"Slaughterbots: Autonomous Chinese Drone Swarm Flies Through Forest While Hunting For Humans"

"Slaughterbots: Autonomous Chinese Drone Swarm

 Flies Through Forest While Hunting For Humans"

by Tyler Durden

“People blame science. Sh*t, man, people 

shouldn’t blame science. People should blame people.”

- Mira Grant, "Countdown"

"A swarm of micro-drones autonomously navigated a dense bamboo forest in China without GPS, able to avoid trees, branches, and brush. The incredible footage suggests these drones could one day be used for search and rescue efforts or even put to sinister use: hunting humans. Chinese scientists from Zhejiang University published a report and footage of ten lightweight drones maneuvering at speed through a forest. The technology behind the drones autonomously navigates the best flight path through high-tech sensors.

Lead author Xin Zhou wrote in a paper published Wednesday, in the journal "Science Robotics," that "multi-robot aerial systems are a symbol of future technology" and cited science fiction films, "Prometheus" (2012), "Ender's Game" (2013), "Star Wars: Episode III" (2005), and "Blade Runner 2049: (2017), where drones or drone swarms were used, which ultimately "inspired" the research team. Here is the drone swarm navigating through the woods. Full video below:

Full screen recommended.

In another experiment, Zhou and his team showed the drone swarm could track a human "target" through a field of trees:

Commenting on the breakthrough research is Enrica Soria, of the laboratory of intelligent systems at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland, who told The Telegraph: "This work presents a notable contribution to the robotics community and an important step towards the application of drone swarms beyond the constrained environment of a laboratory, not only for exploration in forests but also for a range of safety-critical missions in human-made environments, such as urban areas with humans and buildings."

What's terrifying is if researchers transfer the technology to Beijing, or even the military, who could use the advanced drone software for hunting humans, if that's for domestic surveillance purposes, or equip it with weapons for the modern battlefield.

About five years ago, the world's leading AI researchers and humanitarian organizations warned about lethal autonomous weapons systems, or killer robots, that select and kill targets without human control. Future of Life Institute released this dystopic video of "slaughter bots."

Full screen recommended.

- https://www.zerohedge.com/news/

Must Watch! "It’s Game Over This Week for the Global Economy"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly 5/7/22:

"It’s Game Over This Week for the Global Economy"

"This is a pivotal week in our economy. We are going to get the consumer price index numbers on May 11. If they are above 9% everything will be finished. Interest rates will dramatically rise for mortgages, and this will affect the businesses around the world."

"Inflation Is Going To Destroy Your Life; Markets Are Going Much Lower; Maxing Out Credit Cards"

Full screen recommended.

Jeremiah Babe, 5/7/22:

"Inflation Is Going To Destroy Your Life; 

Markets Are Going Much Lower; Maxing Out Credit Cards"

Musical Interlude: Logos, "Cheminement"

Full screen recommended.

Logos, "Cheminement"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“To some, the outline of the open cluster of stars M6 resembles a butterfly. M6, also known as NGC 6405, spans about 20 light-years and lies about 2,000 light years distant. M6 can best be seen in a dark sky with binoculars towards the constellation of Scorpius, coving about as much of the sky as the full moon.

Like other open clusters, M6 is composed predominantly of young blue stars, although the brightest star is nearly orange. M6 is estimated to be about 100 million years old. Determining the distance to clusters like M6 helps astronomers calibrate the distance scale of the universe.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110906.html

"If You Caught A Glimpse..."

"If you caught a glimpse of your own death,
would that knowledge change the way you live the rest of your life?"
- Paco Ahlgren, "Discipline"

The Poet: Jane Hirshfield, "Instant Glimpsable Only For An Instant"

"Know Thyself"

by Chet Raymo

"The ancient Greek aphorism, attributed to Socrates and others. Good advice, I'm sure. If only we knew what it means. Is it the same as the "examination of conscience" we were asked to perform as young Catholics? "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned." Well, yes, it is good to ask ourselves if we have lived up to our highest moral aspirations. But surely "Know thyself" means more than that.

Does it mean to be aware of our self-awareness? That is to say, not to act impulsively, but reflectively. Thoreau's "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

Or perhaps it means to apply the method of scientia to the problem of consciousness, treat the mind like a fish that can be dissected at the lab bench, watch the brain flickering on the display of a scanning machine as the subject is stimulated with love, sex, fear, music, pain. Neuroscience. Daniel Dennet's book audaciously titled "Consciousness Explained." There is a line from a poem by Jane Hirshfield, in which she questions herself: "A knife cannot cut itself open/ yet you ask me both to be you and to know you."

Is it hopeless then? Is there an essential absurdity in a thing knowing itself? Does knowing necessarily imply a knower more complex than the thing known? Is it possible that we might fully understand, say, the neurology of the sea slug Aplysia, that favorite subject of experimental neurobiologists with only 20,000 central nerve cells, big nerve cells, ten times bigger than human neurons, but not the workings of the human brain, with its 100 billion nerve cells, each one connected to thousands of others?

Hirshfield's poem is titled "Instant Glimpsable Only For An Instant." Perhaps that is the best we can do. To know ourselves in those fleeting moments of recognition than come now and then, often unbidden, sometimes as the result of a chance encounter with beauty or with ugliness, sometimes bidden out of the silence and solitude of meditation - a flash upon one's inward eye that is, perhaps, all the ancients were asking for when they asked us to "know ourselves."

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

○

"Instant Glimpsable Only For An Instant"

"Moment. Moment. Moment.

- equal inside you, moment,

the velocitous mountains and cities rising and falling,

songs of children, iridescence even of beetles.

It is not you the locust can strip of all leaf.

Untouchable green at the center,

the wolf too lopes past you and through you as he eats.

Insult to mourn you, you who mourn no one, unable.

Without transformation,

yours the role of the chorus, to whom nothing happens.

The living step forward: choosing to enter, to lose.

I, who am made of you only,

speak these words against your unmasterable instruction -

A knife cannot cut itself open,

yet you ask me both to be you and to know you."

~ Jane Hirshfield

The Daily "Near You?"

San Luis Obispo, California, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"A Parade Of Fools..."

"Humanity is a parade of fools, 

and I am at the front of it, twirling a baton."

- Dean Koontz

Freely Read Online: Rainer Maria Rilke, "Letters to a Young Poet"

"Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are 

only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage.

Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence,

something helpless that wants our love."

- Rainer Maria Rilke, "Letters to a Young Poet"

○

"The Restless Heart" 

by Chet Raymo

In "Letters to a Young Poet", Rainer Maria Rilke writes: "We should try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue." To which I would add, let us trust the gifts that nature has given us- curiosity, attention, reason- and if our personal lives are destined for oblivion, then know that we have made of ordinary things something grander and more enduring. We are the transformers. We are bestowers of praise. "Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them," Rilke advises the restless young poet, echoing the great Catholic mystics: "And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."

Is it enough? In the long history of humanity, no hope has been so enduring as personal immortality. At every time and in every place men and women have assumed they will live forever. It is our solace, our balm for the restless heart. Even Neanderthals, it seems, placed flowers in the graves of their dead, presumably to grace the afterlife.

But the lesson of modern biology is clear: Death is final. Do we lapse then into morbidity? Do we rage, rage against the dying of the light? We have art. We have science. Even a rhyme can thumb its nose at death, says Seamus Heaney. We can each of us try to live our lives as poetry, to add to the world an element of graciousness that is not strictly necessary, to leave behind a spoor of rhymes that marks our passage on the Earth.

Yes, the spirit is flesh, but the spirit is more than flesh. The spirit is flesh in interaction with a universe of almost unimaginable grandeur and complexity. The windows of the flesh are thrown open to the world. The spirit is a wind of awareness, a pool stirred by angels."

Some part of the spirit will linger after the flesh is gone, as memories in other flesh, as words, music, science, rhymes- as a world nudged slightly in its pell-mell course towards good or bad. But the self is mortal: This is the existential fact that agitates the restless heart. "We are biological and our souls cannot fly free," writes Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson, summarizing what science has taught us about ourselves. He adds: "This is the essential first hypothesis for any consideration of the human condition."

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

○

Freely read online "Letters to a Young Poet",

 by Rainer Maria Rilke, here:

- https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/German/RilkeLetters.php

"The Rules"

 

"How It Really Is"

"'Sorry For The Inconvenience' Stickers Everywhere At Kroger! What's Coming?"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures with Danno, 5/7/22:
"'Sorry For The Inconvenience' Stickers 

Everywhere At Kroger! What's Coming?"

"In today's vlog we are at Kroger Marketplace, and are noticing inconvenience stickers everywhere! The last time we saw this many, there was a major food shortage. For the past few weeks we have seen a steady increase in food prices around the country. In addition we are also seeing a lot more empty shelves. It's getting rough out here as stores continue to struggle to get in products!"

Tucker Carlson, "This Is The Road To Chaos And Collapse"

Full screen recommended.

Tucker Carlson, "This Is The Road To Chaos And Collapse"

"Our World of Lies"

"Our World of Lies"

by Paul Craig Roberts

"If the inflation narrative we are being fed is true, the sanctions policy of the US government makes no sense as the worst sufferers are the American and European populations who are paying for the supply restrictions in higher prices and interest rates.

As Russia is an exporter of energy and minerals, higher prices result in more export earnings. It is Americans and Europeans hit with the high prices who are experiencing the sanctions.

Ask yourself why with supply shortages, disrupted supply chains from the mindless lockdown policy, and rising inflation the US government drove inflation higher by inhibiting supply with sanctions. Is the cause of the current inflation Federal Reserve money printing or is the cause the reduction in the supply of goods and services caused by Washington’s Covid protocol and “Russian sanctions”?

Ask yourself why the Biden regime is more concerned about gangster-state Ukraine than it is about the US inflation rate and the welfare of American citizens.

Ask yourself if the current high gasoline price is really a result of sanctions preventing oil from coming to market. As far as I can tell, Russia continues to sell oil and natural gas. It is only the small US purchases of Russian oil that have stopped. The small amount of oil involved cannot explain the price rise. Most likely it is the oil companies using the “crisis” narrative to raise prices.

Ask yourself if an interest rate rise by half a percentage point is enough to cause a 1,000 drop in the Dow Jones. Presumably, the argument is that a higher interest rate raises costs and drops earnings, thus the stock market’s decline. But if higher interest rates raise costs, how are they anti-inflationary? Most likely the stock market fell because the Federal Reserve said it is halting its policy of printing money to support stock and bond prices.

Instead, the Federal Reserve is going to sell stocks and bonds from its $9 trillion dollar portfolio built by buying stocks and bonds for more than a decade in order to support the New York Banks and Wall Street. When Quantitative Easing began, the Federal Reserves portfolio was $800 billion. Today it is 11 times larger. This huge increase in the Federal Reserve’s portfolio explains the long rise in the Dow Jones and the fortunes made on Wall Street.

None of the narratives we are fed are true. The narratives serve agendas that are not disclosed to the public. It is a fiction that “Western democracies” are self-governing. How can people self-govern when they live in a world governed by false explanations serving hidden agendas?"

- https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/

"Ukraine & World War III"

"Ukraine & World War III"

by Martin Armstrong

"Our computer warned back in 2013 that Ukraine would be the place where World War III would begin. I warned that the ONLY way to prevent that was to split Ukraine based on the language. While the propaganda is that Kyiv is fighting for freedom and democracy, they have refused to allow Donbas to vote and recognize their independence. The hatred in the West of the Russian-speaking East is well documented. It stems from the period of Stalin’ starving of 7 million Ukrainians to pretend that Communism was working. The fact that Stalin was not Russian but a Georgian has been lost in the pages of history.

The Dnipro River was the border between the old Russian Empire and Ukraine. The East of that river was NEVER Ukrainian territory. It was assigned to Kyiv under the USSR for administrative purposes. Crimea was always Russian and was merely assigned to Kyiv in 1954 under the USSR. Nevertheless, we are to throw the entire world into war over this nonsense only because it serves the objectives of the Neocons and the World Economic Forum which cannot pull off this Great Reset without also overthrowing both the governments of Russia and China. Sorry to inform them that our computer has NEVER been wrong on geopolitical forecasts and it is written in stone, in the end, the West will lose to China, which has already stated that it is in a strategic partnership with Russia. SO while people die to fill Zelensky’s offshore accounts and I warned from the outset that he was the agent who would create World War III, he has been preaching this is World War III to engulf the entire world for this territorial grab that is historically unjustified.

The Nazi Ukrainian troops are clinging to control of the steel plant in Mariupol. Our sources say that the Russian troops have breached their defenses and hand-to-hand combat is even taking place inside. They have asked for support from Kyiv, but so far that is not coming. This is the final stronghold and this fierce attack is to deliver the Kremlin a victory against the Nazis days ahead of a major Russian military holiday on Monday.

The steel plant is the last area in Mariupol still under Ukrainian control, and its fall would be a blow to Kyiv. Putin again called Macron for he is the only leader who appears to be interested in a peace agreement. Putin misjudged that the West NEEDS war with Russia and they are counting on the belief that he will not use nuclear weapons.

In reality, there are those who argue that the smartest thing that Russia could do is to take a lesson from the USA. The argument calls for the use of a small tactical nuke and take out Kyiv and then call the bluff of the USA and NATO. Would the West retaliate and go nuclear which would then result in Europe and the USA being in the direct line of fire? I doubt it. But once the US dropped the two bombs on Japan, that ended the war. With the Pelosi delegation saying there is no peace and only total victory with the defeat of Russia is acceptable, this will be another endless war.

"What did Liz Truss expect of Russia’s reaction to her insane and outlandish claims of ‘weakening this nuclear state“?  “A recent Russian state TV program has stirred outrage and made headlines across the United Kingdom after a television presenter featured a simulated demonstration of how the Russian navy’s nuclear submarines would take out the UK with ease.

The segment aired late last week on public broadcaster “Channel One” and featured the chairman of the nationalist Rodina political party, Aleksey Zhuravlyov, who declared that “one Sarmat missile and the British Isles will be no more.” 

Full screen recommended.

What is important to understand is that 1 Hiroshima Bomb Explosion was equal to 0.01434034416826 Megatons of TNT. Today, Russia has more nukes than anyone, but just one is 100 megatons. One can take out the entire island of Britain. The people behind Putin would nuke Kyiv following the lesson of World War II betting that the West will not retaliate and destroy the entire world. We are certainly rolling the dice and our braindead world leaders do not seem to comprehend either the risk or strategy."

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

○

Related:

• "Ukraine, Romania, Moldova... vs. Transnistria: A WW III Scenario"

• "This Time, NATO Better Take Putin’s Ukraine Warnings Seriously"

"25 Facts About Income Inequality In America That Will Blow Your Mind"

Full screen recommended.

"25 Facts About Income Inequality In 

America That Will Blow Your Mind"

by Epic Economist

"The world's richest country is also the most unequal country on the planet. Today, average American workers have way less power relative to the corporations, investors, and institutions that rule our society than at any other point in the history of our nation. Wealth has never been so highly concentrated, and those who don't have it are forced to fight for their right to exist in a country where social mobility is almost non-existent. Over the past several decades, the ultra-rich have been rigging the same so that more and more money continues to be funneled into their pockets.

The biggest, meanest concentrations of wealth are devouring everyone else's with a big help from government policies. Since the foundation of America, "Capitalism" has come to mean something completely different. It was supposed to be about the empowerment of individuals and families and small businesses. Instead, it has become a system of exploitation. We have actually been left with Corporatism, which produces a handful of winners and a whole lot of losers. But, when wealth and power are so highly concentrated, economic rewards are doomed to flow only to the hands of the few.

In the United States, the income gap between the wealthy and the rest of the population has been significantly growing, by every major statistical measure, for more than three decades. Over the past decade, paychecks at the top have skyrocketed while flatlining at the bottom. The bottom 90 percent have seen their wages grow by a mere 8.7% compared to 20.4 percent for the top 1 percent and 30.2 percent for the top 0.1 percent. According to the latest Executive Excess report, in 2021, 50 major companies reported CEO pay 1,000% larger than worker pay. Those companies include Walmart, McDonald’s, and many other highly profitable corporations.

Corporate giants are so powerful that it is virtually impossible for small businesses to directly compete with them. According to the Forbes list of 400 richest Americans, three men own as much money as the bottom 50 percent. But as the US top 0.01 percent have accumulated more wealth, they have paid a smaller share of total U.S. taxes. Many of these institutions have become so big that the global economy literally cannot afford for them to fail. A handful of corporate bureaucrats control approximately 90% of the world's trade. So what happens if those companies collapse?

By contrast, average workers are, of course, never "too big to fail". Big banks and large companies can always ask for bailouts, but if you're late on your debt payments you can be thrown in the streets - or, worse, you can be chucked into prison. The numbers we exposed today are proof that our system has become corrupted beyond all recognition. Now more than ever, it is time for Americans to start recognizing their worth and start think how are we going to take power back to our hands."

For that reason, in this video, brought some stunning numbers that expose the true extent of income and wealth inequality in our country."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com/

Musical Interlude: 2002, "Breathing Light"

Full screen recommended.

2002, "Breathing Light"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"How do clusters of galaxies form and evolve? To help find out, astronomers continue to study the second closest cluster of galaxies to Earth: the Fornax cluster, named for the southern constellation toward which most of its galaxies can be found. Although almost 20 times more distant than our neighboring Andromeda galaxy, Fornax is only about 10 percent further that the better known and more populated Virgo cluster of galaxies. 

Fornax has a well-defined central region that contains many galaxies, but is still evolving. It has other galaxy groupings that appear distinct and have yet to merge. Seen here, almost every yellowish splotch on the image is an elliptical galaxy in the Fornax cluster. The picturesque barred spiral galaxy NGC 1365 visible on the lower right is also a prominent Fornax cluster member."

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap130111.html

"We've All Heard..."

"The early bird catches the worm. A stitch in time saves nine. He who hesitates is lost. We can’t pretend we haven’t been told. We’ve all heard the proverbs, heard the philosophers, heard our grandparents warning us about wasted time, heard the damn poets urging us to seize the day. Still, sometimes, we have to see for ourselves. We have to make our own mistakes. We have to learn our own lessons. We have to sweep today’s possibility under tomorrow’s rug, until we can’t anymore, until we finally understand for ourselves what Benjamin Franklin meant: That knowing is better than wondering. That waking is better than sleeping. And that even the biggest failure, even the worst, most intractable mistake, beats the hell out of never trying.”

- “Meredith”, “Grey’s Anatomy”

"The Problem Is..."

“How small a portion of our life it is that we really enjoy. In youth we are looking forward to things that are to come; in old age, we are looking backwards to things that are gone past; in manhood, although we appear indeed to be more occupied in things that are present, yet even that is too often absorbed in vague determinations to be vastly happy on some future day, when we have time.”

- Charles Caleb Colton, “Lacon”

○

“The problem is, you believe you have time.”

- Buddha

Gregory Mannarino, "Markets And More! Crash? Meltup?"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 5/6/22:

"Markets And More! Crash? Meltup?"

- https://traderschoice.net/

"The Ministry of Truth - Everything You Need To Know!"

Full screen recommended.

AwakenWithJP,

"The Ministry of Truth - Everything You Need To Know!"

Bill Bonner, "Ace Pilot Powell"

"Ace Pilot Powell"

by Bill Bonner

Youghal, Ireland - "Consumer prices are rising. Real wages are falling. Investors are panicking. Productivity is dropping. The trade deficit is getting worse. Mortgages and car payments are rising. And here comes the ace pilot, Jerome Powell, in for a landing:

Our subject today is incompetence. So much of it is on display we gasp… and wonder; when God created man, did he overestimate his abilities?

MarketWatch: "The productivity of American workers and businesses sank at an 7.5% annual pace in the first quarter - the biggest drop since 1947 - in a reflection of ongoing supply shortages and other drags on the economy. The amount of goods and services produced, known as output, fell at a 2.4% rate in the first three months of the year. Yet hours worked rose at a 5.5% annual rate, the government said Thursday."

Yep… another sign that the 21st century, so far, has been a flop. MarketWatch continues: "Unit-labor costs surged at 11.6% annual pace in the first quarter. Over the past year these costs have risen at the fastest clip in 40 years. Unit-labor costs reflect how much a business pays an employee to produce one unit of output - say a ton of steel or a box of cookies."

Hourly compensation, or the amount of wages and benefits paid to employees, increased by 3.2%. Yet adjusted for inflation compensation fell 5.5%, underscoring that rising prices are hurting breadwinners. Wages aren’t keeping up with inflation. Productivity – how much you can do per hour (time is limited) – is the key to wealth. In rich nations, productivity is high. In poor ones, it is low. When productivity goes down, people get poorer.

New technology… along with the Fed’s careful piloting… was supposed to speed up productivity, not decrease it. What went wrong? The internet… the blockchain… new vaccines… self-driving cars – were they all such disappointments? We have a dictum to explain it: technical genius is no match for political imbecility.

Send in the Clowns: Looking back, the incompetence of federal policymakers is staggering. Bernanke’s bailout of Wall Street was supposed to make US markets stronger; instead, they’re more fragile than ever. 

The Trump/Biden trade restrictions were supposed to reduce trade deficits; now they’re bigger than ever.

Money-printing was supposed to make a stronger economy, with higher wages… But real disposable personal income is falling hard and the economy is getting smaller.

Ultra-low interest rates were supposed to push the inflation rate up to an ideal 2%... instead, the CPI is almost 9%; the Fed missed the mark by 350%.

What a bunch of clowns.

The fed’s financial and economic policies over the last 21 years have been a disaster: The lowest interest rates in the last 500 years. More money-printing than ever before. Meddling… tinkering… controlling – and deficits, deficits, deficits! – all of which have only squandered real wealth, slowed the economy and added some $50 trillion in debt to the US economy.

People borrowed. People spent. The spending produced business profits. Stock and bond prices went up. The rich got richer. And now, inflation has slithered in, like a snake at a teenage slumber party. Shrieks of terror have caused the central bankers to “pivot” to a hardline, hard-assed, hard-nosed policy stance. But these are the same people who caused today’s inflation… who didn’t see it coming… who denied it had come… and who claimed it would go away soon (with no need to take action). And now, they can no longer duck it or dodge it. So they say they have the ‘courage to act.’

What do you think? Have they got it right this time? Jerome Powell has the hoe in his hands; will he bruise the head of the serpent… with higher interest rates and QT (quantitative easing)? Or… faced with a bear market and a recession... will he fumble the job again? Here’s Charlie Bilello:

The US Money Supply has increased by over 50% in the last 3 years, the largest 3-year increase ever. The only other times when Money Supply increased by [greater than] 40% in a 3-yr period: 1973 & 1977-78. Both were followed by high inflation, recessions (1973-75, 1980, 1981-82) and bear markets. Stay tuned..."

- bonnerprivateresearch@substack.com

The Daily "Near You?"

Delhi, Ontario, Canada. Thanks for stopping by!

Jim Kunstler, "Nausea Rules"

"Nausea Rules"

by Jim Kunstler

"The way financial markets puked this week, they must have started reading the news. Let’s face it, the headlines are a little short of reassuring. The $6.49 price on a gallon of diesel is enough alone to tell you that the nation can’t do business the way it’s set up to do, and there isn’t a new model for running things ready to launch - not even Klaus Schwab’s utopia of robots and eunuchs.

What’s out there, rather, is a model of breakdown and collapse which the Woked-up, globalist neo-Jacobins are doing everything possible to hasten. US-inspired sanctions on Russia have quickly blown-up in America’s face. How’s that ban on Russian oil working? Do you understand that US shale oil - the bulk of our production - is exceptionally light in composition, meaning it contains not much of the heavier distillates like diesel and aviation fuel? ‘Tis so, alas. Truckers just won’t truck at $6.49-a-gallon, and before long they’ll be out of business altogether, especially the independents who have whopping mortgages on their rigs that won’t be paid. The equation is tearfully simple: no trucks = no US economy.

Europe, the old original homeland of Western Civ, isn’t just losing face, it’s blowing its head clean off going along with “Joe Biden’s” economic war. Are Germany, France, and the rest of that bunch really so dead-set on jamming Ukraine into NATO that they’re willing to go full medieval for it? By which I mean sitting in the cold and dark with empty plates. That’s a hard way to go just to prove somebody else’s point.

The war in Ukraine itself was apparently losing its sex appeal for the click-hungry news media. No matter which way The New York Times and friends tried to spin it, they failed to grok both Russia’s determination to neutralize Ukraine and its ability to get the job done, even if it takes a longer-than-expected grind to finish. That’s how important it was to Russia that Ukraine not become a forward missile base and bio-weapons lab for its adversaries. When that operation concludes, the West will be left economically crippled and humiliated - which are conditions that historically portend regime change. Will America cough up “Joe Biden” like a hairball to get those trucks running again? Might the Dems themselves resort to releasing the kraken known as Hunter’s laptop just to send the old grifter packing?

In the meantime, the leaked Roe v Wade cancellation ruling shoved the Ukraine fiasco offstage so as to provoke more useful histrionics for the dreaded midterm elections upcoming. The poorly-understood truth is that said ruling will only send the abortion question back to the individual states. But let’s get real: places like New York, Massachusetts, Maryland, and California are not going to enact any new anti-abortion laws, and that’s where most of the people having hebephrenic breakdowns over the issue live. Which is to say there’s little danger that the shrieking denizens of these Blue states will lack abortions. So, how much has the party only been pretending that Roe v Wade is its primal touchstone?

The strange parallel question has been raised: might laizzez-fair abortion be a cover for the evident new problem that Covid-19 vaccines have made a shocking number of birthing people incapable of reproducing? There’s a buzz about it, anyway. It’s a fact that Pfizer excluded pregnant and breastfeeding women from all phases of its mRNA trials. Among the various harms now ascribed to the mRNA shots are infertility, miscarriage, and newborn abnormalities. But, of course, that sort of rumor - in this case coming from cases among vaccinated military personnel and not so easily hushed up - is just what the many lurking censors want to slap down in any forum where ideas could be exchanged. It’s misinformation!

And so, the derangement volume knob over Twitter changing ownership stays up at eleven. Imagine what will happen if the supposedly 70-odd percent of Americans who got vaxxed learn in a re-liberated Twitter Zone that the Covid-19 vaccines are not “safe and effective.” According to Zero Hedge, twenty-six globalist NGOs with ties to George Soros signed a letter saying, “Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter will further toxify our information ecosystem and be a direct threat to public safety, especially among those already most vulnerable and marginalized.”

They are, as usual, projecting - since what is a greater threat to public safety than inducing tens of millions of frightened citizens to accept multiple shots of a poorly-tested pharmaceutical cocktail that can kill you six ways to Sunday? The folks in-charge (and others who would like to be the boss-of-you) don’t want you to know any of this. The pharma companies, the doctors, the hospital administrators, and the politicians must be frantic with terror of being found out.

Altogether, the scene looks like a multi-dimensional nightmare. Broken economy… sinking Western Civ… police state tyranny… vaccine death and injury… starvation…. So, there it is. Oh, look, those markets… they’re puking again!"

- https://kunstler.com/

"Nationwide Baby Formula Shortage Hits "Shocking" Levels, Sparking Panic Among Parents"

"Nationwide Baby Formula Shortage Hits "Shocking" Levels, 

Sparking Panic Among Parents"

by Jack Phillips

"A nationwide shortage in baby formula is worsening, according to a new analysis, as parents have expressed alarm over the worrying trend. At retail locations across the United States, about 40 percent of the top-selling infant formula products were not in stock for the week ending April 24, said Datasembly. The company said that it tracked baby formula stock at more than 11,000 stores nationwide. “This is a shocking number that you don’t see for other categories,” Ben Reich, CEO of Datasembly, told CBS News. “We’ve been tracking it over time and it’s going up dramatically. We see this category is being affected by economic conditions more dramatically than others,” Reich added.

Previously, drugstore chains like Walgreens and CVS have announced they would limit how many baby formula products each shopper can purchase at a given time. In a statement, Reich cited inflation, product recalls, and supply chain shortages as why there is “an unprecedented amount of volatility for baby formula.” And he believes that the shortages will continue in the near future. “We expect to continue to see the baby formula category being dramatically affected by these conditions,” Reich said. “Baby formula stock, which has been one of the more affected categories so far in 2022, and one that will continue to demonstrate higher than average out-of-stock levels.”

Meanwhile, some parents have expressed alarm on social media about the apparent lack of infant formula on shelves. “If the [mainstream media] can talk about the toilet paper shortage ever [sic] hour, they should be talking about the baby formula shortage at least,” Danielle Miller, a mother, wrote on Twitter last week. “We ended [up] finding the Amazon brand online but not everyone is so lucky to be able to feed that. Please share. This is every store!”

“The baby formula shortage is unreal!” GET THESE BABIES SOME FOOD!” another mother wrote on Twitter along with a photo of empty shelves, adding that “it’s a crisis all over.”

Another parent, Irene Anhoeck of San Francisco, told local media that “we’ve noticed it being difficult to find maybe a couple months ago - two, three months ago - and then just recently we can’t find it.” She added, “We’ve tried all the local Targets. We checked Costco, Costco online, Walgreens, Long’s. Can’t find it anywhere.”

In February, a major baby formula producer, Abbott Nutrition, recalled numerous lots of its products following reports of bacterial illnesses in infants. Last week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a notice to consumers telling them not to consume any products manufactured at Abbott’s facility in Sturgis, Michigan, over concerns of contamination."

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

“FED Must Save The Market Today; Retail Is Crashing; Market Bloodbath; Housing Wealth Destruction”

Jeremiah Babe, 5/6/22”

“FED Must Save The Market Today; Retail Is Crashing; 

Market Bloodbath; Housing Wealth Destruction”

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Related:

"The Great Crash Of 2022... What Happens Next?"

"The Stock Market Is Crashing! Is This 1,000 Point Wipeout Just The Beginning Of A Historic Financial Nightmare?"

"The Stock Market Is Crashing! Is This 1,000 Point

 Wipeout Just The Beginning Of A Historic Financial Nightmare?"

by Michael Snyder

"Is this “the Big One”? On Wednesday, I warned that the Federal Reserve had made a “colossal mistake” when it increased its benchmark interest rate by 50 basis points, and it looks like investors on Wall Street fully agree. We just witnessed one of the largest single day stock market crashes in history, and of course this comes at a time when stock prices had already fallen quite dramatically. Even before the carnage on Thursday, stocks were off to their worst start to a year in decades. So will things settle down soon, or is this the beginning of a truly historic stock market collapse?

Millions of Americans better hope that it is the former, because trillions upon trillions of dollars in paper wealth is on the line. I have always warned my readers that you only make money in the stock market if you get out in time. It doesn’t matter if you were holding certain stocks when they soared to all-time record highs. What is going to determine if you make a profit or not is when you choose to sell. And markets tend to go down a whole lot faster than they go up.

On Thursday, the Dow was down more than 1,000 points, the S&P 500 plunged more than 3.5 percent, and the Nasdaq got absolutely crushed…"The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 1,063 points, or 3.12%, to close at 32,997.97. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite fell 4.99% to finish at 12,317.69, its lowest closing level since November 2020. Both of those losses were the worst single-day drops since 2020. The S&P 500 fell 3.56% to 4,146.87, marking its second worst day of the year."

The reason why the Nasdaq plummeted so dramatically was because tech stocks were in “free fall mode” once again…"Large tech stocks were under pressure, with Facebook-parent Meta Platforms and Amazon falling 6.8% and 7.6%, respectively. Microsoft dropped 4.4%. Salesforce tumbled 7.1%. Apple sank 5.6%."

If you think that those numbers are bad, just look at what happened to Etsy and eBay…"Etsy and eBay dropped 16.8% and 11.7%, respectively, after issuing weaker-than-expected revenue guidance. Shopify fell nearly 15% after missing estimates on the top and bottom lines. The declines dragged Nasdaq to its worst day in nearly two years."

We have seen other bad days on Wall Street in recent years, but this definitely feels different. I think that Kim Forrest has done a better job than anyone else of summarizing what we just witnessed… “I expected some selloff, but the great puking that’s happening, I didn’t expect,” said Kim Forrest, founder and chief investment officer at Bokeh Capital Partners. “Is this capitulation? I remember what capitulation feels like — this kind of feels like capitulation, when everything, even the good names, are getting barfed out.”

I could not have said it better myself. So precisely what was the trigger that prompted this rush for the exits? Well, a lot of analysts are pointing to the Fed’s decision to raise interest rates on Wednesday. Here is one example… “It’s going to be incredibly difficult for the Fed to normalize interest rates without having a negative impact on growth and earnings,” said Paul Nolte, portfolio manager at Kingsview Investment Management. “So stock prices are too high if we’re going to see a flattening or a decline in earnings per share.”

Because there is so much leverage in the market right now, rapid declines could precipitate wave after wave of forced selling. In fact, it appears that this is already happening to a certain degree. Ultimately, it certainly won’t take too much to turn this “market slide” into a “market avalanche”.

Meanwhile, we continue to get more indications that the U.S. economy as a whole is really slowing down. On Thursday, we learned that worker productivity declined “at its fastest pace in nearly 75 years” during the first quarter…"Worker productivity fell to start 2022 at its fastest pace in nearly 75 years while labor costs soared as the U.S. struggled with surging Covid cases, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Thursday. Nonfarm productivity, a measure of output against hours worked, declined 7.5% from January through March, the biggest fall since the third quarter of 1947."

At the same time, we continue to get more bad news on the inflation front. One of the largest meatpackers in the western hemisphere is warning that steaks and burgers will get even more expensive in the months ahead…"Beef will be getting even more expensive at U.S. grocery stores in the months ahead, according to one of the country’s biggest meatpackers.

National Beef Co., controlled by the Brazilian giant Marfrig Global Foods, sees relatively stable margins in the next two quarters, according to Tim Klein, who heads Marfrig’s U.S. operations. That means even though their costs to buy cattle are increasing, the company will ultimately be able to pass that on to consumers in the form of pricier steaks and burgers."

And the rapidly rising cost of fertilizer will inevitably make trips to the grocery store much more painful later this year…"A fertilizer shortage is putting the food supply at risk. Fertilizer prices have tripled from where they were in 2021 and it’s forcing Mid-Michigan farmers to change how they grow their crops. “You’re cutting off one hand to save the other,” said Seth Cords."

So many things are simultaneously going wrong, and the outlook for the second half of this year is exceedingly bleak. But for a long time stock prices were able to defy economic reality. Even though economic conditions were rapidly deteriorating all around us, investors just continued to party on as stock prices just kept going higher and higher.

Of course now everything has changed. Trillions of dollars in paper wealth has already been wiped out, and trillions more will likely be wiped out in the days ahead. But Wall Street doesn’t even realize that what we have been through so far is just a warm up act.

Much more difficult days are coming, and eventually we will see financial disaster on a scale that is absolutely unprecedented in our history. Hopefully that time can be put off for as long as possible. But the clock is ticking, and what happened on Thursday should be a major league wake up call for all of us."

- http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/

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Related:

Market Data Center, live updates:

- https://www.marketwatch.com/market-data

"How It Really Is"

"Empty Shelves Everywhere, And Massive Price Increases! What's Coming? What's Next?

Full screen recommended.

Adventures with Danno, 5/6/22:

"Empty Shelves Everywhere, And Massive Price Increases! 

What's Coming? What's Next?

"In today's vlog we are noticing massive price increases! We are here to explain skyrocketing prices, and a lot of empty shelves! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"

"USA Production Is At A 75 Year Low - Retail Is Crumbling"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly 5/6/22:

"USA Production Is At A 75 Year Low - Retail Is Crumbling"

"It doesn’t matter where you live in the country. Everything is off. US production is that a 75 year low. Business is contracting and you’re seeing everything from retail to law firms contracting at this point. Things are slowing down before our eyes."

Gregory Mannarino, "Markets: Panic Selling! This Is NOT The 'BIG ONE'"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 5/6/22:

"Markets: Panic Selling! This Is NOT The 'BIG ONE'"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Canadian Prepper, "An Extremely Bad Feeling..."

Canadian Prepper, 5/6/22:

"An Extremely Bad Feeling..."

Midnight musings...

Greg Hunter, "Weekly News Wrap-Up 5/6/22"

"Weekly News Wrap-Up 5/6/22"

Nuke War Close, FOX Ignores 2000 Mules, Inflation vs Roe

By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"It is now confirmed by intel sources that the U.S assisted in sinking the prized Russian warship called the Moskva. Sinking a ship is an act of war. Here’s what history says about the U.S. entering into the first world war. “Lusitania, British ocean liner, the sinking of which by a German U-boat on May 7, 1915, contributed indirectly to the entry of the United States into World War I.” Are we close to world war and a war that could very easily escalate into a nuke war? I think we are going to find out sooner than later.

Every mainstream media operation is simply ignoring the new movie “2000 Mules,” which creator Dinesh D’Souza says proves beyond a doubt there was widespread voter fraud in the form of ballot box stuffing in the 2020 Election. Even FOX is ignoring this explosive film. Shame on fake FOX News. The mainstream media is desperate to discredit it and try to totally ignore this earth-shaking revelation of a stolen election and an illegitimate President in the White House.

Looks like the federal abortion case Roe v. Wade is going to be overturned by the Supreme Court. Is this enough to give the Democrats an advantage? Don’t bet on it as Americans will be struggling to survive in a world of staggering inflation, the worst in 40 years. Getting behind killing the unborn is going to be low on the priority list when trying to pay for food and fuel that is exploding in price along with everything else."

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he talks about these stories and more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up for 5/6/22:

- https://rumble.com/

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Related:

• "US Intel Assisted In Sinking Russian Flagship Vessel:

 Officials Claim Bombshell Escalation"

• "U.S. Intel Helped Ukraine Sink Russian Flagship Moskva, Officials Say"

• "Provoking Nuclear War with Russia – Dr. Paul Craig Roberts"

• "USA Targeting of Moskva Ship is Russia's "Pearl Harbor"...

Retaliation is Next"

• "Warship Moskva was Blind to Ukrainian Missile Attack, Analysis Shows"

○

• "US Intelligence Has Helped Kill Multiple Russian Generals In Ukraine"

• "U.S. Intelligence Is Helping Ukraine Kill Russian Generals, Officials Say"

○

"US Ramps Up Training Ukrainian Troops 

While Still Rejecting 'Proxy War' Label"

○

$33 billion weapons and support...

○

We're just begging for a nuclear war... and we'll get one, too...

Gerald Celente, "Bitcoin And Market Dive, White House Ramping Up War"

Strong language alert!

Gerald Celente, 5/5/22:

"Bitcoin And Market Dive, White House Ramping Up War"

"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present Facts and Truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for What’s Next in these increasingly turbulent times."

- https://trendsresearch.com/

"The Cost of Living Crisis Of 2022 Is Now Worse Than Anything That We Ever Experienced"

Full screen recommended.

"The Cost of Living Crisis Of 2022 Is Now Worse 

Than Anything That We Ever Experienced"

by Epic Economist

"The inflation crisis of 2022 has escalated to a level that is beyond anything we’ve ever witnessed, even surpassing the horrible cost of living crisis experienced during the Jimmy Carter era of the 1970s. In the early 1980s, the inflation rate hit a record high of 14.6%. A couple of weeks ago, we learned that the official rate of inflation in the U.S. hit 8.5% in March, the highest level since the early days of the Reagan administration, according to Labor Department data. But when we make an apples-to-apples comparison, calculating the rate of inflation the way it was originally calculated, the official rate of inflation would be somewhere around 17% right now. This means that the cost of living in this country has risen 17% in less than two years. By comparison, in “normal” times, a healthy inflation rate would be somewhere between 2.5 to 3.5%. This leaves us with the highest living expenses and consumer prices ever recorded in the entire history of America.

The price of gasoline has risen by 48% from March 2021 to March 2022, according to numbers released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In just one month - from February to March - the seasonally adjusted price of gasoline jumped by 18.3%. At the same time, we’re seeing vehicle prices climb to absurd levels as the auto industry scrambles to fight against factory shutdowns, shortages, and shipping disruptions. However, all across the board, US manufacturers are reporting that inflation is out of control, and it hasn’t peaked, but intensified in the past quarter.

“Firms continued to pass higher material and staff costs on to clients in April, as the rate of charge inflation accelerated. The increase in selling prices was the fastest since last October,” the PMI report says. So when we think we’ve already seen the worst of inflation, we’re told that more price hikes happened all across the industry last month, and soon they will hit the stores.

As the cost of living crisis bites, consumer prices have already been causing a lot of pain. If you think paying $10 for a pound of bacon or $6 for a pound of butter is way too much, we’re sorry to say but it's about to get even more expensive. In a few weeks, you'll be paying a lot more for just about everything when it comes to eating in or dining out, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. "All food prices are now predicted to increase," the USDA's Food Prices Outlook for 2022 March report said.

And that's on top of all the other increases consumers faced over the past several months. Before the health crisis, it would be inconceivable that so many Americans would be experiencing food insecurity all of a sudden. But this tragic situation illustrates the kind of nightmare scenario that is now upon us. Sadly, economic conditions will continue to rapidly deteriorate. And if another black swan event hits us later this year, it wouldn’t take much at all to push our nation over the edge and into an unprecedented economic crisis of catastrophic proportions. We’re rapidly transitioning from stagflation to a full-blown economic recession, and the consequences of it are going to be devastating."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com/

Musical Interlude: Vangelis, "Hymn"

Vangelis, "Hymn"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“What makes this spiral galaxy so long? Measuring over 700,000 light years across from top to bottom, NGC 6872, also known as the Condor galaxy, is one of the most elongated barred spiral galaxies known.

The galaxy's protracted shape likely results from its continuing collision with the smaller galaxy IC 4970, visible just above center. Of particular interest is NGC 6872's spiral arm on the upper left, as pictured here, which exhibits an unusually high amount of blue star forming regions. The light we see today left these colliding giants before the days of the dinosaurs, about 300 million years ago. NGC 6872 is visible with a small telescope toward the constellation of the Peacock (Pavo).”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap160426.html