The Poet: Neil Gaiman, "What You Need To Be Warm "

"What You Need To Be Warm" 

by Neil Gaiman

 "A baked potato of a winters night to wrap

your hands around or burn your mouth.

A blanket knitted by your mother's cunning fingers. 

Or your grandmother's.

A smile, a touch, trust, as you walk in from the snow

or return to it, the tips of your ears pricked pink and frozen.

The tink tink tink of iron radiators waking in an old house.

To surface from dreams in a bed, 

burrowed beneath blankets and comforters,

the change of state from cold to warm is all that matters, 

and you think just one more minute snuggled here 

before you face the chill. Just one.

Places we slept as children: 

they warm us in the memory.

We travel to an inside from the outside. 

To the orange flames of the fireplace

or the wood burning in the stove. 

Breath-ice on the inside of windows,

to be scratched off with a fingernail, melted with a whole hand.

Frost on the ground that stays in the shadows, waiting for us.

Wear a scarf. Wear a coat. Wear a sweater. 

Wear socks. Wear thick gloves.

An infant as she sleeps between us. 

A tumble of dogs, a kindle of cats and kittens. 

Come inside. You're safe now.

A kettle boiling at the stove. 

Your family or friends are there. They smile.

Cocoa or chocolate, tea or coffee, 

soup or toddy, what you know you need.

A heat exchange, they give it to you, you take the mug

and start to thaw.

While outside, for some of us, the journey began

as we walked away from our grandparentshouses

away from the places we knew as children: 

changes of state and state and state,

to stumble across a stony desert, or to brave the deep waters,

while food and friends, home, a bed, even a blanket become just memories.

Sometimes it only takes a stranger, in a dark place,

to hold out a badly-knitted scarf, to offer a kind word, 

to say we have the right to be here, 

to make us warm in the coldest season.

You have the right to be here. "

- Neil Gaiman

"How It Really Is"

 

"Too Often..."

"The majority of us lead quiet, unheralded lives as we pass through this world. There will most likely be no ticker-tape parades for us, no monuments created in our honor. But that does not lessen our possible impact, for there are scores of people waiting for someone just like us to come along; people who will appreciate our compassion, our unique talents. Someone who will live a happier life merely because we took the time to share what we had to give. Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have a potential to turn a life around. It's overwhelming to consider the continuous opportunities there are to make our love felt."

- Leo Buscaglia

"A Must View: Straight Calls with Douglas Macgregor, 2/5/23"

Straight Calls with Douglas Macgregor, 2/5/23:

"Russia's Deliberate And Methodical Conquest Of Ukraine"

"Your home for analysis of breaking news and in-depth discussion of current geopolitical events in the United states and the world. Geopolitics. No ego descriptions. No small talk. Straight to the point. Calls with the relevant analysis only."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Lt. Col. Daniel Davis Warnings Of Nuclear War: U.S. Has 'No Plan' In Ukraine, This Is Not A 'Video Game'" (Excerpt)

"Lt. Col. Daniel Davis Warnings Of Nuclear War: U.S.

Has 'No Plan' In Ukraine, This Is Not A 'Video Game'"

By Joshua Klein

Excerpt: "Providing new tanks to Ukraine won’t change the reality on the ground of the current conflict with Russia, according to retired Army Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis, who claimed the United States has “no plan” or strategy and warned of the real-world danger of invoking NATO’s “mutual defense” clause, which would trigger a nuclear war.

In an exclusive interview with Breitbart News on Thursday, Davis discussed the situation on the ground in Ukraine. Davis, a Defense Priorities senior fellow and military expert, spent over two decades in active service, which included combat deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, and was awarded two Bronze Star medals.

“It just doesn’t work that way in reality.” Calling the recent decision by the U.S., Germany, and other European nations to send tanks to Ukraine a “huge information operation ‘game changer,’” Davis cautioned that “information operations and claims don’t translate into reality on the battlefield.” “From someone who has done combat operations in tank-on-tank fights; in operations patrolling the East-West border during the Cold War and its potential Soviet invasions; and was the second-in-command of an armored cavalry squadron for the First Armored Division in the mid 2000s in Germany; I can tell you that just having NATO tanks does not equal battlefield success,” he explained."

Davis cast doubt on the perception many have on how effective the new tanks will prove on the battlefield. “The problem is that what works on video games and on paper — you have to make it work on the ground,” he said. “And very few people anywhere in the western media or anywhere in the other media, for that matter, understand how combat power is made. And it’s not just the platform, though that is very important, but roughly 90 percent of the success is the people who operate the equipment,” he added.

In order to achieve that, he explained, a “trained individual at each of the positions within a tank” is needed, in addition to “a trained crew that knows how to fight well together.” “And then you have to have a trained platoon, platoons in a company; and a company in the battalion; and if you’re talking about the inner-level operations, battalions within brigades etc,” he said. “So all of those are necessary and they all take time,” he added.

Recalling his unit’s “intense training” in Europe and Saudi Arabia prior to battle in order to “replicate” how war would play out, Davis noted that it had all taken place with military officials in key positions with many years of experience - something he asserted could not be “manufactured.”

“You can’t send 500 [Ukrainian] dudes to Germany and conduct six weeks of maneuver training and think you’re going to get the same output, because those guys don’t have the experience,” he said. “They don’t even have the baseline understanding that we had a whole career and our whole training before we even arrived at that one year preparation.”

Davis suggests imagining the chances that someone who has “never even seen this equipment” will “have to just fall in on it while they’re in [combat] potentially a few months from now - which is what they’re saying they’re trying to do - and it’s somehow those things are going to be effective in combat.”

“I mean just on the surface of it, that’s ridiculous,” he said. “I mean it’s people who just don’t have any idea of how actual combat power is generated that would believe that. Because maybe it works for movies and in video games - just getting this capacity on your video game and poof, you’ve got the full capacity as though you were fully trained, but it just doesn’t work that way in reality,” he added. “What makes somebody think that just the presence of a different kind of tank is suddenly going to change all that?”

Full, highly recommended article is here:

- https://www.breitbart.com/

"There Are Times..."

"There are times the lies get to me, times I weary of battering myself against the obstacles of denial, hatred, fear-induced stupidity, and greed, times I want to curl up and fall into the problem, let it sweep me away as it so obviously sweeps away so many others. I remember a spring day a few years ago, a spring day much like this one, only a little more sun, and warmer. I sat on this same couch and looked out this same window at the same ponderosa pine.

I was frightened, and lonely. Frightened of a future that looks dark, and darker with each passing species, and lonely because for every person actively trying to shut down the timber industry, stop abuse, or otherwise bring about a sustainable and sane way of living, there are thousands who are helping along this not-so-slow train to oblivion. I began to cry.

The tears stopped soon enough. I realized we are not so outnumbered. We are not outnumbered at all. I looked closely, and saw one blade of wild grass, and another. I saw the sun reflecting bright off the needles of pine trees, and I heard the hum of flies. I saw ants walking single file through the dust, and a spider crawling toward the corner of the ceiling. I knew in that moment, as I've known ever since, that it is no longer possible to be lonely, that every creature on earth is pulling in the direction of life- every grasshopper, every struggling salmon, every unhatched chick, every cell of every blue whale - and it is only our own fear that sets us apart. All humans, too, are struggling to be sane, struggling to live in harmony with our surroundings, but it's really hard to let go. And so we lie, destroy, rape, murder, experiment, and extirpate, all to control this wildly uncontrollable symphony, and failing that, to destroy it."

- Derrick Jensen, 

"A Language Older Than Words"

"Strange Prices At Walmart! This Is Absolutely Ridiculous!"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures With Danno, 2/5/23:

"Strange Prices At Walmart! This Is Absolutely Ridiculous!"

"In today's vlog we are at Walmart, and are noticing some strange price increases on groceries! We are here to check out skyrocketing prices, and a lot of empty shelves! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

If they'll do this for a TV, 

what happens when there's no food?

"My Cheap Toyota Camry Runs Great; Balloons Flying Over Your House; Scary Times Ahead"

Full screen recommended.

Jeremiah Babe, 2/4/23:

"My Cheap Toyota Camry Runs Great; 

Balloons Flying Over Your House; Scary Times Ahead"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Balloongate Ends, WW3 Escalates"

Full screen recommended.

Canadian Prepper, 2/4/23:

"Balloongate Ends, WW3 Escalates"

"Balloongate continues as the world braces for global conflict. 

It's about to get crazy."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: Ludovico Einaudi, "Oltremare"

Ludovico Einaudi, "Oltremare"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Close to the Great Bear (Ursa Major) and surrounded by the stars of the Hunting Dogs (Canes Venatici), this celestial wonder was discovered in 1781 by the metric French astronomer Pierre Mechain. Later, it was added to the catalog of his friend and colleague Charles Messier as M106. Modern deep telescopic views reveal it to be an island universe - a spiral galaxy around 30 thousand light-years across located only about 21 million light-years beyond the stars of the Milky Way. 

Along with a bright central core, this stunning galaxy portrait, a composite of image data from amateur and professional telescopes, highlights youthful blue star clusters and reddish stellar nurseries tracing the galaxy's spiral arms. It also shows off remarkable reddish jets of glowing hydrogen gas. In addition to small companion galaxy NGC 4248 at bottom right, background galaxies can be found scattered throughout the frame. M106, also known as NGC 4258, is a nearby example of the Seyfert class of active galaxies, seen across the spectrum from radio to X-rays. Active galaxies are powered by matter falling into a massive central black hole.”

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

"The Ironic, The Tragic Thing..."

“One can fight evil but against stupidity one is helpless… I have accepted the fact, hard as it may be, that human beings are inclined to behave in ways that would make animals blush. The ironic, the tragic thing is that we often behave in ignoble fashion from what we consider the highest motives. The animal makes no excuse for killing his prey; the human animal, on the other hand, can invoke God’s blessing when massacring his fellow men. He forgets that God is not on his side but at his side.”

“There is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy.”

- Henry Miller

Chet Raymo, "Lessons"

"Lessons"

by Chet Raymo

"There is a four-line poem by Yeats, called "Gratitude to the Unknown Instructors":

"What they undertook to do

They brought to pass;

All things hang like a drop of dew

Upon a blade of grass."

Like so many of the short poems of Yeats, it is hard to know what the poet had in mind, who exactly were the unknown instructors, and if unknown how could they instruct. But as I opened my volume of "The Poems" this morning, at random, as in the old days people opened the Bible and pointed a finger at a random passage seeking advice or instruction, this is the poem that presented itself. Unsuperstitious person that I am, it seemed somehow apropos, since outside the window, in a thick Irish mist, every blade of grass has its hanging drop.

Those pendant drops, the bejeweled porches of the spider webs, the rose petals cupping their glistening dew - all of that seems terribly important here, now, in the silent mist. There is not much good to say about getting old, but certainly one advantage of the gathering years is the falling away of ego and ambition, the felt need to be always busy, the exhausting practice of accumulation. Who were the instructors who tried to teach me the practice of simplicity when I was young - the poets and the saints, the buddhas who were content to sit beneath the bo tree while the rest of us scurried here and there? I scurried, and I'm not sorry I did, but I must have tucked their lessons into the back of my mind, a cache of wisdom to be opened at my leisure.

Whatever it was they sought to teach has come to pass. All things hang like a drop of dew upon a blade of grass."

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

"Don't Worry About Any of This"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly 2/4/23:

"Don't Worry About Any of This"

"The job numbers came in and they were absolutely amazing. There is not a care in the world because everybody has a job. You don’t have to worry about inflation anymore or the fact that people cannot afford to heat their homes."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Koln, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany. Thanks for stopping by!

"And Never, Never To Forget..."

“To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.”

- Arundhati Roy, "The Cost of Living"

"Knowing..."

“Knowing can be a curse on a person’s life. I’d traded in a pack of lies for a pack of truth, and I didn’t know which one was heavier. Which one took the most strength to carry around? It was a ridiculous question, though, because once you know the truth, you can’t ever go back and pick up your suitcase of lies. Heavier or not, the truth is yours now.”

- Sue Monk Kidd

"How It Really Is"

"Thailand Declares Death Con 3 On Pfizer"

"Thailand Declares Death Con 3 On Pfizer"

By Chris Black

"A few days after receiving her booster injection, the Thai princess “suddenly” collapsed. Three weeks later she remains in a coma. The Thai Royal Family was just informed that the initial “bacterial infection” diagnosis was in fact always untrue; thus, from the very start there was a coordinated cover-up by the BigPharma captured authorities.

The Thai king is finally making the obvious connection that Pfizer’s mRNA “vaccine” is a slow kill bioweapon.

He will be declaring the Pfizer contract null and void due to fraud, which will result in the stripping away of all immunity. Lawsuits and compensation payments just in Thailand will be greater than the billions in COVID profits that Pfizer stole on the backs of taxpayers (theft)."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

You were warned right here since May 28, 2021, and again and again...

"Unthinkable Thoughts"

o

"Everyone Vaccinated For Covid Will DIE, Warns French Virologist"

"There is no chance of long-term survival for anyone who received a Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) injection, according to leading French virologist Luc Montagnier. Everyone who is getting jabbed for the Chinese Virus will die, he reportedly stated during a recent interview, which you can watch at Brighteon.com. “There is no hope and no possible treatment for those who have already been vaccinated,” Montagnier stated plainly during the segment. “We must be prepared to cremate the bodies.” After studying at length the ingredients contained in the injections and what they do, Montagnier came to the conclusion that every single person who gets the shot will eventually die from antibody-dependent enhancement, or ADE. “That is all that can be said,” he added."

Full article here:

- https://coyoteprimeblog2.blogspot.com/

May God have mercy on you if you've taken the shot...

"How to Love the Bomb"

"How to Love the Bomb"

Powell's rate hike, climbing Mt. Midas and

 the "greatest speculative bubble in history"...

by Joel Bowman

Buenos Aires, Argentina - “They blew up the greatest speculative bubble of all time...” So began Investment Director Tom Dyson’s research note to Bonner Private Research members earlier this week... We’ll return to Tom’s observations in a moment... but first, let’s check in with the markets. It was another rough and tumble week, dear reader, with plenty of thrills and spills for the brave and the brainless.

Speaking of which, woe to he who follows the headline news! Here’s a smattering from the sages in the MSM over the past few days...

“Dow closes more than 350 points higher...” ~ CNBC (Wednesday)

“Dow falls 275 points on jobless claims...” ~ Investors Business Daily (Thursday)

And, our personal favorite, courtesy of YahooFinance (on Friday): “Why you should stop caring about the Dow Jones Industrial Average...”

“…and learn to love the bomb,” we might have added.

The major indices ended the week mixed, with the Dow slightly lower, by 0.15% and the S&P 500 and Nasdaq higher by 1.6% and 3.3% respectively. The Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq are up 2.4, 8.7 and 15.6% year-to-date.

Climbing Mt. Midas: Meanwhile, gold too has been up and down like a cheerleader’s... acrobatics. The Midas Metal popped $30/oz on Tuesday... and another $30/oz on Wednesday, both moves on strong volume. So far, so good... Then, just when the psychological $2,000/oz threshold was within reach... Big Au fell $40/oz on Thursday... and $50/oz on Friday, to end the week down $70. (These are rough numbers, as you see.) The spot price was last seen hovering around $1,865/oz, still up over 6% for 2023.

It was a tough week in the energy markets, too, as investors fretted about demand from China and substantial US inventory builds (coming off a pretty dry base, it must be said). A barrel of black gold (WTI) goes for around $73 and change.

And finally, over in the crypto world, top dog Bitcoin smashed through the $24,000 mark on Thursday, before “settling” around $23,300 on Friday. (“Settling,” that is, to the extent that a currency which has appreciated over 40% year-to-date can be said to have “settled.”)

But all eyes this week were on Jerome Powell and the Fed’s decision to raise rates for the 8th time since March, this time by a quarter of a percent. Mr. Powell assured pundits that it was too early to “declare victory” over transitory inflation just yet...“We will need substantially more evidence to be confident that inflation is on a long, sustained downward path,” said he.

Toggling between Mr. Powell’s remarks and the price action in the market, we imagined the following conversation...

Investors: “So... a rate cut coming soon then, eh?”

Mr. Powell: “Given our outlook, I don’t see us cutting rates this year...”

Investors: “OK... then howzabout a pause?”

Mr. Powell: “Did you hear what I just said?”

Investors (to each other): “Whatevs. The man has no idea what he’s talking about. Buy!!!”

And that, dear reader, is how you get speculative bubbles and the madness of crowds… and how you learn to stop fearing and love the bomb. Which brings us back to Tom’s research note to BPR members from Wednesday. Here’s a key passage... “They blew up the greatest speculative bubble of all time and now that bubble wants to deflate. There’s so much malinvestment. Think of all the terrible decisions businesses made when $18 trillion of bonds were trading at negative yields and the Fed was saying, in 2021, “we aren’t even thinking about thinking about” raising interest rates."

It all needs to be liquidated. Giant losses need to be realized. Huge mistakes need to be corrected. So we’re now in a bear market. That’s just the nature of artificial, credit-driven booms. They end. Bull markets turn to bear markets.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government is the most indebted it has ever been. Its spending is out of control. It’s made endless promises it’ll never be able to keep. A bear market will put unbearable stress on government finances as tax receipts crash and expenditures balloon. They should have kept something in reserve for a rainy day, but they didn’t. They just borrowed and spent without any thought of ever having to pay it back.

Click for larger size.

You can see the problem. A bear market will destroy the government’s finances. And the first place this problem manifests itself is illiquidity in the government bond market, which is what we started seeing last year. (The government’s gargantuan appetite for dollars can’t be met by investors at prevailing interest rates.)

The solution, from the government’s perspective, is currency debasement. Effectively, what debasement does is push losses onto the currency market and off nominal prices in the bond and stock markets. It socializes losses. It turns the dollar into a release valve. It puts a bid under nominal stock, bond and real estate prices.

And that’s what we’ve been calling inflation volatility or “inflate or die”. It’s the vacillation between deflation and currency debasement by the Feds, as they try to keep the government solvent during the collapse of the greatest ever debt bubble."

- https://bonnerprivateresearch.substack.com/

"Ridiculous Price Increases At Kroger! This Is Frustrating! What's Next?"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures With Danno, 2/4/23:

"Ridiculous Price Increases At Kroger! 

This Is Frustrating! What's Next?"

"In today's vlog we are at Kroger, and are noticing massive price increases on groceries! We are here to check out skyrocketing prices, and the empty shelves situation! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"We're Entering A Full Blown Crisis; Credit Card Limits Coming"

Jeremiah Babe, 2/3/23:

"We're Entering A Full Blown Crisis;

 Credit Card Limits Coming"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Oh Sh*t, Here We Go"

Full screen recommended.

Redacted news, 2/3/23:

"Oh Sh*t, Here We Go"

"Overnight the head of NATO said that that Russia is mobilizing an additional 200,000 troops readying a massive offensive. Poland is ready to send F-16 jets to Ukraine in coordination with NATO. And Ukraine’s head of intelligence says Crimea will be retaken by Ukraine. Colonel Douglas MacGregor joins Clayton Morris to talk about the latest developments."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"15 Stats That Prove Working-Class Families Are Getting Hit From All Sides"

Full screen recommended.

"15 Stats That Prove Working-Class

 Families Are Getting Hit From All Sides"

by Epic Economist

"Millions of working-class families are living on the edge, and they are struggling to keep their dreams alive in the face of overwhelming odds. These people are getting hit from all sides in today's economy. Working-class Americans have been facing some of the hardest economic challenges for decades. Despite being the group that contributed the most to the rise in overall productivity levels, their wages have fallen behind all other income groups, rising at the slowest pace compared to middle-class, and upper-class Americans. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average hourly wage of working-class Americans adjusted for inflation has only risen by 0.6% per year from 1980 to 2022.

This means, that over the past 42 years, this group has seen a mere 25.2% rise in their incomes, compared to an average increase of 160.3% for upper-income individuals. But the lack of wage growth is not just a problem for workers and their families, it also has broader implications for the economy as a whole. When working-class Americans have less money to spend, they are less able to contribute to the economy through consumption. This can lead to lower economic growth and a decrease in demand for goods and services, which in turn can result in job losses and further economic hardship.

Home and rent prices are soaring above what most blue-collar workers can pay. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, in 2022, the average fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment was $1,192, while the hourly wage needed to afford this rent without paying more than 30% of income was $24. However, the average pay of a minimum wage worker is only $7.25. No wonder why more than half of labor-class renters in the US are cost-burdened, with approximately 11.2 million working-class households in the US paying more than 50% of their income on housing. Last year, only 28 affordable and available rental homes existed for every 100 extremely low-income renters, making it increasingly difficult for them to afford adequate and stable housing.

Working-class individuals are typically low-income workers, and the amount they make every month is often insufficient to cover everyday necessities, including food and utilities. And despite government assistance programs, many families still struggle to put food on the table and keep their lights on due to the record rise in consumer prices. Labor Department data shows that the average household food insecurity rate for working-class families is 32%. In 2022, the average monthly cost of utilities for a low-income US household took over 10% of their pay every month. That’s why approximately 22% of such families were unable to pay their energy bills on time, while about one in five had to choose between paying for food or utilities.

Financial insecurity, job loss, debt, and limited upward mobility are just some of the obstacles they must navigate in order to make ends meet. The grim reality facing these families is reflected in the statistics we compiled in today's video, which tell a tale of struggle, hardship, and despair. These numbers don't just demonstrate the difficulties faced by working-class families, they also shine a light on the systemic issues that impact our entire society."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"It’s Too Late For NATO To Win The War Against Russia… Here’s Why" (Excerpt)

"It’s Too Late For NATO To Win 

The War Against Russia… Here’s Why"

by Mike Adams

Excerpt: "While the prostituted propaganda media absurdly claims that Russia is retreating and NATO forces are winning the war in Ukraine, the truth is far more sobering: NATO has already lost the war with Russia. Here’s how we know: A land war with a major military power is a long, drawn out slug fest that requires the sustained expenditure of enormous quantities of munitions: Artillery shells, rockets, missiles, small arms cartridges and so on.

To supply these munitions, a fighting force needs to be backed by a strong munitions manufacturing infrastructure or have huge stockpiles that can sustain the war while supplies are depleted. The United States has neither. No sufficiently large stockpiles and no existing munitions manufacturing infrastructure that can keep pace with Russia, which at times has expended up to 20,000 artillery rounds per day. (Note: The existing munitions infrastructure in the United States can’t even churn out that many rounds in a full month of production…)

Consider this recent article from Breitbart.com: "Endless Arms Flow to Ukraine Raises Worry over U.S. Military Readiness Against China", which warns that U.S. precision-guided munitions would run out in just one week: "A recently-published think-tank analysis warned that as it currently stands, the U.S. would run out of long-range, precision-guided munitions in a war with China over Taiwan in less than a week — a problem that author Seth Jones called one of “empty bins.” “The United States has been slow to replenish its arsenal, and the DoD has only placed on contract a fraction of the weapons it has sent to Ukraine,” Jones, a senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) wrote."

Full article is here:

- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

Full video is here:

- https://rumble.com/

"Breaking News: Here's Why They Don't Shoot Down The China Balloon"

Canadian Prepper, 2/3/23:

"Breaking News: Here's Why They 

Don't Shoot Down The China Balloon"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Judge Napolitano ,"Scott Ritter, Is The U.S. Forcing Putin's Hand In The Ukraine War?"

Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 2/3/23:

"Scott Ritter, Is The U.S. Forcing 

Putin's Hand In The Ukraine War?"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: Liquid Mind, "Laguna Indigo"

Full screen recommended.

Liquid Mind, "Laguna Indigo"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“This shock wave plows through space at over 500,000 kilometers per hour. Moving toward to bottom of this beautifully detailed color composite, the thin, braided filaments are actually long ripples in a sheet of glowing gas seen almost edge on. Cataloged as NGC 2736, its narrow appearance suggests its popular name, the Pencil Nebula.

About 5 light-years long and a mere 800 light-years away, the Pencil Nebula is only a small part of the Vela supernova remnant. The Vela remnant itself is around 100 light-years in diameter and is the expanding debris cloud of a star that was seen to explode about 11,000 years ago. Initially, the shock wave was moving at millions of kilometers per hour but has slowed considerably, sweeping up surrounding interstellar gas.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120924.html

Chet Raymo, “We Are Such Stuff...”

“We Are Such Stuff...”

by Chet Raymo

“Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,

Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.

Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments

Will hum about mine ears, and sometimes voices,

That, if I then had wak'd after long sleep,

Will make me sleep again.”

"Caliban is talking to Stephano and Trinculo in Shakespeare's “Tempest”, telling them not to be "afeard" of the mysterious place they find themselves, an island seemingly beset with magic, strangeness, ineffable presences. And you and I, and, yes, all of us, find ourselves inexplicably thrown up on this island that is the world, and we too, if we are attentive, hear the strange music, the sounds and sweet airs, that seems to come from nowhere and everywhere

No, I'm not talking about the usual ubiquitous clamor, the roar of internal combustion, the blare of the television, the beeping of mobile phones. I'm not talking about the Limbaughs and the Becks, the televangelists, the blathering politicians, the twitterers and bloggers (including this one). I'm not even talking about the exquisite music of Mozart, the poetry of Wordsworth, the theories of Einstein.

I'm talking about the sounds we hear in utter silence, in moments of repose, in the heart of darkness, when we are a little bit afraid, disoriented, off kilter. A strange music that comes from beyond our knowing, a felt meaning. You've heard it. I've heard it. You'd have to be deaf not to have heard it.

Where we differ is how we describe it. Mostly, we give its source a name. Angels. Fairies. Gods or demons. Yahweh. Allah. Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Nixies, E.T.s, shades and shadows. Naiads, dryads, Ariel and Puck. A host of invisible creatures who are, in one way or another, images of ourselves. And, in naming, we are a little less afraid.

And some of us are just content to listen, to take delight. Having woken to the inexplicable mystery of the world- the sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not- we let the music lull us back into a sweet slumber, a kind of dreamless dream, a reverie. Does reverie share a deep root with reverence? I don't know.”

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

"How the Brain Stops Time"

"How the Brain Stops Time"

by Jeff Wise

"One of the strangest side-effects of intense fear is time dilation, the apparent slowing-down of time. It's a common trope in movies and TV shows, like the memorable scene from "The Matrix" in which time slows down so dramatically that bullets fired at the hero seem to move at a walking pace. In real life, our perceptions aren't keyed up quite that dramatically, but survivors of life-and-death situations often report that things seem to take longer to happen, objects fall more slowly, and they're capable of complex thoughts in what would normally be the blink of an eye.

Now a research team from Israel reports that not only does time slow down, but that it slows down more for some than for others. Anxious people, they found, experience greater time dilation in response to the same threat stimuli. An intriguing result, and one that raises a more fundamental question: how, exactly, does the brain carry out this remarkable feat?

Researcher David Eagleman has tackled his very issue in a very clever way. He reasoned that when time seems to slow down in real life, our senses and cognition must somehow speed up-either that, or time dilation is merely an illusion. This is the riddle he set out to solve. "Does the experience of slow motion really happen," Eagleman says, "or does it only seem to have happened in retrospect?" To find out, he first needed a way to generate fear of sufficient intensity in his experimental subjects. Instead of skydiving, he found a thrill ride near the university campus called Suspended Catch Air Device, an open-air tower from which participants are dropped, upside down, into a net 150 feet below. There are no harnesses, no safety lines. Subject plummet in free fall for three seconds, then hit the net at 70 miles per hour.

Was it scary enough to generate a sense of time dilation? To see, Eagleman asked subjects who'd already taken the plunge to estimate how long it took them to fall, using a stopwatch to tick off what they felt to be an equivalent amount of time. Then he asked them to watch someone else fall and then estimate the elapsed time for their plunge in the same way. On average, participants felt that their own experience had taken 36 percent longer. Time dilation was in effect.

Next, Eagleman outfitted his test subjects with a special device that he and his students had constructed. They called it the perceptual chronometer. It's a simple numeric display that straps to a user's wrist, with a knob on the side let the researchers adjust the rate at which the numbers flash. The idea was to dial up the speed of the flashing until it was just a bit too quick for the subject to read while looking at it in a non-stressed mental state. Eagleman reasoned that, if fear really does speed up our rate of perception, then once his subjects were in the terror of freefall, they should be able to make out the numbers on the display. As it turned out, they couldn't. That means that fear does not actually speed up our rate of perception or mental processing. Instead, it allows us to remember what we do experience in greater detail. Since our perception of time is based on the number of things we remember, fearful experiences thus seem to unfold more slowly.

Eagleman's findings are important not just for understanding the experience of fear, but for the very nature of consciousness. After all, the test subjects who fell from the SCAD tower certainly believed, as they accelerated through freefall, that they knew what the experience was like at that very moment. They thought that it seemed to be moving slowly. Yet Eaglemen's findings suggest that that sensation could only have been superimposed after the fact. The implication is that we don't really have a direct experience of what we're feeling ‘right now,' but only a memory - an unreliable memory - of what we thought it felt like some seconds or milliseconds ago. The vivid present tense we all think we inhabit might itself be a retroactive illusion."

- http://www.psychologytoday.com/

The Poet: Rainer Maria Rilke, "A Walk"

"A Walk"

"My eyes already touch the sunny hill.

going far ahead of the road I have begun.

So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;

it has inner light, even from a distance -

and changes us, even if we do not reach it,

into something else, which, hardly sensing it,

we already are; a gesture waves us on

answering our own wave...

but what we feel is the wind in our faces."

- Rainer Maria Rilke

The Universe

“Believe me, I know all about it. I know the stress. I know the frustration. I know the temptations of time and space. We worked this out ahead of time. They're part of the plan. We knew this stuff might happen. Actually, you insisted they be triggered whenever you were ready to begin thinking thoughts you've never thought before. New thinking is always the answer.”

“Good on you,”

The Universe

“Thoughts become things... choose the good ones!”

- www.tut.com

The Daily "Near You?"

Saco, Maine, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

Douglas Macgregor, "Russia Is Ready For A Much Larger Conflict Than Ukraine"

"Russia Is Ready For A Much Larger Conflict Than Ukraine"

Straight Calls with Douglas Macgregor, 2/3/23

"Your home for analysis of breaking news and in-depth discussion of current geopolitical events in the United states and the world. Geopolitics. No ego descriptions. No small talk. Straight to the point. Calls with the relevant analysis only."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Related:

"We Are About To See The Biggest 

Escalation Of The War In Ukraine So Far"

"Cash Is Not Trash"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly 2/3/23

"Cash Is Not Trash"

"Ray Dalio steps forward to say that cash is NOT trash. What an about face from just last May. People are borrowing more money than ever."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Greg Hunter, "Weekly News Wrap-Up 2/3/23"

"Weekly News Wrap-Up 2/3/23"

by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"The constant media psyop is falling apart on all fronts. We were told Trump was colluding with the Russians. That was a huge lie. We were told Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation. That’s another huge lie. We were told the CV19 vax was safe and effective, which is a double deadly monster lie. These are just a few of the lies the Lying Legacy Media (LLM) continues to push. As the old saying goes, “Don’t give up the con.” We have been conned, and we are all paying for it. The LLM will never recover.

A new study shows masks do not work to stop covid. NYU Professor of Media Studies Mark Crispin Miller called the mask fiasco a gigantic form of propaganda. He also says the entire Covid19 event from infection to injection was a masterpiece in propaganda. Another new study says the CV19 vax offered “zero benefit” and “made the problem worse in every metric, hospitalizations, infections and death.” The CV19 injections are now routinely being called a “bioweapon.” There have been 600 million CV19 injections in the USA alone. There have been nearly 13 billion CV19 injections globally. There is no stopping the vaccine genocide, but you may help yourself with Ivermectin. The LLM is covering up deaths, injuries and still trashing Ivermectin. Nuremberg 2.0 will not be kind to them.

They keep saying the Fed is just about to stop raising rates, and rate cuts are right around the corner. The Fed just raised a key interest rate this week and is promising there are more to come. Granted, the Fed has signaled the increase will be smaller, but the FED IS STILL RAISING RATES. Maybe it’s the Saudi government announcing the end of the petrodollar by now accepting other currencies besides the U.S. Dollar in trade for oil. You think that has the Fed uptight? Can you cut interest rates when the world is shedding your currency and your Treasury bonds?" There is more in the 52 minute newscast.

- https://usawatchdog.com/

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble for these stories and 

more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up for 2/3/23:

- https://rumble.com/

"How It Really Is"