"Looking for a Reason to Believe: The Benefit of the Doubt Is Cracking"

"Looking for a Reason to Believe: 

The Benefit of the Doubt Is Cracking"

by Paul Rosenberg

"Those of us who pursue positive change are very often frustrated. We see the necessity of change all too clearly, and we can explain how it should come about, but it never seems to happen. The truth, however, is that change does come; it just comes more slowly than we’d like, and in ways that differ from those we imagined.

One real change I like to point out is the passing of blind trust in politicians. In the 1950s and ‘60s, most people spoke of politicians with respect and even with reverence. Now it’s almost standard for people to agree that they’re liars and thieves. That’s a very significant change, even if it did take several decades to unfold. So, a significant change has occurred in our time, and over a very broad base. Still, most people are hanging on, and often desperately, to old ways that should really be abandoned.

The Automatic Benefit of the Doubt: It’s a bit troubling to see how blindly, and for how long, people give the benefit of the doubt to hierarchy and its operators. They can know that a system is abusing them, and they can complain about it at length, but still they grasp at reasons to keep believing in it.

Here’s what I mean: During the bad spots of the Middle Ages, people would be abused by the clergy but say, “If only His Holiness knew!” During the reign of the USSR, people in the Gulag would often say, “If only Stalin knew!” In our time, people hold Political Party A or Political Party B as grave evils, while pretending that the combination of A + B is good and noble.

Still, such blind biases do eventually break. Stalin, after all, is gone, along with his USSR. The Protestant reformation broke the domination of the Church. And the delusions of our time will die as well.

“Still, I look to Find a Reason to Believe”: If there were such a competition, I’d nominate Rod Stewart’s song, "Reason To Believe," as the Anthem of the Age. Regardless of how badly they are abused, people have a very hard time letting go of their hierarchies; they’ve taken emotional refuge in them, after all. Even when sharp pain forces them to examine the hierarchy that constantly tells them, “Obey or we’ll hurt you,” the impulse to maintain belief erupts. Here’s how the song expresses it:

"If I listened long enough to you,

I’d find a way to believe that it’s all true.

Knowing that you lied,

straight-faced while I cried.

Still I look to find a reason to believe."

Humans have a real problem with that last line: looking for reasons to believe. It flies in the face of both logic and honesty, but people not only do it, but vigorously defend it. As for specific reasons to believe, they’re endless. Seldom are humans quicker and cleverer than when justifying their previous actions.

Why This Is a Good Sign: When people are desperately grasping for reasons to believe, it’s because the benefit of the doubt is cracking beneath them. Otherwise, why would they fight so wildly? The circumstances of our modern world are propelling people toward this break. Every time a ruling system tells gigantic lies, censors the public square, surveils their own people and frightens the masses for their own benefit, belief in their system cracks a little.

More and more people are conceding that it’s not just “one bad actor” here or there, but that Joe Stalin really is evil, that the clergy really is corrupt, and that hierarchies are abusive by nature. The whirlwind of distractions and slogans arrayed against moral clarity are losing their effectiveness. Little by little, humanity’s blind devotion to authority is cracking. Someday, it will break."

- https://freemansperspective.com/

o

Rod Stewart, "Reason To Believe"

"Life Changing Poems for Hard Times"

Full screen recommended.

RedFrost Motivation, 

"Life Changing Poems for Hard Times"

Read by Shane Morris

Poems:

 "Defeat" by Khalil Gibran

 "A Psalm of Life" by H. W. Longfellow

"If" by Rudyard Kipling

 "Invictus" by William Ernest Henley

 "Desiderata" by Max Ermann

The Daily "Near You?"

Lancaster, South Carolina, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Every Day..."

“Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans to gain or maintain power. What is more, those who choose not to empathize may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it through our own apathy. If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.”

– J. K. Rowling, Harvard Commencement, June 5, 2008

"The Trouble With Most People..."

"The Trouble With Most People..."

"Kaufman thought his public health students at the Kennesaw State University might know more than high schoolers. During the same week, he conducted an ad hoc survey in class, “How many of you believe the American dream is dead?” He asked his class of about 25 students. “Ninety percent raised their hands,” said Kaufman. “I was just blown away.”

He asked his college students what the American dream was. Not getting an answer, he defined it for them, “The American dream is, in this country, if you work hard, you sacrifice, and you never quit, you will find some type of success in your life.” After giving the students his definition, he tried again, “How many of you still believe the American dream is dead?” Still, 90 percent raised their hands. “If you believe the American dream is dead in this country, why are you sitting in a college classroom?” he asked. The class was silent. Students looked shocked, and one said he hadn’t thought about that."

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

○

"Back when I taught at UCLA, I was constantly amazed at how little so many students knew. Finally, I could no longer restrain myself from asking a student the question that had long puzzled me: ''What were you doing for the last 12 years before you got here?''

- Thomas Sowell

○

"The problem isn't that Johnny can't read. 

The problem isn't even that Johnny can't think.

The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is; 

he confuses it with feeling."

- Thomas Sowell

○

"The trouble with most people is that they think with their

hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds."

- Will Durant

○

"It takes considerable knowledge just to 

realize the extent of your own ignorance."

- Thomas Sowell

"11 Reasons Why The Federal Reserve Is Bad"

"11 Reasons Why The Federal Reserve Is Bad"

by Michael Snyder

"Most Americans realize that the federal government is drowning in debt and that inflation is out of control. But very few Americans can coherently explain where money comes from or how our financial system actually works. For decades, bankers that we do not elect have controlled America’s currency, have run our economy into the ground, and have driven the U.S. government to the brink of bankruptcy. The Federal Reserve is an institution that was designed to drain wealth from U.S. taxpayers and transfer it to the global elite. Have you ever wondered why a sovereign nation such as the United States has to borrow United States dollars from anyone? Have you ever wondered why a sovereign nation such as the United States does not even issue its own currency? Have you ever wondered why we allow a group of unelected private bankers to run our economy?

Those are some very important questions. Hopefully what you are about to read will open the eyes of many. The truth is that our financial system is centrally-controlled and centrally-managed by a group of banking oligarchs who oversee a constantly expanding debt spiral which could come crashing down at any time. If the American people truly understood how our system works, they would be protesting in the streets right now. The following are 11 reasons why the Federal Reserve is bad…

1 – The Federal Reserve was created as a way to enslave the U.S. government. In fact, the Federal Reserve system literally could not function without U.S. Treasury bonds. Government debt is at the very core of the system, and our federal government is now trapped in a debt spiral from which it can never possibly escape because the system is operating exactly as it was designed. Our national debt has been rising at an exponential rate, and that will continue to be the case until either the current system collapses or we adopt an entirely new system.

2 – The individual Federal Reserve Banks are not “federal” at all. In fact, on the official website of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, it is openly admitted that Federal Reserve Banks “are not a part of the federal government” and that private banks “hold stock in the Federal Reserve Banks and earn dividends”…The Federal Reserve Banks are not a part of the federal government, but they exist because of an act of Congress. Their purpose is to serve the public. So is the Fed private or public? The answer is both. While the Board of Governors is an independent government agency, the Federal Reserve Banks are set up like private corporations. Member banks hold stock in the Federal Reserve Banks and earn dividends.

3 – Why does the Federal Reserve issue our currency? The U.S. Constitution explicitly gives Congress the power to issue our currency… [The Congress shall have Power . . . ] To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures; . . .

4 – The Federal Reserve creates money out of thin air. I asked Google AI about this, and this is what I was told…Yes, the Federal Reserve (Fed) creates money out of thin air by increasing the money supply. This process is called “creating money out of thin air” because it involves adding funds to the economy without printing currency.

5 – The Federal Reserve devalues our currency. Since the Federal Reserve was created in 1913, the U.S. dollar has lost more than 96 percent of its purchasing power. The truth is that just a two percent inflation rate will wipe out half of your purchasing power within a single generation. In the chart below, you can clearly see that the beginning of the rapid rise of inflation in the United States coincided with the creation of the Federal Reserve.

6 – The Federal Reserve manipulates the U.S. economy by setting interest rates.  By moving rates higher or lower, the Federal Reserve has the power to create economic growth or to destroy it.  They have the power to inflate massive economic bubbles and to pop them.  Most Americans believe that our presidents “run the economy”, but the truth is that the Federal Reserve has far more control over the economy than the White House does.  As you can see below, every recession since World War II has come after a period of rising interest rates.

7 – The Federal Reserve also controls the national money supply.  They can pump trillions of dollars into the economy or pull trillions of dollars out of the economy without being accountable to anyone.  This can have absolutely disastrous consequences.  For example, inflation started getting wildly out of control after the Federal Reserve dramatically increased the size of the money supply during the pandemic.

8 – The Federal Reserve has become far, far too powerful. Our financial markets swing up and down whenever a Fed official makes an important statement, and every man, woman and child in the entire country is directly affected by the decisions that the Federal Reserve Board makes. Ron Paul once told MSNBC that he believes that the Federal Reserve has actually become more powerful than Congress… “The regulations should be on the Federal Reserve. We should have transparency of the Federal Reserve. They can create trillions of dollars to bail out their friends, and we don’t even have any transparency of this. They’re more powerful than the Congress.”

9 – The Federal Reserve is dominated by Wall Street and the New York banks. The New York representative is the only permanent member of the Federal Open Market Committee, while the other members rotate. The truth is that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has always been the most important of the regional Fed banks by far, and in turn the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has always been dominated by Wall Street and the major New York banks.

10 – The Federal Reserve has completely eliminated minimum reserve requirements for our banks. Fractional reserve banking has always been a way that the bankers have conned the public, but now they have gotten rid of minimum reserve requirements altogether. This is literally insane.

11 – The Federal Reserve is not accountable to the voters, and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell is flaunting the fact that he cannot even be fired by President Trump…Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell had a clear, direct response when asked during a press conference Thursday if he would step down if asked to do so by President-elect Trump. “No,” said Powell, whose term as chair ends in 2026. When asked to elaborate and if he would be legally required to leave, he again said, “No.” Powell later said it is “not permitted under the law” for the president to fire or demote him or any of the other Fed governors with leadership positions. Powell’s term will eventually end, but until then he can do whatever he wants.

Shouldn’t we have some way to keep them accountable? After all, they have an incredible amount of power over us, shouldn’t we have at least a little bit of power over them? Nobody knows what is really going on inside the Federal Reserve, because we aren’t allowed to see. Unfortunately, the truth is that they desperately do not want light to be shined on the elaborate “shell game” that they are running.

Have you ever wondered if it was just a coincidence that the personal income tax was implemented just about the same time that the Federal Reserve was created? Why does the U.S. government have to tax us at all? Prior to 1913, there was no personal income tax in this country.

If you take a few minutes to stop and think about it, an America where there is no Federal Reserve, no personal income tax and no IRS is not that hard to imagine. If the U.S. government functioned just fine without all of them at one time, then why couldn’t the U.S. government function just fine without all of them now? The system that we have now is clearly not working. The Federal Reserve was supposed to guarantee that our system would be perfectly stable, but in reality our system has become much more unstable.

It is time for different thinking. It is time for the U.S. government to take back control of our currency and to take back control of our economy. For more than a decade, I have been on a crusade to bring the Federal Reserve system to an end, and many others have been pushing for the exact same thing. Now that we have a new administration in Washington, perhaps they will be open to listening to us.

- https://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/

o

"JFK's Executive Order 11100 Abolishing the Federal Reserve"

Dan, I Allegedly, "The Media is Broken"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly 1/24/25

"The Media is Broken"

"CNN is struggling like never before, and I’m breaking it all down in today’s video. From plummeting ratings to layoffs affecting hundreds, it’s clear this media giant is facing serious challenges. I’ll share why their business model is falling apart, how their content no longer resonates, and what this means for viewers and advertisers alike. Plus, we’ll dive into other key topics like rising interest rates, layoffs sweeping the economy, and shocking issues with companies like Equifax and Cash App. It’s a wild time right now, and there’s so much we need to keep an eye on."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"How It Really Is"

 

Adventures With Danno, "Major Price Changes at Sam's Club"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures With Danno, 1/24/25

"Major Price Changes at Sam's Club"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Bill Bonner, "Strange Days...and the Big Gain"

John McAfee, back from the dead to participate in the 

next crypto boom as a disembodied consciousness.

"Strange Days...and the Big Gain"

Leaders don’t make as much difference as most people think. 

The path of events is determined by deeper historical forces - 

the ‘primary trend’ in markets... and in politics.

by Bill Bonner

Baltimore, Maryland - "An old Irish joke goes: "How do I get to Dublin?" The local replies, "Well, you don't want to start from here. You can't get there from here." We begin with where we are. USA Today: "US stocks end up, with S&P 500 at record."  But the S&P is not the only thing hitting records. Fartcoin, Butthole coin, Microstrategy, FartStrategy, $Trump, $Melania, $Lorenzo…even dead men are launching new wealth defying cryptos. John McAfee, who committed suicide three years ago, on X yesterday: "I'm back with AIntivirus. An AI version of myself," @officialmcafee's post reads.  "You didn't think I would miss this cycle did you?" Whatever else can be said about where we are... it’s a pretty strange place.

Our first priority is to avoid the Big Loss. If we can keep our wealth more or less intact, we can benefit from time, compounding, luck, our own wisdom... increasing (or decreasing!) with age, and occasionally, good research. That brings us to our second priority. Going in the opposite direction from the Big Loss is the Big Gain. Today, we wonder where it is. We don’t think the Trump Team can get from where we are to where we want to go…but we don’t doubt that there’s money to be made somewhere.

To bring new readers – if there are any – up to speed, leaders don’t make as much difference as most people think. The path of events is determined by deeper historical forces — the ‘primary trend’ in markets... and in politics.

In democracies at least, the aspiring Caesar must connect to the soul of the masses... or he’ll be forever condemned to lead a more honest life. This is not to say that he must obey the ‘will of the people’ once in office... but only that his rigging and conniving can’t be too far out of step with where The People think they want to go. These considerations usually give us the leaders we need — not to ‘do the right thing,’ but to carry out the mission given to them by fate.

This brief description of ‘historical determinism,’ of course, is not ‘true’ in any empirical way. It can’t be tested or proven. But it’s probably a good way to look at it. And it’s the best we can do... without having access to the mind of God.

Empires rise and fall. There are no exceptions. It doesn’t matter what people said... or thought. Or whether their leaders were good or bad. They could have polled the citizens of Rome in the 5th century. Most people might have answered, ‘yes, I’d like to keep the empire as it is.’ But so what? In 410, Rome was sacked. By 472, the western empire was history.

In 1980, gold was at its zenith... stocks at their nadir. A single ounce of gold could have paid for almost the entire 30 Dow stocks. The potential for a big gain in gold was slim; the risk of a big loss was obvious. From a high over $800 an ounce, gold fell all the way to the ‘Brown Bottom’ in 1999. On May 7th of that year — with the price at $282.40 – Gordon Brown, Chancellor of the Exchequer (Sec. of Treasury), announced the sale of approximately half of Britain’s gold. The timing couldn’t have been worse. After suffering the Big Loss, 1980-1999, with the price down 67%, Brown then locked in the loss by selling gold at its lowest price.

But if the Bank of England and other gold holders had already taken the Big Loss, we reasoned, there probably wasn’t much loss left to take. Instead, the action of the previous 19 years should be followed by an equal and opposite reaction over the next 19 years. A Big Gain, in other words. With the price of gold still under $300, and the Dow now selling for more than 40 ounces of gold, the Big Loss should now come to the stockholders, not the holders of gold.

That is what happened. Gold rose 10 times to today’s $2,770 price. Stocks went down; in gold terms, the Dow fell from over 40 ounces to today’s 16 ounces. Historical determinism works for markets as well as politics. It didn’t matter who was president... or what investors thought... or said. The primary trend turned against gold in 1980... and against stocks in 1999.

And today? When we look around today, it is clear today where the Big Loss is likely to come from. Once again, stocks are selling for record-high prices. Fortune: "Larry Summers warns bubbling asset prices are hitting levels of froth last seen prior to the financial crisis. In an interview with German business daily Handelsblatt, the former Treasury Secretary said bullish sentiment reminded him of the giddy days that preceded the 2008 financial crisis and the dotcom bubble at the turn of the century." 

Not only are equity prices near a top, strange non-equities are having a field day too. CNBC: "Greenlight Capital's David Einhorn thinks speculative behavior in the current bull market has ascended to a level beyond common sense. "We have reached the 'Fartcoin' stage of the market cycle," Einhorn wrote in an investor letter obtained by CNBC. "Other than trading and speculation, it serves no other obvious purpose and fulfills no need that is not served elsewhere."

And where’s the Big Gain? Tune in next week for more..."

- https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/

John Lennon, "Nobody Told Me"

Strange days indeed...

Jim Kunstler, "The Great Sorting-Out Begins"

"The Great Sorting-Out Begins"

by Jim Kunstler

“The purpose of a pardon is to correct a miscarriage of justice, 

not to prevent future judicial action.” 

- Dr. Joseph Sansone

"This, as they say, is one of those weeks when decades happen. You realize that under the fiends fronted by “Joe Biden,” the US government became a demon-driven machine for wrecking lives, perverting the law, and demolishing all scaffolds of decent behavior. And now, it all has to be fixed, cleaned up, fumigated, rectified, rehabilitated.

Scores of executive orders flew out of the Oval Office, rescinding four years of “Biden” regime lunacy in every direction: Censorship, dead. . . Gain of function research, killed. . . CBDCs banned. . . CBP-app for aiding illegal migrants, discontinued. . . border fortified. . . homicidal alien mutts deported. . . World Health Organization, no thanks. . . Paris Climate Accords, fuggeddabowdit. . . DEI, vacated through all of government. . . Green New Deal, scrapped. . . “pride” in mental illness, cancelled. . . Ukraine War, headed for the negotiating table. . . all in four days and so much more coming.

The DEI flimflam is particularly illustrative of the hazards still lurking. The DC blob is desperate to hide its chaos agents by switching their job titles and shuffling them around to hidey-holes in obscure precincts of this-or-that bureaucracy. Being federal employees, of course, they all have searchable names and payroll accounts, so you may be sure they’ll be discovered wherever they’re hiding-out and placed, as ordered, on “administrative leave.” Since DEI was essentially a program to promote incompetence, these employees represent a monumental cargo of dead-weight. So, the next task will be finding a way under the civil service codes to cashier them for good. For instance, reclassifying their job status to render them fire-able.

This is sure to be a major friction-point for the so-called “resistance,” the huge cadre of “activist” Wokesters embedded in the agencies. Cue the army of Democratic Party lawyers who will be filing suits to prevent the chief executive from coherently managing the departments of the executive branch. But there’s a catch: this time, the White House will not be funneling scads of money directly to the NGOs that pay for these blob-adjacent lawyers, nor will they be able to redirect money out of the DOJ, FBI, and CIA for that purpose. The president may also find a way to interrupt the flow of money from foundations financed by malign freelancers such as George Soros and Linked-in founder and billionaire Reid Hoffman (who financed the E. Jean Carroll “rape” trial hoax and many more Democratic Party pranks ).

Another friction point: release of the pardoned J-6 prisoners is being loudly opposed by DC District federal judges such as Tanya Chutkan and Amy Berman Jackson. They don’t enjoy any privilege or prerogative for voicing prejudicial opinions about vacated cases, nor for failing to comply with paperwork needed to discharge them. They can be impeached for that in the House of Representatives. Or, if they actively obstruct releases, the new-and-improved Department of Justice might consider 18 U.S.C. § 242 - Deprivation of rights under color of law.

Meanwhile, goons at the DC jail detained pardoned prisoners unlawfully this week after years of the grossest mistreatment, including solitary confinement in basement “holes” without beds, blankets, or water, and direct physical assault that could be described as “torture.” All of this was countenanced by DC Mayor Muriel Bowser, despite plentiful public reports of abuse over the past four years. That is, she knew all about it. This is an argument for finally rescinding Washington DC’s “home rule” status and placing the city and all its departments back under federal management.

Last night, Mr. Trump signed an order to declassify government files relating to the murders of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King. Of course, the intel agencies holding these files have had a half-century to expunge anything in the files that might reflect poorly on the intel agencies — such as, the long-trafficked rumor that the CIA was behind the killing of all three. Why would you expect to get anything like that? How could the remaining material be anything but a cover-your-ass file? Well, now we shall see. At some point in his first term, Mr. Trump allegedly saw what was in the files and demurred from his promise then to release them. Was it too shocking? Or was it the well-groomed nothingburger described above.

That’s not to say that there’s any shortage of weird, tantalizing documentation around all those cases, inexplicable doings. . . sketchy characters like Oswald, Jack Ruby, Howard Hunt, Clay Shaw, Sirhan Sirhan, Thane Eugene Cesar, James Earl Ray, “Raul” (Ray’s alleged “handler”), Frank Liberto, Loyd Jowers. . .  and curious circumstances like the so-called “magic bullet” that supposedly exited JFK and wounded Texas Governor Connolly, and was later found oddly intact on a stretcher in Parkland Hospital. I guess we’ll find out shortly.

Now, we await the confirmation of Mr. Trump’s cabinet. Pam Bondi’s USAG nomination was held up for a week by peevish freshman Senator Adam Schiff, after she called him out for being censured last year in the House for “reckless” statements — that is, she reminded the committee and the public that Mr. Schiff is a chronic liar. There are rumblings that he will be kicked off the Senate Judiciary Committee (maybe not such a good fit for someone incapable of telling the truth). The preemptive pardon he received last week from “Joe B” might be tested through the courts in the years just ahead. The Judiciary Committee announced that it will convene an inquiry into the whole J-6 fiasco. Do you sense that there is much to discover in that hairball of enigmatic events, hidden actions, concealed motives, and buried evidence? All this (plus a lot I left out) and the first week isn’t even over yet!"

- https://www.kunstler.com/

"I Went to a Brand-New Russian Supermarket in 2025"

Full screen recommended.

Travelling with Russell, 1/24/25

"I Went to a Brand-New Russian Supermarket in 2025"

"What does a Russian typical brand-new supermarket look like inside? Opened only days ago. Join me on a tour of Food City Express, which is Russian-owned and has just opened its first "close to home" supermarket in Russia."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Gerald Celente, "We Called The Trend First, Trump Said He Will Lower Interest Rates"

Strong language alert!

Gerald Celente, 1/23/25

"We Called The Trend First, 

Trump Said He Will Lower Interest Rates"

"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://trendsjournal.co

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Jeremiah Babe, "Can America Avoid Economic Disaster Or Is The Pain Coming?"

Jeremiah Babe, 1/23/25

"Can America Avoid Economic Disaster 

Or Is The Pain Coming?"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Judge Napolitano, "Col. Douglas Macgregor: The Coming World War III"

Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 1/23/25

"Col. Douglas Macgregor: The Coming World War III"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: Two Steps From Hell, "Evergreen"

Full screen recommended.

Two Steps From Hell, "Evergreen"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“What powers are being wielded in the Wizard Nebula? Gravitation strong enough to form stars, and stellar winds and radiations powerful enough to create and dissolve towers of gas. Located only 8,000 light years away, the Wizard nebula, pictured above, surrounds developing open star cluster NGC 7380. Visually, the interplay of stars, gas, and dust has created a shape that appears to some like a fictional medieval sorcerer.

The active star forming region spans 100 about light years, making it appear larger than the angular extent of the Moon. The Wizard Nebula can be located with a small telescope toward the constellation of the King of Aethiopia (Cepheus) Although the nebula may last only a few million years, some of the stars being formed may outlive our Sun.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/

Chet Raymo, “Examination of Conscience”

“Examination of Conscience”

by Chet Raymo

"I have been reading Stephanie Smallwood's “Saltwater Slavery,” a close examination of the trade in human beings between the coast of West Africa and the Americas in the 17th and 18th centuries. It is a sobering read, but if there is one thing I came away with, it was this: We have an enormous capacity to rationalize the most horrendous crimes. Everyone involved in the slave trade - the European owners of the ships, the masters of the trading companies, the ship captains and crews, the plantation owners in the West Indies and the Chesapeake, the African tribal chiefs who captured and sold their neighbors to the European merchants - knew in some part of their souls that what they were doing was wrong. All of them - good Christians among them, pillars of their communities - found ways to rationalize their participation.

Who among us is immune to self deceit? To what extent am I implicated in the horrendous tragedies that are Darfur and Iraq? What do I owe to the global environment? Is there such a thing as innocence when we are so intimately connected that people in Fiji and Japan will read these words only moments after I write them?

What about science, the favored subject of this blog? Here is Smallwood: “The littoral [of the West African coast]...was more than a site of economic exchange and incarceration. The violence exercised in the service of human commodification relied upon a scientific empiricism always seeking to find the limits of human capacity for suffering, that point where material and social poverty threatened to consume entirely the lives it was meant to garner for sale in the Americas.”

Even science, like religion and democratic politics, can be pressed into the service of evil. We are all of us to some extent in the grip of economic forces as powerful and sometimes as pernicious as those that drove the saltwater slave trade. Few of us are required to personally face the direst evils. We are saved from moral anguish only by the fact that our acts of commission and omission ripple outward until their consequences are diluted and lost in the general happiness or unhappiness of humankind.”

- https://www.sciencemusings.com/

“Just Sit Down And Think?”

“Just Sit Down And Think?”

by Oliver Burkeman

“’All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone,’ wrote the French philosopher Blaise Pascal. It's a line repeated so frequently, in the era of smartphones and social media, that it's easy to forget how striking it is that he wrote it in the 1600s. Back then, a sentence such as "Yo is a messaging app that enables iPhone and Android users to say 'Yo' to their friends" might have got you burned as a witch.

Yet even in 17th-century France, apparently, people hated being alone with their thoughts so intensely, they'd do almost anything else: play boules, start the Franco-Spanish war, and so on. Still, I'd wager even Pascal would have been disturbed by a study published in Science, showing that people detest being made to spend six to 15 minutes in a room by themselves with nothing to do but think – even to the extent of being willing to give themselves mild electric shocks instead. It's natural to conclude that there's something wrong with such people. Which means, all else being equal, that something's probably wrong with you, too.

Modern humans spend virtually no time on "inward-directed thought", and not solely because we're too busy: in one US survey, 95% of adults said they'd found time for a leisure activity in the previous 24 hours, but 83% said they'd spent zero time just thinking. The new study, led by Timothy Wilson of the University of Virginia, first asked students to entertain themselves with nothing but their thoughts in an "unadorned room". Most said they found it hard to concentrate; half found it unpleasant or neutral at best. In further experiments, older people, and those who rarely used smartphones, got similar results. Meanwhile, those given the chance to do something outward-directed, such as reading, enjoyed it far more. And when 42 people got to choose between sitting doing nothing and giving themselves electric shocks, two-thirds of men and a quarter of women chose the latter.

Are we mad? In his book "Back To Sanity," the Leeds Metropolitan University psychologist Steve Taylor answers: yes. The condition he diagnoses, "humania", isn't recognized as a disorder, but only because we're all victims, he argues, and it's part of the definition of a mental illness that most people don't have it. The "urge to immerse our attention in external things is so instinctive that we're scarcely aware of it", he writes. We often speak of emails, tweets and texts as if they're annoyances that we'd eliminate if we could. Yet the truth, of course, is that half the time we're desperate to be distracted, and gladly embrace the interruption.

Taylor's explanation for this puzzle borrows from Buddhism (among other places). We mistake ourselves for individual, isolated beings, trapped within our heads. No wonder we don't dwell on what's inside: that would underline the loneliness of existence, so obviously watching TV is more fun. To sit comfortably with your thoughts first requires seeing that there's a sense in which they're not real. A less new agey way of putting it is simply that you don't need to believe your thoughts. Whereupon they become fun to watch, and the need for distraction subsides. To quote the title of a book by Sylvia Boorstein, a meditation teacher: don't just do something, sit there.”

- http://www.theguardian.com/

"All Is Not Lost..."

"If you can't answer a man's arguments, all is not lost;
you can still call him vile names."
- Elbert Hubbard

"Artificial Eternity"

"Artificial Eternity"

by The ZMan

"One of the clarifying things about Trump’s second term is that we are seeing the reality of politics on display. He made deals for support and right away he is making good on those deals. One of those deals was with Silicon Valley with regards to Artificial Intelligence, which they think is the next revolution. Trump is pledging billions for something like a Manhattan Project to make AI real. Here is Sam Altman explaining why this is the greatest thing ever.

Lost in most of the AI debate is something Altman said in that clip, “Immortality is not too far ahead.” That is an interesting selling point, as it assumes that everyone wants to live forever, but it is not the first time this has come up with the tech bros. Once Silicon Valley was awash in billions, they started investing some of it in life extension technology with the hope of conquering death. Ray Kurzweil has made a nice living selling life-extension ideas to the tech bros.

It is fair to say that conquering death has been an obsession with Silicon Valley since the great boom of the 1990’s started. Perhaps there is some natural link between extending human ability through technology and extending life with it. On the one hand, solving the complex mathematical puzzles that put the stock of human knowledge at your fingertips leads to hubris. On the other hand, that same hubris can easily lead to a view of life as nothing more than complex math puzzles.

Much of what lies behind the synopticon that Silicon Valley has rolled out over the last decades is the assumption that life is not terribly complicated because humans are relatively simple in their actions. Facebook and Google easily roll up our lives into easy-to-use data sets, so marketers can nudge us into buying their products. The fact that this strategy does not work is ignored. They have come to believe that the vast network of machines is controlling human behavior.

That aside, conquering death is not new to this age. Christianity is all about conquering death and living forever in bliss. That is the main point of Christianity, at least from the marketing point of view. If you live an ethical life, when you die and your life is put in the scales, you will gain access to heaven, which is everlasting life. John 3:16 tells us, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life”

The Christians were not the first to think this way. In fact, it was most likely borrowed from Zoroastrianism, which held that heaven was one option for your soul once it left your body and crossed Bridge of Judgment. Of course, the concept of reincarnation has been with us since forever probably. The soul reentering the material world in the body of another human or as another species is a form of conquering death. The soul is eternal, so you never truly die.

In folk religions without a complex system of ethics tied to their deity, conquering death was still an important topic. The ancient heroes fought to be remembered after they had fallen in battle. Valhalla, which was reworked by early Christians into a warrior heaven, was originally just a resting place for warriors, until they poured out to fight alongside Odin against the jötnar during Ragnarök. Conquering death was to live so you could take part in the final scene of existence.

Simply being remembered was a form of conquering death. Greek mythology is a great example of this. To be remembered was the point of life. The great heroes of the long-forgotten past are proof that a man can outlive his people. Troy, for example, was long gone by the time of Homer, but the men of Troy and those who defeated them, lived on long after Troy was forgotten. Our modern cemeteries still reflect this ancient urge to be remembered and thus conquer death.

in the modern age, men who aspire to greatness are not satisfied with having their memory carved on a rock. They will not blink their last blink with the knowledge that they will live forever at the foot of God. Both require a connection to a people who will maintain the rock or pray for your soul. Instead, they hope the machines with which they spend so much of their lives will save them from rotting away in a field or being incinerated in a crematorium.

Despite their brilliance, they not only think little about their obsession with immortality, but they never wonder if it is what they want. To this point, people have understood that living even a very long time comes with punishments. Our fiction is full of examples of men who lived too long. Even in good health, their psyche suffers from having lived beyond the natural limit. We have always had a sense that who we are is tied to the brevity of our time on this world.

Artificial Intelligence may help mitigate diseases like cancer, but at this stage it is mostly used for creating clever memes. The walls that contain AI right now, the limits of human knowledge, will probably prove impenetrable. It will never be able to go beyond what we know but merely be faster at accessing and applying it. That will have its uses but will fall far short of the robot future. Until we unriddle what makes human consciousness possible, AI will remain a fantasy.

Nature, of nature’s God, has a sense of humor, so the most likely result of AI is better ways to kill one another. We already see that with the war in Ukraine where AI powered drones hunt for men and equipment. This is another thing the present quest for eternal life shares with the past quests. The end result will inevitably require death, as without death, life is not possible. Living is not merely the absence of death but the struggle against death. Artificial Intelligence cannot do that for us."

- https://thezman.com/wordpress/

o

“When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in an eternity before and after, the little space I fill engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces whereof I know nothing, and which know nothing of me, I am terrified. The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.

For in fact what is man in nature? A nothing in comparison with the infinite, an all in comparison with the nothing, a meeting between nothing and everything. Since he is infinitely removed from comprehending the extremes, the end of things and their beginning are hopelessly hidden from him in an impenetrable secret; he is equally incapable of seeing the nothing from which he was made, and of the infinite in which he is swallowed up."

- Blaise Pascal, "Pensees"

○

"Blaise Pascal: The Infinite Spaces, Alienation, and The Wager"

The Daily "Near You?"

Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. Thanks for stopping by!

"As Humans..."

“It is easy to overlook this thought that life just is. As humans we are inclined to feel that life must have a point. We have plans and aspirations and desires. We want to take constant advantage of the intoxicating existence we’ve been endowed with. But what’s life to a lichen? Yet its impulse to exist, to be, is every bit as strong as ours - arguably even stronger. If I were told that I had to spend decades being a furry growth on a rock in the woods, I believe I would lose the will to go on. Lichens don’t. Like virtually all living things, they will suffer any hardship, endure any insult, for a moment’s additional existence. Life, in short just wants to be.”

- Bill Bryson

"Lifes Impermanence..."

"Lifes impermanence, I realized, is what makes every

single day so precious. It's what shapes our time here.

It's what makes it so important that not a single moment be wasted."

- Wes Moore

"All We Really Need..."

"Causes do matter. And the world is changed by people who care deeply about causes,about things that matter. We don't have to be particularly smart or talented. We don't need a lot of money or education. All we really need is to be passionate about something important; something bigger than ourselves. And it's that commitment to a worthwhile cause that changes the world."

- Steve Goodier

"Find the things that matter, and hold on to them,

and fight for them, and refuse to let them go."

- Lauren Oliver

"Alert! Watch How This Develops Very Closely – 'We Can Do It The Easy Way, Or The Hard Way'”

"Alert! Watch How This Develops Very Closely –

'We Can Do It The Easy Way, Or The Hard Way'”

by Michael Snyder

"We have reached such a pivotal moment in world history. During his time in the White House, Joe Biden brought us closer to nuclear war with Russia than ever before. If Kamala Harris had won the election, I am convinced that a nuclear war with Russia would have almost certainly happened during her term. But Donald Trump won the election instead, and now he has a historic opportunity. He can end the conflict in Ukraine and avoid a nuclear war with Russia. If he is able to do that, he will save countless lives. However, if he handles this situation with Russia badly and nuclear missiles start flying back and forth, it will be the end of America (and the world- CP) as we know it today.

It is not going to be easy to end the war in Ukraine. Anyone that suggests otherwise simply does not understand the dynamics that are at play. The good news is that unlike Biden, Trump actually wants to make a deal, and on Wednesday he posted a message on Truth Social in which he revealed quite a bit about what he is thinking…"I’m not looking to hurt Russia. I love the Russian people, and always had a very good relationship with President Putin – and this despite the Radical Left’s "Russia, Russia, Russia" HOAX. We must never forget that Russia helped us win the Second World War, losing almost 60,000,000 lives in the process. All of that being said, I’m going to do Russia, whose economy is failing, and President Putin, a very big FAVOR. Settle now, and STOP this ridiculous War! IT’S ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE. If we don’t make a “deal,” and soon, I have no other choice but to put high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States, and various other participating countries. Let’s get this war, which never would have started if I were President, over with! We can do it the easy way, or the hard way – and the easy way is always better. It’s time to “MAKE A DEAL.” NO MORE LIVES SHOULD BE LOST!!!

I very much agree with Trump that we need to end this ridiculous war. But Trump needs to be very careful. Diplomatic finesse will be required to reach an agreement, and making threats is not going to help at all. In particular, telling Russia that we “can do it the easy way, or the hard way” is not going to move the needle in the right direction.

Precisely what would “the hard way” look like? Would that mean greatly escalating the conflict in Ukraine? Already, Trump is calling on the Europeans to substantially increase their financial support for the war… Additionally, the U.S. President reiterated his call for European Union nations to step up their contributions to support Ukraine, calling for an extra $200 billion [USD].

I understand what Trump is trying to do. He has repeatedly expressed his desire for “peace through strength”, and so he is attempting to get leverage on the Russians. But issuing threats could threaten the temporary “window of opportunity” that we have right now.

In fact, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov just stressed that the “window of opportunity” that has opened up is “a small one”…"‘Compared to the hopelessness in every aspect of the previous White House chief (President Joe Biden), there is a window of opportunity today, albeit a small one,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told the Institute for U.S. and Canadian Studies in Moscow. ‘It’s therefore important to understand with what and whom we will have to deal, how best to build relations with Washington, how best to maximise opportunities and minimise risks.’

Hopefully the two sides will sit down and talk very soon, because if an agreement does not happen in the coming months there probably will not be one at all. And when talks do commence, they will be quite tricky.

Vladimir Putin has repeatedly stated that the Russians must be allowed to keep all of the territory in Ukraine that they have conquered and NATO forces will not be allowed on Ukrainian territory once the conflict is over… Putin has repeatedly said that he is ready to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine but that Russia’s current control of 20% of Ukrainian territory will have to be accepted and that Ukraine must remain neutral.

On the other side, the Ukrainians have no intention of accepting what Russia is offering. The Ukrainians want all of their territory back, and President Zelensky just told that world that he wants “a minimum of 200,000 European soldiers” on Ukrainian soil once the war has concluded…"Zelensky said “a minimum of 200,000 European soldiers will be required to secure Ukraine after any peace deal is reached.” “A minimum, otherwise it’s nothing,” he said, emphasizing the need to keep Putin in check." He also decried Russia’s demand to cut Ukraine’s army down to a fifth of its current size of 800,000 troops, saying that would leave the country defenseless.

The Russians will absolutely not accept NATO peacekeepers in Ukraine. In fact, during a recent broadcast Russian television host Vladimir Solovyov issued an ominous warning to “every mother in Europe”…"During a state TV broadcast, he furiously declared, “[The West] don’t understand that we can easily destroy all these countries, at least their capitals, which send peacekeepers….”, reports the Express US. “For us, these are not peacekeeping troops, but interventionists. And we will kill them all. The French, the English, the ******* Germans.”

Addressing his audience across 11 Russian time zones on Kremlin-controlled state TV, he said, “I just want you to translate my words carefully so that they reach the consciousness of every mother in Europe. You will send your sons and they will all be destroyed. And if that happens, thanks to your politicians, war will come to your homes.”

That is rather chilling. Unfortunately, Solovyov represents what mainstream Russians are thinking. The Russians will not accept NATO troops in Ukraine under any circumstances, and the Russians will not give any territory back. And with each passing day, the Russians are taking even more territory. It literally will take a major miracle to end this war.

But now Trump has his chance. He is the master of “the art of the deal”, and so let’s see what he can do. I just hope that he realizes that the fate of our society (and the world- CP) hangs in the balance. We’ve got one shot at this, and if an agreement cannot be reached the consequences will be apocalyptic. I know that everyone is focused on Trump’s domestic policies right now, and they are certainly important. But if he doesn’t get negotiations with Russia right, the domestic policies that he is instituting aren’t really going to matter much at all."

- https://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/

Dan, I Allegedly, "Here is Some Crazy News - Get Over It"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, 1/23/25

"Here is Some Crazy News - Get Over It"

"Get ready for some of the craziest news you’ll hear this week! From a watermelon-sized chunk of blue ice smashing through a roof (and JetBlue refusing to take responsibility 😱), to Olympic medals literally falling apart, I’m breaking it all down. Oh, and did you know your donuts at Dunkin’ aren’t even made fresh on-site? Yeah, we’re talking about that too. Plus, a cat that became an airline frequent flyer, collapsing housing markets, and a guy who performed his OWN vasectomy (yes, you read that right). It’s all here on IAllegedly! I’ve got updates on wild airline stories, jaw-dropping economic news, and downright weird happenings you won’t hear anywhere else. Please join our email list to stay connected. Let’s keep this conversation going!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Oh How It Really Is"

The O'Jays, "For The Love Of Money"

“All the money you make will never buy back your soul. ”

- Bob Dylan