John Wilder, "The Jenga Economy"

"The Jenga Economy"

by John Wilder

“Out of these windows, we will view the collapse of 

financial history. One step closer to economic equilibrium.” 

– "Fight Club"

"After 9-11, sales of the Jenga® game really dropped. I’m not sure why, but in 2002 people had to play Jenga® the old-fashioned way – by stacking dishes in the sink.

But the game of Jenga™ is a pretty good analogy for our economy right now. Jenga© is based on taking one piece from the lower part of the structure and putting it on top. As the game progresses, everyone can see that the structure becomes weaker and more unstable. The game always (at our house) ends the same way: the tower, which now seems ridiculously tall, sways a little bit, becomes unbalanced, and topples. The pieces then go everywhere, and we leave them on the floor for the herds of stray free-range toddlers in our neighborhood to eat. We’re givers that way. The economy (to me) looks exactly like a game of Jenga™, seemingly impossibly stretched out and tall.

Examples? Well, let’s talk about when we turned money into cash. The dollar used to be bound to actual, physical commodities – gold and silver. I guess you could call it an either-ore situation. Gold was always the preferred, but people who wanted looser money (i.e., inflation) fought to get silver in there, too. In fact, silver was actually part of the money supply, making up a portion of many coins up until the 1960s when one Jenga© block was pulled and set on top.

Nixon pulled another when he ended the ability of foreign nations to bring piles of dollars and walk away with piles of gold. He made the tower even shakier as he threw gold out, entirely as a standard. The good news was that Americans could once again own gold. The bad news was that dollars were no longer money – they were cash – not backed by anything.

And could be printed at will. Another Jenga™ piece on top. The tower becomes a bit wobblier. And wobblier still as Nixon and Ford and Carter start printing. I mainly blame Nixon, since he got the ball going, and it took the hand of Reagan reaching out to steady the tower, though that created the very deep 1982 recession.

Reagan, though, added his bit as well. Sure, it made sense to try to spend the Russians into the ground – after the 1982 recession the economy came roaring back as The Wealth Pump started in earnest and the stock market soared. But during this time, the market cheered as jobs left the United States. In many cases, the jobs were subsidized by the country taking them. They wanted to build up the industrial expertise so that they could make world-class products and were willing to pay for their economy and workers to learn how to do it.

Remember George H. W. Bush’s advisors saying they didn’t care if the economy made computer chips or potato chips? Pepperidge Farms© remembers™. Because it does matter. Potato chips or computer chips don’t matter if you’re a banker making a loan, but if you’re trying to create the greatest value with the economy? It sure as hell does matter.

On the government side, fiscal responsibility seemed to come back for a bit with Bill Clinton. Now, don’t thank Bill – it was entirely based on Newt Gingrich stopping all the nonsense for a few years that primed the pump of the economy. While Hillary is an ideologue, Bill was always in it for the hot chicks. Sure, there were shenanigans, but the Jenga™ players were mostly playing it safe during that time period.

But when the recession hit in 2000? George W. Bush really wanted to open the floodgates, so he started stacking as high and as fast as he could. War helped him move a few Jenga™ pieces, and low interest rates in his “everyone who breathes should own a McMansion” policy fueled an amazing set of bubbles that ended up including housing, natural gas, crude oil, and what was left of my hair.

The path out of the Great Recession was a simple one. Print more money. People aren’t buying United States Bonds? Heck, the Fed® can buy them now. We can also pay Wall Street to launder all the bad debt and make sure that irresponsible bank vaults get filled to the top with cash. Because, why not?

Obama took some Jenga™ pieces from the very bottom and put them up top because he wanted to get health care into the system.

Trump didn’t add too many blocks to the top of the board, at first. Trump was mainly because he was focused on deals – immigration, trade, covfefe. But he couldn’t make a deal with COVID. His instincts were bad and his solution was just to stack more blocks up top by printing money and cramming it down people’s throats as fast as he could.

Biden doubled down on that strategy: importing illegals by the truckload to paper over the economy that no longer serves its citizens, spending billions to “reduce inflation” and now nobody wants to buy the bonds. Thankfully, the banks are scrambling to create weird new structures so they can pretend that the loan that they made at 4% isn’t costing them when they’re giving 5.5% on CDs.

The tower is now, really, really tall. And really, really shaky. And these things never end slowly – they end either with mass social unrest, a big war, or both when the tower finally collapses. And others have just given up."

- https://wilderwealthywise.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Wimberley, Texas, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Psychopaths: 'Intra-species Predators'"

"Psychopaths: 'Intra-species Predators'"

by Various Authors

A comment: Sometimes what’s happening in this world seems nearly indescribably insane. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote, “Once you’ve eliminated the impossible whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” Wars, economic crises, fiscal madness, none of these things just happen spontaneously, all by themselves. Perhaps there is a logical explanation. It would explain much... - CP

•

"Study: Psychopaths Have 'Potholed' Brains"

by Kate Kelland, Reuters/ABC Science

"Psychopaths have faulty connections between the part of the brain dealing with emotions and that which handles impulses and decision-making, scientists have found. In a study of psychopaths who had committed murder, manslaughter, multiple rape, strangulation and false imprisonment, the British scientists found that roads linking the two crucial brain areas had "potholes", while those of non-psychopaths were in good shape.

The study opens up the possibility of developing treatments for dangerous psychopaths in the future, says Dr Michael Craig of the Institute of Psychiatry at London's King's College Hospital, and may have profound implications for doctors, researchers and the criminal justice system. "These were particular serious offenders with psychopathy and without any other mental illnesses," he says. "Essentially what we found is that the connections in the psychopaths were not as good as the connections in the non-psychopaths. I would describe them as roads between the two areas, and we found that in the psychopaths, the roads had potholes and weren't very well maintained."

Timing is key: The scientists caution against suggestions the study could lead to screening of potential psychopathic criminals before they are able to commit crimes, saying their findings had not established how, when or why the brain links were damaged. Psychopathic extremes have been portrayed in Hollywood blockbusters by characters like the serial killer and cannibal Hannibal Lecter. They often violate social norms, are manipulative, impulsive and sensation-seeking, and appear to feel no empathy or remorse.

Craig, who is lead author of the study, published in the journal "Molecular Psychiatry," stresses that the number of brain scans in the study was small, with only nine psychopaths analyzed compared to nine non-psychopaths. "Trying to get people of this particular type to take part in a study, and also then deal with all the security you need to get them into a brain scanner, is not an easy feat," he says.

The study used a new brain imaging technology to further analyze psychopaths' brains after previous studies found that the amygdala part of the brain, which processes emotions, and orbitofrontal cortex, which handles impulses and decisions, are structurally and functionally different in psychopaths. "Up until recently the technology hasn't been available to look at the connections between those two brain areas in any meaningful way," says Craig. But a new technique, called diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging (DT-MRI), allows the researchers to look at the white matter tract linking the two key brain areas.

As well as finding clear structural deficits in the tract in psychopathic brains, they also found the degree of abnormality was significantly linked to the degree of psychopathy. "As for the moral significance for society, and how society wants to deal with these things, that is a little premature," says Craig. "This is a small study and the important thing it raises is that more research needs to be done."

- http://www.sott.net/

•

"Understanding Psychopaths"

by Paul Wilson, ABC Science

"Psychopaths are usually egocentric and often experience little guilt or remorse for their actions. The successful TV series "Dexter," based on Jeff Lindsay's novels of the same name, followed Dexter Morgan, a forensic blood spatter expert for the Miami Dade Police Department. He hunted down people who have escaped justice and then killed them. Quirky, charming but often murderously violent Dexter's character oscillated between normality and controlled psychopathic fury. But does Dexter represent the typical psychopathic serial killer? For that matter do psychopaths really exist or are they, as some psychologists believe, simply a media and writers' beat-up, a condition that has never been scientifically established?

While I am skeptical about many psychological categorizations and believe that it is always difficult to pigeon-hole humans into neat diagnostic packages, there is a great deal of evidence that psychopaths really do exist. More surprising to many is that violent serial killers - such as Ted Bundy, Australian child killer Derek Percy or even fiction's Dexter - are not necessarily stereotypical psychopaths.

While many psychopaths are violent criminals, others prefer to stay within the bounds of the law and achieve their career or interpersonal aspirations by manipulation and intimidation. Indeed, there is an increasing amount of evidence that corrupt politicians and businessmen, unethical lawyers, some radical activists and many others who may have reached positions of authority or power have psychopathic personalities. And these are the psychopaths we are more likely to encounter or be affected by in our lives.

What is a psychopath? Although there are many evidence-based psychological tests to measure psychopathy, the most well researched is undoubtedly Robert Hare's psychopathy checklist which is used extensively around the world. Hare describes psychopaths as "intra-species predators" who use charm, manipulation and/or violence to satisfy their own selfish needs. Lacking in conscience or real feelings they take what they want regardless of the consequences to others. In pursuing their goals they are likely to be cool under pressure, calm, emotionally flat and lacking in feeling. And by these criteria, Dexter is indeed a quintessential psychopath. The general consensus is that psychopaths don't change over time, although the number of their criminal acts might well reduce with age. However, most experts believe that they remain thoroughly unpleasant individuals throughout their life.

Psychopathy is a socially destructive personality disorder usually characterized by a combination of emotional, interpersonal and behavioral traits. The most common of these are egocentricity, extreme impulsivity coupled with irresponsible behavior, pathological lying and a lack of guilt or remorse. The condition is not a defined mental illness - both legally and in a psychiatric sense psychopaths are generally declared sane, although there is some evidence that a combined diagnosis of schizophrenia and psychopathy occurs occasionally.

Psychopathy and crime: While psychopaths comprise around six per cent of the general population, it's estimated that between 15 and 25 per cent of the American male prison population and seven to 15 per cent of female prisoners are psychopaths. The figures for Australian prisons are thought to be lower, although no one knows for sure.

The crimes of psychopaths are not confined to violent predatory behavior. Embezzlement, major fraud and many other "white collar" offenses are also committed by psychopaths. But often the psychopaths who make headlines are the ones that represent the most violent and dangerous criminals. Those who commit child abduction and murder are very often sexual psychopaths, sadists who delight in inflicting emotional and physical pain on their victims. These men - and occasional woman - are driven by their wild and dangerously out-of-control fantasies that include acting out visions of domination, pain, humiliation and sexual perversion. It is often said that the people who commit these kinds of crimes lack empathy - the ability to identify with how other people feel. But I believe that this view distorts how psychopaths actually feel. [Comment: This is the author's opinion of course, but do Psychopaths actually 'feel' anything for other people?]

Violent sexual psychopaths have an urgent and intense desire to inflict pain and suffering and do actually identify with how their victims feel. Indeed, the more pain and suffering their victims suffer, the more pleasure they obtain - they identify with the pain, they simply do not care about the physical and psychological anguish that they cause.

Causes of psychopathy: A great deal of debate has occurred as to the origins of psychopathy - much of it a classic nature versus nurture argument. Many psychopaths have had appalling childhoods punctuated by parental, sexual or physical abuse by one or both parents. Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy and many of Australia's and the world's worst serial killers have childhoods marked by these events, often reinforced by horrendous abuse in child or juvenile institutions for young offenders or those taken into care. However, these environments cannot by themselves explain why men and women become violent predators or psychopaths - if only because hundreds of thousands of children all over the world have similar upbringings and never commit any crime or develop psychopathy.

On the 'nature' side of the argument, there is some evidence of physiological differences in the brains of psychopaths. Preliminary neurophysiological research suggests that psychopaths fail to appreciate the emotional importance of events and that this may be related to brain dysfunction especially in the frontal cortex, the area of the brain that is responsible for processing emotions. More recent research has emphasized psychopathy as essentially a learning disability. For example Joseph Newman's work categories the way that psychopaths think as an information processing problem that makes psychopaths oblivious to the implications of their actions when focused on tasks that promise instant rewards. Clearly we are far from understanding the causes of this condition.

The future: We still have a lot to learn about the origins of psychopathy and how it manifests itself across cultures. A great deal of research is currently being conducted on the neurophysiological, psychological and social roots of psychopathy and how each may interact with each other. And in an exciting trend, researchers are increasingly focusing on community studies of psychopaths, rather than just confining their studies to the extreme sub-populations within prisons. This research is critical because few who have worked in this field doubt the enormous destructive power of the psychopathic personality, a personality that seems resilient to any known therapy or intervention."

Professor Paul Wilson, a forensic psychologist and criminologist at Bond University, was one of the guest speakers when ABC Science's Bernie Hobbs hosted "Café Scientific: The Science of Psychopaths in Storytelling" at the Brisbane Writers Festival. His most recent book, written with Amanda Howard, is "Predators: Killers without Conscience," published in Australia by New Holland."

- http://www.sott.net/

"The Sociopath Next Door"

"The Sociopath Next Door"

by Martha Stout
‧

"Imagine - if you can - not having a conscience, none at all, no feelings of guilt or remorse no matter what you do, no limiting sense of concern for the well-being of strangers, friends, or even family members. Imagine no struggles with shame, not a single one in your whole life, no matter what kind of selfish, lazy, harmful, or immoral action you had taken. And pretend that the concept of responsibility is unknown to you, except as a burden others seem to accept without question, like gullible fools.

Now add to this strange fantasy the ability to conceal from other people that your psychological makeup is radically different from theirs. Since everyone simply assumes that conscience is universal among human beings, hiding the fact that you are conscience-free is nearly effortless. You are not held back from any of your desires by guilt or shame, and you are never confronted by others for your cold-bloodedness. The ice water in your veins is so bizarre, so completely outside of their personal experience, that they seldom even guess at your condition. In other words, you are completely free of internal restraints, and your unhampered liberty to do just as you please, with no pangs of conscience, is conveniently invisible to the world.

You can do anything at all, and still your strange advantage over the majority of people, who are kept in line by their consciences will most likely remain undiscovered. How will you live your life? What will you do with your huge and secret advantage, and with the corresponding handicap of other people (conscience)? The answer will depend largely on just what your desires happen to be, because people are not all the same. Even the profoundly unscrupulous are not all the same. Some people - whether they have a conscience or not - favor the ease of inertia, while others are filled with dreams and wild ambitions. Some human beings are brilliant and talented, some are dull-witted, and most, conscience or not, are somewhere in between. There are violent people and nonviolent ones, individuals who are motivated by blood lust and those who have no such appetites. Provided you are not forcibly stopped, you can do anything at all.

Maybe you are someone who craves money and power, and though you have no vestige of conscience, you do have a magnificent IQ. You have the driving nature and the intellectual capacity to pursue tremendous wealth and influence, and you are in no way moved by the nagging voice of conscience that prevents other people from doing everything and anything they have to do to succeed. You choose business, politics, the law, banking or international development, or any of a broad array of other power professions, and you pursue your career with a cold passion that tolerates none of the usual moral or legal encumbrances. When it is expedient, you doctor the accounting and shred the evidence, you stab your employees and your clients (or your constituency) in the back, marry for money, tell lethal premeditated lies to people who trust you, attempt to ruin colleagues who are powerful or eloquent, and simply steamroll over groups who are dependent and voiceless. And all of this you do with the exquisite freedom that results from having no conscience whatsoever.

You become unimaginably, unassailably, and maybe even globally successful. Why not? With your big brain, and no conscience to rein in your schemes, you can do anything at all. If you are born at the right time, with some access to family fortune, and you have a special talent for whipping up other people's hatred and sense of deprivation, you can arrange to kill large numbers of unsuspecting people. With enough money, you can accomplish this from far away, and you can sit back safely and watch in satisfaction. Crazy and frightening - and real, in about 6 percent of the population.

The high incidence of sociopathy in human society has a profound effect on the rest of us who must live on this planet, too, even those of us who have not been clinically traumatized. The individuals who constitute this 6 percent drain our relationships, our bank accounts, our accomplishments, our self-esteem, our very peace on earth.

Yet surprisingly, many people know nothing about this disorder, or if they do, they think only in terms of violent psychopathy - murderers, serial killers, mass murderers - people who have conspicuously broken the law many times over, and who, if caught, will be imprisoned, maybe even put to death by our legal system. We are not commonly aware of, nor do we usually identify, the larger number of nonviolent sociopaths among us, people who often are not blatant lawbreakers, and against whom our formal legal system provides little defense.

Most of us would not imagine any correspondence between conceiving an ethnic genocide and, say, guiltlessly lying to one's boss about a coworker. But the psychological correspondence is not only there; it is chilling. Simple and profound, the link is the absence of the inner mechanism that beats up on us, emotionally speaking, when we make a choice we view as immoral, unethical, neglectful, or selfish. Most of us feel mildly guilty if we eat the last piece of cake in the kitchen, let alone what we would feel if we intentionally and methodically set about to hurt another person. Those who have no conscience at all are a group unto themselves, whether they be homicidal tyrants or merely ruthless social snipers.

The presence or absence of conscience is a deep human division, arguably more significant than intelligence, race, or even gender. What differentiates a sociopath who lives off the labors of others from one who occasionally robs convenience stores, or from one who is a contemporary robber baron - or what makes the difference between an ordinary bully and a sociopathic murderer - is nothing more than social status, drive, intellect, blood lust, or simple opportunity. What distinguishes all of these people from the rest of us is an utterly empty hole in the psyche, where there should be the most evolved of all humanizing functions."

- http://www.cix.co.uk/~klockstone/spath.htm

The Poet: Maya Angelou, "A Brave And Startling Truth"

"A Brave And Startling Truth"

by Maya Angelou

"We, this people, on a small and lonely planet

Traveling through casual space,

Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns,

To a destination where all signs tell us

It is possible and imperative that we discover

A brave and startling truth.

And when we come to it,

To the day of peacemaking,

When we release our fingers

From fists of hostility

And allow the pure air to cool our palms.

When we come to it,

When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate,

And faces sooted with scorn are scrubbed clean.

When battlefields and coliseum

No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters

Up with the bruised and bloody grass,

To lie in identical plots in foreign soil.

When the rapacious storming of the churches,

The screaming racket in the temples have ceased.

When the pennants are waving gaily,

When the banners of the world tremble

Stoutly in the good, clean breeze.

When we come to it,

When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders,

And children dress their dolls in flags of truce.

When land mines of death have been removed,

And the aged can walk into evenings of peace.

When religious ritual is not perfumed

By the incense of burning flesh,

And childhood dreams are not kicked awake

By nightmares of abuse.

When we come to it,

Then we will confess that not the Pyramids

With their stones set in mysterious perfection

Nor the Gardens of Babylon

Hanging as eternal beauty

In our collective memory,

Not the Grand Canyon

Kindled into delicious color

By Western sunsets.

Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe

Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji

Stretching to the Rising Sun.

Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor,

Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores

These are not the only wonders of the world.

When we come to it,

We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe,

Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the dagger

Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace.

We, this people on this mote of matter,

In whose mouths abide cankerous words

Which challenge our very existence,

Yet out of those same mouths

Come songs of such exquisite sweetness

That the heart falters in its labor,

And the body is quieted into awe.

We, this people, on this small and drifting planet,

Whose hands can strike with such abandon

That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living.

Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness

That the haughty neck is happy to bow,

And the proud back is glad to bend.

Out of such chaos, of such contradiction

We learn that we are neither devils nor divines.

When we come to it,

We, this people, on this wayward, floating body,

Created on this earth, of this earth,

Have the power to fashion for this earth

A climate where every man and every woman

Can live freely without sanctimonious piety,

Without crippling fear.

When we come to it,

We must confess that we are the possible,

We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world.

That is when, and only when,

We come to it."

○

"How It Really Is"

 

"World War III Prelude, 12/14/23"

Full screen recommended.

OpenmindedThinker Show, 12/14/23

"Multiple Explosions Rock Israel; 

Tel Aviv, Ashdod, and Ashkelon Hit"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

Hindustan Times, 12/14/23

"'Gaza Situation Catastrophic': Putin Blasts 

Israel's War; Reiterates Support To Palestinian Cause"

"Russian President Vladimir Putin has once again backed Palestinian cause of independence and said that the situation in Gaza is catastrophic which has no comparison with Ukraine where Russia has waged a war since February 2022. Putin has been highly critical of Israel's war on Gaza and called on Tel Aviv to cease its actions following Hamas' assault on Israel on October 7."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

Scott Ritter, 12/14/23

"US Will Attack Iran To Divert Attention From Ukraine"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

Douglas Macgregor, 12/14/23

"Israel's Attacks On Gaza - Innocent Civilians In War"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

Scott Ritter, 12/14/23

"Hezbollah Will Shock The World 

With the Absolute Destruction Of Israel"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Dan, I Allegedly, "Fees to Use Cash? The Shocking New Proposal"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly 12/14/23

"Fees to Use Cash? The Shocking New Proposal"

"Imagine getting charged to use cash at a business? 

This is the proposal that is in the works."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Adventures With Danno, "Outrageous Price Increases At Kroger! This Is Ridiculous!"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures With Danno, 12/14/23

"Outrageous Price Increases At Kroger! 

This Is Ridiculous!"

"In today's vlog, we are at Kroger and are noticing massive price increases on groceries! We are noticing a huge surge on price increases to the likes we have not seen in a while. It is important now more than ever we are paying attention and stocking up on sales as we see them. It's getting rough out here as many food items are becoming unaffordable!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Canadian Prepper, "Alert! UK Issues Dire Warning, 'The Big One Is Coming'; NATO Probes Moscow Airspace With Drones"

Full screen recommended.

Canadian Prepper, 12/13/23

"Alert! UK Issues Dire Warning, 'The Big One Is Coming'; 

NATO Probes Moscow Airspace With Drones"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

"Russia & Turkey Send Troops 

Into Gaza Palestine Against Israel!"

Jeremiah Babe, "Alert! Game Over, Most People Will Lose Everything"

Jeremiah Babe, 12/13/23

"Alert! Game Over, Most People Will Lose Everything;

End Of US Dollar Was Confirmed Today"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: Dire Straits, "Private Investigations"

Dire Straits, "Private Investigations"

"A Look To The Heavens"

"Some spiral galaxies are seen nearly sideways. Most bright stars in spiral galaxies swirl around the center in a disk, and seen from the side, this disk can appear quite thin. Some spiral galaxies appear even thinner than NGC 3717, which is actually seen tilted just a bit. Spiral galaxies form disks because the original gas collided with itself and cooled as it fell inward. Planets may orbit in disks for similar reasons.

The featured image by the Hubble Space Telescope shows a light-colored central bulge composed of older stars beyond filaments of orbiting dark brown dust. NGC 3717 spans about 100,000 light years and lies about 60 million light years away toward the constellation of the Water Snake (Hydra)."

- https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap191112.html

Kahlil Gibran, "The Madman"

"The Madman"

by Kahlil Gibran

"It was in the garden of a madhouse that I met a youth with a face pale and lovely and full of wonder. And I sat beside him upon the bench, and I said, “Why are you here?” And he looked at me in astonishment, and he said, “It is an unseemly question, yet I will answer you. My father would make of me a reproduction of himself; so also would my uncle. My mother would have me the image of her seafaring husband as the perfect example for me to follow. My brother thinks I should be like him, a fine athlete. And my teachers also, the doctor of philosophy, and the music-master, and the logician, they too were determined, and each would have me but a reflection of his own face in a mirror. Therefore I came to this place. I find it more sane here. At least, I can be myself.” Then of a sudden he turned to me and he said, “But tell me, were you also driven to this place by education and good counsel?”

And I answered, “No, I am a visitor.”

And he answered, “Oh, you are one of those who live in the madhouse on the other side of the wall...”

Chet Raymo, "Asperges Me, Domine "

"Asperges Me, Domine"

by Chet Raymo

"Our earliest mammalian ancestors were presumably nocturnal - to escape the predations of dinosaurs - but for most of human history we have been afraid of the dark, huddling in caves around stuttering fires, curled together in darkness like mice in a burrow. Night belonged to animals with big, dark-adapted eyes and sharp teeth, to footpads and graverobbers, to werewolves and vampires. Ironically, it was with the coming of electric illumination that it became reasonably safe to go out and about at night, even as the illumination erased the best reason to do so.

William Blake called day Earth's "blue mundane shell... a hard coating of matter that separates us from Eternity." At night we peer into infinity, awash in a myriad of stars. We creep to the door of the cave and look up into the Milky Way and catch a glimpse of divinity - everlasting, all-embracing, utterly unknowable. Night - that cone of shadow, that wizard's cap of spells and omens - is the chink in Earth's shell through which we court Ultimate Mystery the way Pyramus courted Thisbe.

Which is why, I suppose, that whenever I think of "the porch" of people who visit here, I imagine Carolina rockers on a southern summer verandah, far from city lights, Vega, Deneb and Altair swimming in the Milky Way, fireflies flickering on the lawn. At some point the conversation ceases and we simply sit, rock, and listen to the sounds of the night- the whippoorwill, the bullfrog, the cricket and the owl - and let starlight fall upon our heads like a sprinkling of holy water."

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

"Asperges Me, Domine"

"Wash me, Lord. Sprinkle me with hyssop and I shall be clean."

- The Catholic Mass

"Russia & Turkey Send Troops Into Gaza Palestine Against Israel!"

Full screen recommended.

Tech Show 12/13/23

"Russia & Turkey Send Troops 

Into Gaza Palestine Against Israel!"

"In this video, we look at the surprising and momentous occurrence in which Russia and Turkey sent troops into Gaza to aid Palestine. The entry of Russian and Turkish forces into Gaza has shocked the Middle East and the international community, changing the region's geopolitical landscape. We'll look at the reasons for this unusual move, the potential implications, and the larger backdrop of their intervention.

The long-running and contentious Israeli-Palestinian conflict has seen little progress in peace talks over the years. Russia and Turkey's involvement adds a fresh aspect to this complex scenario, promising both promise and alarm. We will examine the geopolitical variables at work as we discuss this development, underlining Russia's strategic goals in the Middle East and Turkey's devotion to the Palestinian cause.

For Palestinians, the deployment of foreign troops provides a ray of optimism in their decades-long campaign for self-determination. Generations of Palestinians have lived through conflict, relocation, and occupation, and they are cautiously optimistic about the possibility of restarting peace talks with international mediators such as Russia and Turkey.

Israel, on the other hand, has harshly opposed the presence of foreign forces into Gaza, considering it as a danger to its national security and sovereignty. This trend has damaged Israel's relationship with its traditional ally, the United States. The international community's reaction has been divided, with some countries expressing sympathy for the Palestinian cause while others warning of growing regional instability.

As we assess the unfolding situation, we will consider several scenarios and their implications, including as the prospects for fresh peace talks, the risk of escalation, the possibility of greater regional participation, and the shifting alignments in the Middle East. We will also stress the necessity of diplomacy and conflict settlement in the region, as well as the responsibility of the UN and global powers in dealing with this situation.

The intervention of Russia and Turkey in Gaza offers a complex and developing situation that necessitates serious study and international coordination. The purpose of this video is to present a comprehensive review of the fundamental elements, motivations, and prospective outcomes of their deployment, providing light on the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead in the pursuit of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Mexico City, Mexico. Thanks for stopping by!

Dan, I Allegedly, "Get Ready for the 100 Year Mortgage"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, 12/13/23

"Get Ready for the 100 Year Mortgage"

"It’s getting worse and worse. People are so desperate to buy a home that they could realistically extend mortgage payments out to 100 years. This is the only thing that will make house is affordable because the prices are sky high."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Long Live Liberty, Damnit!"

"Long Live Liberty, Damnit!"

"Scenes of freedom in the national theater

 here in Argentina's capital...

by Joel Bowman

“Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.”

~ Victor Hugo

Buenos Aires - “It’s a minarchist revolution!” declared one guest... “A tyrannical overthrow!” retorted another... “The end of the road for the political caste,” rallied a third, “and not a moment too soon!”

The weekend’s MexiChrisMakkuh festivities were just getting going. Three dozen guests from over half a dozen countries converged in our modest Buenos Aires apartment to munch tacos, quaff malbec and – as so often happens these days – debate the hot button socio-political topics of the minute.

Gender pronouns and culture wars in the US... the fall of the ANC and race riots in South Africa... the temperature of the earth half a century from now and what (if anything) should be done about it...and of course, the local topic du jour, the rise and rise of self-described anarcho-capitalist, Javier Milei, to the highest office in the land down here in Argentina.

Long Live Liberty, Damnit! Ordinarily, when it comes to being into politics, we’re mostly into being out of them. That is to say, we tend to think of the whole fetid cesspool as an occupational hazard. We check in from time to time the same way someone living in the Australian Outback checks his boots before he puts them on (redback spiders love the dark, warm hiding spots.)

Left to our own devices, we’d just as soon spend our days flânuering the city’s many cafés, parks and plazas, book in hand, whistling a cheerful tune. And yet, we are drawn to the idea of liberty in our time or, as the newly-elected Argentine president has it, “¡Viva la libertad, carajo!” (“Long live liberty, damn it!”)

You see, it’s hard to “live and let live” when The State is hellbent on spreading misery and corruption into everything it touches. And in a country where the currency is inflating away at an annual rate of ~200%, where the bloated bureaucracy bleeds into every aspect of life, where prices are controlled, markets are regulated and commerce severely restricted, all in favor of the parasitic political class, the leviathan becomes more than just a minor inconvenience, a splinter in the craw, an intellectual abstraction...

So when we see videos like the one below, in which the audience at the nation’s prized Teatro Colón greet their incoming president with a spontaneous outburst of...“¡Libertad! ¡Libertad! ¡Libertad!”...it’s impossible to ignore the swelling feeling of optimism for the future of this once-proud nation and its long-suffering people. Play video here.

In the first few days of his presidency, Mr. Milei has taken his trademark motosierra (chainsaw) to the rotten limbs of the administrative state, hacking hollow branches and abolishing whole ministries. Within 48 hours of entering office, he had:

Cut the number of under secretaries from 182 to 140...
Slashed the number of secretaries from 106 to 54...
Halved the number of ministries from 18 to 9.

Also announced: the suspension of all government subsidies to media outlets... the end of all government permits for importer-exporters... the end of all energy and fuel subsidies.

Hmm... a free press... free trade... and a free market. Piece by piece... brick by brick... the State is being dismantled and liberty is being returned to the people of Argentina. The world is watching. “¡Viva la libertad, carajo!”

- https://joelbowman.substack.com/

“Viva The Chainsaw!”

“Viva The Chainsaw!”

Argentina's government gets the chop, 

while the American Dream soars out of reach...

by Bill Bonner

Baltimore, Maryland - "The most exciting thing in the world of money and politics, right now, is the remarkable story of Javier Milei in Argentina. He brandished a chainsaw at campaign events, pledging to use it on the government. Now, against all odds, he is El Presidente…and he’s cutting the deadwood. All over the world people are wondering: shouldn’t we try this at home? We have two of our Bonner Private Research team on the scene to bring us the straight skinny – one in Buenos Aires and the other in Cafayate. Here’s the ‘Chainsaw Report” from Joel Bowman In the Paris of South America:

"Within the first 48 hours in office, Sr. Milei has...
Cut the number of "under secretaries" from 182 to 140.
Cut the number of secretaries [department chiefs] from 106 to 54.
Cut the number of ministries from 18 to 9.

He's also cut all superfluous ministerial expenses (staff cell phones, drivers, travel accounts, etc.) Currently, all people hired by the outgoing president (Alberto) across all divisions of the government are under review. The presidential spokesperson reiterated that "the national spending cuts have just begun." Also in the news, perhaps unrelated, a fire has broken out in the building next to the Ministry of Labor with reports there was an explosion. Some are speculating they're "burning documents."

Yesterday, more wood chips flew. Bloomberg: "Argentina’s Milei Devalues Peso by 54% in First Batch of Shock Measures." Government to introduce crawling peg that weakens 2% per month. Milei to slash subsidies and social security payments The newly inaugurated administration weakened the official exchange rate to 800 pesos per dollar, Economy Minister Luis Caputo said in a televised address after the close of local markets on Tuesday. It was 366.5 per dollar before the address.

Milei needs to move fast. Argentina has run out of money. And the parasites, powers-that-be, and elite know-it-alls around the world are doing everything they can to stop him. Because he is a real reformer, not a fake. Milei is no ‘right-winger’…no ‘Trump clone.’ He’s something else altogether; he’s actually trying to reduce the power of a bankrupt government. Is it possible? With so many powerful special interests against him? We will see.

The American Dream - In the meantime, the Biden Team goes in the other direction, and wonders why Americans don’t appreciate it. CBS news: The "American Dream" costs far more than most people will earn over their lifetime. The "American Dream" costs about $3.4 million to achieve over the course of a lifetime, from getting married to saving for retirement, according to a recent analysis from financial site Investopedia.

Meanwhile, median lifetime earnings for the typical U.S. worker stand at $1.7 million, earlier research from the Georgetown University has found. Another analysis, from USA Today, found that funding the American Dream costs about $130,000 a year for a family of four. Median household income stands at about $74,450, according to the Census Bureau.

‘What went wrong?’ is the question we’ve been asking. How come the richest people in the world, in what should have been the richest period in their history – 1980-2020 – made so little progress…and actually slipped backward by most measures?

In our businesses and our private lives, pruning goes on all the time. Businesses go belly up. Investments fail. People are fired. Wives file for divorce. Customers go over to the competitor. People die. The sound of chainsaws is never far away. Like cutting off the ‘suckers’ on a fruit tree, unnecessary or unproductive limbs are lopped off.

In a sense, the whole idea behind Fed policies of the last 20+ years was to keep the chainsaws off the job. The dead wood was propped up by ultra-low interest rates; bad ideas were financed with below-inflation loans; no-hope ‘investments’ drew in billions in EZ money. There was no discipline…no corrections. With phony prices, often there was no way to tell what was a good use of money and what wasn’t.

One Nation, Under Debt - The most telling artifact of the period, 1980-2020, is the nation’s $34 trillion in debt. Each dollar is a mark of shame. Baby boomers wanted ‘something for nothing.’ They got it by leaving their sons and daughters the bill; giving them nothing for something. Younger generations will pay, probably for their entire lives…and probably in the form of financial chaos and higher prices, for goods and services delivered to their elders.

How was it possible, they might wonder, that people so rich – the richest people ever in the history of the world – couldn’t pay their own way? Were they so strapped for cash that they had to put the costs for their wars and jackass programs onto their children? Did they think that their own plans…goals…and Christmas lists were so important that other people – even those who hadn’t been born yet – should pay for them? And that their children would have no spending plans of their own? What the US needs is a good Husqvarna too. More to come…"

- https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/

"How It Really Is"

 

"A Primer For The Propagandized: Fear Is The Mind-Killer"

"A Primer For The Propagandized:

Fear Is The Mind-Killer"

by Margaret Anna Alice 

“Those who can make people believe absurdities, 

can make people commit atrocities.”

- Voltaire

"The noose is dangling gently around our necks. Every day, they cinch it tighter. By the time we realize it’s strangling us, it will be too late. Those who – gradually and gleefully – sacrifice their freedoms, their autonomy, their individuality, their livelihoods, and their relationships on the altar of the “common good” have forgotten this is the pattern followed by every totalitarian regime in history.

Everyone wonders how ordinary Germans could have been manipulated to participate or stand dumbstruck while their government was transformed into a genocidal juggernaut. This is how. Read Sebastian Haffner’s "Defying Hitler" memoir to see how this can happen anywhere - including here.

Everyone wonders how Russians could have permitted and even zealously reported fellow citizens for imprisonment and execution under "Article 58", the penal code invented to incarcerate anyone who dared express the slightest whisper of noncompliance under Stalin’s homicidal state. This is how. Read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s meticulously documented "The Gulag Archipelago" to witness this progression of authoritarian lunacy.

Everyone wonders how Hutus could have suddenly started axing their Tutsi neighbors to death after being inundated with waves of anti-Tutsi propaganda from "Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines." Read Philip Gourevitch’s "We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda."

The list goes on. And on. And on. From Machiavelli’s "The Prince" to Étienne de la Boetie’s "The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude" to Edward Herman’s and Noam Chomsky’s "Manufacturing Consent" (and accompanying documentary) to BBC’s "The Century of the Self," mechanisms of mass control have been chronicled for millennia.

George Orwell wrote, "As far as the mass of the people go, the extraordinary swings of opinion which occur nowadays, the emotions which can be turned on and off like a tap, are the result of newspaper and radio hypnosis.”

Can you imagine what master propagandist Edward Bernays would have done with access to today’s mainstream media conglomerate combined with the global surveillance infrastructure of Big Tech? And you really think that’s not happening now - with another century of psychological, neurological, and technological research under their belts?

The present ability to curate reality and coerce obedience is unprecedented, far beyond what Orwell envisioned in "1984", Bradbury in "Fahrenheit 451", Huxley in "Brave New World," and Burgess in "A Clockwork Orange."

A textbook example of "Problem Reaction Solution", the current tsunami of worldwide hysteria is the latest and potentially most threatening example of mass control in history.

The recipe is simple. Take a naturally occurring phenomenon, say a seasonal virus, and exaggerate its threat far beyond every imagining - despite exhaustive evidence to the contrary. Suppress, silence, ostracize, and demonize every individual who dares present facts that expose the false mono-narrative.

Whip up a witches’ brew of anger, envy, and, most importantly, fear, escalating emotions to a boil so as to short-circuit our faculties of reason and logic.

Isolate us from one another, supplant real-world interactions with virtual feuds, label nonconformists as a threat to the group, and pump the public with a disinformation campaign designed to confuse and atomize. In essence, foster a cultlike mentality that shuts down thought to guarantee assent.

Cultivate and wield our cognitive biases - especially ingroup bias, conformity bias, and authority bias - against us in a comprehensive divide-and-conquer policy that keeps us too busy squabbling amongst each other to recognize and unite against those corralling us into a Matrix-like collective delusion that enables the powerful to extract our resources for their own gain.

This ideological mass psychosis is religion - not science. If this were about science, the Media–Pharmaceutical–Big-Tech complex would not be memory-holing every dissenting voice, vilifying every thought criminal, and censoring every legitimate inquiry in quest of the truth.

Mark Twain said, “It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” He also said: “In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.”

The next time you’re watching the news, reading a social media post, listening to a friend repeat a scripted talking point, pay attention. Learn to identify the earmarks of propaganda, the clickbait used to trigger your emotions, the mechanisms employed to engineer your cognitive biases.

Don’t let your pride prevent you from seeing - and admitting - the Emperor is naked. We are losing our last sliver of opportunity to resist authoritarianism. This is not a partisan issue. Those who wish to control us have made it such because disunited lemmings are easier to steer than independent, critical thinkers.

This is a human issue. This is about crushing the middle class - the backbone of a democratic republic - and transferring trillions from the middle and lower classes to the ruling plutocracy. This is about demolishing the foundations of a free society and building it back - not better, but better-controlled.

I will close by recommending a series of illuminating videos on menticide (“the systematic effort to undermine and destroy a person’s values and beliefs … to induce radically different ideas”) throughout history by "Academy of Ideas." This analysis of mass psychosis is nonpartisan and of value to every thinking human being.

• "Is a Mass Psychosis the Greatest Threat to Humanity?"

• "The Mass Psychosis and the Demons of Dostoevsky"

• "The Manufacturing of a Mass Psychosis – 

Can Sanity Return to an Insane World?
"

○

"Dare to question. Dare to disbelieve. 

Dare to defy ideology in favor of science while you still can."

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

"Huxley vs. Orwell"

"Huxley vs. Orwell"

by Neil Postman

“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one...

o

Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those 

who  would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism...

o

Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us.

Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance...

o

Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we 

would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent

 of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy...

o

As Huxley remarked in 'Brave New World Revisited', the civil libertarians and the rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In '1984,' Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In 'Brave New World,' they are controlled by inflicting pleasure...In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us."

Huxley was quite obviously correct...

o

“What opinions the masses hold, or do not hold,

is looked on as a matter of indifference. They can be

granted intellectual liberty because they have no intellect.”

“To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself – that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word “doublethink” involved the use of doublethink.”

– George Orwell, 

“Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel” (1949)

Freely download “1984″, by George Orwell here:

- https://www.planetebook.com/1984/