Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan. All those countries got on that particular train and did very well. But the U.S. went from being the greatest nation in the world in terms of manufacturing to losing almost all of that and became the foremost debtor nation in the world. Now the US may well be in a worse financial place than any country in the world.

It’s just that whatever collapse is going to occur, it hasn’t happened yet. So, that shoe hasn’t dropped, but when it does, it won’t only be the U.S. that goes down, it will be all the other countries that are on that particular train.

So, what that means is that if you want to come out of this well, then you try to diversify yourself into those countries that are not going to be as directly affected. For example, if you wanted to leave the U.S., you wouldn’t go to Japan because it’s going to give you just as much trouble. You might choose to go to Thailand, or you might choose to go to Uruguay. There are a number of places that you could choose where you’re still going to have quite a good life and, going forward, possibly an even better life than exists in those places now.

Historically, this is always true. If you look at history over thousands of years, there’s always some country going down and another country coming up. It’s just a question of timing; when something is about to collapse, you want to get out. In 1938, for instance, many people left Germany. It’s the same thing now. It’s hard to accept that this is about to happen to the great US of A since it’s been number one for so long, but it’s reached its sell-by date.

International Man: What is it exactly that you are looking at that might lead to a collapse?

Jeff Thomas: Well, there’s going to be a major debt collapse. It’s inescapable at this point. You get to a tipping point where, even if it hasn’t occurred yet, it’s too late to fix it. When you get countries at the point where they’re borrowing so much money that they can’t even pay the interest any longer yet are moving headlong to borrow more and offering their people increased entitlements, the money isn’t going to be there. It simply doesn’t exist. In that regard, it’s really a question of simple arithmetic. Do the numbers add up, or do they not?

We see that in the US, where it’s rapidly moving in the direction of far greater entitlements and more Americans who are demanding much more in the way of entitlements. Somebody’s got to pay for this. Historically, the same thing happens in every empire. Every empire ends in the same fashion because human nature remains the same in any generation, in any era. The same mistakes end up being made by those in charge. So, you can look at what’s happened elsewhere.

For example, just in recent history, we can look at 2001 in Argentina and examine that. Or, you can visit Zimbabwe and research what happened there in 2008 and watch those that collapsed, how that unfolded. Or, we could take a trip right now to Venezuela and watch that in its collapsing stage. I started warning about Venezuela a decade or so ago and, since that time, the collapse has occurred, and Venezuela has bottomed out. They’re right in the middle of their collapse and nearing the end of it, at this point.

So, you can kind of watch the movie as it’s played out in other nations and say, "This is the pattern." You can examine the pattern, and it’s almost always the same. So, you follow that, and you say, "Well, this is what potentially is going to be happening in the country that I live in." It’s not a question of trying to change the country because, historically, it doesn’t work. What you do, instead, is you step aside, you simply let it go past you by being in another jurisdiction.

International Man: You’ve written extensively about international diversification. What is the basic concept behind it?

Jeff Thomas: It’s a process of diversifying yourself amongst several jurisdictions so that no one jurisdiction can dictate to you. It’s a known fact that countries tend to treat their guests a lot better than they treat their own citizens. Once they feel that they own you, they can be a lot rougher on you and make greater demands.

What you would ideally hope to do would be to have your citizenship in one country, probably have your residency in a second country or even more than one country, have your income in a third country, and even have your banking or wealth storage in a fourth country.

International Man: How difficult is it for someone to go about doing this?

Jeff Thomas: Well, it certainly does take some planning. But what it really takes is researching some places where you’d be happy being or where you feel that you’d be better treated and where the laws would treat you better.

For example, if you happen to be a U.S. citizen, which is one of the most difficult countries to be a citizen of right now—they tax their citizens worldwide, and other countries don’t do that—what you’d want to do is find the country that you could either be a citizen of or at least be a resident of or have investments in that has either little or no direct taxation. Then you would have an opportunity to keep the money that you’ve made rather than simply turning it over to others.

International Man: What are some of the practical things that people should be looking to do to start this process?

Jeff Thomas: First, I tend to focus much more on what’s coming than what exists right now. Most people try to face whatever is facing them right now and saying, "Can I live with this?" My approach is to be looking ahead 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, and for whatever reason, I’ve done that all my life. And so, based on what’s coming, I say to myself, "Can I live with that when it happens?" And if not, I want to get out of the way of it.

For example, the worst hasn’t happened in the U.S. by any means. Some people would be saying, "Well, if I see it get bad, then I’ll get out." But historically, what ends up happening is that you then start having capital controls. Your government places capital controls on you so that you can no longer move your money out. They will use a number of reasons why this is necessary, but they’re usually not true.

This time around, they’ll blame it on money laundering or terrorism so that you’re some sort of an evil person if you actually want to take your money out. That will be followed by migration controls where you are physically not allowed to leave. If you try to leave, you lose your passport.

A lot of these laws have already been written in the US over the last eight years. And there’s a whole pile of them that have been written but not yet implemented. So we know they’re coming. We know that they intend to implement these laws, but many of them will only be rolled out as needed, now that the crisis period has begun.

So, if somebody wanted to deal with this, the first thing that they’d do would be to liquidate all their assets in any country that’s at risk. They don’t want to leave anything there. Anything that you keep behind is sacrificial, and that would include a bank account. Even if you continue to live in that country, you’d keep only three months’ worth of spending money in a bank account and then regard that as being sacrificial. It could conceivably be lost.

In the US, you have a confiscation law, as of 2010, which allows the banks to confiscate all the money that you have on deposit in a bank. Very few Americans know that, but there it is. It’s there in black and white; it’s in the American law that banks can do that.

So you’d want to liquidate your assets, then you’d want to expatriate the proceeds. Then, if possible, if you can afford it, you would establish a residency somewhere else and then prepare an exit so that if it got to the point where you say, "Whoops, this is really beginning to fall apart now; I can’t take it any longer; I’m going to make an exit," you would be ready.

At that point, you may not even be able to sell your house; you may have to just turn the key in the door, wave goodbye, but at least… you have an exit plan. If you’ve done everything in advance, you’d just pack a carry-on, and out you’d go. Those people will be able to escape. A lot of people will not be able to.

International Man: It sounds like the underlying message here is to start preparing for this sooner rather than later and to have your solutions in place before people start to panic and before there’s a rush to the door, which is often the case.

Jeff Thomas: Yes, exactly right. First, you may not be allowed to leave. But also, all those countries that are presently welcoming people from any given country may pull away the welcome mat.

And again  - Nazi Germany, in 1938, there was a conference in 1938  - the Évian Conference - when the Jews attempted to begin to leave Germany, 32 governments got together and said, "There’s going to be millions of them, we can’t take them, but we don’t want to look like bad guys, so let’s all make an agreement that we won’t take them, then they’ll have nowhere to go, then they’ll just stay where they are." And that’s exactly what happened.

So that will happen again. The welcome mat will be pulled in a lot of countries, so whatever legal residency you want to have somewhere else, you need to get it in place now while the welcome mat is still out. The time to prepare is now."

"The Darker Ages"

"The Darker Ages"
A new age of brutality, subjugation and 
stupidity for the WrongThinking masses...
by Bill Bonner and Joel Bowman

Baltimore, Maryland - "If this is really the beginning of a long, dark period of rising yields and falling asset prices, the markets still haven’t gotten the message. The Dow closed on Friday over 36,000 – near an all-time record (still, with an inflation adjusted loss of about 20%). Gold is hitting a record high. And Bitcoin is once again trading over 42,000. Bloomberg:

"The biggest cryptocurrency rose as much as 6.1% to reach $42,144 as of 11 a.m. on Monday in London. Bitcoin was last at these levels in April 2022, before the TerraUSD stablecoin collapse that accelerated a $2 trillion rout in digital assets. It’s on track for the biggest annual gain since 2020."

Of course, we could be wrong. Maybe the economy really is healthy. Maybe stocks and bonds really are going up in price, reflecting the general prosperity of our time. Maybe…but more likely we are still in that transition stage from one major trend to another. We’ve left behind one period (marked by ultra-low interest rates without much inflation); we have not fully entered another (where the threat of higher inflation hangs over Fed policy). In the meantime, anything can happen. But last week, we were looking at something else…deeper and more dangerous – the revolt of the masses.
 
A Superficial Understanding: We’ve seen that immigration is a hot button. It was Donald Trump’s ticket to the White House. So it was Geert Wilders’ winning formula. Trump is now counting on it to give him an encore. Other Republican contenders are trying to rouse the rabble by appealing to animosity towards immigrants, but also towards Mexicans, Russians, Chinese, Iranians, Muslims, Democrats, trannies or others. Immigration is a ‘cultural issue.’ Very visible. Easy to understand…at least superficially.

[Extended parenthetical: Some of our Dearest Readers insist that immigrants are destroying the country. But most of our adult life has been spent in countries other than our own. We don’t like anyone telling us where to live; we return the favor.

In a perfectly free world, people would go where they wanted…with neither aid nor hindrance from the government. But we don’t live in that world. In our world, immigration is a political issue…connected to labor rates, housing, welfare systems, crime and other matters. And like all political issues…it is a mess of lies and propaganda.]

Immigration benefits the ruling, asset-owning classes. They get higher sales, lower wage costs, and more voters to do their bidding. So they continue to shove it down the public’s throat, whether the voters like it or not. Immigration may be the key to protecting Americans’ social security system too. The whole program is a ponzi scheme. It needs an influx of new contributors to keep it solvent. New immigrants could help pay the pensions of old, native-born retirees. Whether it is worth the social problems it brings, we don’t know.

Canceled, Fined, Jailed - Apart from immigration, elites champion a series of other issues that the masses find hard to swallow. Sex change operations, for example, even in the military. The plain people don’t much care for ‘trans’ women competing at sports with real women either. And they don’t like being told what pronoun to use when addressing or referring to others. They think it is faddish nonsense.

Speech has become another battleground between the elites and the masses. Most people think they should be able to say whatever they want without fear of being labeled, censored, canceled, fined or jailed. “Free speech” is in the US Constitution, after all. But the elites want to control the masses’ thoughts…and they begin by controlling who can say what to whom.

The most recent example is in the widespread use of the epithet – ‘antisemite.’ A decent person might disapprove of both sides in the Hamas/Israeli slaughter. And since at least 10 Palestinians are killed for every 1 Israeli, he might begin to wonder about who will suffer the judgment of Heaven. He could condemn the Palestinians and feel very satisfied with himself. But woe to those who accuse the Israelis of mass murder. They are called “antisemitic.’ Then, they lose their jobs. Their advertisers leave them. Their speaking fees vanish. Their book contracts are withdrawn. In short, they are ‘disappeared’ from the elite classes.

Whatever the subject, elites believe they have the final truth. Vaccines, climate change, EVs, windmills, race relations, sex, marriage, politics – you name it. And the mainstream press backs them up. They “condemn” alternative opinions… ‘call out’ incorrect views…and ‘school’ anyone suspected of WrongThink.

Antisemitism, Racism, Nazism - Their aim is to make sure you never have a wrong thought…and never come in contact with one. That’s the convenience of sloppy slurs such as ‘antisemite’ or ‘racist.’ No need to discuss the issues. Just label opponents; as everyone knows, ‘you can’t argue with a Nazi!’

So too is the accusation of ‘racism’ slung so often it has lost its sting. The common White man is meant to believe he is a racist…(most likely a white supremacist and patriarchal SOB too!). What can he do? He must ask for forgiveness…and sign up for an anti-racist course taught by racism profiteers.

The majority of level-headed citizens have a hard time taking this claptrap seriously. The common man wants to ‘save the planet’ as much as anyone, but he suspects that the Green Agenda may be a scam. He believes in treating his fellow man with the respect he deserves…but he’ll decide for himself how much respect is suitable.

As for ‘racist,’ the greater danger is that he might begin to believe it. Then, he asks: Why not act like one? ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ was engraved on Moses’s tablet. We don’t recall the qualifier: ‘unless you have a good reason.’ But if your thoughts are pure, approved by the New York Times, why not? Therein lies the final abomination. Once you decide that it is thoughts that matter, rather than acts, you can get away with murder."
o
Joel’s Note: Meanwhile, down here at the fin del mundo, it appears they may have turned a different corner. After 75 dark years of ignorance, stupidity and brutality – on the part of the government – the Argentine voters finally saw fit to throw off their chains and elect a libertarian president.

Now, we have no idea if Sr. Javier Milei will stick to his guns… or cave to the demands of the corrupt, entrenched interests of the political establishment, but he sure talked a big game ahead of the election. One of the key points he hammered during the campaign was his firm stance as “anti-woke.” That is to say, Sr. Milei has no time for empty virtue signaling and cheap political correctness… and he suspected most ordinary people don’t, either. He was right. Not only did the poor and working class swing heavily in his favor, even the youth responded to his plain talking and denouncement of so-called “social justice.”

Not that this should come as a surprise… Argentina’s “backwardness” – that is, its stubborn rejection of political correctness – is one of its charms.

Here in the Downside-Up capital, local, independent supermarkets – run largely by the city’s Asian population – are still called “chinos.” People call each other, affectionately, nicknames like “gordo” (fatty), “flaca” (skinny) and even “loco” (crazy). And, contrary to what progressives in the English speaking world would have you believe, Latinos largely despise the cringeworthy “Latinx” mutilation of their elegantly gendered language.

In fact, a 2020 Pew Research poll found that, while a quarter of Hispanics in the US had heard of the gender-neutral term, only 3% actually used it themselves. Outside the US, that figure quickly approaches zero. Turns out, Spanish speakers don’t appreciate self-righteous virtue signalers (many of whom do not even speak Spanish) colonizing their language and rewriting the rules. Go figure!

So while the some in the “civilized west” continue down the path of political correctness DEI and social justice nonsense, it’s nice to know there’s a place in the world where you can still think and say what you want… and you may even get elected for doing so!"

"How It Really Is"

 

Dan, I Allegedly, "Credit Crisis - Are We the Next Zimbabwe?"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, AM 12/4/23
"Credit Crisis - 
Are We the Next Zimbabwe?"
"The country is upside down financially. Can I pay my credit card with another? I am no financial expert, but we are all tackling the debt crisis threatening America. With national debt spiraling out of control, we risk total financial ruin. What must be done before it's too late? Get context on the debt emergency, China's property bubble, job loss from AI, lithium to power electric vehicles, and more."
Comments here:

Jim Kunstler, "Bidenomics in Action"

"Bidenomics in Action"
by Jim Kunstler

“We are at an inflection point, a threshold, where weak, brittle,
 effete personality structures are a threat to human civilization.” 
- JD Haltigan

"If you’re troubled at all about the state of our country, and even your own small role in it, you might be asking yourself whether the people running things have any idea what they’re doing. Some of these doings happen in the metaphysical realm of finance, for instance America’s national debt ($34-trillion and going up like mad), and the death of the US dollar, along with the bonds that underwrite it. Or the game of hide-the-salami with the repo and reverse repo markets played between the Federal Reserve and the US Treasury to give the broken banking system the appearance of stability when it is actually in deepening ruin.

Did you understand any of that? Probably not, but not because you’re dumb. It’s because all that action is meant to be incomprehensible even to people who went to grad school. The news media only amplify the mystification. The net effect is that increasingly nothing in the life of our nation is real. Every action taken is a swindle of one kind or another, a cavalcade of switcheroos aimed at zeroing out the consensus about reality.

What trickles down from all this cosmic activity is the dwindling possibility of a fruitful life for most Americans. You cannot make a living. You can’t fix all the machines in your life or get new ones. You can’t get married because there’s no way you can fulfill your end of the contract. You search in vain for something purposeful to do. You are eventually faced with the choice: surrender to depression and hopelessness, or revolt against a ruling blob that is only good at one thing: depriving you of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

What also trickles down from on-high is the increasing dysfunction of all the systems that evolved to serve American life on-the-ground. For instance, the supply chains that stuff the gigantic merchandise marts from sea to shining sea. The trucking industry is falling apart. The industry can’t find enough workers to load the trucks. They call them “lumpers” in the trucking biz. United Parcel Service (UPS) is hurting so badly for lumpers that they now make the drivers load and unload the brown trucks and have to pay them double overtime for it. The fruit and vegetables that have to make a truck journey thousands of miles from the sunshine lands to the icy north sit rotting in the warehouses because there aren’t enough lumpers on the loading docks — in case you’ve noticed that the produce in your supermarket is looking wilty and gross.

All the systems that move stuff around this big country are wobbling. Many trucking and logistics companies went out of business in 2023, led by Convoy’s bankruptcy in October due to a “an unprecedented freight market collapse” and inability to get financing. UPS has not recovered from the big drop in shipping that followed the end of Covid lockdowns - 1.2-million packages per day in lost volume - nor adjusted to its new contract with the Teamsters Union, a 46 percent cost increase for drivers in the first year. UPS CEO Carol Tomé even took a pay cut: $19 million this year, down from $26 million (including stock packages) in 2021. Federal Express also saw a sharp drop in package deliveries and in September yanked its full-year profit guidance. The FedEx share price dropped 20 percent in one day. Consider, too, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) regulations aimed at a “zero carbon emissions” goal in 2035, legislation guaranteed to first paralyze and then kill trucking in that state, including trucks delivering into and out of California. Good luck with that.

Then there is the good US Postal Service, a crypto-public/private corporation cobbled together back in the 1970s supposedly because mail delivery was losing money. While our Constitution stipulates that the government “establish post offices and post roads” with the implied authority to carry and deliver the mail, the Constitution never said that the post office had to show a profit any more than the Army or the Navy does. These days it looks like our country is just about done with the mail business. Been to your local post office lately? Ours is looking like an old soviet DMV... a few part-timers on duty... mail delivered when they feel like it... an odor of rot in the building. Consider that the post office is one of the few places where we citizens actually interface directly with the government’s workings. So, how does it look like it’s working to you?

Christmas, 2023, will be a test of how all these crumbling services and wobbling business models are affecting the people who live in the outfit known as the USA. Initial reports of empty Walmarts and maxed-out credit cards don’t paint a pretty picture. The Yuletide potlatch will not look like it used to. At some point, the activity on-the-ground - or eerie absence of activity - might ordinarily be expressed in the stock indexes - but these strange days the markets seem to be hostages of some algorithm cult that operates in a mystical vacuum where nothing matters. When it gets to the point where famished Americans start eating each other to stay alive, will we see another S & P record high?"
Oh yeah, the full title of his website says it all...

Adventures With Danno, "Shopping Trip To Dollar Tree!"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, AM 12/4/23
"Shopping Trip To Dollar Tree! 
Christmas Decor & Holiday Gift Ideas!"
"In today's vlog, we are at Dollar Tree and are checking out all of the different Christmas items, including holiday decor and many different gift ideas! We're excited to take you with us as we go over the new Christmas options at Dollar Tree for 2023!"
Comments here:

"Economic Market Snapshot 12/4/23"

"Economic Market Snapshot 12/4/23"
Market Data Center, Live Updates:
Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...
Only the consequences are real - to you!
Your guide...
Gregory Mannarino, AM 12/4/23
"Markets, Gold, Silver, Central Banks, 
Bitcoin, New System, More!"
Comments here:

"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, December 3, 2023

Canadian Prepper, "Alert! World War III Update! 3 More Wars Starting, 70K Troops Near Russia"

Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 12/3/23
"Alert! 3 More Wars Starting, 70K Troops 
Near Russia, Ukraine Collapses, NATO Preps"
Comments here:

And you just know somebody's gonna do something stupid...
God help us...

Jeremiah Babe, "Warning! We Are In Serious Trouble"

Jeremiah Babe, 12/3/23
"Warning! We Are In Serious Trouble
Consumer In Danger; Animal Shelters Are Flooded, Need Help"
Comments here:

Musical Interlude: Vangelis, “Beautiful Planet Earth”

Full screen mode recommended.
Vangelis, “Beautiful Planet Earth”

"A Look to the Heavens"

“The constellation of Orion holds much more than three stars in a row. A deep exposure shows everything from dark nebula to star clusters, all embedded in an extended patch of gaseous wisps in the greater Orion Molecular Cloud Complex. The brightest three stars on the far left are indeed the famous three stars that make up the belt of Orion. Just below Alnitak, the lowest of the three belt stars, is the Flame Nebula, glowing with excited hydrogen gas and immersed in filaments of dark brown dust.
Below the frame center and just to the right of Alnitak lies the Horsehead Nebula, a dark indentation of dense dust that has perhaps the most recognized nebular shapes on the sky. On the upper right lies M42, the Orion Nebula, an energetic caldron of tumultuous gas, visible to the unaided eye, that is giving birth to a new open cluster of stars. Immediately to the left of M42 is a prominent bluish reflection nebula sometimes called the Running Man that houses many bright blue stars. The above image, a digitally stitched composite taken over several nights, covers an area with objects that are roughly 1,500 light years away and spans about 75 light years.”

The Poet: Fernando Pessoa, “I Don’t Know If The Stars Rule The World”

“I Don’t Know If The Stars Rule The World”

“I don’t know if the stars rule the world,
Or if Tarot or playing cards
Can reveal anything.
I don’t know if the rolling of dice
Can lead to any conclusion.
But I also don’t know
If anything is attained
By living the way most people do.

Yes, I don’t know
If I should believe in this daily rising sun
Whose authenticity no one can guarantee me,
Or if it would be better (because better or more convenient)
To believe in some other sun,
One that shines even at night,
Some profound incandescence of things,
Surpassing my understanding.

For now...
(Let’s take it slow)
For now
I have an absolutely secure grip on the stair-rail,
I secure it with my hand –
This rail that doesn’t belong to me
And that I lean on as I ascend...
Yes... I ascend...
I ascend to this:
I don’t know if the stars rule the world.”

- Fernando Pessoa

"In the Inbox"

"In the Inbox"

"From: Coordinator of Volunteer Services: We have a young man, thirty-six, on hospice who has a very young child. They want someone to help him do a life review and perhaps put some pictures together for he and his wife so the child will know him. Call me if you are willing to do this."
"The next time, friend, your life seems too hard, check your Inbox."
- Jose Orez

“There Is No Reality Anymore…”

“There Is No Reality Anymore…”
by Thad Beversdorf

“I‘d love to change the world, but I don‘t know what to do,
so I’ll leave it up to you…” *

“What a great lyric that is from the late 60′s, early 70′s English band “10 Years After.”* I believe this describes that uneasy feeling of discontent that sits deep in the stomach, beneath the day to day exteriors, of so many people today. The world is like a black hole in that it seems to be getting smaller and smaller as the years go by but also heavier and heavier with each passing day.

When I was a teenager and my friends and I were taking reality obscuring substances, one of my buddies (this means you Nichol) would stop us at certain points throughout the night for a reality check. This was just a few moments where we ‘d all gather our senses to make sure the world was still right and then we’d venture back into obscurity. I feel that reality is an old world term. There is no reality anymore. With advances in technology came unending possibilities of if you can dream it they can make it so. The ubiquitous flow of information ensures that the truth is always available but never known with certainty. It means there is no such thing as a reality check. It’s like that dream inside a dream inside a dream. Which reality is real anymore? How deep does the rabbit hole go?

We are raised with pretty standard ideals of what the world is meant to be but these ideals seem to take place only in the movies. It must be incredibly difficult for our young people to reconcile the two worlds, I know it is for me. That which they learn as a child and that which they find has replaced it as a young adult. Our leaders are despicable, arrogant and egotistical fools who pretend we elect them because we don’t see them for what they are. But we elect them because we feel we have no choice. We know what we want the world to be. We know what it should look and feel like. And we know it is not the world in which we live today. I know I’d love to change the world but I don’t know how and so I’ll leave it up to you. And so we continue to move forward down this path, each step uneasy as though something ungood is lurking just around the next corner.

We are able to put that feeling out of our minds for the most part but our subconscious is always aware that things are off. We have all kinds of self help books and new age theories that attempt to make sense of it all and explain why we just aren t happy the way we envision happy should be. Perhaps the only reality is the reality that the world isn’t what we had hoped it would be and we don’t know how to make that right. I’d love to say that if we just stand up and do the right thing, act from our hearts and have good intentions that it could change the world. But quite honestly there are ill-intentioned people that are constructing this new world in which we sub-exist.It is them and us, but they’d never say it that way. Certainly though their intention is not for us to co-exist along side them.

But so we carry on and we, move forward, to the best of our abilities. We accept the good with the bad and acknowledge that everything is a trade off. We believe that if we go to college we stand a better chance in life and so we borrow our first 10 years of post college wages to get an edge over the next guy who is doing the same. When we get out of school we know that it is time to buckle down and get serious. We put our lives on hold in order to focus on the future with the idea that one day we will be sitting on the porch with the person we love, the one we put on hold for all those years, and we will then enjoy our life’s work then.

But then we get further in debt because we need a sleeker car and we need a bigger house but it’s ok because we can just work a little more. And then the kids come and as far as we got to know them they are great, I think. But it’s ok because they just finished college and now they’ve moved back in as the job market is tough out there and so we’re paying off their student loans. Eventually they get away and begin their life’s journey and they take their debt with them. And then we realize, god I’m almost 60. But it feels great because that means soon I’ll be there on the porch getting to know the one I love again and life will be grand at that point.

But then we turn 65 and we realize all those policies that were implemented by all those well-intentioned decision makers have actually left us with very little. And we say it’s ok because we’d be bored anyway just sitting on the porch. And so we take a job waving at people in Walmart but feel like OMG how did I get here. But the shift ends and we go home anxious to spend time with the one we love because, although it’s a terrible thought, we are aware we’re both getting long in the tooth. And so we arrive home only to realize the one we love is now sick and that it’s too late for our days sitting on the porch getting to know each other again. We do everything we can but we cannot afford to help that person who stood quietly behind us all those years as healthcare costs are unrealistically out of touch with reality. And then it hits us that despite taking all the right steps to ensure we have a great life we failed to ever really be happy, to really love and to really accept love. And then it really hits us, this world provides but one shot.

Well, then that feeling of uneasy discontent that shadowed us when we were young is now an intense pain in our heart. And we look out at the world and we ask ourselves how could this have happened? I did everything they told me I was supposed to do, I did everything right! And it becomes clear that life was a chance to change the world, but we didn’t know what to do, and so we left it up to…”
*

"There Are Some Oddities..."

"There are some oddities in the perspective with which we see the world. The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be."
- Douglas Adams

The Daily "Near You?"

Dysart, Iowa, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

Dan, I Allegedly, "What Were They Thinking?"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly PM 12/3/23
"What Were They Thinking?"
"It’s funny how corporations lie to us. The latest one is Red Lobster telling us that they’re losing money because of a $20 shrimp promotion. The truth is people are not eating out at these restaurants. This got me to think about all the other promotions that went wrong over the last few years."
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"They’re the Living Dead"


"They’re the Living Dead"
by Glock-n-Load

"IMO, Van Halen wrote the best lyrics to go along with the video above."

"At night I walk this stinkin’ street past the crazys on my block
 and I see the same old faces and I hear that same old talk
 and I’m searching for the latest thing, a break in this routine, 
I’m talkin’ some new kicks, ones like you ain’t never seen.
This is home, well, this is Mean Street, it’s our home, the only one I know

And we don’t worry ’bout tomorrow ’cause we’re sick of these four walls.
Now what you think is nothin’ might be somethin’ after all.
Now you know this ain’t no through street, the end is dead ahead,
The poor folks play for keeps down here,
they’re the living dead.

Come on down, huh, down to Mean Street
They’re dancin’ now, Lord, out on Mean Street
Dance, baby.
It’s always here and now, my friend, it ain’t once upon a time, 
it’s all over, but the shouting, I come, I take what’s mine.
We’re searching for the latest thing, a break in this routine, 
talkin’ some new kicks ones like you ain’t never seen.
This is home, mmm, this is Mean Street, it’s our home, only one I know
See, a gun is real easy in this desperate part of town, 
turns you from hunted into hunter (yeah), you go an’ hunt somebody down,
 wait a minute, ah, somebody said fair warning,
 Lord, Lord, strike that poor boy down."
–Van Halen, "Mean Street"
Full screen recommended.
"Opioid Crisis Kensington Ave."
"This is a snapshot of the opioid crisis in America and shows what I have seen and felt. It was a roller coaster of emotions. Seeing people suffer pushed me beyond my own limits several times."
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o
Hat tip to Glock-n-Load and the 
Burning Platform for this material.
o
Van Halen, "Mean Street"

"I Wish..."

"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo. "So do I," said Gandalf "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
- J.R.R. Tolkien, "Lord of the Rings"

"How It Really Is"

 

Good luck, kids...

"Over 60 Bank Branches Close As Americans Scramble To Pull Money Out Of Banks"

Full screen recommended.
The Atlantis Report, 12/3/23
"Over 60 Bank Branches Close As Americans 
Scramble To Pull Money Out Of Banks"

"Big banks like PNC Bank and JPMorgan Chase filed for closing several of their branches in multiple states last week amid a troubling pattern of rising branch shutdowns over the past years. Several banks filed for closing down branches, with PNC Bank leading with the most number of filings. It filed for 19 branch closures - five in Pennsylvania, four in Illinois, three in Texas, two each in Alabama and New Jersey, and one each in Indiana, Ohio, and Florida. JPMorgan Chase followed closely with 18 filings, three in Ohio, two each in Connecticut and South Carolina, and one each in 11 states including New York, Illinois, Florida, and Massachusetts. Citizens Bank came in third with eight branch closure filings, six in New York, and one each in Massachusetts and Delaware. Minneapolis-based US Bank filed for seven closures, three in Tennessee and one each in Missouri, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Illinois.

The use of the US dollar is increasing, partly due to the printing of more money. This has an effect on the Western economy. China and Japan, which hold a significant amount of US Treasury, are gradually reducing their holdings. Next year, there might be a situation where the Bank of Japan is forced to sell a large portion of the US Treasury, causing global repercussions. The US debt's annual interest expense has doubled in the last two years, reaching 1 trillion, even though the country isn't officially in a recession. The total US debt has risen by 10 trillion since 2020 and is expected to reach 35 trillion next year, a 45% increase in the last three years."
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