Full screen recommended.
Market Gains, 2/17/25
"Meta Firing 4000 Workers as
Tech Workers Have 0 Jobs"
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Market Gains, 2/17/25
"Redfin Fires Hundreds of Workers as
Tech Sector Collapses"
Comments here:
So, we rise from the rubble...
StatCounter
Monday, February 17, 2025
Adventures With Danno, "Kroger: This Was A Bad idea, But Here We Go"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 2/17/25
"Kroger: This Was A Bad idea,
But Here We Go"
Comments here:
Jim Kunstler, "Krakatoa Blows"
"Krakatoa Blows"
by Jim Kunstler
“'Save democracy' is code phrase for a club of delusional people who belong
to a delusional group that does delusional things to justify their delusions.”
- Wendy Williamson
"You’ve got to wonder who at CBS-News thinks it’s a good idea to quadruple down on mendacious grandstanding when the network faces a $20-billion lawsuit from Donald Trump - for assisting Kamala Harris’s campaign (aka election interference) - while the FCC under new Commissioner Brendan Carr questions the network’s license to operate on the grounds of “news distortion” and violation of the broadcast news fairness doctrine.
So, on Sunday night February 16, CBS’s flagship news show, 60-Minutes, pitched a doubleheader of knowingly faked-up feature pieces intended to scramble American minds to benefit the Party of Chaos and its manager, the US Intel Blob. The first piece was a sob-story on how sad and unjust DOGE’s deconstruction of the USAID money-laundering operation is. Yeah, boo-hoo. They interviewed several part-timers and consultants pretending to be long-term employees of the outfit. Complete horse-shit, and they knew it. What really matters is that a whole lot of bureaucrat grifters (and politicians) won’t get paid anymore...and the Blob won’t be able to soften-up faraway nations for plunder with its color revolutions and other hijinks.
The second piece was a ringing endorsement of Germany’s current censorship campaign, arresting ordinary citizens for mean tweets. Their camera crew followed the German Gedankenpolizei entering apartments and seizing cell phones. The viewing audience was asked to shed tears for German Green Party politician, Renate Künast, who got dissed on “X” (“misogynist comments” and insults) - the same week that an Islamic immigrant maniac drove a car into a Munich crowd on-purpose, injuring 39 people, including two dead (one, a child). No mention of that incident on 60-Minutes, or, more generally, that illegal immigration is the big taboo subject behind all the censorship.
CBS actually preceded that gaslighting job with a bit of Sunday morning constructed Orwellian fake syllogistic idiocy by Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan, who said that free speech caused the Holocaust against the Jews. Her reasoning: free speech allowed the Nazis to gain power, therefore...Auschwitz...therefore, free speech is bad. Guest, Sec’y of State Marco Rubio, told her that he could not associate himself with her thesis. In fact, once in power, the Nazis totally controlled speech and news and did not permit other political parties to even exist. All of this, you understand, is just deliberate Gramscian distortion-and-perversion of language - black is white, up is down - to defeat any attempt at coherent public debate today.
The conclusion you might draw from all this is that CBS is terrified of free speech, and is trying desperately to hide the Blob’s long-running criminal racketeering activity - which they have aided and abetted for years and deserve to lose their license over, plus pay billions in penalties, and go out of business - a rather existential predicament.
Reality distortion is no longer working so well with Mr. Trump in the White House. Here is what’s behind the USAID brouhaha and why it matters. By 2016, the Blob had become a fullblown, independent, parasitical organism on US governance. It had several purposes: 1) to keep itself in perpetual power by paying off its voting blocs of “the poor and marginalized,” 2) to pay its corps of bureaucrat managers (of the “poor and marginalized”) handsome salaries to win their everlasting allegiance, and 3) to pay-off elected officials to keep voting the money flows for all that. All this created a massive class of Democratic Party activists dedicated to overthrowing the republic so as to usher-in their social equity nirvana. And all that was sheer hubris. More recently, nemesis arrived on the scene and all this institutional Blob power had to be diverted to a massive ass-covering operation, now in full, florid failure. And, worst of all for the Blobists, evidence of actual crime is accruing at a frightful, fast pace.
With the confirmation of Kash Patel later this week, Mr. Trump’s agency team will be complete. What follows will be a Krakatoa of revelation, drastically altering the climate of US politics for years to come. You should learn exactly how many FBI and CIA agents were moiling and roiling in the J-6 mob. You’ll find out what the J-6 DNC pipe bomb caper was all about. You’ll find out why RussiaGate was never properly investigated or adjudicated... how the Adam Schiff/Alexander Vindman/Eric Ciaramella impeachment op worked...how the Clinton Foundation made a zillion dollars...where all the money went that got poured into Ukraine... and much much more.
You will also soon start getting some actually reliable information out of CDC, FDA, NIH, and other public health agencies. Do you suppose that Tony Fauci is the only person who must answer for Covid-19? I expect many of the following persons who were high-ranking officials - nearly all of them completely obscure to the public - to be asked under oath what they thought they were doing:
Robert R. Redfield, M.D. — Director of the CDC
H. Clifford Lane, M.D. — Deputy Director for Clinical Research and Special Projects, Clinical Director, NIAID
Sarah W. Read, M.D., M.H.S. — NIAID Principal Deputy Director
Jill R. Harper, Ph.D. — NIAID Deputy Director, Science Management
Carl W. Dieffenbach, Ph.D. — Director, Division of AIDS
Daniel Rotrosen, M.D. — Director, Division of Allergy, Immunology, and Transplantation
Emily Erbelding, M.D., M.P.H. — Director, Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases
Anne Schuchat, M.D. — Principal Deputy Director, CDC
Sherri A. Berger, Ph.D. — Chief Operating Officer, CDC
Debra Houry, M.D., M.P.H. — Acting Director, CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control
Nancy Messonnier, M.D. — Director, National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases
Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D. — Director, NIH
John Jernigan, M.D., M.S. — Director, Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion
Ruth J. Etzel, M.D., Ph.D. —Director, National Center for Environmental Health/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR)
Dana Meaney-Delman, M.D. — Acting Director, Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response
Lawrence A. Tabak, D.D.S., Ph.D. — Principal Deputy Director, NIH
Joshua A. Gordon, M.D., Ph.D. — Director, National Institute of Mental Health
Walter J. Koroshetz, M.D. — Director, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke
Gary H. Gibbons, M.D. — Director, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute
Richard J. Hodes, M.D. — Director, National Institute on Aging
Shannon N. Zenk, Ph.D., M.P.H., R.N. — Director, National Institute of Nursing Research
I’m sure many more names can be added to the list. They must have known, and found out early on, that Covid-19 was created with US Government grants (possibly through DARPA), that the mRNA vaccines were ineffective and harmful, that the lockdowns were shuck and jive, and that public health officials were paid a lot of money in royalties while all this was going on. If they haven’t shredded or deleted the info - and it’s still possible that Tulsi Gabbard can find it, anyway - the gaslight will finally get turned off and the sunlight will shine in. You know this is going to happen."
o
"Economic Market Snapshot 2/17/25"
"Economic Market Snapshot 2/17/25"
○
.jpeg)
Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...
Only the consequences are real - to you!
○
"It's a Big Club, and you ain't in it.
You and I are not in the Big Club."
- George Carlin
o
Market Data Center, Live Updates:
○
○
Comprehensive, essential truth.
○
Financial Stress Index
"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI) is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: credit, equity valuation, funding, safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United States, other advanced economies, and emerging markets."
○
Job cuts and much more.
○
○
○
○
○
○
Commentary, highly recommended:
○
"The more I see of the monied classes,
the better I understand the guillotine."
- George Bernard Shaw
○
Oh yeah... beyond words. Any I know anyway...
○
And now... The End Game...
o
Sunday, February 16, 2025
"Douglas MacGregor: Israel & Iran: Why The Conflict Will Lead to WW3, Ukraine War Decided"
Soar Financially, 2/16/25
"Douglas MacGregor: Israel & Iran:
Why The Conflict Will Lead to WW3, Ukraine War Decided"
"In this episode of Soar Financially, Kai Hoffmann speaks with Colonel Douglas MacGregor, a renowned geopolitical expert. They discuss the rising tensions between Israel and Iran, the ongoing war in Ukraine, and the shifting balance of global power. MacGregor shares his insights on why the U.S. is closer to disaster than many realize, how NATO is weakening, and why a major regional conflict could erupt by March. They also explore China’s strategic position, Russia’s growing influence, and whether the U.S. is prepared for the challenges ahead. Is NATO on the path to extinction? Will the Middle East crisis spiral into a WW3? And what does this all mean for global stability in 2025?"
Comments here:
"$100 For Dinner: Families Are Cracking Under Inflation; U.S. Soldiers Going Hungry; Ft. Knox Audit"
Jeremiah Babe, 2/16/25
"$100 For Dinner: Families Are Cracking Under Inflation;
U.S. Soldiers Going Hungry; Ft. Knox Audit"
Comments here:
"A Look to the Heavens"
"NGC 1333 is seen in visible light as a reflection nebula, dominated by bluish hues characteristic of starlight reflected by interstellar dust. A mere 1,000 light-years distant toward the heroic constellation Perseus, it lies at the edge of a large, star-forming molecular cloud.
This telescopic close-up spans about two full moons on the sky or just over 15 light-years at the estimated distance of NGC 1333. It shows details of the dusty region along with telltale hints of contrasty red emission from Herbig-Haro objects, jets and shocked glowing gas emanating from recently formed stars. In fact, NGC 1333 contains hundreds of stars less than a million years old, most still hidden from optical telescopes by the pervasive stardust. The chaotic environment may be similar to one in which our own Sun formed over 4.5 billion years ago."
"Could Be Worse..."
"I'd been in hairier situations than this one. Actually, it's sort of depressing, thinking how many times I'd been in them. But if experience had taught me anything, it was this: No matter how screwed up things are, they can get a whole lot worse."
- Jim Butcher
Dig your way out, they said...
"Amazon Firing 1,700 Workers as Entire Warehouses Close"
Full screen recommended.
Market Gains, 2/16/25
"Amazon Firing 1,700 Workers as
Entire Warehouses Close"
Comments here:
"So far 27,000 layed off..."
o
Full screen recommended.
Market Gains, 2/16/25
"3,000 Employees Just Got Fired From The CDC"
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
ThisisJohnWilliams, 2/16/25
"The End of Government Jobs,
300,000 Federal Workers Fired in 7 Days"
Comments here:
Includes a horrifying, comprehensive report.
What happens to all these people? Where will they go?
The Poet: Robinson Jeffers, "We Are Those People"
"We Are Those People"
"I have abhorred the wars and despised the liars,
laughed at the frightened
And forecast victory; never one moment's doubt.
But now not far, over the backs of some crawling years, the next
Great war's column of dust and fire writhes
Up the sides of the sky: it becomes clear that we too may suffer
What others have, the brutal horror of defeat -
Or if not in the next, then in the next - therefore watch Germany
And read the future. We wish, of course, that our women
Would die like biting rats in the cellars,
our men like wolves on the mountain:
It will not be so. Our men will curse, cringe, obey;
Our women uncover themselves to the grinning victors
for bits of chocolate."
- Robinson Jeffers, 1937
"Danger..."
“At the approach of danger there are always two voices that speak with equal force in the heart of man: one very reasonably tells the man to consider the nature of the danger and the means of avoiding it; the other, even more reasonable, says that it is too painful and harassing to think of the danger, since it is not a man’s power to provide for everything and escape from the general march of events; and that it is therefore better to turn aside from the painful subject till it has come, and to think of what is pleasant. In solitude a man generally yields to the first voice; in society to the second.”
- Leo Tolstoy, “War and Peace”
○
“All our mortal lives are set in danger and perplexity: one day to prosper,
and the next – who knows? When all is well, then look for rocks ahead.”
- Sophoclese, “Philoctetes”
○
Free Download:
A little light reading from Tolstoy…
Freely download “War and Peace”, by Leo Tolstoy, here:
"Once Upon a Time, The End"
"Once Upon a Time, The End"
by Martin Zamyatin
"Those that can make you believe absurdities
can make you commit atrocities."
- Voltaire
"The small group of devoted followers gathered around Chicago housewife Dorothy Martin sat in stunned silence as the clock on her suburban living room wall struck midnight on the twentieth of December, 1954…and nothing happened. Many had left jobs and spouses and given away all their money and possessions in order to await the arrival of alien beings from the planet Clarion, who Martin had assured them would descend at that appointed hour, carrying the faithful few off in their flying saucers just before huge floods engulfed the planet Earth. Finally, four hours after their scheduled departure time, Martin broke her silence.
As the group readjusted their bras, belts, and zippers - having been instructed to discard any metal objects which might interfere with the aliens’ telepathic radio transmissions - their tearful host revealed the reason why their intergalactic rescuers had failed to appear: Apparently it had all been only an elaborate test of faith, and the group’s advanced state of enlightenment had saved the entire planet from a watery destruction!
Surprisingly, only one or two of Martin’s followers were unconvinced by this perfectly rational explanation. Among them, however, was social psychologist Leon Festinger, who had secretly infiltrated the group. Festinger would later write about Martin - using the pseudonym of Marian Keech - in his groundbreaking 1958 book, "When Prophecy Fails." (Not surprisingly, Festinger is credited with coining the psychological term ‘cognitive dissonance.’)
Following publication of Festinger’s book, the group predictably collapsed under the weight of public ridicule. Martin fled to Peru to warn the clueless natives about the imminent re-emergence of Atlantis, before later resurfacing in Arizona, where she joined crackpot L. Ron Hubbard’s nascent pseudoscientific movement, Scientology.
It seems that for as long as people have inhabited the world, they have anticipated its imminent demise. (In fact, the oldest known apocalyptic prediction is depicted on Assyrian tablets from 2800 BC.) In what may be the earliest example in European folklore, a Frankish villager wandered off into the forest in 591, only to be accosted by a swarm of ravenous flies. Overwhelmed, the poor fellow completely lost his mind and returned to his village clothed in animal pelts, claiming he was Jesus Christ, sent to gather his flock before the coming Rapture. (Perhaps resenting the competition, a local bishop hired a gang of thugs to capture the Lord of the Flies, who they rapturously hacked into little bits.)
The failure of one apocalyptic prophecy not only failed to deter its devoted followers but in fact spawned several entirely new religions. When the world failed to end as predicted in the ‘Great Disappointment’ of 1843-44, Massachusetts preacher William Miller’s tens of thousands of followers splintered off to found the Seventh Day Adventists, as well as the obnoxious doorknockers known as Jehovah’s Witnesses. When the next fateful year of 1874 passed without the desired fireworks, the latter’s charismatic founder, Charles Taze Russell, explained that Jesus had indeed returned, but was invisible to all except the truly devout. (Predictably, few dared admit to being lacking in the requisite level of faith.)
The founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, had declared way back in 1832 that 1890 would be the year of Jesus’s long awaited return engagement. (Later jailed for fraud, Smith somehow failed to predict his own deliverance by an angry mob at age 39.) Russell revised the fateful year to 1881…then 1914…and finally, 1918. (The latter dates spanned World War I and the Spanish Flu epidemic, events that while apocalyptic for many, fell short of being world ending.)
Our own time has seen the horrors of the Peoples Temple - in which 914 adults and children committed suicide in the jungles of Guyana in 1978; the Branch Davidians, an offshoot of the Seventh Day Adventists - 75 of whom died in the FBI standoff at Waco in 1993; Aum Shinri Kyo -whose poison gas attacks on the Tokyo subway in 1994-95 left 19 innocent people dead; and -neither least nor unfortunately, last - Heaven’s Gate, 39 of whose members committed suicide in 1996, fully expecting (like Dorothy Martin) their spirits to be carried away by aliens hiding in the wake of an approaching comet.
It was probably no coincidence that all of these cults were acting in anticipation of an impending Bible-inspired Day ofJudgement. One is tempted to blame these kinds of incidents on the delusions of a small minority of misguided religious fanatics, except that millions of people alive today are expecting an imminent Biblical apocalypse. In a 2012 global poll, fully one out of 7 people said they thought the world would end during their lifetime - and rather ominously, Americans topped the list of doomsayers at 22%. Since their government has the means to fulfil their death wish many times over, one can only hope their gloomy prediction won’t one day become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Just call it a bedtime story for humanity."
"There Are Some Oddities..."
"There are some oddities in the perspective with which we see the world. The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be."
- Douglas Adams
"The One Day Eviction is Here - Get Ready to Move Out!"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 2/16/25
"The One Day Eviction is Here -
Get Ready to Move Out!"
"Big changes are here for renters and landlords! In today’s video, I’m talking about the shocking new “1-day eviction” policy that’s causing a huge stir. From the CARES Act eviction moratoriums to the current push for lightning-fast evictions, this is a must-watch if you’re a renter, landlord, or just curious about how this affects the housing market. Iowa has already embraced a 3-day eviction rule, but could a federal 1-day eviction policy be next? Let’s break it all down and discuss the controversies, including mortgage fraud, insurance headaches, and the state of the rental market. Landlords are fed up, tenants are stressed, and it’s clear the system is at a breaking point. What does this mean for you? And can anyone really get evicted within 24 hours? I’ll also share my thoughts on skyrocketing costs—from insurance to breakfast—plus some jaw-dropping stories about housing scams, Disneyland’s insane prices, and even the latest news from Hertz and Tesla."
Comments here:
"The Truth We Can’t Accept"
"The Truth We Can’t Accept"
by Paul Rosenberg
"There is a simple fact that people are unable to ingest. You can explain it with charts, graphs and documentation… and they may even like the sound of it… but it soon fades and is forgotten. This truth is simply too foreign to us; it doesn’t fit within our mental universe. Most of us don’t particularly fight it, but we're very slow to integrate it. So please bear in mind that this may affect you too.
This truth is massively good news, by the way, which is strange too: Bad news people believe instantly; good news they doubt instantly. All that said, here's the news:
Scarcity upon Earth has been fundamentally overcome. We’ve been growing more food than we can eat for decades now, and we could grow much more if we needed to.
Building houses for everyone would be no problem: we have the entire set of technologies and processes worked out, materials are available and there's no lack of people who’d be glad to work as a homebuilder.
Likewise providing quality medical care to all is well within our reach, and of course cars and roads are no problem. So, before I get to support and objections, I’ll restate our main point: The doors to a golden age have swung open before us, but we're having a hard time accepting that it’s real.
But Why Can’t We Believe It? Before I get to the details of our disbelief, let me tell you were you can find all the documentation you’d like:
• "The Other Side of Scarcity". We cover many of the primary sources in this issue, and even studies showing an increase in intelligence from overcoming scarcity.
• The work of Julian Simon, especially "The Ultimate Resource and The State of Humanity." You’ll find lots of hard data in these.
• The work of Stephen Moore and Johan Nordberg. Particularly "It’s Getting Better All The Time and Progress."
And just to support this a bit, here’s part of a presentation from Norman Borlaug, the man who revolutionized modern agriculture (Nobel Prize, etc.) and saved a billion lives in the process. It was delivered in in September of 2000: "I now say that the world has the technology – either available or well advanced in the research pipeline – to feed on a sustainable basis a population of 10 billion people."
You’ll find similar passages in the resources noted above. So, from a scientific standpoint, our main points are very solid, and on the production side, scarcity was overcome some decades ago. Why then is this non-believable? First of all, we’ve been raised to believe in regimentation; to see it as the path to paradise and to treat it as a sublime invention. But regimentation is entirely focused on the bad: We believe that by suppressing evil we create a better world for ourselves. And so, anything that smells of a present golden age - a good age - is incompatible with our beloved regimentation. That means that our deep assumptions would have to be revised, and that's uncomfortable. Beyond that sits the fact that scarcity is a psychological necessity to us. If we no longer need to fight over resources, how do we show ourselves superior?
Objections to this discussion tend to be indirect, dealing with things like “human desires are infinite.” These, however, are paper arguments: we’re discussing concrete things like food and houses. And, of course, there is a difference between wants and needs. Wants are bounded only by our imaginations, and so are unfit for a serious and this-worldly discourse. A comfortable home, good food and reliable transportation are needs. Ferraris, mansions and caviar are wants.
Likewise, arguments over finite resources are distractions: We have plenty of materials right now (including fuels for both fission and fusion). Additionally, there are planets and asteroid belts waiting for us in the not-too distant future. In actual fact there are fewer starving people all the time. Moreover, the cause of whatever starvation remains is almost wholly political, not technological.
So…What we need is to talk about these things: To review the sources, examine the graphs and start working this into ourselves as an actual possibility. We really are ready to step into a golden age, as impossibly foreign as that may seem. In fact, we’ve been doing precisely that, mostly by accident, for decades. If we worked at it, we might go down in history as the generation that transformed humanity forever."
Saturday, February 15, 2025
"This Ain't Funny, People Are Losing Everything; Mass Layoffs; Political Demons"
Jeremiah Babe, 2/15/25
"This Ain't Funny, People Are Losing Everything;
Mass Layoffs; Political Demons"
Comments here:
Musical Interlude: Liquid Mind, "Awakening (Cosmic Sea)"
Full screen recommended.
Liquid Mind, "Awakening (Cosmic Sea)"
"A Look to the Heavens"
“The beautiful Trifid Nebula, also known as Messier 20, is easy to find with a small telescope in the nebula rich constellation Sagittarius. About 5,000 light-years away, the colorful study in cosmic contrasts shares this well-composed, nearly 1 degree wide field with open star cluster Messier 21 (top right).
Trisected by dust lanes the Trifid itself is about 40 light-years across and a mere 300,000 years old. That makes it one of the youngest star forming regions in our sky, with newborn and embryonic stars embedded in its natal dust and gas clouds. Estimates of the distance to open star cluster M21 are similar to M20's, but though they share this gorgeous telescopic skyscape there is no apparent connection between the two. In fact, M21's stars are much older, about 8 million years old.”
“Addicted! Internet Dependency Alters the Human Brain”
“Addicted! Internet Dependency Alters the Human Brain”
by Jeremy Laurance
by Jeremy Laurance
“Internet addiction has for the first time been linked with changes in the brain similar to those seen in people addicted to alcohol, cocaine and cannabis. In a groundbreaking study, researchers used MRI scanners to reveal abnormalities in the brains of adolescents who spent many hours on the internet, to the detriment of their social and personal lives. The finding could throw light on other behavioral problems and lead to the development of new approaches to treatment, researchers said. An estimated 5 to 10 per cent of internet users are thought to be addicted - meaning they are unable to control their use. The majority are games players who become so absorbed in the activity they go without food or drink for long periods and their education, work and relationships suffer.
Henrietta Bowden Jones, consultant psychiatrist at Imperial College, London, who runs Britain's only NHS clinic for internet addicts and problem gamblers, said: "The majority of people we see with serious internet addiction are gamers - people who spend long hours in roles in various games that cause them to disregard their obligations. I have seen people who stopped attending university lectures, failed their degrees or their marriages broke down because they were unable to emotionally connect with anything outside the game."
Although most of the population was spending longer online, that was not evidence of addiction, she said. "It is different. We are doing it because modern life requires us to link up over the net in regard to jobs, professional and social connections - but not in an obsessive way. When someone comes to you and says they did not sleep last night because they spent 14 hours playing games, and it was the same the previous night, and they tried to stop but they couldn't - you know they have a problem. It does tend to be the gaming that catches people out."
Researchers in China scanned the brains of 17 adolescents diagnosed with "internet addiction disorder" who had been referred to the Shanghai Mental Health Centre, and compared the results with scans from 16 of their peers. The results showed impairment of white matter fibres in the brain connecting regions involved in emotional processing, attention, decision making and cognitive control. Similar changes to the white matter have been observed in other forms of addiction to substances such as alcohol and cocaine. "The findings suggest that white matter integrity may serve as a potential new treatment target in internet addiction disorder," they say in the online journal Public Library of Science One. The authors acknowledge that they cannot tell whether the brain changes are the cause or the consequence of the internet addiction. It could be that young people with the brain changes observed are more prone to becoming addicted.
Professor Michael Farrell, director of the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Australia, said: "The limitations [of this study] are that it is not controlled, and it's possible that illicit drugs, alcohol or other caffeine-based stimulants might account for the changes. The specificity of 'internet addiction disorder' is also questionable."
Case studies: Caught in the web:
Xbox addict killed by blood clot after 12-hour sessions: Chris Staniforth, 20, died of a blood clot after spending up to 12 hours at a time playing on his Xbox. Despite having no history of ill health, he developed deep vein thrombosis - commonly associated with long-haul flight passengers. Mr Staniforth, from Sheffield, had been offered a place to study game design at the University of Leicester. But he collapsed while telling a friend he'd been having pains in his chest.
Toddler starved to death while mother played online: A mother was jailed for 25 years after her daughter starved to death while she played an online game for hours at a time. Rebecca Colleen Christie, 28, from New Mexico in the US, played the fantasy game World of Warcraft while her three-year-old daughter, Brandi, starved. The toddler weighed just 23lbs when she was finally rushed to hospital after her mother found her limp and unconscious.
Woman jailed after gamble fails to pay off: A woman who stole £76,000 from a company to fund her internet gambling addiction was jailed this week. Lucienne Mainey, 41, from Cambridgeshire, was sentenced to 16 months in prison at Ipswich Crown Court after admitting fraud. The court heard she secretly paid herself by changing old invoices. Mainey turned to internet bingo following the breakdown of her marriage.”
- http://www.sott.net/
o
Wow, scared me for a second there... "internet addiction", oh my, that does sound scary. So happy I'm not addicted, nothing wrong with spending all kinds of hours reading and posting articles on a blog, right? All kinds of hours... hmmm, a lot of hours, actually. Oh no! lol - CP
o
John Wilder, "Be Bold. Life Is Too Short For Anything Else"
"Be Bold. Life Is Too Short For Anything Else"
by John Wilder
“That’s a bold statement.” – "Pulp Fiction"
"One of the problems with life in Modern Mayberry is that it often moves at a fairly slow pace. Especially in the time when an adult is focused on raising kids, the days tend to blur one into the next. If your life is good, this isn’t really a problem. When I was younger, my life was spent going to weddings. Now that I’m older, more time is spent going to funerals. It is important to not get mixed up as to which you’re at, although sometimes “My condolences,” is appropriate at a wedding and I’d almost be willing to bet $20 that at least one person will say “Congratulations!” after my funeral. However, in the event that I’m wrong, collecting on that bet might be a problem.
One thing that facilitates this blur is reading stuff on the Internet. One blogger I read (LINK) is giving up doomscrolling (or reading the unending list of negative stories that are available in the news) for Lent. I suppose you could leave him a comment, but you’d have to wait a few weeks to get a response.
But when it comes to doomscrolling, there are huge numbers of these stories available. The business model is simple: scary stuff attracts eyeballs, and eyeballs means revenue. As I look at my own past posts, I’m thinking that, even though I talk about a lot of scary stuff, that I’m mostly relentlessly positive. I can even recall a comment section or two where I’m called a Pollyanna because I’m so positive.
I can live with that. Being positive, being for things and knowing that, in the end it’s all going to work out keeps me positive. In most cases (most, not all!) the things I write about don’t make me angry, either. Again, stress on the “mostly”. And I try not to get worked up about events occurring half-a-world away that I can’t control or even much influence. Things are what they are. And, for most of us, things are generally pretty good on a day-to-day basis, even when things aren’t perfect. Even on a bad day, most parts of the day are good. The thing that gets us is built into the doomscrolling: spending time worrying about things that simply have not happened.
I write about the coming Civil War 2.0 not in hopes that it comes, rather to make people aware that it’s coming. Do I sit and worry about it daily? No! That would take away from the time I spend thinking about the Roman Empire.
In this moment, there are things that I could let bother me. However, I realize that letting them bother me gives them power over me when that’s the last thing I want. “Take not counsel of your fears,” is attributed to George S. Patton, Jr. I’m sure other people said the same thing in similar ways in the thousands of years that people have been saying things, but when Patton says it, well, it’s been said.
“Better to fight for something than live for nothing.”
– GSP
If I let my fears fill me up, I live a life of fear regardless of if it’s a perfect 63°F, and I have a wonderful cigar, and a great book beside me while sitting in a comfortable chair. I think fear comes to people as they age. I certainly saw Pa Wilder get more and more cautious as he aged. I could give a few examples, but it doesn’t much matter. I did notice. And when I saw the tendency to do it start to crop up in myself, at least I understood what was going on and I could choose to be cautious or choose to be bold.
I think, however, that as I get older it is precisely the time to be bolder. Life moves in a blur, and days stack up faster, so they should mean something. If I knew I had only a year? What would I do? Something to make that year worthwhile. If a month? A day? The shorter the time left, the more that boldness matters and the less caution should. If I only had an hour of my life left, you can damn sure bet I’d do something with it, as much as I could.
But life is built on compound interest. The more I try to write, the better I get. The more I lift, the stronger I get. The time to start is now. The actions should be bold. While my days may pass fast, the more I can do with them, the more I will do.
When I pass, what will be left are the lives I’ve touched, the children that I’ve raised, the ways I’ve made the world better, and the words that I have written. Since the restraining order dictates who I can touch, and the lessons to the children are mainly done, that leaves making the world better and writing.
Even a full human lifetime isn’t enough, because they are so very short. But I’ll make do. With the remaining decades (hopefully) of my life, how big a dent can I kick in the Universe? I guess I’ll see. And I’ll smile some, every day. And enjoy that cigar, and book, and chair when I’m not being bold. “L’audace, l’audace, toujours l’audace.”
"Our First Duty..."
"No one today likes truth: utility and self interest have long ago been substituted for truth. We live in a nightmare of falsehoods, and there are few who are sufficiently awake and aware to see things as they are. Our first duty is to clear away illusions and recover a sense of reality."
- Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)