"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI)is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: credit, equity valuation, funding,safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United States, other advanced economies, and emerging markets."
President Ronald Reagan and Japanese Emperor Hirohito
share a toast at the Imperial Palace
"Beyond the Herald's Cry"
In a country the size of the US, ‘the people’ are far too
remote from Washington to have any real influence on it.
That’s why state governments tend to do less harm than the federales.
by Bill Bonner
"The war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage."
- Emperor Hirohito, after Hiroshima
"The situation last week did not develop to Joe Biden’s advantage. But what did anyone expect? Put an old man at a podium; he’s likely to dodder a bit. And so what? Biden was never more than a figurehead anyway. His only real role was as a ‘dog in the manger,’ making sure no one else, who might disrupt the scammy system, got to sit in the Oval Office.
But last week’s debate was another one for the record books. America is already in the grip of the biggest, most costly experiment in monetary history... destined to prove, once again, that the authorities can’t be trusted with the power to ‘print’ money. Using this fake money, they pushed interest rates down to the lowest levels in five thousand years, well below zero... and crippled the economy with $100 trillion in debt.
Included in that figure is $35 trillion of US government debt; this was Miracle Gro for the feds, allowing them to get way too big for their britches... and setting the US up for perpetual war and bankruptcy. And now, Joe Biden, has had his Big Reveal. They opened the door and no one was home.
Inside Job: On the weekend, Americans were still reeling from the discovery that their President... the man with the nuclear codes... is senile. And as we guessed last month, the insiders are scurrying around to find a replacement.
Let us pause to draw breath. White House honchos must have known that their man was not up to the job. They must have known that he would stand at the podium as an elderly mouth breather and make a fool of himself. They must have known that he couldn’t put together a coherent thought... that he would be confused and hopeless, standing in front of fifty million spectators... and make a laughing stock of himself and of the USA.
Why did they do that? Why subject him to humiliation and scorn? Could they not have known... not have anticipated what would happen? Or did they set him up? Was the idea that he would make it so obvious that he was not going to be the actual president for another six months - let alone for 4 more years - that even he, through the accumulated fog of four-score years, could see that it was time to take himself off the stage?
There’s no shame in getting old. That’s the way it works. And it wouldn’t be the first time a mental defective was in the White House. In October, 1919, Woodrow Wilson was on the toilet when he had a stroke. He fell over and hit his head. Thereafter, he was absent... unable to think or speak clearly. For the next year and a half, his wife and personal physician covered for him. They claimed he was fine... recovering from the flu, or from ‘nervous exhaustion.’ The nation was probably better off without him, anyway. Life went on as before.
Astrologer in Chief: Later, Ronald Reagan was getting a little doddery in his second term. His wife, Nancy, turned to her astrologer, Joan Quigley, to help the president on key policy issues. Chief of Staff, Donald Regan, claimed that “every major move and decision the Reagans made during my time as White House Chief of Staff was cleared in advance” by Quigley.
Wilson had disgraced the nation with his meddling in Latin America. Then, after running for re-election as the man who ‘kept us out of war,’ he sent US troops to Europe, where more than one hundred thousand of them died. But the effect of it on the average citizen was probably modest. And Reagan’s team - famously minus our friend David Stockman - went on to ignore Reagan’s ‘small government’ promise altogether, and more than doubled US debt.
In both cases, what the voters had asked for had nothing to do with it. And today, the problem is not that Biden is a cut-out... a puppet for the ruling elite. The problem is that the whole system is counterfeit. Democracy only works on a small scale. “Beyond the herald’s cry,” as Aristotle put it, the elites take over. In a country the size of the US, ‘the people’ are far too remote from Washington to have any real influence on it. That’s why state governments - with the exception of the biggest ones - tend to do less harm than the federales.
Before 1971, the ‘power of the purse’ gave citizens some residual control over their government. Taxes are something that ‘the people’ understand. And a politician who raised taxes risked his career. But after the feds switched to fake, credit-based money, the insiders could print money and borrow it themselves - spending without having to raise taxes. Then, the situation did not necessarily develop to our advantage."
“Joe Biden is the walking embodiment of the exhausted American Establishment.
More and more people have simply lost their faith in our Ruling Class.
You could scarcely have a more potent symbol of its impotence.”
- Rod Dreher
"Just before the weekend, a political prairie fire raced across a nation buffaloed, blind-sided, and buried deeply in bullshit, and the little critters who inhabit the landscape are still running around with their fur smoldering. What a surprise that “Joe Biden,” the mentally-disabled pretend-president, fell apart in the debate spotlight for all to see, like Captain Queeg in his fateful witness chair, or William Jennings Bryan at the Scopes trial (1925), or the 'Wizard of Oz' when little Toto drew the curtain back - a brutal revelation of stark truth about how things actually are.
Since his hiding-in-the-basement campaign in 2020 “Joe Biden’s” Party of Chaos has pretended that he is fit and alert for the job and now all of sudden they pretend to be shocked to see how far gone in the head he really is. The bullshit shovelers of the mainstream news media were especially rocked, not by the truth of the situation per se, but at being unmasked as the contemptible, confabulating tools that they’ve become. The New York Times wheeled around on a dime from their servile lionizing of the presidential hologram they helped create to its editorial board abjectly yelling for him to drop out and get gone. They were joined instantly by a long list of other opinion-shapers, campaign donors, political celebs, and Beltway players.
Right after the debate, First lady Dr. Jill led a cheerleading session before a roomful of partisans that went beyond cringeworthy into uncharted territory of mortification. (“You were great, Joe! You answered all the questions!”). By the time the entourage moved to a pre-planned event at a nearby Atlanta Waffle House, “JB” had gone full-on zombie. If all that was intended to be reassuring, the effect was the opposite. Someone handed the blank-faced old grifter a milkshake and they beat it out of there.
The Bidens flew off to the Hamptons Saturday to milk the showbiz cows and hedge-funders for a campaign that might not still exist. “Everyone paid in advance, so it could be an opportunity to encourage him to drop out,” an invited guest told a New York Post reporter. “I wanted to go and see the train wreck” another donor said. “I’d rather choose someone from a phone book than have Biden.” That was generally the tone among the woke-gay-communist echelons all over the land - surprisingly vehement, considering that just forty-eight hours before they were all in on re-election. Some could probably see their lucrative hustles whirling around the drain, and others might fret about just how far and wide prosecutions under a Trump Attorney General might loom.
“JB” and his family circle attempted to regroup over the weekend at Camp David where first son, Hunter (“the smartest man I know,” the president often says), led the buoying-up session, perhaps mindful of the many bank accounts set up by his lawyers in the name of Biden family members (including little grandchildren) for receipt of influence-peddling revenue gathered sedulously from entities abroad during “Joe Biden’s” post-veep high-earning years. The family emerged from that meet-up triumphantly, ready to forget the one bad evening and jump back into the election game.
Next, the biggest Dem dawgs - Obama, Schumer, Pelosi - stepped up with fulsome support for “Joe Biden” continuing to steer the party’s war canoe straight over Niagara Falls on November 5th. What possesses them? Misguided love for the monster they created? Fear of being called out as traitorous liars? Desperation to preserve the gigantic racketeering operation of the party they lead, with consideration for their big cuts of the action? Or are they just determined to complete the job of wrecking our country?
And where was She-Whose-Turn-It-Is, HRC, the only possible replacement candidate with name-recognition and no ruined state hanging over her as is the case with Newsom, Pritzker, and Whitmer (California, Illinois, Michigan)? Mrs. Clinton has so far stayed out of it, laying low, probably thinking that the party poohbahs will eventually have to come around to seeing she’s the obvious viable alternative. Since the Clinton Foundation bought and paid for the DNC some time ago, she might be able to get the nominating machinery lined up in her direction. There are myriad problems, for sure, with many state election laws that discourage switching-out a nominee who has already captured a winning share of party convention delegates - but Norm Eisen, Marc Elias, and the Lawfare gang are already tasked to that set of problems now that their work is done cobbling together all those janky court cases to hamstring Mr. Trump.
We enter high summer with countless consequential things afoot. A grand new momentum is expressing itself throughout Western Civ against the Globalist insanity. Sunday, Marine LePen’s National Rally (RN) thrashed President Macron’s En Marche (EM) party, a shock equal to the “Joe Biden” debate fiasco here. British elections follow Thursday July 4, with PM Rishi Sunak sucking wind and Nigel Farage’s Reform UK Party ascending rapidly. Sunday July 7 France’s runoff election happens. A widened war threatens the Middle East as Iran and Turkey line up with Hezbollah in Lebanon against Israel. Ukraine cries for a negotiated settlement with no help from our own State Department. ISIS terrorists (among many other dangerous cadres) circulate on-the-loose around the USA, ready and able to perp atrocities.
Still hanging over the “Joe Biden” crisis - and it is a crisis - is the question as to how somebody no longer capable of leading a party in an election can also be capable of leading the executive branch of the USA as Commander-in-Chief. That quandary has been shoved aside for the moment but it still lurks ominously in the background."
"Renowned geopolitical and financial cycle expert Charles Nenner has been warning of a huge war cycle and plunging financial economic cycle. This week, Nenner’s war cycle “turned straight up” and his economic cycle “turned straight down.” The next big conflict is not going to be in Ukraine or Taiwan–just yet. On Saturday, this headline: “Iran Threatens Israel With ‘Obliterating War’ If It Attacks Lebanon.” Nenner says all hell is about to break loose. Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iran and Turkey are key players in an escalating war with Israel. Nenner, who lives on the border with Lebanon in Northern Israel, interviewed with USAW just after a barrage of 100 rockets hit near his location. Nenner reports, “The children here have not gone to school for a year, and we are under rocket fire day and night. It is a very strange situation. What I don’t understand is the Arab resistance, led by Iran, did not see what happened in Gaza. If this really goes, Lebanon is going to disappear from the map.
How do I know these things? I know these things because I work with several governments in the world. In the 1960’s, there was a war, and half of Cypress ended up Turkish and half of Cypress is Greek. Turkey never accepted that. Israel is using airfields in Cypress. If this really gets going, Turkey is going to take over Cypress because they support Hamas (and Hezbollah). Turkey will invade Cypress, and this will lead to a war between Greece and Turkey. Of course, Iran is going to be involved also. Big boats are heading to Israel, so America is going to be involved. Russia has its ideas too. I don’t think Americans have any clue what is going on there, and they have no background. They are only busy with trying to win the Election, and it’s going to lead to catastrophe. If there is a war, Turkey is going to be involved, Cypress is going to be involved, NATO is going to be involved, and it is going to be much more serious than people think.”
Nenner says, “We are already in the next big war cycle.” Nenner still thinks China is going to be a big problem and says, “I would say if the world is busy with all this nonsense, then this is a time for China to take Taiwan over. The war cycle is extra up, so we have to be very careful. A lot of my wealthy clients are busy trying to get visas to Caribbean islands. I know many wealthy people busy trying to get visas and trying to get out of America. This is what is going on below the surface, and most small investors don’t know what is going on. They are worried about a nuke strike or terrorists blowing stuff up left and right because they came through the border. This is a very dangerous situation. They are not leaving right now, but they are preparing now. The war cycle has turned up, and it is going to be extra dangerous from the 3rd of July on.”
Nenner says his big clients are also leaving the cities and buying houses in rural locations. Nenner told me this is a trend that has been going on for about 5 years, but it has picked up speed in the last year and a half.
Nenner says his economic cycles have turned straight down. In NYC, Nenner points out, “I have very wealthy clients that just got out of commercial real estate with a 67% loss. I also know the banks, they are holding all these bad loans. The banks have US bonds coming to maturity that they have lost a fortune on. So, the banks, especially the regional banks, are going to be in big trouble. The regional banks are very weak. A lot is burning below the surface, which nobody tells you about.”
Nenner still likes gold, but it’s going to consolidate here. Inflation is getting ready to take off again, and Nenner says, “Layoffs are coming soon. Very hard times are coming.” There is much more in the 38-minute interview."
“The Pelican Nebula is changing. The entire nebula, officially designated IC 5070, is divided from the larger North America Nebula by a molecular cloud filled with dark dust. The Pelican, however, is particularly interesting because it is an unusually active mix of star formation and evolving gas clouds.
The featured picture was processed to bring out two main colors, red and blue, with the red dominated by light emitted by interstellar hydrogen. Ultraviolet light emitted by young energetic stars is slowly transforming cold gas in the nebula to hot gas, with the advancing boundary between the two, known as an ionization front, visible in bright red across the image center. Particularly dense tentacles of cold gas remain. Millions of years from now this nebula might no longer be known as the Pelican, as the balance and placement of stars and gas will surely leave something that appears completely different.”
"In a universe devoid of life, any life at all would be immensely meaningful. We ARE that meaning. "And what we see, "says the poet Mary Oliver, "is the world that cannot cherish us, but which we cherish." As though life itself is the great, universal, unrequited love of all time. But there is even more to this. Deep mystery. We are the universe aware of itself. We let the miracle get lost in distractions. On a planet so rich with living companions, much of humanity sentences itself to solitary confinement. Late at night, I used to lie in my boat listening to radio calls from ships to families ashore. There was only one conversation, and it boils down to, "I love you and I miss you: come home safe." Connections make us individuals. Ironic, isn't it? The more connected, the more unique our life becomes."
"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."
“Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn’t there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance, and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who’s to blame? Well, certainly, there are those who are more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable. But again, truth be told, if you’re looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn’t be? War, terror, disease. They were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you, and in your panic, you turned to the now high chancellor, Adam Sutler. He promised you order, he promised you peace, and all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent.”
"Is America Becoming Fascist? Government Spies Are
Watching You From Some Of The Least Expected Private Companies"
Companies are getting rich by contracting with the
government to keep tabs on your movements and actions 24/7.
by Leo Hohmann
"In fascist America, many of the corporations we do business with on a daily basis are in fact acting as secret agents of the government. Facebook, Istagram, Google-YouTube, TikTok, etc., are all working with the government at every level. Your education data, your health data, your financial data, almost all of it can be requisitioned by the government at a moment’s notice and it will be turned over.
But some companies are turning over your personal data where you would least expect it. Remember, the very definition of fascism is when the private sector corporations are colluding with government agencies to oppress the people. Keep that in mind as we look at a shocking story that broke over the weekend that impacts almost every American.
The Daily Mail, citing an article in Forbes magazine, has a shocking story about FedEx using AI-powered cameras installed on its trucks to serve as the watchful eyes of police departments nationwide. The private postal-delivery firm has partnered with a $4 billion surveillance startup company based in Georgia called Flock Safety, Forbes reported:
"FedEx’s Secretive Police Force Is Helping
Cops Build An AI Car Surveillance Network"
"Forbes has learned the shipping and business services company is using AI tools made by Flock Safety, a $4 billion car surveillance startup, to monitor its distribution and cargo facilities across the United States. As part of the deal, FedEx is providing its Flock surveillance feeds to law enforcement, an arrangement that Flock has with at least four multi-billion dollar private companies. But publicly available documents reveal that some local police departments are also sharing their Flock feeds with FedEx - a rare instance of a private company availing itself of a police surveillance apparatus."
Flock specializes in automated license plate recognition and video surveillance, and already has a fleet of around 40,000 cameras spanning 4,000 cities across 40 states. FedEx has teamed up with the company to monitor its facilities across the U.S., but under the deal it is also sharing its Flock surveillance feeds with law enforcement. And it is believed to be one of four multi-billion-dollar private companies with this type of arrangement. Critics liken the move to rolling out a mass surveillance network – as it emerged that some local police departments are also sharing their Flock feeds with FedEx.
Jay Stanley, a policy analyst with the ACLU, told the Virginian Pilot: “There's a simple principle that we've always had in this country, which is that the government doesn't get to watch everybody all the time just in case somebody commits a crime.” He adds that, “The United States is not China. But these cameras are being deployed with such density that it's like GPS-tracking everyone.
In response to Forbes' report that FedEx was part of Flock's nationwide surveillance system, he told the outlet: “It raises questions about why a private company…would have privileged access to data that normally is only available to law enforcement.” He went on to describe it as “profoundly disconcerting.” Flock Safety's cameras are used to track vehicles by their license plates, as well as the make, model, and color of their cars. Other identifying characteristics are also monitored, such as dents and even bumper stickers.
Lisa Femia, staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, warned that FedEx's participation is open to abuse because private firms are not subject to the same transparency laws as police. This, she told Forbes, could “leave the public in the dark, while at the same time expanding a sort of mass surveillance network.” The Shelby County Sheriff's Office in Tennessee confirmed its partnership with Flock in an email to Forbes, stating: “We share reads from our Flock license plate readers with FedEx in the same manner we share the data with other law enforcement agencies, locally, regionally, and nationally.” He also confirmed his department had access to FedEx’s Flock feeds.
So, in essence, FedEx is an arm of the government. More accurately, it’s the eyes and ears of the government. Treat it accordingly. If you’re able to install a gate across your driveway that would require them to leave packages there, do it. If not, make sure all garage doors, blinds, etc., are closed whenever you are expecting a delivery from this company."
"You don't have to be an expert to understand that economic conditions are deteriorating all over the country. We can see that things are going terribly wrong every time we go grocery shopping and prices are higher, or when we are going to fill in our tanks and fuel prices have gone up by 15% within a week. Our monthly bills are taking a larger share of our pay, but officials insist that inflation is subsiding and that Americans are consuming more than ever before. They may be under that impression because many corporations have been reporting record profits. But when it comes down to personal finances, most people are deeply struggling, and a large portion of our population is not happy about the direction our nation is heading. Over the past 30 days, we have received quite a bit of troubling news, and economists are warning that the outlook for the rest of 2024 is very bleak. In today's video, we're going to expose 15 signs that the U.S. economy is in far worse shape than anyone has thought. So get ready for another reality shock because the truth about our economic situation is more alarming than what we are being told."
“The world is not driven by greed. It’s driven by envy.” Here you have the sage conclusion of Mr. Charles Munger, aged 99 and one-half years when he died on November 2023. Mr. Munger was of course the business partner of Warren Buffett and legendary vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway. This ancient drew his conclusion from many, many decades of penetrating and microscopic observation. Penetrating and microscopic observation, that is, of man in action. And he concluded that the world is not driven by greed - but by envy. Envy. What human vice ranks fourth among the seven lethalist sins? That is correct. The answer is envy - the acid emotion of envy.
“Hate the Man Who Is Better Off Than You Are”: “The whole gospel of Karl Marx can be summed up in a single sentence,” argued economics journalist Henry Hazlitt long ago: “Hate the man who is better off than you are.” He continued: "Never under any circumstances admit that his success may be due to his own efforts, to the productive contribution he has made to the whole community. Always attribute his success to the exploitation, the cheating, the more or less open robbery of others. Never under any circumstances admit that your own failure may be owing to your own weakness, or that the failure of anyone else may be due to his own defects - his laziness, incompetence, improvidence or stupidity."
The History Pages Are Filled With Envy: “Hate the man who is better off than you are…” History is a detailed diary of this very hatred. The French Revolution. Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution. China’s Cultural Revolution. Perhaps even America’s unfolding cultural revolution of its own. We cite but some examples. They all set out to right wrongs. They mostly ended up wronging rights.
The right to life itself was often among them. How many lives has envy claimed throughout time? We cannot furnish a specific answer. Yet the answer runs to many, many, many millions - you can be certain of it.
Jealousy Isn’t Envy: Here let us distinguish jealousy from envy…The two are siblings - yet they are not twins. It is said a man is jealous of his betters. Yet look closer. The average man harbors no jealousy for the great man. The average man is not jealous of the Alexanders of this world. He is nor jealous of the Caesars of this world. He is not jealous of the Napoleons of this world. He may envy them… yet he is not jealous of them.
That is because the world’s Alexanders, Caesars and Napoleons are men stamped from a finer metal. The average man - inwardly - acknowledges this metal is not in him. The sparrow understands its place is not among the soaring eagles. Rather, the subject of the average man’s jealousy is his peer - the average man.
Jealousy: As we have argued before: The average man is not jealous of the champion golfer who once shot 60. He understands the feat is beyond him. But he is jealous - not envious that is, but jealous - of the fellow duffer in his weekend foursome who once broke 80. He is not jealous of the Hollywood movie actor who hauls in the unattainable beauty. He is jealous instead of his acquaintance who captured the pretty-enough gal he himself set his cap for - the 7.5 out of 10 gal.
Is the average man jealous of a Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk with their billions and billions? He is not. He harbors little ambition to gather such fortunes as theirs. Again, he may envy them. Yet he is not jealous of them.
Of whom is he jealous? He is jealous of the other fellow who got the promotion over him — and the raise. The Sage of Baltimore - H.L. Mencken - once defined a wealthy man as “a fellow who earns $100 more than his wife’s sister’s husband.” Be assured, the wife’s sister… and her husband… feel that $100 sharply.
Envy Is Never Contented: Envy, jealousy, jealousy, envy - they perceive only what they lack. They do not perceive what they have. That is, envy gives a man a mighty itch. This itch he forever scratches. It is never soothed.
Today’s average fellow lives grandly and royally compared with actual royalty of yesteryear. Next to them he wallows in a sort of luxury scarcely conceived 100 years ago. Could old Louis XIV cool himself with air conditioning devices against the savage summer heat? He could not. Today’s average man can. Could Louis board a jet airplane that could deliver him half a world away within hours? He could not. Today’s average man can.Could the same Louis stare at a television screen as live images from even the most distant parts tickle and delight him? Again, he could not. And again, today’s average man can.
Yet the envious man of today does not rate himself against the royalty of yesterday. He rates himself against what he believes to be the royalty of today. And against this royalty he finds himself lacking.
The Never-ending Chase: A man’s eye is forever glued to the next rung of the ladder… to the prettier plum just out of reach… to the greener grass just opposite the fence. A poor man may aspire for the middle class. But once he finds himself lodged therein, discontentment soon bubbles within him. It is not enough. He lights out for the upper classes. If by grace he attains it, he at once takes notice of the floor above him. And he begins another merry chase up the ladder. There is always another.
Such is man. He focuses not on what he has… but on what he lacks. He is forever climbing ladders. Here we do not criticize him. It is this ceaseless striving that accounts for all material progress. A contented civilization does not erect skyscrapers, amass empires or rocket into space. Only a striving, discontented civilization erects skyscrapers, amasses empires or rockets into space. And only striving, discontented men get on in this world.
Envy Can Be Costly: We hazard envy can wreck a man’s wealth as easily it can wreck his soul. That is because envy is an emotion that rips the reasoning capacities from him. And men of emotion are the market’s dupes. Nearly every time they are taken by reasoning men.
Can envy poison your investments? Yes it can, argues Mr. Marcelo Perez of Alhambra Investments: "In a day and age where… keeping up with the Joneses (or the Kardashians, or the Windsors) is no longer a silent, Sisyphean struggle but a top-rated TV series or Netflix special, it is only natural for this poison to seep into the investing world…"
YouTube stars dole out “investment strategies” left and right, extolling the benefits of the newest and coolest moneymaking venture, as per views, of course. Message boards are full of posts containing stock and option trades that yielded percent returns in the hundreds and thousands, over the course of no more [than a] few days. Virtually riskless, they say…
And even if we are skeptical, we become befuddled with amazement, consumed by “Why not me?” We are driven by envy as much as we are by greed. We see that our neighbor is excelling, or so we think, so we change our own course, or regret that we didn’t take the plunge.
The Siren Call of Envy: By our lights, envy is a thing to be resisted in this world. Yet it exerts a very heavy gravity upon it. It is very difficult for most to resist the tug. Perhaps we should all chain ourselves to our mainmast, like the ancient Ulysses. We should plug our ears against envy’s siren cries. Thus we can navigate clear of the destroying rocks that have claimed other men. Can we do it, collectively? Again, in this fallen world of sin… it is not easy. Yet we might recall the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus: “Our envy always lasts longer than the happiness of those we envy.”
"Albert Camus on How to Live Whole in a Broken World"
by Maria Popova
"Born into a World War to live through another, Albert Camus (November 7, 1913–January 4, 1960) died in a car crash with an unused train ticket to the same destination in his pocket. Just three years earlier, he had become the second-youngest laureate of the Nobel Prize, awarded him for literature that “with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience” — problems like art as resistance, happiness as our moral obligation, and the measure of strength through difficult times.
Camus addresses this with poetic poignancy in an essay titled “The Wrong Side and the Right Side,” found in his altogether superb posthumous collection "Lyrical and Critical Essays" (public library). In a prescient admonition against our modern cult of productivity, which plunders our capacity for presence, Camus writes:
"Life is short, and it is sinful to waste one’s time. They say I’m active. But being active is still wasting one’s time, if in doing one loses oneself. Today is a resting time, and my heart goes off in search of itself. If an anguish still clutches me, it’s when I feel this impalpable moment slip through my fingers like quicksilver… At the moment, my whole kingdom is of this world. This sun and these shadows, this warmth and this cold rising from the depths of the air: why wonder if something is dying or if men suffer, since everything is written on this window where the sun sheds its plenty as a greeting to my pity?"
Echoing the young Dostoyevsky’s exultant reckoning with the meaning of life shortly after his death sentence was repealed (“To be a human being among people and to remain one forever, no matter in what circumstances, not to grow despondent and not to lose heart,” Dostoyevsky wrote to his brother, “that’s what life is all about, that’s its task.”), Camus adds:
"What counts is to be human and simple. No, what counts is to be true, and then everything fits in, humanity and simplicity. When am I truer than when I am the world? What I wish for now is no longer happiness but simply awareness. I hold onto the world with every gesture, to men with all my gratitude and pity. I do not want to choose between the right and wrong sides of the world, and I do not like a choice. The great courage is still to gaze as squarely at the light as at death. Besides, how can I define the link that leads from this all-consuming love of life to this secret despair? In spite of much searching, this is all I know."
So, you look around in horrified astonishment at how totally insane it all really is, how the never ending bad news is everywhere you look, how truly hopeless it really is, and know there's nothing at all you can do about it, can't save anyone, can't even save yourself. So you remember what they said and how you need to be, and carry on...
“The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority,
but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.”
- Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations"
“That millions of people share the same forms of
mental pathology does not make these people sane.”
- Erich Fromm, "The Sane Society"
“Laugh whenever you can. Keeps you from killing
yourself when things are bad. That and vodka.”
- Jim Butcher, "Changes"
And yet, sometimes, at the end of another long day,
your defenses are just worn out and you lose control and feel like this...
Full screen recommended.
The Trashmen, "Surfin' Bird - Bird is the Word," 1963
"Well, the news media tells us at 70 million people will travel over 50 miles this Fourth of July. The numbers really don’t look good. Four and 10 say that they will not travel this summer at all."
"(These are deranged ramblings, perhaps of psychiatric interest. If pressed, Fred will deny authorship and possibly bring an action for defamation. Beware.)
These days, not unreasonably I think, people wonder whether artificial intelligence will produce an electronic being superior to, well, us. Others of darker imaginings ask whether we don’t face the arrival of a real-life Terminator. Science fiction? These days, it has a short shelf life. Actually, the superior being has probably already happened, if so far in bits and pieces. Let us consider what these bits are, and their assembly into a Terminator, whom we will affectionately call Arnold. First, Arnold’s mental capacities. Then, is robotic physicality.
Breadth of knowledge is usually thought a sign of intelligence. Arnold, with a Wifi link in his head, would know everything on the internet, books, history, quantum physics, the weather in Chengdu, geography, and just about everything else. Yes, I know, we are all used to this and it looks like mere lookup and not intelligence. Wait a minute. With his Wifi link, Arnold could translate fifty or sixty languages into each other, in seconds. If I could do that, you would think me quite a bright fellow. We are used to it, and people are never impressed by what they are used to.
Computers have beaten the world’s best players at chess and Go and defeated the national Jeopardy champion. If the victorious machines are not online, they easily could be. These capacities are usually regarded as requiring intelligence.
Since all of these things happened at least three days ago, they are ho-hum and not too interesting. But then we have to consider – drum roll, squalling of trumpets – Chatgpt and suchlike. Chat is the omnipotent humanizer, combining all the foregoing into a great Being. Chat can hold conversations, write essays and poetry often indistinguishable from those produced by humans and, weirdly, containing literary insight and psychological perceptiveness. So why is something – Arnold’s head in this case – that knows everything, writes business proposals and collegiate term papers, speaks fifty languages, does graduate-level mathematics, and plays championship chess, not superior to the common run of humanity? Note that as lagniappe that Arnold’s head as herein described can generate images from text, talk in different voices, write songs, and perhaps sing them.
Now let us consider Arnold’s more-corporeal being. Here we will ponder Boston Dynamics, the robotics-design firm. The company has produced Atlas, a robot remarkably similar to the Terminator when its pseudo-flesh was stripped away. The video is worth watching. Atlas, doubtless the Terminator under an assumed name, is an actual, really and truly, functioning humanoid robot. He walks, does gymnastic flips, finds stuff where it is and carries it to somewhere else. It is, so far as I know, the first potentially scary robot. If it can find a box, carry it upstairs and put it on a table, it could find an intruder in the warehouse, carry him downstairs to the basement, and stuff him into a wood chipper.
Full screen recommended.
(Boston Dynamics does not offer Atlas for this purpose.) Yet. In fact it just retired him as obsolescent and presumably is working on something more alarming.
Just now, Atlas seems an engineering exercise. He certainly cost a megabundle to figure out. But should he prove profitable for some purpose, such as guard duty or actual work, in mass production his cost would drop sharply. His metal parts are unlikely to cost horrendously. Software, once written, is almost free. Here I speculate, but the code for housekeeping –making him walk, see things, and so on, may be aboard, but if he were equipped with Wifi and Chatgpt, all of that would come wirelessly. If, say, a hundred thousand were built for industrial use, which is what Elon Musk has in mind for his Optimus robots, they would be controlled by the local buyer’s Wifi, unless bad guys hacked them and ordered them to do bad things, or simply planted code so that at a later date they could be ordered to go on a rampage or do something nefarious.
Skynet.
OK, that’s silly. I think. But Apple updates the software of millions of iPhones now with little effort. Why not hundreds of thousands of humanoid robots? Could evil hackers tell them to stuff bosses into the wood chipper? This could be a major selling point.
But if these things become practical, as Elon Musk promises, what does a warehouse manager make of mechanical workers that quote Hamlet to him? Or human workers make of Arnolds who work twenty-four seven without rest, except to recharge, who remember where everything is infallibly, and do complex calculations in milliseconds?
Or, a robot could be a cute little panda, becoming best friend to your daughter of four years. Chatgpt is well beyond just answering recorded questions. Kind of creepy, a child becoming emotionally attached to a being not really a being. I assume that a little girl cuddling a doll knows it isn’t a real baby. Hmmmm.
As a minor but related note, Audible.com now sells audiobooks read by a computer. I have listened to a couple of them, and could not tell the voices from human.
It is worth bearing in mind that robotics advances rapidly, and artificial intelligence is in its infancy. Image recognition is now routine, understanding of speech by computers well developed. I encounter estimates that humanoid robots suitable for factory work will cost twenty thousand dollars in mass production. These things are some way from being useful as, say, soldiers, but “some way” may mean fifteen years. If you consider the cost of human soldiers – recruiting, training, feeding, and explaining to their mothers why they are dead –buying robotic soldiers and storing them in warehouses looks a good thing if practical.
Methinks the world doth change overmuch. Many today in their fossil years remember Dick Tracy’s two-way wrist radio, which we knew to be impossible because vacuum tubes could never be made small enough."
"Sky News Investigations Reporter Jonathan Lea sits down to talk with a “free-thinking” and “opinionated” artificial intelligence, Ameca Desktop. “Ameca is driven by the same artificial intelligence behind Chat-GPT,” Mr Lea said."
"We do not rest satisfied with the present. We anticipate the future as too slow in coming, as if in order to hasten its course; or we recall the past, to stop its too rapid flight. So imprudent are we that we wander in the times which are not ours, and do not think of the only one which belongs to us; and so idle are we that we dream of those times which are no more, and thoughtlessly overlook that which alone exists. For the present is generally painful to us. We conceal it from our sight, because it troubles us; and if it be delightful to us, we regret to see it pass away. We try to sustain it by the future, and think of arranging matters which are not in our power, for a time which we have no certainty of reaching. Let each one examine his thoughts, and he will find them all occupied with the past and the future. We scarcely ever think of the present; and if we think of it, it is only to take light from it to arrange the future. The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means; the future alone is our end. So we never live, but we hope to live; and, as we are always preparing to be happy, it is inevitable we should never be so."
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