"You've seed how things goes in the world o' men. You've knowed men to be low-down and mean. You've seed ol' Death at his tricks... Ever' man wants life to be a fine thing, and a easy. 'Tis fine, boy, powerful fine, but 'tain't easy. Life knocks a man down and he gits up and it knocks him down agin. I've been uneasy all my life... I've wanted life to be easy for you. Easier'n 'twas for me. A man's heart aches, seein' his young uns face the world. Knowin' they got to get their guts tore out, the way his was tore. I wanted to spare you, long as I could. I wanted you to frolic with your yearlin'. I knowed the lonesomeness he eased for you. But ever' man's lonesome. What's he to do then? What's he to do when he gits knocked down? Why, take it for his share and go on.”
"If we compare health and endurance, well-being, security, general attitudes, family
and community ties and values, we would conclude that it is we who are impoverished."
by Charles Hugh Smith
"We're taking care of my 92-year old mother-in-law here at home. She has the usual aches and pains and infirmities of advanced age but her mind and memory are still sharp. Her memories of her childhood are like a time capsule from the 1930s.
My mom-in-law has always lived in the same general community here in Hawaii. She's never lived more than about 10 miles from the house where she was born (long since torn down) in 1931. Listening to her memories (and asking for more details) is to be transported back to the 1930s, an era of widespread poverty unrelated to the Great Depression. Many people were poor before the Depression. They were working hard but their incomes were low.
Prior to the tourist boom initiated by statehood and affordable airfare, Hawaii's economy was classically colonial: large plantations owned by a handful of wealthy families and/or corporations (known as The Big Five) employed thousands of laborers to raise and harvest sugar cane and pineapple. Pearl Harbor, Hickam air base and Schofield Barracks were large military bases on Oahu. Travel between islands was expensive (ferries) and each island was largely self-sufficient. Even taking a bus for the 12-mile ride to the island's sole city was a rare luxury, an excursion that occurred a few times a year.
Plantation workers were not yet unionized in the 1930s, and wages were around $20 a month for backbreaking field labor - work performed by both men and women. Typical of first and second-generation immigrant communities of the time, families were generally large. Six or seven children was common and nine or ten children per family was not uncommon. Many families lived in modest plantation-provided camps of two bedroom houses.
Gardens were not a hobby, they were an essential source of food to feed a table of hungry kids and adults. Candy, snacks, sodas, etc. were treats rserved for special occasions and holidays. Kids usually went barefoot because shoes were outside the household's limited budget.
Staples were bought at the company store (or one of the few privately owned groceries) on credit and paid off when the plantation paid wages.
Credit issued by banks was unknown. Neighborhoods (kumiai) might pool a few dollars from each family every year and offer the sum to the highest secret bidder or by lottery. Those households that scraped up enough to open a small business often worked 12 hours a day, 7 days a week (or equivalent: 14 hours 6 days a week).
Neighbors helped with births and deaths.
Since no one could even dream of owning a car, transport was limited. Children and adults walked or biked miles to school or work. Many sole proprietors made a living delivering vegetables, meat and fish around the neighborhoods. (This distribution system is still present in rural France where my brother and sister-in-law lived for many years). Each vendor would arrive on a set day / time and housewives could gather to buy from the proprietor's jitney or truck. Children could eye the few candies longingly, and if they were lucky, a few pennies would be given to them to buy a candy.
Locally baked bread was delivered by boys. Milk was delivered by small local dairies.
Nostalgia is a powerful force, but I don't think we can dismiss the general happiness of my Mom-in-law's childhood as airbrushed impoverishment. The poverty seems obvious to us now, but at the time it was normal life. Everyone was in the same general socio-economic class. The plantation manager lived in a mansion with servants, but those with wealth were few and far between. In other words, wealth and income inequality was extreme but the class structure was flat: the 99% had very similar incomes and opportunities - both were limited.
Employment was stable, community ties and values were strong without anyone even noticing, and everyone had enough to eat (though not as much as they might have wanted, of course).
This secure plantation structure of work and community was still firmly in place in 1969-1970 when I lived on the pineapple plantation of Lanai (and picked pineapple with my high school classmates in the summer), and so I was fortunate to experience it first-hand. My Lanai classmates speak fondly and with a sense of loss when they recall their youth. Life was secure and protected, and with unionization of the workforce, the wages sufficient enough for frugal households to save enough to send their children to college off-island. I can personally attest that fond memories of 1970s plantation life are not distorted by nostalgia. These memories are accurate recollections of a far more secure, safe and nourishing place and time.
Compared to today, the typical 1930s diet was locally grown/raised and therefore rich in micro-nutrients. Grains such as rice and flour came from afar, but other than canned fish and similar goods, food was local and fresh. Little if any was wasted. People typically worked physically demanding jobs that burned a lot of calories.
There are many people 90+ years of age in our neighborhood. My Mom-in-law's brother - like many of the men in this age bracket, he was a World War II veteran of the famed 442nd unit -died last year at 96, despite smoking a half-pack of cigarettes daily until the end. A neighbor/friend just passed away at 99 (he was also a 442nd veteran). Our neighbor (cared for by her daughter and son-in-law, just like us) just turned 100. These people are generally healthy and active until the end of their lives.
If we look for causal factors in their advanced age and generally good health, we cannot ignore the high-quality, near-zero-processed foods diets of their youth and their strong foundations in community ties and values.
If we compare the financial and material wealth most enjoy today with the limited income and assets of the pre-war era, we would conclude they lived in extreme poverty and their lives must have been wretched as a consequence. But if we compare health and endurance, well-being, security, general attitudes, family and community ties and values, we would conclude that it is we who are impoverished and it was their lives that were rich in these essentials of human life.
The world has changed since the 1930s, of course. Materially, our wealth and options of what to do with our lives are off the charts compared to the 1930s. But if we look at health, security, well-being, community ties, social cohesion and civic virtue, our era seems insecure, disordered and deranging.
The irony is that those who have grown weary of our divisive, rage-inducing socio-economic system yearn for all that's been lost in the rise to material wealth and opportunities to spend that wealth. Those who grasp the emptiness of spectacle and material wealth and who have the means to do so are seeking the few enclaves that still have a few shreds of community and social cohesion left. These enclaves then get listed on "best small towns in America" or "best places in the world to retire" and the resulting influx of wealthy outsiders destroys the last remaining shreds of what everyone came for.
I recently harvested some of our homegrown green tomatoes, and my Mom-in-law gave me a handwritten recipe for Fried Green Tomatoes from her collection. The first ingredient was "two tablespoons of bacon drippings." Um, okay, if we were all working 10-hour days hauling 80-pound loads of sugar cane on our backs, no problem, but we're a household of three seniors, 69, 70 and 92. I think we'll substitute two teaspoons of olive oil for the bacon drippings..."
"1930s USA - Fascinating Street Scenes of Vintage America"
"Step back in time with us as we unveil a mesmerizing journey through 1930s America like you've never seen before! While the Dustbowl was heating up in the southwest, the country as a whole was fighting through the Great Depression. All the while, Americans were living their day-to-day lives, and getting on as best as they could.
In this captivating video, we've meticulously colorized a collection of stunning photographs that capture the essence of a tumultuous yet resilient period in American history. From bustling cityscapes to serene countryside vistas, witness the contrast between hardship and hope that defined an entire generation. Discover the intricate details of everyday life as we explore the highways and byways of the past, complete with corner gas stations, storefronts, and bustling city streets. Journey through snapshots of the stunning architecture that emerged during this era, from Art Deco skyscrapers to quaint suburban homes. Each frame is a window into a world where innovation and creativity thrived despite adversity.
Join us on this mesmerizing visual journey, as we honor the legacy of the past and celebrate the indomitable spirit of the American people. Don't miss out on this unique opportunity to experience the 1930s in an entirely new light. Whether you are a history enthusiast, a lover of vintage aesthetics, or simply curious about the past, this video offers an immersive visual experience that will evoke a sense of nostalgia and leave you with a renewed appreciation for the beauty of the human experience."
"The old FedEx envelope was clever, a work of art even, optimistic and colorful, signifying speed and progress. What a beautiful contrast to the plainness of the U.S. Postal Service. For years, I can recall dropping off these treasures and paying maybe $10 to assure their delivery across the country, even the world. For me, it was a fabulous symbol of an improved life, living proof that progress was baked into the historical trajectory.
But a few days ago, the clerk at the FedEx office confirmed a different ethos. There was no doing business without a scan of my government-issued ID. I asked for confirmation: So if I did not have this, there is simply no way that I could send a package? Confirmed. Then came the envelope. It was the color of the brown bag I took to school when I was a kid. Serviceable, drab, dull. Also the new one is stamped with a big green marker: recyclable. There is no design, no art, certainly no beauty. It’s all gone.
Its main message is suffering. What happened to the old envelopes? They’ve been replaced, the clerk explained firmly, with no more detail. A recycle exhortation suggests shortage. We have to reuse everything because there just isn’t enough to go around. We must sacrifice. The color suggests privation. It’s an aesthetic of sadness and penance. Then of course the price tag came: $26 for delivery not tomorrow but in two days. So compared with some years ago, we pay 2½ times as much for service half as good as it was.
Don’t complain. It’s just the new way. It’s the new way of life. What happened to progress? It’s been replaced. The new path is flagellantism: in politics, culture, economics and everywhere.
The flagellants were a medieval movement of public penitents that roamed from town to town in garbs of woe, flogging themselves and begging as penance for pestilence and war. They were infused with a fiery, apocalyptic and millenarian passion that they could see terrible moral realities to which others were blinded. The theory was that plagues were being visited upon the Earth by God as punishment for sin. The answer was contrition, sorrow and acts of penance as a means of appeasement, in order to make the bad times go away.
It’s true that there were people who did so in private but that was not the main point. The central focus and purpose of the flagellant movement was to make one’s suffering public and conspicuous, an early version of the virtue signal. In the guise of personal sorrow, they were really about spreading guilt to others. They would show up at any public celebration with a message: Your happiness is causing our suffering. The more you party, the more we are forced to bear the burden of the need to be in pain for your sins. Your joy is prolonging the suffering of the world.
Flagellantry is most recognizable in the aesthetic. The first signs I recall seeing of this occurred immediately during the panic of March 2020 when it was proclaimed from on high that a terrible virus was visiting the U.S. Read on for the ugly details…
"Flagellantism: The New Political Ritual"
by Jeffrey Tucker
"No, you couldn’t see the virus, but it is highly dangerous, everywhere present, and should be avoided at all costs. You must wash constantly, douse yourself with sanitizer, cover your face, dress in drab color and be sad as much as possible. Fun things were banned: public gatherings, singing, house parties, weddings and all celebrations. This whole scene took on a political patina, as people were invited to think of the invisible virus as a symbol of a more tangible virus in the White House, an evil man who had invaded a holy space whose malice had leaked out in the culture and now threatened to poison everything.
The more you complied with mandatory misery, the more your work made a contribution to making the pestilence go away while we wait for the inoculation. That could take two forms: driving him from the White House or releasing the vaccine which everyone would accept.
Joseph Campbell was correct about the role of religious impulses in the human mind. They never go away. They just take on different forms according to the style of the times. Every single feature of traditional religion found a new expression in the COVID religion.
We had masking rituals that were rather complicated but learned and practiced quickly by multitudes: mask on while standing and mask off when sitting. We had sacramentals like social distancing and communion with vaccination. Our holy water became sanitizer and our prophets on Earth were government bureaucrats like Fauci.
Flagellantism did not disappear once the old president left and the new one came. Even after the pandemic ended, there were new signs that God was angry. There was the ever-present climate change which was a sign of Earth’s anger for being drilled and carved up for energy sources. And the bad country said to be responsible for the unwelcome invader of the White House - Russia - was now rampaging through the holy land of its neighbors.
In addition, the broader problem was capitalism itself, which gave us things like meat, gasoline, fur and other signs of evil. And what gave rise to capitalism? The answer should be obvious: imperialism, colonialism, racism and the existence of whiteness - each of which called for mass penance.
The pandemic unleashed it all. It was during this period that corporations decided that profitability alone required signs of suffering and hence the rise of ESG and DEI as new ways to assess economic value of corporate culture. And new practices were added to the list of the highly suspect: monogamy, heterosexuality and religious traditions such as Christianity and Orthodox Judaism that should now be regarded as deprecated, even as part of the underlying problem.
It was during this period when I found myself on an apartment hunt and observed a newly remodeled offering. I asked why the owner had not replaced the flooring. I was corrected: These are new floors. Impossible, I thought. They are gray and ghastly. That’s the new fashion, I was told. Looking it up, it was true. Gray flooring was being installed everywhere.
How does wood become gray? It dies. It starts to decay. It is swept away by rivers and floats around for years, alternatively soaked, baked by the sun and soaked again, until every bit of color is drained away. It becomes driftwood, a survivor of the elements and a symbol of the brutality of the cycle of life. Gray flooring is therefore the ideal symbol of the age of suffering, the proper material on which to move back and forth pondering the evils of the world.
In a world governed by flagellantism, ugly formlessness rises to replace aspirational art and imaginative creativity. This is why public art is so depressing and why even the clothing we can afford at the store all looks dreary and uniform. In this world, too, gender differences disappear as luxurious signs of decadence we can no longer afford.
Two other anecdotes. The overhead bins on the flight just now were largely empty, simply because most passengers chose the cheaper basic economy fare. This also requires they have no carry-on luggage and hence be forced to pay for checked luggage or travel with all their belongings in a backpack. We’ve gone from gigantic Louis Vuitton steamer trunks to stuffing things in pockets and hiding them from authorities.
Another case in point. I asked the man in the high-end shoe shop why none of the shoes had leather soles. Instead all shoes have these cushy rubber soles that seem weak and pathetic, and make no noise when one steps. “Everything has changed since COVID,” he said. “All shoes are house shoes now.”
I had no words and walked away, my entire thesis confirmed. Sure enough, all the data we have suggests the mighty triumph of flagellantism. Fertility is down dramatically. Life spans are shortening. People are sicker. Excess deaths are rising. We learn less, read less, write less, create less, love less.
Personal trauma is everywhere. The groceries are more expensive so we eat whatever we can, when we can, while hoping for breezes and whatever sunlight there is to provide just the essential energy we need to slog through another day.
Degrowth is the economic model of flagellantism, reducing consumption, embracing privation, acquiescing to austerity. We no longer declare recessions to be on their way because recession is the new way we live, the realization of the plan. The word “recession” implies a future of recovery, and that is not in the cards.
“Decolonization” is another watchword. It means feeling so guilty about the space you inhabit that your only moral action is to stay put and reflect on the sufferings of those you have displaced. You can of course say a prayer of supplication to them, so long as you never appropriate any aspect of their culture, since doing so would seem to affirm your rights as a human being.
You want joy, beauty, color, drama, adventure and love? It’s not gone entirely. Park yourself on a yoga mat on your gray floor and open your computer. Stream something on one of many streaming services you have been provided. Or become a gamer. There you will find what you seek. The experiences you seek you can only observe as an outsider looking in. It is not participatory. Social distancing never went away; it is how we live in a new age of unending penance.
So, you see, it’s not just about eating bugs. It’s about a whole theory and practice of life and salvation itself, a new religion to replace all the old ones. Cough up your government-issued ID, send your package if you must, think twice before complaining about anything on social media and figure out a way to channel your depression and despair into quiet humble gratitude and acquiescence. Don’t forget to recycle. The flagellants have taken over the world."
"In a scene from the 1975 film "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," a group of monks are depicted singing plainchant while on a procession through the streets of a medieval village. After chanting the first few lines of text, the monks abruptly hit themselves in the face and repeatedly do so during their procession. Although this scene was undoubtedly filmed for comedic purposes, and the movie, in general, propagates a number of historically questionable stereotypes of the Middle Ages, the act of monks singing while engaging in self-harm is historically sound. In fact, this scene reflects the practices of a group of traveling medieval flagellants who would whip themselves while singing songs of penance for the purpose of placating God."
“The advantage of a free market is that it allows millions of decision-makers to respond individually to freely determined prices, allocating resources - labor, capital and human ingenuity - in a manner that can't be mimicked by a central plan, however brilliant the central planner."
~ Friedrich August von Hayek, "The Road to Serfdom" (1944)
Luxor, Egypt - "Free markets... free minds... free people. That’s our beat here in these pages. Today, a brief update concerning our adopted home of Argentina, where a long-awaited experiment in anarcho-capitalism is playing out in real time. Long time readers will recall that the southernmost nation in the Americas elected a president who, alone among his peers, believes in the radical notion that “we, the people,” are not the property of the State. “The State is not the solution to our problems,” says Javier Milei, often to rooms full of knaves, thieves and career politicians (but we repeat ourselves). “The State is the problem.”
And so, in late December of 2023, Sr. Milei set about dismantling his nation’s malignant government from the inside. Tens of thousands of public non-workers were fired... whole ministries axed... entire sectors of the ossified economy privatized, liberalized… liberated. So, how’s the grand old laissez-faire experiment going thus far?
Anarchy Unleashed: To the undisguised chagrin of the hyperventilating blowhards peopling the mainstream media, who prophesied a collapsing economy, widespread misery and a Mad Max-style, statewide collapse, the long-suffering citizens of Argentina were spared their ghoulish fantasies.
Take the national carrier, AerolÃneas Argentinas, as a simple case study. In a major legislative victory late last year, the Milei administration was able to pave the road (or is it, clear the skies?) for privatizing the nose-diving, cash-hemorrhaging airline. Naturally, the popular presses sided with the powerful and notoriously corrupt unions, who weren’t exactly keen on seeing their gravy plane grounded. From USAID-funded bullhorn, Reuters: "Argentina’s state airline cuts staff, routes, passenger perks ahead of possible sale."
"BUENOS AIRES - Argentina's state airline, Aerolineas Argentinas, is slimming down for a potential sale, shedding 13% of its staff, cutting money-losing domestic routes and even removing snacks formerly available to passengers, according to sources and documents seen by Reuters.
The cutbacks, many of whose details were previously unreported, are part of a backdoor attempt to trim the airline's burden on the state and lure private investment. The drive is progressing, even though libertarian President Javier Milei's plans to privatize the firm have generated pushback.
The carrier, with Argentina's blue and white colors, is a major test case of Milei's pro-market reforms, which are yanking South America's second-largest economy in a sharply different direction after years of big government. They have improved the state's finances, but stunted economic growth and pushed up poverty."
Now, hold up just a second... We’ll return to AerolÃneas Argentinas in a jiffy... but first, did you catch those last two claims – that Milei’s pro-market reforms have “stunted economic growth” and “pushed up poverty” – flippantly tossed in there at the end, just for bad measure? They are what’s known as “verifyable.” So, let’s do just that, shall we? First, Argentina’s “stunted growth.”
Lies of Commission: Rather than collapse into a greater depression, as the presstards claim, the Argentine economy is actually, measurably, verifiably, roaring back to life. Even the The BA Times was obliged to cite the latest data from INDEC: "Argentina’s economy grew more than expected in February. Economic activity rose 5.7% in February year-on-year, reveals data from the INDEC national statistics bureau.
Argentina’s economy grew more than expected in February, solidifying the country’s bounceback under President Javier Milei a week after he clinched a US$20-billion deal with the International Monetary Fund. Economic activity rose 5.7 percent from the same month a year ago, compared with the median estimate of 5.5 percent, according to government data published Tuesday. On the month, activity rose 0.8 percent after a 0.6 percent rise in January.
And this, all while keeping a lid on public enemy #1: Inflation. Although the monthly rate ticked up slightly in March, the yearly rate is down roughly ~80% from what it was a year ago, from almost 290% to 55%. Here’s the official stats, again from INDEC...
As for the dangling “pushed up poverty” claim, official data show those figures collapsing, too... right alongside inflation, as any economist worth his pesos might expect. Even the Associated Press printed the story, albeit through gritted teeth and weak, anecdotal asides: "Argentina reports a drop in poverty under President Milei, but many say life is harder.
Argentina’s poverty rate dropped to 38.1% in libertarian President Javier Milei ‘s first year in office, the nation’s official statistics agency reported on Monday, a closely watched measure reflecting the government’s progress wrestling down what had been among the world’s highest inflation rates. The decline in poverty for the second half of 2024 - from July to December - marks an improvement from the 41.7% that Milei’s left-wing populist predecessors delivered for the second half of 2023. Milei swept to office late that year with a mandate to reverse the country’s economic decline brought about by years of reckless borrowing.
Ivy League Idiocy: So... massive growth and sharply falling rates of poverty (tracking plummeting inflation). It takes an Ivy League degree in journalism, and a paycheck from a top tier newspaper, to translate this to “stunted economic growth” and “pushed up poverty.”
As for AerolÃneas Argentinas, industry publication, Aviacion Al Dia had the hard figures when the 2024 earnings report came around: "AerolÃneas Argentinas Records First Annual Profit Since 2008." For the first time since its nationalization in 2008, AerolÃneas Argentinas reported a positive annual financial result. According to data from the National Budget Office, the company closed the year 2024 with a favorable balance of $156,323.9 million. In operational terms, the company achieved a profit of US$20.7 million, measured by EBIT (Earnings Before Interest and Taxes).
Free markets... free minds... free people. Don’t trust those who tell you there’s nothing to them. And stay tuned for more Notes From the End of the World..."
"Toxic people systematically destroy others because if they cannot bask in the light then no one else deserves to. Lost people suffer in their darkness, happily dragging your light down into their personal hell so you can listen to all their woes. Soulless people, lacking empathy, suck the light from others to taste that which they can never understand. People can't be helped until they want to be helped. You can't be there for others who need you if any one of these types destroy you. Save yourself... it's not a sin to love from a distance."
"If you are a Twitter user, one of the things you may have noticed is that the site is increasingly difficult to use as intended. The “slop accounts” fill the site with posts intended to game the payment system. It is also infested with “influencers” who, like the slop accounts, seek to gain attention, but instead of doing it for money, they do it for the “clout.” As a result, many popular accounts have reduced their activity on the site, which magnifies the problem.
This is not just a Twitter issue. YouTube suffers from the same problem as artificial intelligence makes it easier for slop merchants to churn out content. They use AI to create a slideshow and voiceover about a topic. It is not a video in the conventional sense, but it is close enough for their purposes. If you watch a video on your favorite historical figure, you will be flooded with artificial intelligence slop videos in your recommended feed. If you are not careful, you end up awash in these slop videos.
Like the slop on Twitter, the slop on YouTube is mostly about gaming the payment system, and most of it originates from India. Even a small amount of money from slop farming goes a long way in a land without indoor toilets. The advance of artificial intelligence might end Indian call centers and coding shops, but it will come with the proliferation of Indian slop centers. The big social media platforms will be swamped by this content unless they figure out how to stop it.
The Google search engine experience suggests it is unlikely that the big social platforms will effectively combat the slop. For the most part, Google is a useless search engine now because they had to implement so many filters to combat the scammers, that the outputs often make little sense. The reason they had to do this was the scammers were finding ways to get their scams at the top of search results, rather than the legitimate results.
It was not helped by Google’s attempt to ban unapproved opinions during the latest spasm of progressive madness. Ironically, you now need artificial intelligence to find things you used to use Google to find. The Brave browser search engine now provides an AI answer at the top of the search results. Most of the time, the AI response is close enough, unless the question is on the list of banned ideas. Even AI has been rigged by our progressive theocrats.
It is not just Indian scammers that are ruining the public square. A strange phenomenon on YouTube is the reaction video. Video makers with no talent create videos of themselves reacting to other videos. They make goofy faces and add inane commentary to reach the required length to monetize the video. The point is to attract the attention of people interested in the primary content. It is a way to exploit the fair use doctrine to steal the work of others for private gain.
Now that reaction videos have proven successful, a new genre has emerged where the YouTuber makes a reaction video to a reaction video. Suppose a home cook makes a recipe video, and a professional chef then makes a reaction video to it. The new “reaction to the reaction” YouTuber then makes a reaction video to the chef reacting to the original video. It is not hard to see where this is heading. It will not be long before it is reaction videos all the way down.
All of this relies on systemic theft. The Twitter slop merchants steal content like images and videos and then use it in their slop posts. If you are at a public event and video something amusing to post online, you can be sure that an Indian slop farmer will steal it, remove any references to you, and then add it to their slop stream. This is why so many video clips now have highly intrusive watermarks. It is an effort to combat the Indian slop farmers.
Ironically, the deluge of slop that promise to swamp the internet was made possible by what made social media possible. The big platforms made their billions stealing information from their users and then selling it to marketing firms and governments. Free email was about harvesting the user’s private correspondence. Your search and browsing history were used without your permission. Big tech ushered in the collapse of personal property, and now they are the victims of the same theft.
The bigger problem is the tragedy of the commons. The internet is the largest public common in human history. While it is not entirely free to access, it is effectively free to use. The Indian scammer does not have to pay for each scam text message he sends to your grandmother. He does not have to pay for each slop tweet he posts on Twitter. The cost to him as a scammer is the same as for you and every other person accessing the digital public common.
The infrastructure providers have an interest in their part of the internet, but they do not have a stake in the public square. The social media firms have an interest in their piece of the common, but their reason to exist is as an open forum for all to enter, so walling it off is against their interests. The public square portion of the digital commons is like an orchard owned in common. Everyone has a reason to take from it, but no one has a reason to protect it.
We will probably end up with a private internet for the same reason we have gated communities, concierge healthcare, and homeowner associations. The open society benefits only those with no stake in it. They take what they want and then move on to the next host. The only defense is the closed society in which admission is determined by private interests. The great democratization of the public square will end with a great feudalization of it."
"The supply chain is collapsing. Ships empty. Orders canceled. A Catastrophic wave of shortages is about to devastate American stores. Everything you take for granted? GONE. Yes, retailers will attempt to find replacement items from other sources when it is possible to do so. But in many cases, things that are made in China are not made anywhere else. As retailers run through existing inventory levels, shortages will begin to emerge.
If you go into most major retailers today, you will notice that stock levels are lower than usual and there are some empty shelves. We are about to find out what happens when thousands of very popular products are suddenly no longer available for sale. A lot of Amazon shoppers have been shocked to learn that some of their favorite products have already disappeared. In fact, there are entire stores on Amazon that are now completely gone.
Of course it isn't just Amazon that is facing an unprecedented crisis. Walmart, Target, Home Depot and our largest dollar store chains are all going to have to figure out new ways to fill their shelves in the months ahead.
Those that wish to export products to the United States will soon have to pay enormous port fees on top of the tariffs that have already been announced. For certain products coming from China, that will mean paying port fees on top of tariffs of up to 245 percent. Some companies will still attempt to sell Chinese-made products in the United States, but they will be forced to hike their prices EXTREMELY high. But in many other cases, companies will simply decide that it no longer makes economic sense to sell those products in the United States.
Unfortunately, more global difficulties are coming. I'm going to break down the TOP 20 products that are about to VANISH from American shelves. This isn't fear-mongering - this is the cold, hard reality we're facing right now."
From the ranch at Gualfin, Argentina - "Getting back into the rhythm of ranch life, we spent part of yesterday vaccinating calves. The law requires vaccinations against diseases which, thanks to its high and remote position, are not present in the valley.
Like so much else at the ranch, many hands are required. Seven of us worked on the ‘manga’ - the cattle chute - yesterday. Alas, the Milei revolution has made those hands much more expensive - in both local and dollar terms. The peso has been going up against the dollar, making a day’s wage more than twice what it was a couple of years ago. From about $8 a day in 2023 when we were last here, each cowboy now costs around $18 per day. But at least, they are good, hard workers.
Back in the USA...Back when Marco Rubio thought he might be president, he foresaw a future that has not yet happened: “For years to come, there are many people on the right, in the media and voters at large, that are going to be having to explain and justify how they fell into this trap of supporting Donald Trump.”
And now it’s ‘Lil Marco’ who will have some ‘splaining to do. This is what he said about Donald Trump before he sold out: “He runs on this idea that he is fighting for the little guy. But he has spent his entire career sticking it to the little guy...If you all have friends who are thinking about voting for Donald Trump, friends do not let friends vote for con artists.”
One day, a Ph.D. candidate will focus his thesis on how rapidly two legged leopards are able to change their spots. And how do proud and intelligent people sit through a White House cabinet meeting and still hold their heads up? Consider the poor Secretary of State. Now that he’s joined the White House team he has nothing but praise for the con artist: “You know in time, you grow to appreciate how Trump gave voice to that sentiment that needed to be heard and that needed to transform our party. Thank you @POTUS for standing up for America in a way that no President has ever had the courage to do before. Thank you for putting America First. America is with you!”
Yesterday, we began looking at the way Big Man leaders are able to get the flunkies, yes-monkeys, and suck-ups to go along with them...even when their policies are disastrous to almost everyone. We shiver to think of it. Dear Readers may shiver too...as they consider Stalin’s show trials and gulags. As cruel and pointless as they were, ‘the people’ went along. And Mao’s crazy ‘cultural revolution’...its chaos, starvation, and ‘struggle sessions’ left 50 million dead.
Again, hardly any organized opposition appeared. And even with the stench of so many cadavers still fresh in the Far East air, along came Pol Pot to rehearse an even deadlier version of the cultural revolution in Cambodia. The ideas were crackpot. The leaders were bloodthirsty ideologues. But the new Marxist elite...and the peasants... submitted, even as their friends and family died. Before it was over approximately one out of every three men in the country was dead.
And what about the Covid lockdowns? Barely one month into the pandemic and it was obvious that there was nothing to be gained from stopping people from working. People of working age rarely died from the ailment...and those who were vulnerable could easily stay home. And yet...critics were accused of ‘mass murder.’ Doubters kept their own counsel. People went along (partly under the influence of generous ‘stimmies’ and loans that didn’t need to be repaid). And the lockdowns cost the US an estimated $16 trillion.
The history of Big Man government is rarely marked by grace or success. And it may be that when normal people let other people make important decisions for them, the decision makers are almost always grifters or imbeciles.
The Big Man has little trouble finding his lieutenants. One of the most remarkable turnabouts in the history of fickle suck-up-ism...came about in the USA recently, as Lil’ Marco and other leading Republicans joined the MAGA crowd. Here’s another example: Lindsey Graham. The Atlantic: "Short and pudgy... [in school] they nicknamed him “Stinkball.” He always gravitated to custodial, larger-than-life figures, or “alpha dogs,” as he called them.
Graham had been a fierce ‘never Trumper.’ He said Trump was a “complete idiot” who was a “xenophobic, race-baiting, religious bigot.” It would be a “total disaster” if he were elected, he predicted. But Trump was elected. Twice. And now, says Graham, Trump is “doing a really good job on multiple fronts...I’ve determined we really can’t grow without him.”
Of course, the leading stinkballs - Graham, Rubio, Cruz, Musk, etc - have something obvious to gain...power. Trump has it. They want some of it. And they’re willing to trade whatever trace of dignity or independent judgement they once had for a bit of it. But what of the rank and file...the water-carriers and hewers of wood in Congress? Why do they so readily toss off their traditional values - like cockroaches climbing out of their carapaces, revealing even more hideous insects?
Rather than risk being out-of-step with the Big Man, by sticking to principles, good taste or traditional good sense, the creepy crawlers sweat, as Graham put it, to remain “relevant.” What does that mean in a late, degenerate empire? What disaster does it portend? Stay tuned."
"Renowned radio host, filmmaker, book author and archeological dig expert Steve Quayle is warning, in the not-so-distant future, war could be everywhere and food could be nowhere. Let’s start with the under-reported escalation that could go nuclear between Pakistan and India. Will it be confined to just these two countries? Quayle says, “No, it will not be confined to just them. What Pakistan did was to directly threaten India. They told India we have 130 nuclear warheads aimed at you. What most people lose track of is all the different defense agreements, and China is on Pakistan’s side. What is coming under most people’s radar is this is the first nuclear launch of nuclear armed missiles with one nation against another. When you start talking about the two most populated countries in the world, and that is India and China, you get a golden jackpot of these people going at each other. So, this will not stay confined.”
What would happen if a nuclear exchange occurred anywhere in the world? Everyone would be affected, and Quayle explains, “When the first nuclear weapon is fired by one country against another, or a terrorist incident with a nuclear warhead, then all of us know there is a countdown. It will be possibly in days, or possibly in weeks, but no longer than weeks will we have to be prepared. At that point your checks won’t come in the mail; you won’t be able to get anything by FedEx, and every parcel service will shut down. This is why people will have to take this seriously. We are talking about a nuclear crisis.”
In Europe, Quayle says, “The Ukraine/Russia peace deal is dead. I believe NATO is toast. You are seeing it breaking down in real time. You will see US military move out of Europe. We are not in a cold war. We are in a hot war now. You are seeing global economic collapse, and it cannot be stopped. Death, famine and plague are all coming.”
“Here is one of the largest objects that anyone will ever see on the sky. Each of these fuzzy blobs is a galaxy, together making up the Perseus Cluster, one of the closest clusters of galaxies. The cluster is seen through a foreground of faint stars in our own Milky Way Galaxy.
Near the cluster center, roughly 250 million light-years away, is the cluster's dominant galaxy NGC 1275, seen above as a large galaxy on the image left. A prodigious source of x-rays and radio emission, NGC 1275 accretes matter as gas and galaxies fall into it. The Perseus Cluster of Galaxies, also cataloged as Abell 426, is part of the Pisces-Perseus supercluster spanning over 15 degrees and containing over 1,000 galaxies. At the distance of NGC 1275, this view covers about 15 million light-years.”
The most momentous and significant events in our lives are the
ones we do not see coming. Life is defined by the unforeseen.
by Jonny Thomson
"You’re in the shower one day, and you feel a lump that wasn’t there before. You’re having lunch when your phone rings with an unknown number: there’s been a crash. You come home and your husband is holding a suitcase. “I’m leaving,” he says.
Life is inevitably punctuated by sudden changes. At one moment, we might have everything laid out before us, and then an invisible wall stops us in our tracks. It might be an illness, a bereavement, an accident or some bad news, but life has a habit of mocking those who make plans. We can have our eyes on some distant shore, some faraway horizon, only to find everything come crashing down by the most unseen of events. As the Scottish poet Robert Burns wrote, “The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men. Gang aft agley” (often go wrong).
In Anton Chekhov’s remarkable play, "The Seagull," we meet a cast of characters who are all, in some way, in love with something. The young, idealistic artist Konstantin is in love with the idea of pure art. Arkadin, his mother, is in love with her fans and her celebrity. Konstantin’s girlfriend, Nina, is in love with becoming rich and famous. Everyone in the play has some kind of ambition and plan, or they live in regret over the life they chose. They rail against how misguided or mistaken their life has been, while longing for something else.
They are each like a seagull, flying over the sea or a great lake, and aiming purposefully for the shore. The view up there is wonderful. But the longer the seagull flies, the more oblivious they are to how they tire or weaken. They’re so fixated on some distant horizon that they’re at the mercy to life’s sudden changes. They’re blinkered and distracted, and the gods love nothing more than the hopeful hubris of mankind.
At one point in the play, Chekov has the character Trigorin recount a short story about a gull flying over a lake who’s, “happy and free.” But in the next moment, “a man sees her who happens to come that way, and he destroys her out of idleness.” The seagull is killed, its flight and plans annihilated, in one instant of random thoughtlessness.
Boundary Situations: While so much of our lives are spent in planning and preparation, the most transformative and significant moments are those which come at us out of the blue. These are what the psychiatrist Karl Jaspers called “boundary situations” - the ones we cannot initiate, plan, or avoid. We can only “encounter” them. These are not the mundane, everyday parts of our life - what Jaspers calls “situation being” - but rather they are things which thunder down to shake the foundations of our being. They change who we are. Although these “boundary situations” (sometimes called “limit situations”) change a bit in Jaspers’ works, he broadly sorted them into four categories:
Death: Death is the source of all our fear. We fear our loved ones dying, and we fear the moment and fact of our own death. When we know grief and despair, or when we reflect on mortality, we are transformed. We always know about death, but when it’s a boundary situation, it comes crashing into our lives like some grim scythe; an unforeseen curtain call. The awareness and subjective encounter with death transforms us.
Struggle: Life is a struggle. We work for food, compete for resources, and vie with each other for power, prestige, and status in almost every context there is. As such, there are moments when we are inevitably overcome and defeated, but also when we are victorious and champion. The final outcomes of struggle are often sudden and great, and they make us who we are.
Guilt: Hopefully, there comes a moment for each of us when we finally accept responsibility for things. For many, it comes with adulthood, but for others it comes much later still. It’s the awareness that our actions impact all around us, and our decisions echo into the world. It’s seeing the damage or tears we’ve caused. It’s to recognize that, however small or big, we’ve hurt and upset someone. It’s a profound pull of the heart that changes how we live, and it often comes on unexpectedly.
Chance: No matter how neat and ordered we might want our world to be, there will always be a messy, chaotic, and unpredictable exception. We can hope for the best, and make the plans we want, but we can never take a steering handle on the facts that will affect our existence. According to Jaspers, we each prefer, “assembling functional and explanatory structures… whose central axis lies in sufficient reason” and yet, “despite this, it is not possible for man to control and explain everything. In fact, day by day he faces events that he cannot call anything else other than coincidences or hazards.” We want order, and regularity. What we get is the mercurial and capricious throes of chance.
The best laid plans: What Chekhov’s Seagull and Jaspers’ “boundary situations” get right is that we are each much more vulnerable than we might want to allow. A wedding, three years and a fortune to plan, is ruined by a stomach bug. An hour-long journey home for Christmas winds up getting you stuck in the traffic of a freak snowstorm. A lifetime achievement is overshadowed by a national disaster. Our lives are defined by the unforeseen. We have our dreams, hopes and are flying to some faraway shore. Yet life doesn’t care. Around every corner, at every flap of our wings, everything can change."
"Car dealerships across America are facing an inventory crisis. Currently at over 48 days worth of supply on dealership lots where is back in 2022 it was only 25 days of supply. Cars are more expensive than ever and people can't afford the financing so these vehicles are sitting on the lot sometimes four years at a time with some manufacturers still selling brand new 2023 models in 2025."
"Experts Are Warning That There Will Be Significant
Shortages In America By The End Of Next Month"
"The crisis we're facing can't be overstated. Nearly every U.S. industry depends on Chinese imports - and that flow is now grinding to a halt. I wish I was exaggerating, but I'm not. According to the World Trade Organization, trade between the United States and China could decline by as much as 80 percent. Even the U.S. Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, has called this an effective trade embargo. That's why economists say a US recession is now almost a coin flip.Unless something changes, this is going to be the biggest shock to our economy in decades. At the moment, our stores are filled with products that are manufactured in factories in China. But now many of those factories have gone eerily quiet…"
