"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI)is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: credit, equity valuation, funding,safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United States, other advanced economies, and emerging markets."
“Over 400,000 light years across NGC 6872 is an enormous spiral galaxy, at least 4 times the size of our own very large Milky Way. About 200 million light-years distant, toward the southern constellation Pavo, the Peacock, the remarkable galaxy’s stretched out shape is due to its ongoing gravitational interaction, likely leading to an eventual merger, with the nearby smaller galaxy IC 4970. IC 4970 is seen just below and right of the giant galaxy’s core in this cosmic color portrait from the 8 meter Gemini South telescope in Chile.
The idea to image this titanic galaxy collision comes from a winning contest essay submitted to the Gemini Observatory by the Sydney Girls High School Astronomy Club. In addition to inspirational aspects and aesthetics, club members argued that a color image would be more than just a pretty picture. In their winning essay they noted that “If enough color data is obtained in the image it may reveal easily accessible information about the different populations of stars, star formation, relative rate of star formation due to the interaction, and the extent of dust and gas present in these galaxies.”
“There was a time when every wood, every tree, was thought to be inhabited by spirits called dryads, every pool and stream by naiads. Even not so long ago, our road here in Ireland was called “the fairies’ road.” The world, we say, was enchanted - every stone and plant infused with an animate spirit. Science put paid to all that, chased the spirits from their woods and pools, drove the fairies from their hills. Disenchanted the landscape. Well, maybe not. It depends on how you define enchantment.
Remember those spider webs I wrote about the other day, made visible by dew? Once the sun burned away the mist and the dew evaporated, the webs became invisible. But of course they are still there, a thousand silken snares, each with its resident spider. As I walked down the drive today I sensed their presence - the field alive with invisible spirits, a thousand arachnoid dryads crouching in their bowers.
The key to enchantment is to be aware of what can’t be seen. The spiders in their webs. The spinnerets extruding gossamer. The DNA zipping and unzipping in each cell of the spiders’ bodies, the amino acids, A and T, G and C, grasping hands in their dervish dance. The atoms in their resonant vibrations.
“What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well,” wrote Antoine De Saint-Exupery. The key to enchantment is to never stop thinking about the well.”
"Never, ever forget that nothing in this life is free. Life demands payment in some form for your "right" to express yourself, to condemn and abuse the evil surrounding us. Expect to pay... it will come for you, they will come for you, regardless. Knowing that, give them Hell itself every chance you can. Expect no mercy, and give none. That's how life works. Be ready to pay for what you do, or be a coward, pretend you don't see, don't know, and cry bitter tears over how terrible things are, over how youlet them become."
"All afternoon I have been watching a pair of hummingbirds play about our porch. They live somewhere nearby, though I haven't found their nest. They are attracted to our hummingbird feeder, which we keep full of sugar water. What perfect little machines they are! No other bird can perform their tricks of flight - flying backwards, hovering in place. Zip. Zip. From perch to perch in a blur of iridescence. If you want a symbol of freedom, the hummingbird is it. Exuberant. Unpredictable. A streak of pure fun. It is the speed, of course, that gives the impression of perfect spontaneity. The bird can perform a dozen intricate maneuvers more quickly than I can turn my head.
Is the hummingbird's apparent freedom illusory, a biochemically determined response to stimuli from the environment? Or is the hummingbird's flight what it seems to be, willful and unpredictable? If I can answer that question, I will be learning as much about myself as about the hummingbird. So I watch. And I consider what I know of biochemistry. The hummingbird is awash in signals from its environment - visual, olfactory, auditory and tactile cues that it processes and responds to with lightning speed.
How does it do it? Proteins, mostly. Every cell of the hummingbird's body is a buzzing conversation of proteins, each protein a chain of hundreds of amino acids folded into a complex shape like a piece of a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle. Shapes as various as the words of a human vocabulary. An odor molecule from a blossom, for example, binds to a protein receptor on a cell membrane of the hummingbird's olfactory organ - like a jigsaw-puzzle piece with its neighbor. This causes the receptor molecule to change that part of its shape that extends inside the cell. Another protein now binds with the new configuration of the receptor, and changes its own shape. And so on, in a sequence of shapeshifting and binding - called a signal-transduction cascade - until the hummingbird's brain "experiences" the odor.
Now appropriate signals must be sent from the brain to the body - ion flows established along neural axons, synapses activated. Wing muscles must respond to direct the hummingbird to the source of nourishment. Tens of thousands of proteins in a myriad of cells talk to each other, each protein genetically prefigured by the hummingbird's DNA to carry on its conversation in a particular part of the body. All of this happens continuously, and so quickly that to my eye the bird's movements are a blur.
There is much left to learn, but this much is clear: There is no ghost in the machine, no hummingbird pilot making moment by moment decisions out of the whiffy stuff of spirit. Every detail of the hummingbird's apparently willful flight is biochemistry. Between the hummingbird and myself there is a difference of complexity, but not of kind. If humans are the lords of terrestrial creation, it is because of the huge tangle of nerves that sits atop our spines.
So what does this mean about human freedom? If we are biochemical machines in interaction with our environments, in what sense can we be said to be free? What happens to "free will"? Perhaps the most satisfying place to look for free will is in what is sometimes called chaos theory. In sufficiently complex systems with many feedback loops - the global economy, the weather, the human nervous system - small perturbations can lead to unpredictable large-scale consequences, though every part of the system is individually deterministic. This has sometimes been called - somewhat facetiously - the butterfly effect: a butterfly flaps its wings in China and triggers a cascade of events that results in a snowstorm in Chicago. Chaos theory has taught us that determinism does not imply predictability. Of course, this is not what philosophers traditionally meant by free will, but it is indistinguishable from what philosophers traditionally meant by free will. If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's a duck.
I watch the hummingbirds at the feeder. Their hearts beat ten times faster than a human's. They have the highest metabolic rate of any animal, a dozen times higher than a pigeon, a hundred times higher than an elephant. Hummingbirds live at the edge of what is biologically possible, and it's that, the fierce intenseness of their aliveness, that makes them appear so exuberantly free. But there are no metaphysical pilots in these little flying machines. The machines are the pilots. You give me carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen and a few billion years of evolution, and I'll give you a bird that burns like a luminous flame. The hummingbird's freedom was built into the universe from the first moment of creation."
• The always provocative Roger Penrose looks for free will in quantum uncertainty in his "The Emperor's New Mind". Not an easy read, and, in my view, case not proven.
“Do you believe,’ said Candide, ‘that men have always massacred each other as they do today, that they have always been liars, cheats, traitors, ingrates, brigands, idiots, thieves, scoundrels, gluttons, drunkards, misers, envious, ambitious, bloody-minded, calumniators, debauchees, fanatics, hypocrites, and fools?”
“Do you believe,” said Martin, “that hawks have always eaten pigeons when they have found them?”
- Voltaire
o
“Murderers are not monsters, they're men.
And that's the most frightening thing about them.”
“One can fight evil but against stupidity one is helpless… I have accepted the fact, hard as it may be, that human beings are inclined to behave in ways that would make animals blush. The ironic, the tragic thing is that we often behave in ignoble fashion from what we consider the highest motives. The animal makes no excuse for killing his prey; the human animal, on the other hand, can invoke God’s blessing when massacring his fellow men. He forgets that God is not on his side but at his side.”
“There is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy.”
"Every day the war drums beat louder. Asia Times: "US provocatively points new nuke-tipped missile at China." The US has tested a new type of nuclear-tipped air launch cruise missile, reaffirming the viability of the air-based leg of its nuclear triad against evolving threats from near-peer adversaries China and Russia with profound implications for regional stability and global non-proliferation norms. The Warzone reported that the US Air Force had conducted nine flight tests of its future nuclear-tipped AGM-181A Long Range Stand Off (LRSO) cruise missile prototypes, including one test with a mock nuclear warhead.
Waning Support: When Europeans were just beginning to discover North America, an intrepid explorer spent time with the tribes along the Hudson Bay of Canada. He reported that one day, the young men of the tribe took their weapons and headed north. He thought they were on a hunting party. For weeks they continued…until the trees had disappeared …and it looked like desolate tundra. Finally, they found what they were looking for – an Eskimo village. The Eskimos were different people – different language, different culture… Wasting no time, the Indians attacked and slaughtered everyone in the village – men, women, children.
They were on a crusade. And they targeted people they must have viewed as ‘bad.’ Were they bad because they worshiped other gods? Or because they worshiped no gods at all? Were they bad because they had bad breath…or because the Indians lived on a vast, mostly-empty continent and the Eskimos were the only plausible ‘enemy’ within range?
The White Flag: Ukraine is running out of weapons, money, and enthusiasm. Most important, it is running out of meat for its grinder. The average age of its soldiers is said to be 40 years. Young men leave before they can be drafted; they aren’t willing to die for whatever crusade Zelensky is leading.
What is surprising to us is how many are still there. All Russia asked was to keep NATO out of Ukraine. Dying so that your country can join NATO does not seem particularly attractive. In a similar situation young Americans would scurry out of town too. At least, that was the finding of a survey reported in the Daily Mail. Voters were asked: 'Assume there is an invasion of America by another country and they were on the brink of victory. You can either almost certainly die fighting for your country, or surrender and survive. What would you do?' Of young people, 18-29, only 30% would fight.
No matter. History tells us that it is easy to gin up a war fever and get millions of people killed for no apparent reason. All you need is an enemy. And right now, America’s foreign policy experts…it's glorious think tank generals…and it's newspaper heroes turn their eyes east – to China and Russia. What have the Chinese and Russians done to us? Don’t know? But that was the point of the ‘Report from Iron Mountain.’ An enemy doesn’t have to do something, he just has to be something – a useful foe.
The Health of the State: China is the world’s greatest success story – ever. Since 1979, it brought 800 million people up from the grit and slime of Mao’s communist poverty into the modern world of capitalism, decent salaries, abundant food and technological wonders, such as its high speed rail and Shanghai’s maglev train. The US can’t match it.
But instead of admiring it…trying to learn from it…and hoping to profit from it, all of which would benefit the American people, China is becoming the enemy the empire elite need. Richard Cullen: "Bad-tempered coverage of China continues to flourish across the entire US media. It ranges from fire-breathing to pearl-clutching. Most commentators look daggers at Beijing in a dozen different over-cooked ways – and especially at the Communist Party of China – while reminding readers and viewers of America’s continuing paramount superpower status."
Truth emerges, often, in unexpected places. The “Report from Iron Mountain” may have been a spoof, designed only to elicit a knowing chuckle from the cynical cognoscenti, but it reveals the real cause of war better than any group of federal hacks ever could. The supposed background is that a 15-member group of pipe smokers got together in a Special Study Group to speculate on the consequences of ‘peace.’ They met in a nuclear-secure bunker under Iron Mountain. They came to the conclusion that government is incompatible with ‘peace.’ It can’t exist without war. Nation states only exist so they can make war.
There was nothing new about this insight. “War is the health of the state,” said Randolph Bourne. War is not just useful to government; it is government. The defining difference between the US government and the Catholic Church, Kiwanis Club or Walmart is that the former uses force to get what it wants. The latter do not. Without the use of force – police, jails, wars – the ‘state’ would have no reason to exist."
"The key point was made by Georgy Arbatov, a political scientist and advisor to Mikhail Gorbachev (and other secretaries of the Communist Party), and founder and director of the Institute for US and Canadian Studies at the Russian Academy of Science. He said to a group of senior US officials in 1987: “We are going to do a terrible thing to you – we are going to deprive you of an enemy.”
"There has been much controversy over the so-called J6 participants in Washington D.C. on January 6, 2020. The Lying Legacy Media (LLM) and the Deep State call it a “violent insurrection.” Donald Trump supporters called it a setup, psyop and frame job of people protesting a stolen election. Martin Armstrong contends the real theft of the 2020 Election happened because Democrats needed an excuse to suspend the rules of election integrity in Congress and push Joe Biden into the White House under emergency rules. Armstrong says, “Videos Prove January 6 was an Inside Job.” Hundreds have been imprisoned under weak and concocted legal cases, where witnesses were tampered with and evidence was destroyed and “lost.” President-elect Donald Trump promised in his 2024 campaign to give a blanket pardon to the people sitting in prison for the crime of exercising free speech and protesting a rigged election on January 6, 2020. Will he pay off on his campaign promise?
Former “billion-dollar franchise owner,” and now, philanthropist Gary Heavin wants to help all J6 prisoners when released and hold President Trump to his promise. Heavin and his wife Diane started a record-breaking string of women-only fitness franchises called Curves International. The company reached 5,000 franchises in 5 years, a feat that took McDonald’s 25 years. Since Heavin sold the company in 2012, he has concentrated on helping people in dire need. Just a few examples include flying doctors and supplies to survivors of the Haiti earthquake, and again in Haiti with Hurricane Matthew in 2016. Most recently, Heavin flew rescue missions for survivors of Hurricane Helene in North Carolina.
Heavin is known for using his money and skill as a pilot flying rescue missions with his personal helicopter and other aircraft. Heavin says, “Donald Trump has promised on numerous occasions to set the J6 prisoners free on his first day in office, which is going to be Monday. There are going to be some consequences in pardoning these people because the prisons are literally going to be putting these people out on the street with no notice to the families and no resources. We are talking about 300 incarcerated prisoners that are in 75 prisons in 35 states across this country. Many of them are a long way from home and a long way from resources. I am working with a variety of J6 freedom groups to meet those needs. So, we have set up over a hundred volunteers to be at every prison on Monday when these people are released. We are going to make sure they are warm, they’re fed and they have a hotel room. We are going to connect them to their family and figure out how to get them home.”
Heavin will be personally flying some of the J6 prisoners home on his private jet, and that’s not all. Heavin says, “I have organized private aircraft to be available on Tuesday. The ones beyond driving distance, we are going to fly them home.”
In closing, Heavin says, “This is an imminent moment right now. Trump’s mantra from his first term was ‘Lock Her Up, Lock Her Up,’ and, of course, we know what happened to that. The mantra today that begins his second term is ‘Set Them Free, Set Them Free.’ This is literally a litmus test where we are going to discover whether Donald Trump is going to keep his promises to the American people. There is a huge movement right now where millions of people are watching his actions. Is he going to do what he says he’s going to do? We had a little bit of confusion this past week when J.D. Vance was asked about the J6 pardons on FOX News, and he foolishly complicated it and said some will be set free and some won’t and all this other nonsense. My inside information is he (Vance) got his ass handed to him over this whole thing.”
"The aftermath of the recent LA fires has left the restaurant industry in complete turmoil. In this video, I dive into the shocking reality for local restaurants—businesses down 70-85%, closures piling up, and over 100,000 workers displaced. From fine dining to pizza spots, the numbers are devastating, and the ripple effects are massive. I share stories of resilience, donation efforts for first responders, and the heartbreaking challenges faced by restaurant owners and workers alike. With bankruptcies looming and a lack of government support, the question remains: what’s next for these communities?"
"Are your favorite fast food chains on the chopping block? In this video, we're counting down the top fast food chains that might disappear in 2025! From declining sales to increased competition, we'll dive into the reasons why these beloved brands might be saying goodbye. From iconic burgers to crispy fried chicken, which fast food favorites will survive the cut? Watch till the end to find out!
The restaurant industry is facing unprecedented challenges, and it's leaving many of us wondering: will our favorite restaurants disappear in 2025? From rising labor costs to increasing competition from meal kit services, there are many factors contributing to the decline of beloved eateries. In this video, we'll explore the top restaurants that are at risk of disappearing and what it means for the future of the industry. From fast food chains to upscale dining establishments, no one is immune to the challenges facing the restaurant world. So, which restaurants will survive and thrive, and which ones will be saying goodbye for good? Watch to find out!"
"These cosmic clouds have blossomed 1,300 light-years away, in the fertile starfields of the constellation Cepheus. Called the Iris Nebula, NGC 7023 is not the only nebula to evoke the imagery of flowers. Still, this deep telescopic image shows off the Iris Nebula's range of colors and symmetries, embedded in surrounding fields of interstellar dust.
Within the Iris itself, dusty nebular material surrounds a hot, young star. The dominant color of the brighter reflection nebula is blue, characteristic of dust grains reflecting starlight. Central filaments of the reflection nebula glow with a faint reddish photoluminesence as some dust grains effectively convert the star's invisible ultraviolet radiation to visible red light. Infrared observations indicate that this nebula contains complex carbon molecules known as PAHs. The dusty blue petals of the Iris Nebula span about six light-years."
"We were never promised any of it - this world of cottonwoods and clouds - when the Big Bang set the possible in motion. And yet here we are, atoms with consciousness, each of us a living improbability forged of chaos and dead stars. Children of chance, we have made ourselves into what we are - creatures who can see a universe of beauty in the feather of a bird and can turn a blind eye to each other’s suffering, creatures capable of the Benedictus and the bomb. Creatures who hope.
A generation after Maya Angelou held up a cosmic mirror to humanity with “A Brave and Startling Truth,” Pattiann Rogers - who writes with uncommon virtuosity about the intersection of the cosmic and the human, and whose poems have therefore been a frequentpresence in "The Universe in Verse" - offers a poignant cosmogony of our self-creation in the stunning final poem of her book "Flickering" (public library).
"Homo Sapiens: Creating Themselves"
by Pattiann Rogers, Read by Maria Popova
I.
"Formed in the black-light center of a star-circling
galaxy; formed in whirlpool images of froth
and flume and fulcrum; in the center image of herring
circling like pieces of silver swirling fast, a shoaling
circle of deception; in the whirlpool perfume of sex
in the deepest curve of a lily’s soft corolla. Created
within the images of the creator’s creation.
Born with the same grimacing wrench of a tree-covered
cliff split wide suddenly by lightning and opened
to thundering clouds of hail and rain.
Cured in the summer sun as if in a potter’s oven,
polished like a stone rolled by a river, emboldened
by the image of the expanse beyond earth’s horizon,
inside and outside a circumference in the image
of freedom.
Given the image of starlight clusters steadily silent
above a hillside-silence of fallen snow… let there be sleep.
II.
Inheriting from the earth’s scrambling minions,
images of thorn and bur, fang and claw, stealth,
deceit, poison, camouflage, blade, and blood…
let there be suffering, let there be survival.
Shaped by the image of the onset and unstoppable
devouring eclipse of the sun, the tempestuous, ecliptic
eating of the moon, the volcanic explosions of burning
rocks and fiery hail of ashes to death… let there be
terror and tears. Let there be pity.
Created in the image of fear inside a crawfish
skittering backward through a freshwater stream
with all eight appendages in perfect coordination,
both pincers held high, backing into safety beneath
a fallen leaf refuge… let there be home.
III.
Made in the image of the moon, where else
would the name of ivory rock craters shine
except in our eyes… let there be language.
Displayed in the image of the rotting seed
on the same stem with the swelling blossom…
let there be hope.
Homo sapiens creating themselves after the manner
and image of the creator’s ongoing creation — slowly,
eventual, alert and imagined, composing, dissembling,
until the right chord sounds from one brave strum
of the right strings reverberating, fading away
like evening… let there be pathos, let there be
compassion, forbearance, forgiveness. Let there be
weightless beauty.
Of earth and sky, Homo sapiens creating themselves,
following the mode and model of the creator’s creation,
particle by particle, quest by quest, witness by witness,
even though the unknown far away and the unknown
nearby be seen and not seen… let there be goodwill
"Seeing Through The Apocalypse: The Biggest Secret" by Zen Gardner
“And he said unto them, He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.”
- Mark 4:9
“It has been said that wisdom is not in seeing things,
but in seeing through things.”
- Manly P. Hall
"They don't own the earth. They don't own you and me. They don't own all their stupid secret symbols. They don't own the present, they don't own the future. They don't even own themselves. They're usurpers, in every sense of the word. And absolutely nothing to fear. That these invading power freaks striving to control the world should try to lay claim to some secret knowledge and power source is a fraud. That they think they can bring on world changing events that result in national clampdowns and population reduction is their personal nightmare in the making. And we need to see it for what it is. A charade. They have no secret powers. The nightmare is theirs, not ours. The fact is, there is no secret but that which is willfully withheld or deliberately ignored. And to the conscious, nothing is hidden that cannot be revealed.
So much of the big lie that we're witnessing on the world stage is simply projected pride- the big, fat, stinking manufactured pride of pathological egomaniacs reinforcing a fabricated world of their ugly, demented imaginations. Whether world conquest piggy-backing on natural and manufactured catastrophes, or attempting to morph humanity and terraform our environment to meet their specifications for world control, it's all defensive.
They're scared. It is they who are running and hiding from something so incredibly powerful they have to erect giant sand castles to hide behind while they attempt to exterminate all those who carry this amazing potential to realize Truth.
Us. An awakened and empowered us is what they're absolutely frightened of. Our warfare is a spiritual one. Whether we encase this understanding in one of the more classic frameworks or see it completely metaphysically, the play we're witnessing is nothing to fear. The feverish power struggles and social engineering taking place on such a massive scale are all based in fear. Fear of you, and fear of me. Because we represent the potential connection to Truth. And their inevitable downfall.
A perfect example of this shadowy charade is the "Brotherhood's" usurpation of symbols. While we know this supplanting of authority is true about their false hierarchy and self-imposed "ownership" of lands, natural and even human resources, they've cleverly tried to co-opt the inherent powers of the so-called mystery schools, the language of which is numbers and symbols.
What people forget is almost all of these symbols occur naturally with wonderful positive, regenerative properties. What these lying entities have done is simply attach negative and destructive and abusive connotations to anything they can. A perfect example of how once you're wrapped up in their world of interpretation with an abusive, violent world around you to back it up, you begin to think the lie is true.
Therein lies their only power. Your "belief" and entertaining of their notions, empowered to appear real only by your participation. Turn it off. Turn off their sources- mainstream media, staged events, manipulated music, shallow publicity, even phony personal responses and relationships.
It's time to get real. Remember, their whole plan is designed to replace reality with a false matrix of power that's fed by fear. Don't dwell on it, and see it for what it is. And reverse the flow. Each one of us changes the direction of Spaceship Earth. By our very clarity of understanding, our conscious awareness of the Truth and our not submitting to their web of deceit, we throw off the illusory shackles of the would-be controllers. Just one person's total lack of fear, not giving any obeisance to their societal, political, economic or physical oppression network, is a flame in their flimsy cobweb.
Be it.
They're lying usurpers..but it only works with our agreement. Our conscious awareness, as vague as that may seem to some, is the ultimate weapon. And it starts with waking the hell up and then keep waking up...rattling as many other cages as we can in the process. It's not always a smooth process, but it requires honesty and guts. And cutting the bullshit.
As our collective consciousness grows more awake and aware it gains power and tremendous momentum. The x-factor is synchronicity. When each of us responds to Universal consciousness things change dramatically. Life's signs become increasingly apparent and start challenging and leading our lives more and more, activating them in ways we never knew could have such a powerful influence. With each and every wake up the war is won. It was won in the beginning. We just need to stop believing the illusions around us and acting on our true conscience. At that point it becomes now."
Someone asked me a question about David Icke and his work. Rather than getting into a discussion of it, here's a FREE download of "The Biggest Secret." Read it, and decide for yourself what to believe. From the introduction: "David Icke's most powerful and explosive book so far. Every man, woman and child on the planet is affected by the stunning information that Icke exposes. "The Biggest Secret" is a unique book and is quite rightly dubbed "The book that will change the world." No one who reads it will ever be the same again. If you want to wake up and see the conspiracy this book is for you."
Freely download "The Biggest Secret", by David Icke, here:
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