“Of Time, Turnings, Stars & Wars”

“Of Time, Turnings, Stars & Wars”

by Doug "Uncola" Lynn

"Like nature, history is full of processes that cannot happen in reverse. Just as the laws of entropy do not allow a bird to fly backward, or droplets to regroup at the top of a waterfall, history has no rewind button. Like the seasons of nature, it moves only forward."

- Strauss and Howe: “The Fourth Turning”

"Contemplating the concept of time can be quite confounding, to say the least. In the extreme, considering the paradoxical nature of time’s passage will stretch the mind causing thoughts to invert like taffy in a rolling machine or light yielding to the gravity of an Event Horizon before the edge of a Black Hole in deep space.

Knowing Einstein was right means time stops at the speed of light. Surely then, waves of thought must generate their own specific gravity to capture both light and sound, together. Our eyes and ears record each moment and translate events into high definition digital memories which we can recall upon demand and view as celluloid film stock in a dark room.

However, in this dimension, there is another aspect at play that comes attached to time. Space: The final frontier. These conflagrate together and then separate at any given moment never to coalesce again in quite the same way. Time can be recalled like a ghost, or a spectral hologram, on the mind’s screen, but the space will have changed and dissipated entropically like dust digested in the amorphous bellies of Stephen King’s Langoliers.

To put it another way, time changes everything. A couple of years ago one of my offspring had a milestone birthday so we went to a morning movie matinee followed by an expensive late lunch at a fine dining venue. It was there where I chewed my food and contemplated the confounding conceptual continuations of space and time.

The movie was the Star Wars flick, "Rogue One" and the state-of-the-art theater featured stadium seating and a massive UltraScreen Deluxe® with Dolby® Atmospheric Surround-sound which, according to the advertisements, offered the “ultimate moviegoing experience”. As I watched the story unfold in REAL D 3D® with my 3D glasses in place while eating my popcorn and nestled comfortably in the red leather DreamLoungerTM recliner, I thought to myself how I really am in the future. In the lobby after the movie, I checked Drudge on my smartphone and learned Carrie Fisher had died in Los Angeles.

This made me remember way back to my past when I was a preteen and first saw the original Star Wars. I watched it with several friends in an ornately vintage, and solitary, theater in my small town. Through the patina of time and the opaque looking glass of my mind’s eye, I remember hoping no one would tell my parents, or my orthodontist, that I was eating popcorn and lemon drops with new braces on my teeth. Although I was an avid reader back then with a keen appreciation for science fiction, I had not seen a film before that captivated me like the first Star Wars. The excellent storyline, superior special effects, and the characters in the film really made an impression on me.

If my current self could go back to that day, I would meet the geeky, metal-mouthed kid after the movie and tell him some things. I would also mention how, in 39 years, he will celebrate his progeny’s birthday who, at that time, will be several years older than he is now and how he will be seeing another Star Wars movie on the very same day that Princess Leia died in real life.

The ironic confluence of time and space, indeed.

I am sure the mini-me at that time would have pegged me as a brain-damaged old fool and, in turn, would have attempted to persuade me into buying him and his friends a six-pack of beer, a fifth of peppermint Schnapps, a Playboy and a can of chew. After all, according to "The Fourth Turning," by Strauss and Howe, the year 1977 was two and a half “Turnings” ago. Back then, the future wasn’t set. Or was it?

“We perceive our civic challenge as some vast, insoluble Rubik’s Cube. Behind each problem lies another problem that must be solved first, and behind that lies yet another, and another, ad infinitum. To fix crime we have to fix the family, but before we do that we have to fix welfare, and that means fixing our budget, and that means fixing our civic spirit, but we can’t do that without fixing moral standards, and that means fixing schools and churches, and that means fixing the inner cities, and that’s impossible unless we fix crime. There’s no fulcrum on which to rest a policy lever. People of all ages sense that something huge will have to sweep across America before the gloom can be lifted – but that’s an awareness we suppress. As a nation, we’re in deep denial.”

- Strauss and Howe, “The Fourth Turning”

Written by the historians William Strauss and Neil Howe, “The Fourth Turning” was published in 1997 and was, at that time, boldly proclaimed by the authors to be an “American Prophecy”. The book is fascinating in that it very thoroughly documents recorded cycles of history across multiple cultures and eras in order to predict the timing of “America’s next rendezvous with destiny”.

Processing almost like a Cliff’s Notes summary, the book identifies the timelines of historical events and matches them to specific life cycles of people in the form of generational archetypes. What is also interesting is how Strauss and Howe quantify and compare the recordings of history of multiple authors throughout the millennia to find uncanny comparisons in both historical and generational cycles.  Ironically, the comparisons stand up not only to the test of time regarding recorded events in history, but the generational turnings and archetypes also translate to ancient literature and other writings as well, ranging from Homer’s Iliad to the Holy Bible.

The concept of time is discussed in the context of both circular and linear perspectives as Strauss and Howe describe what is called the “saeculum”. The saeculum represents a “long human life”, or approximately 80 to 90 years comprising of four turnings each lasting about 20 to 22 years.

Just as there are four seasons consisting of spring, summer, fall and winter, there are also four phases of a human life represented in childhood, young adulthood, middle age and old age, or elderhood. As each phase of human life represents approximately 20 years, so is each generational archetype identified within historical cycles, or turnings, as follows:

The generational archetypes experience the historical turnings according their life stage, or age. Amazingly, history shows a consistent pattern in how the generations both cause and affect historical events.  The patterns develop based upon how each generation interacts with the other and this also has documented consistencies that are delineated by the authors.

At any given “turning” during the saeculum, the set order of the generations on the age ladder is called a “constellation”. For example, during the Fourth Turning Crisis of 1929 through 1945, America experienced a financial crash, a great depression and a world war. During this period, the Prophet generation was entering Elderhood, the Nomad generation were middle-aged and the Hero generation fought WW II as young adults while the Artist generation were children during that time.

When the Crisis (Winter) era of financial hardship and war was over, the Spring of another First Turning began as the Hero generation led America into a season of unparalleled prosperity from 1946 through President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963. It was then the baby boomer, Prophet, generation began. As young adults, the boomers began to rock the nation with new age flower-power, feminism, guitars and free love. Thus began the Awakening that lasted through Ronald Reagan’s first term that ended in 1984. It was then the Third Turning of the Unraveling began.

In 1997, when the Fourth Turning was published, Strauss and Howe used their generational model to predict with remarkable accuracy, the start of the next Crisis in 2005:

“By the middle Oh-Ohs, institutions will reach a point of maximum weakness, individualism of maximum strength, and even the simplest public task will feel beyond the ability of government. As niche walls rise ever higher, people will complain endlessly how bad all of the niches are. Wide chasms will separate rich from poor, whites from blacks, immigrants from native borns, seculars from born agains, technophiles from technophobes. America will feel more tribal. Indeed, many will be asking whether fifty states and so many dozens of ethic cultures make sense any more as a nation – and, if they do, whether that nation has a future.”

- Strauss and Howe:  “The Fourth Turning”

In 1997 there was no way to foresee the sequencing of 911, the Patriot Act, Edward Snowden, government incompetence after Hurricane Katrina, the financial crisis of 2007 – 2008, the subsequent TARP bailouts or the election of a mysterious, biracial pied piper to the presidency of the United States.

There is no way anyone could have predicted the ensuing eight years of Obama, the nationalization of healthcare, the orgy of greed hosted by Wall Street at the expense of Main Street, endless wars, unchecked immigration, the TSA, NSA, Homeland Security, the CIA versus the FBI, smart phones, drones, religious discriminations, Occupy Wall Street, the Tea Party, the Alt-right, Black Lives Matter and fake news.

Given the accuracy and timing of Strauss and Howe’s predictions, perhaps there is real validity behind their generational theory after all. And, given this, then we are now within the Winter of a Fourth Turning Crisis.

Can you feel it in the air? High powers in dark places are gathering and sides are being chosen as potential treachery and intrigue lurk around every corner. A global empire stands prepared to battle with populist movements and sovereign nations across the globe while rumors of a neo American civil war abound here at home.

Captured corporate media propaganda outlets and deep state government agencies relentlessly shill for a global empire and stoke the fires of war against a free alternative media while simultaneously provoking a nuclear armed Russia.

Half of the nation’s electorate, on the brink of a financial abyss, would rather kneel before an evil empire than to support the outcome of a free election. Of course, there is no unity in America today. Those days are long gone.

“People young and old will puzzle over what it felt like for their parents and grandparents, in a distantly remembered era, to have lived in a society that felt like one national community. They will yearn to recreate this, to put America back together again. But no one will know how.”

- Strauss and Howe, “The Fourth Turning”

Winter is here.  War is coming. Battles will be waged and conflicts will rage. There will be no escape for what is coming and no guarantee as to any outcome, save one: After this Fourth Turning, there will remain only liberty or tyranny. One, but not the other. For this will be a fight unto the death.

Even so, do many Nomads now entering middle-age, and their Hero generation progeniture, actually understand what is about to befall them? Do they even care? And, for those who do understand and do care; do they know how to fight?

Truly, there are many variables to this historical cycle that were absent in the all of the previous Fourth Turnings throughout history. A few examples would include pervasive and devastating technology with the capabilities of either enslaving, or killing, entire generations of people; a global corporatocracy in control of government agencies, mass flows of information, food and resources; entirely misinformed and apathetic populations with no moral bearing, belief system, or willingness to accept truth in order to stand strong against the dark powers now encroaching; and, finally, there are so many who have been trained to embrace the utopian lie of one world under tyranny. Sadly, many of these may be the new Stormtroopers in waiting.

In the end, we must choose. And not choosing, by default, is a choice. Can a rag tag federation of freedom fighters with truth, liberty and history on their side under a flag of 13 stripes and 50 stars, with idea-fueled keyboards, a compromised internet, and semi-automatic weapons prevail against a galactic empire in control of a technocracy more powerful than any fictional Death Star?

We’re about to find out. Everything that has ever happened before has delivered us to where we are now. Hold on to that. Even more importantly, don’t forget to fasten your seatbelts and place your trays in the upright and locked position.The warp drive is about to be engaged. A new journey has begun.

May the Force be with you."

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Groningen, Netherlands. Thanks for stopping by!

The Poet: James Broughton, "Quit Your Addiction"

"Quit Your Addiction"

“Quit your addiction

to sneer and complaint.

Try a little flaunt,

Call for comrades

who bolster your vim

and offer you risk.

Corral the crones,

Goose the nice nellies,

Hunt the bear that hugs

and the raven that quoths.

Stay up all night

to devise a new dawn...”

- James Broughton,

“Little Sermons of the Big Joy”

"The Pure And Simple Truth..."

"The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple."

- Oscar Wilde

"The Great Supply Chain Collapse"

"The Great Supply Chain Collapse"

by James Rickards

"What’s at the root of the supply chain breakdown? That’s a critical question but the answer is almost irrelevant. The supply chain is a complex dynamic system of immense scale. It is of a complexity comparable to the climate as a system. This means that exact cause and effect cannot be computed because the processing power needed exceeds the combined processing power of every computer in the world.

Most people have some notion of how supply chains work, but few understand how extensive, complex and vulnerable they are. If you go to the store to buy a loaf of bread, you know that the bread did not mystically appear on the shelf. It was delivered by a local bakery, put on the shelf by a clerk, you carried it home and served it with dinner. That’s a succinct description of a supply chain – from baker to store to home.

Yet that description barely scratches the surface. What about the truck driver who delivered the bread from the bakery to the store? Where did the bakery get the flour, yeast and water needed to make the bread? What about the ovens used to bake the bread? When the bread was baked, it was put in clear or paper wrappers of some sort. Where did those come from?

Even that expanded description of a supply chain is just getting started in terms of a complete chain. The flour used for baking came from wheat. That wheat was grown on a farm and harvested with heavy equipment. The farmer hires labor, uses water and fertilizer and sends his wheat out for processing and packaging before it gets to the bakery.

The manufacturer who built the oven has his own supply chain of steel, tempered glass, semiconductors, electrical circuits and other inputs needed to build the ovens. The ovens are either hand crafted (engineered-to-order) or mass produced (made-to-stock) in a factory that may use either assembly lines or manufacturing cells to get the job done. The factory requires inputs of electricity, natural gas, heating and ventilation systems, and skilled labor to turn out the ovens.

The store that sells the bread is on the receiving end of numerous supply chains. It also requires electricity, natural gas, heating and ventilation systems and skilled labor to keep the doors open and keep merchandise in stock. The store has loading docks, back rooms for inventory, forklifts and conveyor belts to move its merchandise from truck to shelf.

Every link in these supply chains requires transportation. The farmer relies on trucks or rail for deliveries of seeds, fertilizers, equipment and other inputs. The oven manufacturer also relies on trucks or rail for deliveries of its inputs, including oven components. The bakery and the store rely mainly on trucks for deliveries of their inputs and the finished loaves of bread. The consumer relies on her automobile to get to the store and return home. These transportation modes have their own supply chains involving truck drivers, train engineers, good roads, good railroads, rail spurs and energy supplies to keep moving and keep deliveries on time.

This entire network (farms, factories, bakeries, stores, trucks, railroads and consumers) relies on energy supplies to keep working. The energy can come from nuclear reactors, coal-fired or natural gas-fired power plants or renewable sources fed to a grid of high-tension wires, substations, transformers and local connections to reach the individual user.

Everything described above sits somewhere in a complex supply chain needed to produce one loaf of bread. Now take everything else in the grocery store (fruits, vegetables, meat, poultry, fish, canned goods, coffee, condiments and so on) and imagine the supply chains needed for each one of those products. Then take all the other stores in the shopping center (home goods, clothing, pharmacy, hardware, restaurants, sporting goods) and imagine all the goods and services available from those vendors and the supply chains behind each and every one of those.

In case you think I have exaggerated the components and steps in making a loaf of bread in the above example, I didn’t. The example above is a grossly simplified description of the actual supply chain. A full description of the needed supply chain would reach back further (where do the seeds for the wheat come from?) and branch off in tangential directions (where do the bread wrappers originate?). A full description of the loaf of bread supply chain with choice of vendor analysis, quality-control tests and bulk purchase discounts among other decision tree branches could easily stretch to several hundred pages.

Now consider all of the supply chain links and possible bottlenecks described above are purely domestic. But very few supply chains are actually that local. CEOs, logistics engineers, consultants and politicians have spent the past 30 years making supply chains global. You’ve heard discussion of globalization since the early 1990s. What one may not have realized is that the process that was being globalized was the supply chain.

You know your iPhone comes from China. Did you know that the specialized glass used in the iPhone comes from South Korea? Did you know the semiconductors in the iPhone come from Taiwan? That the intellectual property and design of the iPhone are from California? The iPhone includes flash storage from Japan, gyroscopes from Germany, audio amplifiers, battery chargers, display port multiplexers, batteries, cameras and hundreds of other advanced parts.

In total, Apple works with suppliers in 43 countries on six continents to source the materials and parts that go into an iPhone. That’s a quick overview of the iPhone supply chain. Of course, every supplier in that supply chain has its own supply chain of sources and processes. Again, supply chains are immensely complex.

Once the global perspective is added, we have to expand our transportation options from trucks and trains to include ships and planes. That means ports and airports are additional links in the chain. Those facilities have their own links and inputs including cranes, containers, port authorities, air traffic controllers, pilots, captains and the vessels themselves. And to our list of trucks, trains, ships and planes we can add pipelines that transport liquids such as petroleum, gasoline and natural gas.

You get the idea. Supply chains may be hidden but they are everywhere. They are interconnected, densely networked and unimaginably complex. The touchstone of these efforts was the idea of just-in-time inventory (JIT). If you’re installing seats on an automobile assembly line, it is ideal if those seats arrive at the plant the same morning as the installation. That minimizes storage and inventory costs. The same is true for every part installed on the assembly line. The logistics behind this are daunting but can be managed with state-of-the-art software.

All these efforts are fine as far as they go. The cost savings are real. The supply chains are efficient. The capacity of this system to keep a lid on costs is demonstrable. The supply chain revolution since the early 1990s has been about cost reduction, which gets passed to consumers in the form of lower prices. That practically explains the entire phenomenon.

There’s only one problem. The system is extremely fragile. When things break down, everything gets worse at the same time. One missed delivery can result in an entire assembly line shutting down. One delayed vessel can result in empty shelves. One power outage can result in a transportation breakdown.

In a nutshell, that’s what has happened to the global supply chain. There’s a lack of redundancy. The system is not robust to shocks. The shocks have occurred nevertheless (pandemic, trade wars, China-U.S. decoupling, bank collateral shortages and more) and the system has broken down. The failures have cascaded. Delays in receiving commodity inputs in China have resulted in manufacturing delays for exports. Energy shortages in China have resulted in further disruption of steel production, mining, transportation and other basic industries.

Port delays in Los Angeles have resulted in component and finished goods delayed in the U.S. Semiconductor shortages have halted production of electronics, appliances, automobiles and other consumer durables that rely on automated applications. You’ve seen how complex the system is.

The bottom line is if supply chains are breaking down, the economy is breaking down. If the economy breaks down, the breakdown of social order is not far behind. And the costs of social disorder are far higher than any possible savings from supposedly efficient supply chains."

- https://dailyreckoning.com/

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

○

Related:

- https://www.freightwaves.com/

"How It Really Is"

Of course the above cartoon inspired by this classic:

Full screen recommended.

West Side Story, "America" (1961)

Gregory Mannarino, "Markets, A Look Ahead: 100% Irrefutable Proof That The FED Is Lying"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 1/19/21:

"Markets, A Look Ahead: 

100% Irrefutable Proof That The FED Is Lying"

- https://traderschoice.net

"Do You Own Anything? Financial Gunslingers Will Lose; Warning Signs Of Collapse"

Jeremiah Babe, 12/18/21:

"Do You Own Anything? Financial Gunslingers Will Lose;

 Warning Signs Of Collapse"

Musical Interlude: Liquid Mind I: "Ambience Minimus"

Full screen recommended.

Liquid Mind I: "Ambience Minimus"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"The first identified compact galaxy group, Stephan's Quintet is featured in this eye-catching image constructed with data drawn from the extensive Hubble Legacy Archive. About 300 million light-years away, only four of these five galaxies are actually locked in a cosmic dance of repeated close encounters. The odd man out is easy to spot, though. The interacting galaxies, NGC 7319, 7318A, 7318B, and 7317 have an overall yellowish cast. They also tend to have distorted loops and tails, grown under the influence of disruptive gravitational tides. But the predominantly bluish galaxy, NGC 7320, is closer, just 40 million light-years distant, and isn't part of the interacting group. 

Stephan's Quintet lies within the boundaries of the high flying constellation Pegasus. At the estimated distance of the quartet of interacting galaxies, this field of view spans about 500,000 light-years. But moving just beyond this field, up and to the right, astronomers can identify another galaxy, NGC 7320C, that is also 300 million light-years distant. Including it would bring the interacting quartet back up to quintet status."

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

The Poet: Edward Hirsch, "I Was Never Able To Pray"

"I Was Never Able To Pray"

"Wheel me down to the shore

where the lighthouse was abandoned

and the moon tolls in the rafters.

Let me hear the wind paging through the trees

and see the stars flaring out, one by one,

like the forgotten faces of the dead.

I was never able to pray,

but let me inscribe my name

in the book of waves

and then stare into the dome

of a sky that never ends

and see my voice sail into the night."

- Edward Hirsch

"All It Takes..."

"Not knowing you can't do something

is sometimes all it takes to do it."

- Ally Carter

The Daily "Near You?"

Regensburg, Bayern, Germany. Thanks for stopping by!

"Return of the 10 Minute Eviction - Foreclosures and Evictions are Back"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly, 12/18/21:

"Return of the 10 Minute Eviction - Foreclosures and Evictions are Back"

"The Rent Moratorium is over. Landlords are electing people by the hundreds. Some states are very pro landlord and people are being kicked out with just 10 minutes. Foreclosures are escalating as well."

"We Are Terribly Confused..."

"Humanity today is like a waking dreamer, caught between the fantasies of sleep and the chaos of the real world. The mind seeks but cannot find the precise place and hour. We have created a Star Wars civilization, with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology. We thrash about. We are terribly confused by the mere fact of our existence, and a danger to ourselves and to the rest of life."

- Edward O. Wilson

"Get in Crash Positions"

"Get in Crash Positions"

by Charles Hugh Smith

"Everyone with some gray in their ponytails knows the stock market has ticked every box for a bubble top, so everybody get in crash positions. Let's run through the requirements for a bubble top:

1. Retail investors (i.e., dumb money) are all in and buying the dip with absolute confidence. As the gray-ponytail traders know, there are many moving parts to the retail dumb money going all in:

• The pain of the last bubble bursting has finally faded and been replaced by greed as retail punters watch everyone else mint fortunes by buying the dip and gambling with abandon at the casino's trendy tables: crypto, NFTs, Mega-Tech, EVs, uranium, etc.

• Prudence and caution (i.e., holding cash in low-risk accounts) are thrown to the wind as the more money you put into the bet, the bigger the rewards

• Punters realize the key to the really big gains is maxing out margin and leverage, preferably by foregoing owning the underlying equity in favor of options and futures contracts

• Confidence in the Federal Reserve's godlike powers and determination to never let stocks decline more than a few percentage points over a few hours or days is off the charts

• Confidence that this is a new era and so old rules no longer apply is in the stratosphere. Retail punters believe that cryptos, NFTs and blockchain are can't-lose bets as these are A) unstoppable and B) revolutionizing finance and the economy.

As for stocks, retail traders have discovered the power of the herd: If the herd all buy call options by the thousands, this forces market makers to buy the underlying stocks, pushing the prices higher in a self-reinforcing feedback loop that is guaranteed to succeed.

• Retail investors view all these bets as extremely low risk and so there's no financial sense in hedging bets or limiting margin debt, leverage or risk, because risk has been abolished by the Fed Put.

The Smart Money:

2. Insiders (i.e., the smart money with asymmetric knowledge of what's actually going on beneath the surface PR) are selling with unprecedented enthusiasm. The gray-ponytail traders know the only way to anticipate the next trend change and benefit from this knowledge is to follow what the smart money (insiders) are doing, not saying, because they know the smart money will always talk their book, i.e., promote a confident happy story about future prospects even as they're dumping their own shares as fast as they can without crashing an increasingly precarious market.

3. Market leadership shrinks from 50 to five companies even as the majority of stocks are faltering. The absolutely classic sign of a bubble top is the indexes continue rising even as the majority of stocks stagnate or enter bear market territory with stairstep declines.

How can indexes continue marching higher if 80% of stocks are falling? Easy: big gains in a handful of mega-cap stocks. The current concentration of market-moving heft in a few mega-tech stocks is unprecedented. Last week all three market indexes - the Dow 30, S&P 500 and Nasdaq - were all led higher by one company, Apple, which added hundreds of billions of dollars in capitalization in a few days. When the market depends on a NIFTY 50 for the vast majority of its gains, it's already getting toppy, but when it's entirely dependent on a Fabulous Five for gains, then the top is in.

Suckers:

4. Short sellers give up and short interest falls to multiyear lows. The gray-ponytail traders can savor the irony: As short sellers give up and the percentage of shares sold short dwindles, the retail bulls declare victory (Ha ha, we've wiped out the shorts and bears! We won!). What the jubilant bulls don't understand is the hated short sellers were the last line of defense against a market decline gathering momentum into a crash, as shorts covering their bets by buying stocks are a reliable source of buying when greed turns to fear. Wipe out the shorts and there's nobody left to buy as stocks tumble and margin calls proliferate.

5. Buy-the-dip euphoria continues sucking in money even as market internals weaken and extremes of risk are ignored. When gamblers are putting all their capital on the table and boosting the bets with margin and leverage, the dumb money is all-in; not only do they not have any cash left, but their sky-high margin debt guarantees even a modest dip will result in margin calls and forced selling: The self-reinforcing momentum everyone assumed could only be bullish reverses into selling that begets more selling.

6. Punters are confident that the Federal Reserve will manage to tamp down inflation while keeping the stock market at a permanently high plateau. Never mind rising real rates, never mind the need to reduce monetary stimulus as the only means to take the air out of inflation — the Fed will never let stocks decline. The Fed Put is unbreakable.

How Low Can Stocks Go? And so here we are: Every box of a bubble top about to burst with unimaginable force is ticked. Traders sporting gray streaks in their ponytails know from experience that every bubble pops, and all the endless analysis after the fact boils down to: Things changed.

Nobody can fathom how low stocks can go at the eventual bottom. In a recent example, consider the price action in a marijuana-sector stock, Tilray (TLRY). Believers in the future prospects of the sector pushed the share price of TLRY to over $300. At the eventual capitulation low, shares traded hands in the $3 range - a roughly 99% decline.

History is full of examples of 80% declines, 90%, 95% and, yes, 99% declines. No one predicted the eventual capitulation low because such declines were inconceivable. Any decline could not possibly be more than three or four steps; a nightmarish fall into a chasm could not even be imagined.

And so here we are, witnessing the switch from risk-on to risk-off in real-time. Retail investors are buying every dip with gusto, margin debt is at record highs and insiders are selling quietly but furiously as they race to dump all their overvalued shares on buy-the-dip believers in the permanence of risk-on euphoria and valuations.

"Hell Is the Truth Seen Too Late": From $900 to $90 is unimaginable. Yes, it is unimaginable now, but it will become conceivable as the risk-on bubble deflates, but too late for all those who clung on to the faith that risk-on euphoria is permanent. The final redoubt of risk-on markets is the confidence that I will get out at the top. The problem with this notion is there is no top in greed and hubris, and greed and hubris are the engines of risk-on markets. So please fall carefully into the chasm.

How do I know all this? Experience. Like most participants, I learned about risk-off markets and bubble pops the hard way, falling not so carefully into the chasm. Timing is everything in a crash: As Thomas Hobbes is reputed to have observed, "Hell is the truth seen too late." Well said, T.H. When the market goes bidless, it's too late to preserve capital, never mind all those life-changing gains.

- https://www.oftwominds.com/blog.html

○

Related:

"One Chart Traders Might Want to Ponder"

"How It Really Is"

 

“Mass Formation Psychosis: Understanding the Psychology Behind the COVID Pandemic"

Full screen recommended.

“Mass Formation Psychosis:

Understanding the Psychology Behind the COVID Pandemic;

Billions Of People Are Affected By This & They Don't Realize It"

"A psychological condition of society known as “mass formation psychosis” is a condition for totalitarianism. Under mass formation psychosis, a population enters a hypnotic-type trance that makes them willing to sacrifice anything, including their lives and their freedom. That’s what’s happening right now.

Dr. Robert Malone, inventor of the mRNA vaccine, breaks down the "mass formation" phenomenon that makes it difficult to reason with those who have fallen victim to the globalist leader propaganda. Hear what he says is the hope we have before a total takeover."

"CDC Just Warned at That 15,000 Americans Will Die EACH WEEK by Christmas"

"CDC Just Warned at That 15,000 Americans Will Die 

EACH WEEK by Christmas; But It’s Actually VACCINE DEATHS 

That Are Accelerating Just As Independent Doctors Told Us All Along"

by Mike Adams

(Natural News) "In a stunning development that confirms the mass vaccine die-off is accelerating, the CDC now openly admits that 15,600 Americans will die each week by Christmas, with deaths continuing through the first part of 2022. (Source: UK Daily Mail citing the CDC)

The CDC claims these are “covid” deaths, but of course they are actually vaccine deaths. Covid vaccines inject people with toxic spike proteins or the mRNA instructions to manufacture spike protein nanoparticles. These particles are the disease, and they cause widespread vascular, neurological and reproductive damage. The side effects of these vaccines are identical to the “symptoms” of covid for the simple reason that the vaccines are the pandemic. Thus, when people are injected with the vaccines, they are “given” covid. Once they die, they are said to have died from covid instead of from the vaccine.

Natural News has learned that the CDC’s early warning alert system which is tied into US hospitals is throwing out a large number of red flags indicating the leading edge of a mass die-off wave among the vaccinated. In a panic, the CDC put its propaganda machine into gear and issued announcements that have been picked up by the world’s controlled media, including the UK Daily Mail which covered the CDC news, describing the upcoming mass deaths prediction as “grim.” From the Daily Mail, we see the shocking admission that one of the “largest outbreaks” of Omicron in the USA occurred among the “fully vaccinated:”

It is feared that a ‘tidal wave’ of Omicron is headed for US shores, with the UK recording its biggest one day case total ever on Thursday- 78,610 – with 10,000 of those cases confirmed as Omicron. One of the largest US outbreaks of the Omicron variant to date is believed to have occurred at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where almost all 930 cases over the past week are believed to be of the variant. All of the confirmed Omicron cases in the Cornell University are among people who are fully vaccinated, and some of them are in people who’ve also had booster.

Understand that so far, to our knowledge, there isn’t a single recorded case of an unvaccinated American dying from Omicron. Rather, the Omicron variant - and Delta before that - appear to inflict the vaccinated. That’s because the vaccinated have destroyed their immune systems by taking vaccine shots and booster shots. Get the body bags ready… the vaccines are kicking in

The 15,600 deaths per week that the CDC says will take place in America by Christmas are actually deaths of vaccinated people who are dying from: 1) Destroyed immune systems colliding with Omicron, a very mild strain. Or 2) Antibody Dependent Enhancement effects caused by the vaccines which result in the body waging a hyperinflammatory reaction against simple infections such as the seasonal flu.

The CDC is anticipating over 60,000 Americans will die per month through the winter, meaning we can anticipate somewhere around 200,000+ Americans to be killed by these vaccines before the spring. This is further worsened by the nationwide vitamin D deficiencies that always occur in the winter due to a lack of sunlight and outdoor activity (which has been further worsened by lockdowns and quarantines).

Already nearly 400,000 Americans are DEAD from the vaccines, and by April, it will exceed 600,000 As pandemic analyst Steve Kirsch has correctly pointed out, even using very conservative estimates, covid vaccines have already killed at least 388,000 Americans. With another 60,000+ dying each month over the winter months, we can very conservatively estimate that by the end of the 2021/2022 winter, 600,000+ Americans will have been killed by covid vaccines. That’s the equivalent of more than ten Vietnam Wars in terms of the number of US casualties. Or about 200 9/11 tragedies.

It puts the vaccines into the category of a holocaust. Yet Biden continues to falsely claim that everybody who gets a vaccine will be safe from covid, even when the data clearly show that it’s the vaccinated who are dying. In reality, Kirsh and other analysts are being very conservative with these numbers. In all likelihood, we are approaching one million deaths from the vaccine in America right now and will almost certainly exceed one million total deaths by the spring of 2022. The jab is a depopulation weapon, not a vaccine.

Globally, total vaccine deaths will likely exceed ten million people by mid-2022, dwarfing the number of Jews who were murdered by the Nazi regime in World War II. Yet we are all told to keep taking vaccine shots even though they don’t work. The very fact that they don’t work, in fact, is the justification being given to us for why we need to take booster shots.

Bombshell new study finds vaccines are virtually useless against Omicron: At the same time, a bombshell new study out of Columbia University - covered by the NY Post - finds that the Omicron strain is almost entirely resistant to covid vaccines. This means, in effect, that covid vaccines are now utterly useless and offer no protection whatsoever. Yet they have destroyed the immune systems of those who took the vaccines, leaving them vulnerable to all other infections that might coming along (including the common flu).

From the NY Post: "A new study out of Columbia University says the Omicron variant is “markedly resistant” to vaccines and boosters might not do much to help, spelling bad news for the country as Omicron spreads and COVID-19 cases rise nationally. The scientists express concern in the study published Wednesday that the variant’s “extensive” mutations can “greatly compromise” the vaccine, even neutralizing it.

Study authors even warned that all the antibodies from current covid vaccines may be made obsolete without warning due to natural viral adaptation, saying, “It is not too far-fetched to think that this [COVID-19] is now only a mutation or two away from being pan-resistant to current antibodies.”

In other words, every person who took covid vaccines got NO benefit but took HUGE risks and destroyed their immune systems in the process. Plus, they will now grow cancers at ten times the normal rate due to suppression of anti-cancer components of the immune system (including chromosome repair mechanisms in cell nuclei). In conclusion, the so-called covid “vaccine” really is a depopulation death jab. And the depopulation is now accelerating, exactly as myself and independent doctors and scientists have long warned."

- https://www.naturalnews.com/

Get full, shocking details in today’s Situation Update podcast:

- Brighteon.com/

○

Related:

"The Vaccine Death Report"

Evidence of millions of deaths and serious adverse events

resulting from the experimental COVID-19 injections.

By David John Sorenson & Dr. Vladimir Zelenko MD

"The purpose of this report is to document how all over the world millions of people have died, and hundreds of millions of serious adverse events have occurred, after injections with the experimental mRNA gene therapy. We also reveal the real risk of an unprecedented genocide.

Facts: We aim to only present scientific facts and stay away from unfounded claims. The data is clear and verifiable. Over one hundred references can be found for all presented information, which is provided as a starting point for further investigation.

Complicity: The data suggests that we may currently be witnessing the greatest organized mass murder in the history of our world. The severity of this situation compels us to ask this critical question: will we rise to the defense of billions of innocent people? Or will we permit personal profit over justice, and be complicit? Networks of lawyers all over the world are preparing class-action lawsuits to prosecute all who are serving this criminal agenda. To all who have been complicit so far, we say: There is still time to turn and choose the side of truth. Please make the right choice."

Download "The Vaccine Death Report" here:

- https://www.stopworldcontrol.com/

○

Related, essential:

"Unthinkable Thoughts"

○

"The Vaccines Are Working... Exactly As They Were Designed"

"Supply Chain Crisis Triggering Mass Liquidation Of Businesses As Shipping Prices Shot Up By 700%"

Full screen recommended.

"Supply Chain Crisis Triggering Mass Liquidation 

Of Businesses As Shipping Prices Shot Up By 700%"

by Epic Economist

"We're heading to a new year, but our old problems aren't going away. In fact, according to several industry leaders, Americans haven't seen the worst of shortages and price increases just yet. That's because the ongoing supply chain bottlenecks that have been disrupting global trade for almost two years are likely to persist through the entire year of 2022, and possibly extend until late 2023. A new report just released by insurers Euler Hermes and Allianz pointed that supply chain problems around the world are expected to intensify in 2022 due to renewed virus outbreaks, China's strict virus containment policies, and extreme weather. But disruptions can last even longer in the U.S. due to a lack of investment in shipping infrastructure capacity, the insurers predict.

Short-term shipping contracts and spot prices rocketed to the highest level ever ahead of this year's Christmas. Another company known as TASNEE, one of the largest manufacturers of car batteries in the world, revealed that on the week ending on December 10, shipping prices jumped by 700 percent compared to the same time in 2019. Due to a shortage of available containers, and given that China has stopped the production of new containers amid nationwide factory closure orders, the rental price of a single container climbed from $800-1,200 to $7,500-8,500 on the spot market.

The big problem is that only industry giants, such as Amazon and Walmart, are able to close long-term contracts or charter their own vessels to fight those volatile shipping costs. A 700 percent shipping price hike means hotter inflation and more acute price spikes at the stores. Considering that over 90% of the world's merchandise is shipped by sea, we are going to feel the impact of this extraordinary increase right in our wallets. And the worst part is -- although some of this jump in shipping costs may be seasonal, the chief analyst at the freight rate benchmarking platform Xeneta, Peter Sand, says that container shipping costs aren't likely to normalize before 2023.

"This means the higher cost of logistics is not a transitory phenomenon. For inflation, that means trouble. The element of shipping, in overall prices, small as it may be, is much bigger than ever before, and it could be a permanent lift to prices going forward," Sand warned. Last month, a United Nations report sounded the alarm about the impact of higher shipping and freight rates on consumer prices. It said that the container crisis might derail the global recovery and boost import prices by 11% at the beginning of 2022. The report also noted that the price of cheaper goods will disproportionally rise compared to the price of more expensive items.

On the other hand, there's a 50 percent shortage of truckers in the ports. Roughly 4,000 positions remain vacant, according to Seroka. Many truckers don't want to wait for hours in extremely long lines only to be refused entry for failure to report on time. The fact that the Los Angeles port is not operating is not operating at full capacity is undermining efforts to ease the backlog. Several ships are being diverted to the nearby port of Oakland, which is already congested as chaos roars in LA and Long Beach.

Approximately 75 cargo ships, the highest number in six months, are waiting to get unloaded in the port. With transit times for vessels arriving from Asia in the ports of LA and Long Beach more than doubling to 62 days compared with 2019 levels, nearly 7% more imports are being handled by the Port of Oakland. In contrast, export volumes declined 9.4% due to lack of ships heading to foreign markets, the port said. This entire situation is affecting consumers much more than they realize. Surging transport costs and rampant inflation costed millions of Americans more than $3,000 in additional expenses this year, according to a Penn Wharton University of Pennsylvania Budget Model analysis published on Wednesday.

The PWBM, a nonpartisan research-based initiative, estimates that the record levels of inflation will require the average U.S. household to spend at least $3,500 more in 2022 to achieve the same level of consumption of goods and services as in 2020 or 2021. This entire situation is affecting consumers much more than they realize. Surging transport costs and rampant inflation costed millions of Americans more than $3,000 in additional expenses this year, according to a Penn Wharton University of Pennsylvania Budget Model analysis published on Wednesday. Unfortunately, we're moving towards another painful year, and our leaders' lack of action are only worsening the current economic outlook. The devastating inflation crisis economists have been warning about for months is here, and the months ahead are going to be more chaotic than most people would dare to imagine."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com​

"My Bank Closed Again; Stock Market Rattled; JP Morgan Guilty Again; Banking Fraud"

Jeremiah Babe, 12/17/21:

"My Bank Closed Again; Stock Market Rattled; 

JP Morgan Guilty Again; Banking Fraud"

"A Fast-Moving Cancer"

"A Fast-Moving Cancer"

by Jeffrey Tucker

"In retrospect, all economic events seem inevitable. The cause and effect become obvious. You can look back and easily see the policy disasters. It is always easy to predict backward in time. But there are certain things you can know in advance. For example, if you shut down an economy by force, you will wreck investor confidence in the future. We’ll get to that in a moment. For now, let’s talk about wholesale prices and inflation.

A law of economics says: All else equal, with no change in velocity and productivity, more money pumped into the economy will lead to higher prices. Real-world conditions can vary, but when monetary aggregates of every sort show hockey stick-like patterns, you can be pretty sure the inflation is going to rock up at some point. We’ve known this for the better part of a hundred of years. And we’ve known for a year and a half that we would likely see inflation in this country without precedent in our lifetimes.

A Fast-Moving Cancer: I’ve been reporting on component parts rising 40–200% over the last six months. These extreme cases get filtered out in the indexing process, making it all seem less severe. From the individual producer point of view, we are dealing with near-emergency situations. These price increases in components and materials can be absorbed for a few months but not over the long haul. They devour profitability like a fast-moving cancer. Combine that with labor shortages and you have major problems.

Wages keep being bid up, faster and faster, but still not in a way that increases the purchasing power of the money workers receive. That’s because consumer prices are chasing the producer prices very closely behind. The trajectory here is striking. This is not a stable rate of high increase. It is an increasing rate of high increase. Forecast this out over six months, compounded, and you are looking at something truly horrific. Already these are the largest increases in wholesale prices on record. But keep in mind that this is getting worse.

Cover Your Eyes: Worried yet? If not, let’s take another look. Consider the 108-year chart, which is built of very reliable data. Set the 1982 dollar at 0 and consider the year-to-year percentage change in the Producer Price Index. Sit down. Be prepared to cover your eyes:

This is the on-the-ground reality. Correction: The on-the-ground reality is worse because the data seen in this chart is all dated. In a fast-moving inflation like this one, it is not possible for the data collectors to stay up to date. That the Fed has been completely dopey about this is a complete scandal. They unleashed this hell and now they are saying that they will fix it.

The Fed Fix: It is about as likely that the Fed can fix inflation as it is that the CDC will fix a virus. Whatever they do will cause even more harm. So let’s ask the question: What can they actually do? Raise rates thus tanking the economy quickly into a depression, in times of inflation. Inflationary depression: It’s already here and worse than the 1970s.

They can stop their bond purchases, which throws all this grotesque debt to the private sector. The banks will likely bail if they begin to doubt the presence of the Fed as the last-resort buyer. This will do nothing to curb present inflationary pressure; that only addresses the problem in the future. I simply do not believe that there is any taste in D.C. now for doing what Reagan did in 1981: tolerate a downturn on the promise of a future upturn.

Loss of Confidence: As bad as all this news is, and as grim as the trends look, there are even worse things happening right now. Business investment has taken a downturn not only in the U.S., but in all OECD countries. The data mavens cannot figure out why. They look at the world opening post-pandemic and cannot fathom why companies large and small are unwilling to commit to capital investment over the long term.

The blindness on this point speaks to the problem with digging through numbers alone to provide the answers. The real reason is, for lack of a better term, psychological. The belief in the stability of institutions has been shattered due to lockdown.

Governments all over the world have for two years given a big “F You” to the private sector. They have shut them down, masked their workers, jabbed them silly and otherwise abused private property for their own ruling-class fantasies.

A Scene Straight out of a Dystopian Movie: I spent last week in the nation’s capital doing interviews and meetings. It was productive. But it was also shocking in many ways, starting with prices. Just getting across town breaks the bank. I paid $40 to get from Foggy Bottom to Union Station in an Uber. I swear this trip used to be about $7.

The labor shortages have profoundly affected the transportation sector in cities. Cabs are actually few and far between in D.C, simply because 1) so many people among the driving class have left the city, 2) many have abandoned cabs for Ubers and 3) many workers are just too demoralized to bother.

Another thing I noticed was very troubling. I looked around the airport and saw multitudes of masked people shuffling along with their heads down, arriving early in case of flight troubles and lines, and so not rushing anywhere. The shops were mostly empty. Passengers sat in bars swilling liquor even at early hours. The rest of the travellers were sitting with their masks, not talking to their neighbors (how can you with masks?) but instead staring at their phones, clicking from app to app and vaguely texting with friends who were not there. It was a dreary scene straight out of a dystopian movie.

Regime Uncertainty: After all of this, is there really any wonder why there is reluctance to invest? There is regime uncertainty out there today. No one knows what is next. Long-term capital investment requires a stable legal environment, not an arbitrary bio-fascist dictatorship. One is exclusive of the other. I suspect it could take 10 or 50 years to repair the economic damage of the last two years. That media prognosticators look at this trend with confusion speaks volumes.

Another striking point that this makes: There has been a huge decoupling taking place between real business investment and the stock market. I am going to assume that stocks will perform well throughout this inflationary period. When I say “perform well” I mean that they will keep track with inflation, not rise much in real terms. That says nothing about the long-term hopes for a restoration of prosperity.

Bad times are here, my friends, and it is going to get much worse. Will we learn? It’s happening, but too slowly to find a reliable fix. The ruling class is unwilling even to admit what they have done much less fix it anytime soon."

- dailyreckoning.com

Gregory Mannarino, "Alert! Stocks Fall, Massive FEAR Campaign Under Way"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 12/17/21:

"Alert! Stocks Fall, Massive FEAR Campaign Under Way"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Musical Interlude: Liquid Mind XII: “Peace”

Full screen recommended.

Liquid Mind XII: “Peace”

"A Look to the Heavens"

"The most distant object easily visible to the eye is M31, the great Andromeda Galaxy some two and a half million light-years away. But without a telescope, even this immense spiral galaxy - spanning over 200,000 light years - appears as a faint, nebulous cloud in the constellation Andromeda. In contrast, details of a bright yellow nucleus and dark winding dust lanes, are revealed in this digital telescopic image. Narrow band image data recording emission from hydrogen atoms, shows off the reddish star-forming regions dotting gorgeous blue spiral arms and young star clusters.

While even casual skygazers are now inspired by the knowledge that there are many distant galaxies like M31, astronomers seriously debated this fundamental concept in the 20th century. Were these "spiral nebulae" simply outlying components of our own Milky Way Galaxy or were they instead "island universes" - distant systems of stars comparable to the Milky Way itself? This question was central to the famous Shapley-Curtis debate of 1920, which was later resolved by observations of M31 in favor of Andromeda, island universe.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100109.html

"You Are My Brother..."

“You are my brother, but why are you quarreling with me? Why do you invade my country and try to subjugate me for the sake of pleasing those who are seeking glory and authority?

Why do you leave your wife and children and follow Death to the distant land for the sake of those who buy glory with your blood, and high honor with your mother's tears?

Is it an honor for a man to kill his brother man? If you deem it an honor, let it be an act of worship, and erect a temple to Cain who slew his brother Abel.

Is self-preservation the first law of Nature? Why, then, does Greed urge you to self-sacrifice in order only to achieve his aim in hurting your brothers? Beware, my brother, of the leader who says, "Love of existence obliges us to deprive the people of their rights!" I say unto you but this: protecting others' rights is the noblest and most beautiful human act; if my existence requires that I kill others, then death is more honorable to me, and if I cannot find someone to kill me for the protection of my honor, I will not hesitate to take my life by my own hands for the sake of Eternity before Eternity comes.

Selfishness, my brother, is the cause of blind superiority, and superiority creates clanship, and clanship creates authority which leads to discord and subjugation.

The soul believes in the power of knowledge and justice over dark ignorance; it denies the authority that supplies the swords to defend and strengthen ignorance and oppression - that authority which destroyed Babylon and shook the foundation of Jerusalem and left Rome in ruins. It is that which made people call criminals great men; made writers respect their names; made historians relate the stories of their inhumanity in manner of praise.

The only authority I obey is the knowledge of guarding and acquiescing in the Natural Law of Justice.

What justice does authority display when it kills the killer? When it imprisons the robber? When it descends on a neighborhood country and slays its people? What does justice think of the authority under which a killer punishes the one who kills, and a thief sentences the one who steals?

You are my brother, and I love you; and Love is justice with its full intensity and dignity. If justice did not support my love for you, regardless of your tribe and community, I would be a deceiver concealing the ugliness of selfishness behind the outer garment of pure love.”

- Kahlil Gibran

- http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-poet-s-voice-xv/

The Poet: Theodore Roethke, "In a Dark Time"

"In a Dark Time"

"In a dark time, the eye begins to see,

I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;

I hear my echo in the echoing wood-

A lord of nature weeping to a tree.

I live between the heron and the wren,

Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

What’s madness but nobility of soul

At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!

I know the purity of pure despair,

My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.

That place among the rocks- is it a cave,

Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

A steady storm of correspondences!

A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,

And in broad day the midnight come again!

A man goes far to find out what he is-

Death of the self in a long, tearless night,

All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.

My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,

Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?

A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.

The mind enters itself, and God the mind,

And one is One, free in the tearing wind."

- Theodore Roethke

The Daily "Near You?"

Hays, Kansas, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"The Trick..."

“The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable,

or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same.”

- Carlos Castaneda

Chet Raymo, “Why Cranes Fly”

“Why Cranes Fly”

by Chet Raymo

"There were a few Comments here recently about herons, from right around the world. What is the power of this bird to touch our minds and hearts? The naturalist Aldo Leopold was intimately familiar with the cranes of Wisconsin, cousins of our New England great blue heron, the Irish gray heron, and Adam2's aosagi from Japan, and wondered about their ability to move us so deeply. In A Sand County Almanac he watches as a crane "springs his ungainly hulk into the air and flails the morning sun with mighty wings." Our ability to perceive beauty in nature, as in art, begins with the pretty, he says, then moves into qualities of the beautiful yet uncaptured by language. The beauty of the crane lies in this higher realm, he proposes, "beyond the reach of words."

Words may fail, but poets have tried to capture the ineffable.

John Ciardi sees "a leap, a thrust, a long stroke through the cumulus of trees" and stops to praise "that bright original burst that lights the heron on his two soft kissing kites."

Theodore Roethke observes a heron aim his heavy bill above the wood: "The wide wings flap but once to lift him up. A single ripple starts from where he stood."

In Chekhov's "The Three Sisters", sister Masha refuses "to live and not know why the cranes fly, why children are born, why the stars are in the sky. Either you know and you're alive or its all nonsense, all dust in the wind."

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

"You Better Decide..."

“A wise man once said you can have anything in life if you will sacrifice everything else for it. What he meant is nothing comes without a price. So before you go into battle, you better decide how much you’re willing to lose. Too often, going after what feels good means letting go of what you know is right, and letting someone in means abandoning the walls you’ve spent a lifetime building. Of course, the toughest sacrifices are the ones we don’t see coming, when we don’t have time to come up with a strategy to pick a side or to measure the potential loss. When that happens, when the battle chooses us and not the other way around, that’s when the sacrifice can turn out to be more than we can bear.”

- “Dr. Meredith Grey”, “Grey’s Anatomy"

"How It Really Is"