"So Much Is Going On – Worst Egg Shortage Ever, New Virus In Alabama, Possible Santorini Eruption, And Tensions With China And Iran Escalate"

"So Much Is Going On – Worst Egg Shortage Ever, New Virus In Alabama, 

Possible Santorini Eruption, And Tensions With China And Iran Escalate"

by Michael Snyder

"We live at a time when global events are moving at a blistering pace. As Donald Trump and Elon Musk shake the very foundations of Washington D.C.’s giant bureaucracy, very alarming things are starting to happen all over the world. Chaos is erupting all around us, and I am entirely convinced that it is only going to intensify during the months ahead. Let me start by discussing the worst egg shortage in U.S. history.

All over the country, grocery stores and restaurants are having a really difficult time finding enough eggs right now…"American restaurants are falling victim to a national egg shortage that has already plagued grocery stores from New York City to San Francisco and sent prices to $7 a carton." I never imagined that egg prices would reach such dizzying heights in 2025, and the year has just begun.

In the Big Apple, a dozen cage-free eggs will set you back $11.99…"In New York City, prices reached as high as $11.99 for a dozen cage-free eggs at Whole Foods Inc. The national retailer placed a three-carton purchase limit on customers at some locations in the city. Customers in Nassau County on Long Island found supplies of Vital Farms pasture-raised eggs and Nellie’s free range ones sold out at Whole Foods online in the past week.

Organic eggs have been in short supply too. Over the weekend, refrigerated shelves were almost completely bare at a ShopRite in Brooklyn. The few crates left were priced at about $1 per egg. A nearby Costco was out of everything except quail eggs, according to grocery delivery app Instacart, and a Wegmans had run out of some of its store brands."

This is nuts. A dozen eggs should be less than a dollar. Or at least that was what life in America was like during the “good old days” prior to the pandemic. But now it appears that those days are gone for good.In fact, things are so bad that the Waffle House has decided to implement a “50 cent per egg surcharge”…"The Waffle House restaurant chain is putting a 50 cent per egg surcharge in place due to the biggest bird flu outbreak in a decade. The 24-7 restaurant said that the resulting egg shortage has led to a dramatic increase in its costs.

Bird flu is forcing farmers to slaughter millions of chickens a month, pushing U.S. egg prices to more than double their cost in the summer of 2023. And it appears there may be no relief in sight with Easter approaching. Once upon a time, the two egg breakfast at the Waffle House was one of the most affordable breakfast meals in America. But now you will have to shell out $7.75 for it…"The Waffle House, a reliable source of a cheap breakfast, said that its egg surcharge became effective this week and that it applies to all of its menus. The restaurant’s two-egg breakfast, which comes with toast and a side, was listed at $7.75 on Tuesday. “While we hope these price fluctuations will be short-lived we cannot predict how long this shortage will last,” the company said."

The bird flu pandemic that has been raging all over the world since early 2022 has not gone away. In fact, over the last eight weeks it has been worse then ever…“If you look at what’s happened the last eight weeks, the number of poultry operations that have gone down — and more recently, the duck operations — is absolutely stunning,” Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota told Axios.

Unfortunately, some experts are warning us that it is just a matter of time before the bird flu starts spreading among humans on a widespread basis. When that happens, the panic that we will witness will be off the charts. Are you ready for that?

Meanwhile, there is news that a different deadly virus has been discovered in the U.S. “for the first time ever”…"A potentially deadly virus has been detected in the United States for the first time ever. Scientists identified the Camp Hill virus in shrews in Alabama, sparking fears it could find its way through animal reservoirs to humans and cause a potentially wide-reaching outbreak. The Camp Hill virus belongs to a family of pathogens called henipaviruses, including the Nipah virus, a bat-borne virus that kills up to 70 percent of people it infects. The Camp Hill virus, however, has never been recorded in humans and scientists don’t know what symptoms are or the death rate."

That is certainly alarming. And let us not forget about the outbreaks of Ebola, the Marburg virus, and a new strain of the monkeypox that are causing so much alarm in central Africa. Yes, pestilences are certainly shaping up to be one of the major themes of 2025.

In Europe, another sort of a threat is making headlines. Over the past week, more than 500 earthquakes have shaken the Santorini area…"Starting on January 28, the islands of Santorini and Amorgos have been rocked by near-constant tremors of magnitudes three to four. According to the University of Athens’ earthquake monitoring tool, more than 555 earthquakes have hit the area since then."

Needless to say, these quakes have created quite a stir, and people have been evacuating from Santorini in droves… "Hundreds of people left Santorini on ferries and planes on Tuesday to reach safety in Athens as a series of quakes kept shaking the famous Greek tourist island. Hundreds of quakes have been registered every few minutes in the sea between the volcanic islands of Santorini and Amorgos, in the Aegean Sea, in recent days, prompting authorities to shut schools in Santorini and the small nearby islands of Ios, Amorgos and Anafi until Friday."

Scientists are trying to assure us that everything is just fine and that a full-blown eruption of Santorini is not likely to happen. Hopefully they are correct about that, because an enormous eruption of Santorini that occurred many centuries ago was absolutely catastrophic…"However, geologists believe a vastly more powerful eruption occurred around 1620 BC which destroyed a large part of the island, blanketed the region with ash, and is even believed to have contributed to the downfall of the mighty Minoan civilization."

We have been witnessing unusual seismic activity here in the United States as well. In fact, during the month of December there was a very alarming swarm of earthquakes along the New Madrid fault zone…"It has been an active week on the New Madrid fault line. There have been ten small earthquakes in the Bootheel this week alone, with magnitudes ranging from 1.8 to 3.0." I don’t think that a major quake is going to hit the region immediately.

But it is interesting to note that officials do intend to update the emergency plan for that area of the country…"State officials are teaming up with federal offices to plan for one of the most unpredictable disasters, earthquakes. The Arkansas Department of Emergency Management along with FEMA, Region 6, and 30 counties have teamed up to update the New Madrid Seismic Zone plan."

Before I end this piece, there are two more things that I wanted to mention. First of all, the Chinese have just announced that they will be imposing retaliatory tariffs on U.S. imports…

"China unveiled a series of retaliatory measures against the U.S. on Tuesday, shortly after U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods took effect, raising concerns of a broader trade war between the world’s two largest economies. China’s Finance Ministry said Tuesday it will impose additional tariffs of 15% on coal and liquefied natural gas imports from the U.S. and 10% higher duties on American crude oil, agricultural machinery and certain cars, starting Feb. 10." U.S. relations with China are heading downhill very fast. This will be something to watch very closely in the months ahead.

Also on Tuesday, Donald Trump signed an executive order that is intended to exert “maximum pressure” on Iran…"President Donald Trump will sign executive order on Tuesday restoring “maximum pressure” on Iran, Reuters is reporting, citing a US official. This is with the intended aim of thwarting all paths of the Islamic Republic toward a nuclear weapon. The US official also cited Iran’s “malign influence” in the Mideast region and de facto state of war with Israel, including support for regional militants who attack Israeli territory and interests.

“The official told Reuters that Trump’s directive orders the US Treasury Secretary to impose ‘maximum economic pressure’ on Iran, including sanctions and enforcement mechanisms on those violating existing sanctions. The directive is aimed at denying Iran ‘all paths to a nuclear weapon’ and countering ‘Iran’s malign influence’ according to the official.”

Of course economic pressure alone is not going to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons. In recent months they have really been ramping up their program, and it is being reported that they have actually been working on delivery systems “with a 1,800‑mile range that could reach Europe”…"Iran has allegedly been covertly developing nuclear weapons with a 1,800‑mile range that could reach Europe using North Korean designs, according to the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI).

The Telegraph in Britain reported Sunday that details provided by the NCRI indicate that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is expanding its warhead program at two sites disguised as communication satellite launch facilities. The facilities, controlled by Iran’s nuclear weapons division – the Organisation for Advanced Defense Research (SPND) – are reportedly expediting missile production."

The Trump administration is not going to allow Iran to produce nuclear weapons. Likewise, the Israeli government is not going to allow Iran to produce nuclear weapons. But Iran has already almost reached a point of no return. So I am expecting to see military action against Iran in the not too distant future. When that happens, the Iranians will go absolutely ballistic, the price of oil will go through the roof, and the entire region will be thrown into a state of chaos. At this moment, the media is focusing on so many other things. But it won’t be too long before war with Iran makes really big news, and once we reach that stage everything will change."

- https://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/

"Alert! 'US Troops To Gaza'; Trump, Ukraines Nuclear Weapons; Embargo Iran"

Full screen recommended.

Canadian Prepper, 2/4/25

"Alert! 'US Troops To Gaza'; 

Trump, Ukraines Nuclear Weapons; Embargo Iran"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: Supertramp, "Take The Long Way Home"

Full screen recommended.

Supertramp, "Take The Long Way Home"

"A Look to the Heaven"

"Riding high in the constellation of Auriga, beautiful, blue vdB 31 is the 31st object in Sidney van den Bergh's 1966 catalog of reflection nebulae. It shares this well-composed celestial still life with dark, obscuring clouds recorded in Edward E. Barnard's 1919 catalog of dark markings in the sky. All are interstellar dust clouds, blocking the light from background stars in the case of Barnard's dark nebulae. For vdB 31, the dust preferentially reflects the bluish starlight from embedded, hot, variable star AB Aurigae.

Exploring the environs of AB Aurigae with the Hubble Space Telescope has revealed the several million year young star is itself surrounded by flattened dusty disk with evidence for the ongoing formation of a planetary system. AB Aurigae is about 470 light-years away. At that distance this cosmic canvas would span about four light-years.”

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

"The Only Consequence..."

"What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end,

of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do."

- John Ruskin

Gerald Celente, "Dot-Com Bust 2.0: Ready Or Not, Here It Comes"

Strong language alert!

Gerald Celente, 2/4/25

"Dot-Com Bust 2.0: 

Ready Or Not, Here It Comes"

"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.com/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Jeremiah Babe, "The Elite Want You Poor, Weak And Depressed; Federal Workers Are On Borrowed Time"

Jeremiah Babe, 2/4/25

"The Elite Want You Poor, Weak And Depressed;

 Federal Workers Are On Borrowed Time"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

"They Really Do Want Us To Be Weak Physically, Mentally, Emotionally, 

Financially, & Spiritually So That We Will Become Dependent On Them"

Dan, I Allegedly, "AI is Closing Bank Accounts"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, 2/4/25

"AI is Closing Bank Accounts"

"AI is shaking things up in the banking world, and it's no joke – accounts are being closed, and you might be next. Are you prepared? In this video, I’m diving into how artificial intelligence is being used by banks to assess risks and shut down accounts for reasons they don’t even have to explain. From bad loans to industries banks just don’t like, no one is safe from this evolving tech. I’ll share real-life examples, the dangers of being “debanked,” and why having multiple bank accounts and emergency plans is more important than ever.

We’ll also touch on how industries like farming, gambling, and even independent contractors are being flagged as high-risk by AI systems. Don’t let this catch you off guard - I'll give you tips to protect your finances, stay prepared, and avoid being blindsided by these changes. Plus, we’ll explore whether AI could be the next Black Swan event to disrupt the financial system as we know it."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Leesburg, Florida, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

The Poet: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "What If?"

"What If?"

"What if you slept?

And what if,

In your sleep

You dreamed?

And what if,

In your dream,

You went to heaven

And there plucked

A strange and

Beautiful flower?

And what if,

When you awoke,

You had the flower

In your hand?

Ahh, what then?"

- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"Pepe Escobar: The Most Fabulous Orthodox Church of Russia"

Full screen recommended.

"Pepe Escobar: 

The Most Fabulous Orthodox Church of Russia"

"Built in honor of the 75th anniversary of the Soviet army's victory over fascist Germany, the cathedral has become a spiritual symbol of Russia, glorifying the greatest triumph of life over death. Interesting facts:

- The steps of the cathedral are made from melted-down trophy weapons of the Wehrmacht!

- The captivating architecture of the cathedral is executed in the Russo-Byzantine style;

- Two tiers, height of 96 meters, 5 domes;

- 18 bells, the weight of the largest one is 18 tons;

- The complex's area is 11,000 square meters.

The temple has become the most expensive in Russia, with a total budget exceeding 6 billion rubles (over 66.5 million dollars). The monumental main gates of the complex bear the slogan "Nobody is forgotten, nothing is forgotten."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

GoodWalkers

"Walking Moscow Region: 

The Main Cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

I'm absolutely astonished, speechless...

"Trapping Wild Pigs"

"Trapping Wild Pigs"

by Jeff Thomas

"Most of us would like to assume that we’re smarter than pigs, but are we? Let’s have a look. Pigs are pretty intelligent mammals, and forest-dwelling wild pigs are known to be especially wily. However, there’s a traditional method for trapping them. First, find a small clearing in the forest and put some corn on the ground. After you leave, the pigs will find it. They’ll also return the next day to see if there’s more.

Replace the corn every day. Once they’ve become dependent on the free food, erect a section of fence down one side of the clearing. When they get used to the fence, they’ll begin to eat the corn again. Then you erect another side of the fence.Continue until you have all four sides of the fence up, with a gate in the final side. Then, when the pigs enter the pen to feed, you close the gate.

At first, the pigs will run around, trying to escape. But if you toss in more corn, they’ll eventually calm down and go back to eating. You can then smile at the herd of pigs you’ve caught and say to yourself that this is why humans are smarter than pigs. But unfortunately, that’s not always so. In fact, the description above is the essence of trapping humans into collectivism.

Collectivism begins when a government starts offering free stuff to the population. At first, it’s something simple like free education or food stamps for the poor. But soon, political leaders talk increasingly of "entitlements" – a wonderful concept that by its very name suggests that this is something that’s owed to you, and if other politicians don’t support the idea, then they’re denying you your rights.

Once the idea of free stuff has become the norm and, more importantly, when the populace has come to depend upon it as a significant part of their "diet," more free stuff is offered. It matters little whether the new entitlements are welfare, healthcare, free college, or a guaranteed basic wage. What’s important is that the herd come to rely on the entitlements. Then, it’s time to erect the fence.

Naturally, in order to expand the volume of free stuff, greater taxation will be required. And of course, some rights will have to be sacrificed. And just like the pigs, all that’s really necessary to get humans to comply is to make the increase in fencing gradual. People focus more on the corn than the fence. Once they’re substantially dependent, it’s time to shut the gate.

What this looks like in collectivism is that new restrictions come into play that restrict freedoms. You may be told that you cannot expatriate without paying a large penalty. You may be told that your bank deposit may be confiscated in an emergency situation. You may even be told that the government has the right to deny you the freedom to congregate, or even to go to work, for whatever trumped-up reason.

And of course, that’s the point at which the pigs run around, hoping to escape the new restrictions. But more entitlements are offered, and in the end, the entitlements are accepted as being more valuable than the freedom of self-determination.

Even at this point, most people will remain compliant. But there’s a final stage: The corn ration is "temporarily" cut due to fiscal problems. Then it’s cut again… and again. The freedoms are gone for good and the entitlements are then slowly removed. This is how it’s possible to begin with a very prosperous country, such as Argentina, Venezuela or the US, and convert it into an impoverished collectivist state. It’s a gradual process and the pattern plays out the same way time and again. It succeeds because human nature remains the same. Collectivism eventually degrades into uniform poverty for 95% of the population, with a small elite who live like kings.

After World War II, the Western world was flying high. There was tremendous prosperity and opportunity for everyone. The system was not totally free market, but enough so that anyone who wished to work hard and take responsibility for himself had the opportunity to prosper. But very early – in the 1960s – The Great Society became the byword for government-provided largesse for all those who were in need – free stuff for those who were disadvantaged in one way or another.

Most Americans, who were then flush with prosperity, were only too happy to share with those who were less fortunate. Unfortunately, they got suckered into the idea that, rather than give voluntarily on an individual basis, they’d entrust their government to become the distributor of largesse, and to pay for it through taxation. Big mistake. From that point on, all that was necessary was to keep redefining who was disadvantaged and to then provide more free stuff.

Few people were aware that the first sections of fence were being erected. But today, it may be easier to understand that the fence has been completed and the gate is closing. It may still be possible to make a hasty exit, but we shall find very few people dashing for the gate. After all, to expatriate to another country would mean leaving all that free stuff – all that security.

At this point, the idea of foraging in the forest looks doubtful. Those who have forgotten how to rely on themselves will understandably fear making an exit. They’ll not only have to change their dependency habits; they’ll have to think for themselves in future. But make no mistake about it – what we’re witnessing today in what was formerly the Free World is a transition into collectivism. It will be a combination of corporatism and socialism, with the remnants of capitalism. The overall will be collectivism.

The gate is closing, and as stated above, some members of the herd will cause a fuss as they watch the gate closing. There will be some confusion and civil unrest, but in the end, the great majority will settle down once again to their corn. Only a few will have both the insight and temerity necessary to make a dash for the gate as it’s now closing.

This was true in Argentina when the government was still generous with the largesse, and it was true in Venezuela when the entitlements were at their peak. It is now true of the US as the final transition into collectivism begins. Rather than make the dash for the gate, the great majority will instead look down at their feed and say, "This is still the best country in the world," and continue eating the corn."

- https://internationalman.com/

"18 Life-Learnings from 18 Years of The Marginalian"

"18 Life-Learnings from 18 

Years of The Marginalian"

by Maria Popova

"Somewhere along the way, you realize that no one will teach you how to live your own life - not your parents or your idols, not the philosophers or the poets, not your liberal arts education or your twelve-step program, not church or therapy or Tolstoy. No matter how valuable any of that guidance, how pertinent any of that wisdom, in the end you discover that you make the path of life only by walking it with your own two feet under the overstory of your own consciousness - that singular miracle never repeated in all the history and future of the universe, never fully articulable to another.

This is all to say: Ever since I first began reflecting on what I have learned about living with each passing year of writing The Marginalian (because writing is the best means I have of metabolizing my own life), these learnings have always been profoundly personal - not overt advice to anyone else, but notes to myself about what I have needed to learn and keep relearning. I write them and share them for the same reason I read - so that we may feel less alone in our individual experience, which is just a commonplace fractal of the total human experience. (“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world,” James Baldwin reflected in his finest interview, “but then you read.”)

On this 18th anniversary of the birth of The Marginalian, here are all of these learnings so far as they were originally written in years past, beginning with the present year’s - the most challenging and most transformative of my life.

18. How you love, how you give, and how you suffer is just about the sum of who you are. Everything in life is a subset of one or a combinatorial function of all three. Seek people who love and give generously, who have the strength to suffer without causing damage. (Only strong people are safe people, the measure of strength being not the absence of vulnerability - and “weakness” is just a judgment term for vulnerability - but the ability to carry one’s vulnerability with such self-awareness and valor so as not to harm other lives.) Seek to be such a person.

17. Everything is eventually recompensed, every effort of the heart eventually requited, though not always in the form you imagined or hoped for. What redeems all of life’s disappointments, what makes all of its heartbreaks bearable, is the ability to see how the dissolution of a dream becomes the fertile compost of possibility. Buried between parentheses in the middle of Leaves of Grass is Whitman’s testament to this elemental truth, which turned his greatest heartbreak into his greatest masterpiece:

"Sometimes with one I love I fill myself with rage for fear I effuse unreturn’d love,

But now I think there is no unreturn’d love, the pay is certain one way or another,

(I loved a certain person ardently and my love was not return’d,

Yet out of that I have written these songs.)"

16. Unself. Nothing is more tedious than self-concern -  the antipode of wonder.

15. Outgrow yourself.

14. Choose joy. Choose it like a child chooses the shoe to put on the right foot, the crayon to paint a sky. Choose it at first consciously, effortfully, pressing against the weight of a world heavy with reasons for sorrow, restless with need for action. Feel the sorrow, take the action, but keep pressing the weight of joy against it all, until it becomes mindless, automated, like gravity pulling the stream down its course; until it becomes an inner law of nature. If Viktor Frankl can exclaim “yes to life, in spite of everything!” - and what an everything he lived through - then so can any one of us amid the rubble of our plans, so trifling by comparison. Joy is not a function of a life free of friction and frustration, but a function of focus - an inner elevation by the fulcrum of choice. So often, it is a matter of attending to what Hermann Hesse called, as the world was about to come unworlded by its first global war, “the little joys”; so often, those are the slender threads of which we weave the lifeline that saves us.

Delight in the age-salted man on the street corner waiting for the light to change, his age-salted dog beside him, each inclined toward the other with the angular subtlety of absolute devotion.

Delight in the little girl zooming past you on her little bicycle, this fierce emissary of the future, rainbow tassels waving from her handlebars and a hundred beaded braids spilling from her golden helmet.

Delight in the snail taking an afternoon to traverse the abyssal crack in the sidewalk for the sake of pasturing on a single blade of grass.

Delight in the tiny new leaf, so shy and so shamelessly lush, unfurling from the crooked stem of the parched geranium.

I think often of this verse from Jane Hirshfield’s splendid poem “The Weighing”:

"So few grains of happiness

measured against all the dark

and still the scales balance."

Yes, except we furnish both the grains and the scales. I alone can weigh the blue of my sky, you of yours.

13. In any bond of depth and significance, forgive, forgive, forgive. And then forgive again. The richest relationships are lifeboats, but they are also submarines that descend to the darkest and most disquieting places, to the unfathomed trenches of the soul where our deepest shames and foibles and vulnerabilities live, where we are less than we would like to be. Forgiveness is the alchemy by which the shame transforms into the honor and privilege of being invited into another’s darkness and having them witness your own with the undimmed light of love, of sympathy, of nonjudgmental understanding. Forgiveness is the engine of buoyancy that keeps the submarine rising again and again toward the light, so that it may become a lifeboat once more.

12. Because Year 12 is the year in which I finished writing "Figuring" (though it emanates from my entire life), and because the sentiment, which appears in the prelude, is the guiding credo to which the rest of the book is a 576-page footnote, I will leave it as it stands: There are infinitely many kinds of beautiful lives.

11. A reflection originally offered by way of a wonderful poem about pi: Question your maps and models of the universe, both inner and outer, and continually test them against the raw input of reality. Our maps are still maps, approximating the landscape of truth from the territories of the knowable - incomplete representational models that always leave more to map, more to fathom, because the selfsame forces that made the universe also made the figuring instrument with which we try to comprehend it.

10. Don’t just resist cynicism - fight it actively. Fight it in yourself, for this ungainly beast lies dormant in each of us, and counter it in those you love and engage with, by modeling its opposite. Cynicism often masquerades as nobler faculties and dispositions, but is categorically inferior. Unlike that great Rilkean life-expanding doubt, it is a contracting force. Unlike critical thinking, that pillar of reason and necessary counterpart to hope, it is inherently uncreative, unconstructive, and spiritually corrosive. Life, like the universe itself, tolerates no stasis - in the absence of growth, decay usurps the order. Like all forms of destruction, cynicism is infinitely easier and lazier than construction. There is nothing more difficult yet more gratifying in our society than living with sincerity and acting from a place of largehearted, constructive, rational faith in the human spirit, continually bending toward growth and betterment. This remains the most potent antidote to cynicism. Today, especially, it is an act of courage and resistance.

9. Don’t be afraid to be an idealist. There is much to be said for our responsibility as creators and consumers of that constant dynamic interaction we call culture - which side of the fault line between catering and creating are we to stand on? The commercial enterprise is conditioning us to believe that the road to success is paved with catering to existing demands - give the people cat GIFs, the narrative goes, because cat GIFs are what the people want. But E.B. White, one of our last great idealists, was eternally right when he asserted half a century ago that the role of the writer is “to lift people up, not lower them down” - a role each of us is called to with increasing urgency, whatever cog we may be in the machinery of society. Supply creates its own demand. Only by consistently supplying it can we hope to increase the demand for the substantive over the superficial - in our individual lives and in the collective dream called culture.

8. Seek out what magnifies your spirit. Patti Smith, in discussing William Blake and her creative influences, talks about writers and artists who magnified her spirit - it’s a beautiful phrase and a beautiful notion. Who are the people, ideas, and books that magnify your spirit? Find them, hold on to them, and visit them often. Use them not only as a remedy once spiritual malaise has already infected your vitality but as a vaccine administered while you are healthy to protect your radiance.

7. “Expect anything worthwhile to take a long time.” This is borrowed from the wise and wonderful Debbie Millman, for it’s hard to better capture something so fundamental yet so impatiently overlooked in our culture of immediacy. The myth of the overnight success is just that - a myth - as well as a reminder that our present definition of success needs serious retuning. The flower doesn’t go from bud to blossom in one spritely burst and yet, as a culture, we’re disinterested in the tedium of the blossoming. But that’s where all the real magic unfolds in the making of one’s character and destiny.

6. Presence is far more intricate and rewarding an art than productivity. Ours is a culture that measures our worth as human beings by our efficiency, our earnings, our ability to perform this or that. The cult of productivity has its place, but worshipping at its altar daily robs us of the very capacity for joy and wonder that makes life worth living - for, as Annie Dillard memorably put it, “how we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”

5. As Maya Angelou famously advised, when people tell you who they are, believe them. Just as important, however, when people try to tell you who you are, don’t believe them. You are the only custodian of your own integrity, and the assumptions made by those that misunderstand who you are and what you stand for reveal a great deal about them and absolutely nothing about you.

4. Build pockets of stillness into your life. Meditate. Go for walks. Ride your bike going nowhere in particular. There is a creative purpose to daydreaming, even to boredom. The best ideas come to us when we stop actively trying to coax the muse into manifesting and let the fragments of experience float around our unconscious mind in order to click into new combinations. Without this essential stage of unconscious processing, the entire flow of the creative process is broken. Most important, sleep. Besides being the greatest creative aphrodisiac, sleep also affects our every waking moment, dictates our social rhythm, and even mediates our negative moods. Be as religious and disciplined about your sleep as you are about your work. We tend to wear our ability to get by on little sleep as some sort of badge of honor that validates our work ethic. But what it really is is a profound failure of self-respect and of priorities. What could possibly be more important than your health and your sanity, from which all else springs?

3. Be generous. Be generous with your time and your resources and with giving credit and, especially, with your words. It’s so much easier to be a critic than a celebrator. Always remember there is a human being on the other end of every exchange and behind every cultural artifact being critiqued. To understand and be understood, those are among life’s greatest gifts, and every interaction is an opportunity to exchange them.

2. Do nothing for prestige or status or money or approval alone. As Paul Graham observed, “prestige is like a powerful magnet that warps even your beliefs about what you enjoy. It causes you to work not on what you like, but what you’d like to like.” Those extrinsic motivators are fine and can feel life-affirming in the moment, but they ultimately don’t make it thrilling to get up in the morning and gratifying to go to sleep at night - and, in fact, they can often distract and detract from the things that do offer those deeper rewards.

1. Allow yourself the uncomfortable luxury of changing your mind. Cultivate that capacity for “negative capability.” We live in a culture where one of the greatest social disgraces is not having an opinion, so we often form our “opinions” based on superficial impressions or the borrowed ideas of others, without investing the time and thought that cultivating true conviction necessitates. We then go around asserting these donned opinions and clinging to them as anchors to our own reality. It’s enormously disorienting to simply say, “I don’t know.” But it’s infinitely more rewarding to understand than to be right - even if that means changing your mind about a topic, an ideology, or, above all, yourself."

- https://mailchi.mp/themarginalian/

"How Easy It Seems..."

“A craven can be as brave as any man, when there is nothing to fear. And we all do our duty, when there is no cost to it. How easy it seems then, to walk the path of honor. Yet soon or late in every man’s life comes a day when it is not easy, a day when he must choose.”

- George R.R. Martin

o

“Life has no victims. There are no victims in this life. No one has the right to point fingers at his/her past and blame it for what he/she is today. We do not have the right to point our finger at someone else and blame that person for how we treat others, today. Don’t hide in the corner, pointing fingers at your past. Don’t sit under the table, talking about someone who has hurt you. Instead, stand up and face your past! Face your fears! Face your pain! And stomach it all! You may have to do so kicking and screaming and throwing fits and crying – but by all means – face it! This life makes no room for cowards.”

- C. Joybell C.

"How It Really Is"

Adventures With Danno, "Major Changes At Dollar Tree"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures With Danno, 2/4/25

"Major Changes At Dollar Tree"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

Frugal Recipes, 2/4/25

"They Don’t Want You to Notice… 

But These 8 Foods Are Disappearing!"

"Surging demand, climate extremes, and shifting trade regulations are quietly driving these everyday essentials off store shelves faster than you might think. In this video, we dig into the unseen threats that put chocolate, coffee, avocados, and other staples at serious risk—and explain why big brands might not be eager to draw attention to the growing shortages. Find out the hidden factors behind their looming scarcity, plus what steps you can take right now to brace your pantry for potential supply shocks. Don’t wait until the price hikes and empty shelves make it impossible to find these beloved foods. Stay informed, stay prepared."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Bill Bonner, "All Quiet on the Canadian Front"

A ‘Mountie’ guards the Canadian frontier.

"All Quiet on the Canadian Front"

If there are tariffs, Americans are going to pay them -

 in the form of higher prices, fewer choices and growing poverty. 

Tariffs are just another way to get wealth from 'The People' to the elites.

by Bill Bonner

Baltimore, Maryland - "The trumpets blew. The bands were warmed up. Soldiers said goodbye to their sweethearts… hoping to come home heroes. War! "It’s the dumbest trade war in history,” says the Wall Street Journal, perhaps exaggerating. President McKinley’s tariffs were pretty dumb too. And let’s not forget Smoot and Hawley.

The latest irruption began on Saturday with bluff and bluster, as all wars do. Donald Trump said the foreigners were ‘ripping us off.’ He promised a swift victory that would make us all ‘as rich as Hell.’ Mr. Trump thinks tariffs will be a big winner because we’ll be taxing, not only residents of the US, but foreigners too. Why the foreigners will be willing to pay taxes to the US has yet to be explained.

But if there are any tariffs, Americans themselves are going to pay them - in the form of higher prices, fewer choices and growing poverty. Like taxes and inflation, tariffs are just another way to get wealth from ‘The People’ to the elites.

One of those elites was licking its chops yesterday. Here’s Fox: "'America First': Largest steel producer in US announces support of Trump tariffs." "Nucor applauds the first steps taken by President Trump in his America First Trade Agenda," Leon J. Topalian, the chair, president and CEO Nucor Corp., wrote in a statement dated Friday that was obtained by Fox News Digital. "We look forward to working with President Trump to enforce our trade laws and strengthen American manufacturing!"  Classic win-lose politics. The few - steel company owners, its unions and its lobbyists - win. The rest of us pay higher prices.

But wait. What’s this? We were just getting a case of war fever… our temperature rising as we awaited the Mounties attacking from the North, while Pancho Villa charged across the Rio Grande… ’… when the wily Trump called it off. The Washington Post: "Trump halts tariffs on Mexico as it rushes troops to border." In a dramatic, last-minute move, the Trump administration agreed Monday to pause sweeping tariffs on Mexico for a month while the two sides hammer out an agreement on security and trade, the U.S. and Mexican leaders announced. President Claudia Sheinbaum said on X that in a “good conversation” with President Donald Trump, Mexico committed to rushing 10,000 national guard troops to its border to try to block the flow of drugs into the United States - especially fentanyl."

An hour or so late, the New York Post: "Canada announces US tariffs on hold for 30 days after Justin Trudeau holds ‘good phone call with President Trump’." “Canada has agreed to ensure we have a secure Northern Border, and to finally end the deadly scourge of drugs like Fentanyl that have been pouring into our Country,” Trump announced on Truth Social, following the call with Trudeau. “Canada will implement their $1.3 Billion Border plan.”

Whew! It turned out that the trade war was not a trade war at all… but just a new theater in the drug war! The feds have been fighting since the ‘war on drugs’ was declared in 1971. That’s more than half a century in the trenches at a cost of more than $1 trillion. We’ve grown old waiting for the victory parade. It never comes. Instead, there are said to be 1.5 million arrests for illegal drugs annually… a half a million people in jail on drug charges… and 80% of all opioids produced in the world are consumed by Americans.

But it’s an ill wind breaking across the Potomac that does no one good. The War on Drugs enriched both cops and robbers. Drug dealers enjoyed higher margins - since the feds, in effect, placed “tariffs” on drug imports, restricting supply. Private prison companies, too, enjoyed a huge boost. And the law enforcement industry at all levels - public and private - gained power and wealth they had never before thought possible. (The Drug Enforcement Agency has nearly 5,000 special agents, many of whom are bumping up against the fed’s $191,000 pay cap.)

Yes, there are winners and losers in trade wars, drug wars, and hot wars too. The winners are the usual ones - the ones who make campaign contributions and have lobbyists to whisper in the commander-in-chief’s ear. The losers are the usual ones too - ordinary citizens…the collateral damage, who pay higher taxes, higher prices…and some of them, the highest price of all. And now, with Field Marshal Trump feigning an attack on the right, while he smashes into the enemy from the rear… zigging and zagging… Leaving almost everyone confused and aghast…All we know for sure is that there are bound to be more casualties."

- https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/

"Is It True That Only Moral People Can Be Free?"

"Is It True That Only Moral People Can Be Free?"

by Paul Rosenberg

"People sometimes talk about freedom requiring morality and even religion. The famous quote along these lines is from John Adams, who wrote that the US constitution was made for “a moral and religious people,” going on to say that it’s unfit for any other kind. Nothing against Mr. Adams, but that passage is a mere assertion. It says nothing about why it might be true that freedom requires a moral populace. Such assertions really ought to be supported, and so far as I’ve seen, they haven’t been. Today I’ll address that void.

Civilization, Costs And Sustainability: Any group of people living together must maintain certain norms. If a civilization or society doesn’t suppress theft, murder, rape and so on, all the decent people will walk away from it, leaving behind a carnival of the damned. And so the question is how to keep bad conduct out of any given civilization. And there are fundamentally two ways to do this:

• Produce a populace that is safe and beneficial on the inside.

• Force people who are not internally reformed to behave well anyway.

And here’s the big difference between these two options:The first is cheap, requiring a minimal level of enforcement. It is a high-trust culture, featuring, as its fundamental units, people with civilization inside themselves.The second is immensely expensive, requiring massive enforcement. These are low-trust cultures. And since enforcement is its basic operation, enforcement will expand into one new area after another, until it chokes the society to death.

Civilizations of the first type may be overcome by violent neighbors, but aside from that, they are sustainable. Civilizations of the second type are not. They become predator-prey cultures, where armies of regulators overfeed, until the operation collapses. (Examples of the first type are the Minoans, Phoenicians, Hebrews, the Roman republic and Christian Europe. Examples of the second are the Roman Empire, the Athenian empire and the USSR.)

You can see the same thing at the family level: Healthy families treat each member as a distinct and valuable individual. Come what may, we know that we can trust members of our family. Despite our sometimes legitimate gripes, most families interact with consideration, or at least loyalty, and with no external enforcement required. We know, for example, that we can trust an older sibling (or aunt or grandparent) to take care of our infant. Because of such things, we can enjoy the benefits of high-trust living, where norms are held for internal reasons. Again, this embodies having civilization inside ourselves.

The alternative would be the enforcement of everything, which happens in unhealthy families, just as it does in troops of primates: Do what the leader says or be slapped down. You can also bear in mind that when we can’t trust others, we are forced into hyper-vigilance, with its debilitating mental overload. That’s not sustainable either.

So, we can either build civilization into ourselves and our children, or else we can attempt to enforce it, which leads inevitably to tyranny. While there can be any number of variations on these themes, and time-lags between one and the other, once you accept the model of paid enforcers making everyone obey rules created by a superior class, liberty is doomed. Mr. Adams, then, was correct in his implication that liberty requires morality, and the “cost of civilization” noted above is precisely why.

Okay, But Religion? Nothing we’ve said above establishes the necessity of religion. We’ve established that having civilization inside of us is necessary, but that’s all. That said, religion is a far more potent force in human affairs than enforcement. To make that clear, please consider this: People don’t commit suicide over breaking petty laws or stiffing the IRS. But they do commit suicide over their sins. Enforcements, then, threaten and affect the outer man. Religion affects the inner man, which is a far more powerful thing.

None of this is to say that religion is a pure and pristine thing. (Which is something religious people understand all too well.) But it is a powerful thing: It organizes and improves human interiors in ways that “do what we say or we’ll hurt you” never has and never will. And it’s of some interest that the religions of the West, Judaism and Christianity, differentiate themselves from the enforcement model quite overtly. This is often muddied in the present day, as religious leaders suck up to power, but as these religions formed it was quite otherwise.

Consider that Judaism was very clear that justice stood above the ruler (any ruler) and that God spoke to the humble, not to the mighty. Compare that to the assumptions of the enforcement model. And Christianity, in its early days, was fully committed to internal improvement and opposed to the enforcement of norms. Not only does St. Paul rage against people “going to law” with one another, but in another place he notes that “The law was not made for the righteous, but for the unrighteous.” In other words (and as he labors long to explain), those with goodness inside themselves are free from the law… are apart from the enforcement model.

More could be said here, but we’re straying from our primary point, which is this: When it comes to creating and sustaining a moral civilization, no one has found a better way than religion. Bear in mind that I’m not authorizing any specific religion, or even religion per se. I’m merely saying that to keep millions of people focused on morality, over generations and centuries, the only viable method we see in the historical record is religion. Could something better be found? Perhaps so, but we haven’t yet seen it in action.

A religious populace is a group of people who focus on the most fundamental issues, directly, and usually at least once per week. On top of that, the religions of the West, Judaism and Christianity, are centered around the emulation of, and approach to, a purely good deity. Whatever quibbles we may have with these religions (doctrine, implementation or whatever), the fact that they focus millions of people on virtues, and with great regularity, cannot be seriously challenged. Note also that enforcement-based civilizations inevitably oppose religions centered on internal improvement; or else they swallow them and turn them toward their own ends.

And So… In fairness, it must be said that the people who go about proclaiming the need of religion very often do it for self-serving reasons. That, however, is just a human problem: most of the people who proclaim the sanctity of enforcement do it for equally bad or worse reasons. Still, we’re left with two facts:

• Without pervasive morality, freedom cannot be built or sustained. (There can be a period of riding the coattails of previous generations.)

• Religion, while not essentially necessary, is the only long-term solution to the cost of civilization problem that we find in the historical record.

And so Mr. Adams was correct, even if he didn’t explain it: Consistent moral focus is what creates a moral populace. These will be more-moral or mostly-moral people, of course (not purely moral), but that’s enough to make freedom a practical arrangement."

- https://freemansperspective.com/

o

Reality of course is another matter...

MORALS? This is 'Murica, fool! "Morals? We ain't got no morals. 

We don't need no morals. I don't have to show you any stinking morals!"

Concept gleefully stolen from here:

"The Destroyer Of Worlds"

"The Destroyer Of Worlds"

by The ZMan

"When Trump first appeared on the scene as a politician, a brilliant observer compared him to a character in the Asimov novels called The Mule. This was a character called the “destroyer of worlds” because he literally destroyed whole worlds, but he also destroyed the conception of the world. In fact, his very existence was a threat to accepted understanding of the universe, because the universally accepted conception of the universe precluded the existence of The Mule.

This has been the issue since Trump arrived on the scene. The people atop the post-Cold War world and the post-Cold War world itself, were all based on the assumption that a political character like Trump was impossible. The days of populist, nationalist and picaresque political actors was done. The present and future belonged to the Davos persons, the boys and girls who were produced by and benefitted the most from the managerial ideology that dominated the West.

What Trump’s success in 2016 represented was the nullification of the managerial order because according to the logic of managerialism, men like Trump had no place in the system, so they could never be a threat to the system. Instead, they were marginalized to the fringes of managerial life, the place where things are made, fixed, and created to keep the mechanics of the world going. They had no place in the world where decisions were made by the great and the good.

It is easy to forget that the best and the brightest smirked at the very idea of Trump running in the Republican primary. They were sure he was just another foolish businessman from the fringes, who thought he understood how things worked, but would quickly learn he was in over his head. Instead, the destroyer of worlds first destroyed the Republican primary. and the conservative ecosystem that controlled it, then he destroyed the system itself.

Like all monster movies, the story of this monster had that period where the good guys think they finally killed the beast, only to find out that it was still alive. In the aftermath of the 2020 election, the regime was sure they were done with Trump. Then he reappeared, determined to run again in 2024. It turns out that the destroyer of worlds can never be destroyed because his mere existence depends entirely on his fulfilling his mission as the destroyer of worlds.

Thus, we have entered the final chapter of The Mule. The first two weeks of Trump’s return to Washington have been revolutionary. Things not thought possible are happening on a daily basis. The latest happening is the assault on the financial structure of the neocon war machine. Right now, members of Elon Musk’s team are combing through the records of USAID, the hive mind of the NGO collective that has controlled American foreign policy for decades.

Few appreciate the enormity of what is happening right now with the vast not-for-profit network held together by government entities like USAID. Suddenly, their very existence is threatened due to the suspension of funds from the American government, but also by the revelations to come about what they do with that money. There is a reason Elon Musk is posting about USDAID being a criminal organization. They were doing much more than keeping the Kagan family in donuts.

The vast informal network of formal and informal power centers that make up the real government, the shadow government, is now under assault. This is something that could never happen according to the logic of managerialism. With the owners of American society marginalized and the workers under control of the synopticon, who could possibly challenge this system? The answer is The Mule, the figure who should not exist in the managerial system.

It is hard to imagine it possible, but this is the calm before the storm. The tariff war with Canada and Mexico is just getting started. The system of free trade created forty years ago, which benefitted the ruling elites of all three countries, but was paid for by the people of all three countries, is now under direct assault. It turns out that the great sucking sound Ross Perot warned of thirty years ago was not a sucking sound after all, but an early warning of something terrible to come.

Team Trump is moving quickly to dismantle the post-Cold War world and the understanding of it. Marco Rubio is out giving speeches about how the unipolar world was an anomaly and we are returning to a multipolar world. On the domestic front Trump’s team is quickly working to dismantle and anathematize the bizarre social fads inflicted on the people by the managerial class. When the president blames diversity for a plane crash, the world has truly changed.

It is a bit ironic that the concept of The Mule was created by a man who was the creation of a world that emerged in the 20th century America. The post-national, post-liberal world that arose with the American empire was only possible with the evolution of the managerial ideology. Progressivism evolved to give managerialism moral agency, and together they made the American empire and for a while, came to defined the post-Cold War world, but now that is coming to a close.

What we are seeing is the long-anticipated end of the 20th century. Russia and China have moved into the 21st century, but America and the West have remained moored to the prior century, convulsively resisting any attempt to abandon it. That world, however, is gone and now, thanks to The Mule, it is being destroyed. For now, the destruction is the show, but soon, what comes next is what will matter. Everyone needs to remember that The Mule is the destroyer of worlds, not the creator of them."

- https://thezman.com/