Bill Bonner, "Colossal Wrecks"

The left foot of Ozymandias, engraving by Louis-Pierre Baltard

"Colossal Wrecks"

by Bill Bonner

Baltimore, Maryland - "Is the US repeating the mistakes of past empires? Its pomp? Its vanity? How about this, the New York Times: "Trump publicly unveiled his plans for the arch last week, during a dinner for the wealthy donors who are funding the $200 million ballroom addition to the White House. He showed off renderings and presented three models in different sizes, all of which looked similar to the Arc de Triomphe, France’s neoclassical monument that was finished in the 19th century. “Small, medium and large - whichever one, they look good,” Mr. Trump said, holding out the models. “I happen to think the larger one looks, by far, the best.”

Arcs of Triomphe are conceived and built when the nation is triumphant. France’s Arc de Triomphe was designed in 1806. Then it must have seemed as though nothing could stop the victorious French under its Big Man, Napoleon. In 1805, the Grande Armee, beat the combined Russian-Austrian forces at Austerlitz. Bonaparte feigned retreat and then circled around to crush the enemy. It was such a superb victory that it put the Corsican in the same small group of geniuses as Hannibal and Alexander the Great. In 1806, France was on top of the world…her ‘big battalions’ ready to march…and her leader unmatched. Surely an arch….in the style of Titus’s arch in Rome…seemed appropriate.

They don’t ring a bell at the top of the stock market. But when they put up triumphal arches you might hear the faint jingle of soon-to-be-forgotten glories. Only six years after beginning the arch, the French, angry with the Tsar for failing to respect their trade sanctions, attacked Russia. The campaign was a disaster. Three years on and France’s European empire was finished. Napoleon, perhaps the greatest military man of his generation, had made too many enemies. Two of the biggest of them - England and Prussia - trapped him at Waterloo. And the triumphs were over. Bonaparte spent the rest of his life exiled on Saint Helena, fighting rats.

The Arc de Triomphe is modeled after the Arch of Titus in Rome. It too was built near the very peak of Rome’s glory - in 81 AD - by Domitian to commemorate his brother, Titus. It was Titus who led the siege of Jerusalem, in which he did to the Jews more or less what they now do to the Gazans. He leveled their city, destroyed their temple, and dispersed and enslaved the survivors.

These triumphs were incredibly appreciated by the masses. They got to participate, if only by proximity, to the loot…got to look over the slaves who would later be put to auction…and got the pleasure of watching their enemies (at least, they were told they were enemies) get publicly executed.

Caesar himself brought back the rebel, Vercingetorix, and had him strangled before a cheering Roman mob. Maduro, are you paying attention? But Rome’s clock was ticking too. Until around 100 AD, Rome’s history was one conquest after another. Each time, the winning general was accorded a ‘triumph,’ in which he marched through the streets ahead of the booty, slaves and captives he brought back. After 100 AD, however, Rome was on the defensive. Thereafter, it was a long, bumpy, downhill slide…with no more conquests…and few triumphs.

Bubble markets have their moments of triumph too… just before they fall apart. It is then too when prices get furthest removed from real values. Chris Mayer, who runs Woodlock House Family Capital out of our office in Ireland, sends this remarkable news flash: ‘Since early September, companies with positive earnings on the Russell 5,000 index have gone approximately nowhere. But companies with negative earnings - that is, those that lost money - are up 17%.’

And what about OpenAI, now said to be worth about $500 billion? Does the business plan bring back memories of 1999? Sam Altman explained it: "The honest answer is we have no idea. We have never made any revenue. We have no current plans to make revenue. We have no idea how we may one day generate revenue. We have made a soft promise to investors that once we’ve built this sort of generally intelligent system, basically, we will ask it to figure out a way to generate an investment return for you. [audience laughter] It sounds like an episode of Silicon Valley, it really does, I get it. You can laugh, it’s all right. But it is what I actually believe is going to happen." That interview was in 2019. And today, OpenAI is still losing money, about $5 billion last year.

What do we make of it? The feds’ arches and the investment milestones…tell us what passions their designers read. And we…we just await the ‘decay of those colossal wrecks.’ Stay tuned…"

- https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/

Michael Bordenaro, "Empty Tables: The New Normal For Restaurants"

Full screen recommended.

Michael Bordenaro, 10/23/25

"Empty Tables: 

The New Normal For Restaurants"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

Michael Bordenaro, 10/23/25

"Unemployment and Inflation

 Prove The Economy is in Freefall"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Multiple Items at Kroger You Should Be Buying Right Now!"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures With Danno, 10/23/25

"Multiple Items at Kroger You 

Should Be Buying Right Now!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Orlando Miner, "Food Stamps Cancelled! People Are Losing It!"

Full screen recommended.

Strong language alert!

Orlando Miner, 10/22/25

"Food Stamps Cancelled! People Are Losing It!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"This Shutdown Could Push Millions Into Poverty - Here’s How"

Full screen recommended.

Snyder Reports, 10/22/25

"This Shutdown Could Push Millions 

Into Poverty - Here’s How"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Jeremiah Babe, "Freakouts Over Losing Food Stamps, Grocery Snatching Coming Soon"

Jeremiah Babe, 10/22/25

"Freakouts Over Losing Food Stamps, 

Grocery Snatching Coming Soon"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: Vangelis, “Hymn”

Full screen recommended.

Vangelis, “Hymn”

"A Look to the Heavens"

"In silhouette against a crowded star field along the tail of the arachnalogical constellation Scorpius, this dusty cosmic cloud evokes for some the image of an ominous dark tower.

In fact, clumps of dust and molecular gas collapsing to form stars may well lurk within the dark nebula, a structure that spans almost 40 light-years across this gorgeous telescopic portrait. Known as a cometary globule, the swept-back cloud, is shaped by intense ultraviolet radiation from the OB association of very hot stars in NGC 6231, off the upper edge of the scene. That energetic ultraviolet light also powers the globule's bordering reddish glow of hydrogen gas. Hot stars embedded in the dust can be seen as bluish reflection nebulae. This dark tower, NGC 6231, and associated nebulae are about 5,000 light-years away."

- https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap210715.html

Chet Raymo, “Cosmic View”

“Cosmic View”

by Chet Raymo

“When writing about Philip and Phylis Morrison’s “Powers of Ten” I found I had made the following notation in the flyleaf, perhaps a dozen or more years ago:

Britannica
 32 volumes
 1000 pages per vol
 1200 words per page
 5 letters/wd
 = 200 million letters. So, 200 million letters in the 32 volume set of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Why was I making that estimate? I can think of several possibilities. Perhaps…

1. I was making a comparison with the number of nucleotide pairs in the human DNA; that is, the number of steps- ATTGCCCTAA, etc.- on the double-helix. If the information on the human genome- an arm’s length of DNA in every human cell- were written out in ordinary type, it would fill 15 sets of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Nearly 500 thick volumes of information labeled YOU. Think of that for a moment. Fifteen 32-volume sets of the Encyclopedia Britannica in every invisibly-small cell of your body. And every time a cell reproduces, all of that information has to be transcribed correctly. Did I say the other day that it took a semester to stretch the imagination to grasp the universe of the galaxies? It could take another semester to stretch the imagination to grasp the scale of the molecular machinery that makes our bodies work.

Or maybe…

2. I was trying to give an insight into the complexity of the human brain. There are something like 100 billion nerve cells in the brain. That’s equivalent to the number of letters in 500 sets of the Britannica! Each many-fingered neuron connects to hundreds of other neurons, and each synaptic connection might be in one of many levels of excitation. I’ll let you calculate the number of potential states of the human brain. We’ve left behind the realm of Britannica. Even talking of libraries would be insufficient. I was marveling here recently about the amount of digital memory Google must command to store all of those 360-degree Street View images from all over the planet, all of it instantly retrievable by anyone with access to a computer and the internet. I imagined banks and banks of electronics in some cavernous building in California. Big deal! I’m sitting here right now in the college Commons and I can bring to mind street views of every place I’ve lived since I was three or four years old.

By the way…

3. The number of letters in 500 sets of the Britannica is about the number of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy.

And…”

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

"Everything We Assume Is Permanent Is Actually Fragile"

"Everything We Assume Is Permanent Is Actually Fragile"

by Charles Hugh Smith

"The great irony of the past 75 years of expanding consumption is the belief that all these decades of success prove the system is rock-solid and future success is thus guaranteed. The irony lies in the systemic fragility that's built into the large-scale industrial production that generates endless surpluses of energy, food, fresh water, etc. and the global financial system that delivers endless surpluses of capital and credit to be distributed by public authorities and private owners of capital.

The key driver of increasing efficiencies has been scaling up production by concentrating ownership and capacity into a few quasi-monopolies/cartels. In industry after industry, where there were once dozens of companies, there are now only a handful of behemoths with outsized market and political power which they wield to retain their dominance.

For example, where there were dozens of large regional banks in the U.S. not that long ago, relentless consolidation has led to a handful of supergiant too big to fail banks which can take extraordinary risks (and undertake criminal skims) knowing that the federal government will always bail them out and leave the banks' corporate criminals untouched.

Two of these too big to fail banks recently paid fines in the billions of dollars, yet no one went to prison or even faced criminal charges. This highlights the systemic problem with concentrating capital and power in the hands of the few: too big to fail means corporate wrongdoers have a permanent get out of jail free card while the small-fry white-collar criminal will get a fiver (five-year prison sentence) for skimming a tiny fraction of the billions routinely pillaged by the too big to fail banks.

The net result is a two-tier judicial/law enforcement system: the too big to fail "essential" companies get a free hand and the citizenry get whatever "justice" they can afford, i.e. very little.

This concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few corporations is of course state-cartel socialism in which the public good has become subservient to the profits of corporate owners and insiders, and the skims paid to the state's insiders. The state enables and enforces this concentration of private wealth and power in a number of ways: regulatory capture, the polite bribery of lobbying, the revolving door between government and private industry, and so on.

The public good would best be served by competition and transparent markets and regulations, but these are precisely what's been eliminated by relentless consolidation and the paring down of the economic ecosystem to a handful of too big to fail nodes which work tirelessly to eliminate competition, transparency and meaningful public oversight.

This ruthless pursuit of efficiencies and profits has stripped the economy of redundancies and buffers. Production supply chains have been engineered to function in a narrow envelope of quality, quantity and time. Any disruption quickly leads to shortages, something that became visible when meatpacking plants were closed in the pandemic.

Supply chains are long and fragile, but this fragility is not visible as long as everything stays within the narrow envelope that's been optimized. Once the envelope is broken, the supply chain breaks down. Since redundancies and buffers have been stripped away, there are no alternatives available. Shortages mount and the entire system starts breaking down.

Quality has been stripped out as well. When markets become captive to cartels and monopolies, customers have to take what's available: if it's poor quality goods and services, tough luck, pal, there are no alternatives. There are only one or two service providers, healthcare insurers, etc., and they all provide the same minimal level of quality and service.

The moral rot in our social, political and economic orders is another source of hidden fragility. I'm constantly told by readers that corruption has been around forever, so therefore nothing has changed, but these readers are indulging in magical nostalgia: things have changed profoundly, and for the worse, as the moral rot has seeped into every nook and cranny of American life, from the top down.

There is no "public good," there is only a rapacious, obsessive self-interest that claims the mantle of "public good" as a key mechanism of the con.

As I discussed in "Everything is Staged", everyone and everything in America is now nothing more than a means to a self-interested end, and so the the entirety of American life is nothing but 100% marketing of various cons designed to enrich the few at the expense of the many. That America was a better place without endless marketing of Big Pharma meds and "vaccines", and colleges hyping their insanely costly "product" (a worthless diploma) has been largely forgotten by those indulging in magical nostalgia.

What few seem to realize is all the supposedly rock-solid permanent foundations of life are nothing more than fragile social constructs based on trust and legitimacy. Once trust and legitimacy have been lost, these constructs melt into the sands of time.

A great many things we take for granted are fragile constructs that could unravel with surprising speed: law enforcement, the courts, elections, the value of our currency -- these are all social constructs. Once legitimacy is lost, people abandon these constructs and they melt away.

It's clear to anyone who isn't indulging in magical nostalgia that trust in institutions is in a steep decline as the legitimacy of these institutions, public and private, have been eroded by incompetence, corruption, dysfunction and the rapacious self-interest of insiders.

What we've gotten very good at is masking the rot and fragility. Masking the rot and fragility is not the same thing as strength or permanence. The nation is about to discover the difference in the years ahead."

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

"The World..."

"The world is a comedy to those that think,

a tragedy to those who feel. "

- Horace Walpole, In a Letter, 1770

"68 Percent Of Americans Consider The Condition Of The Economy To Be “Poor” As Millions Of U.S. Consumers Reach Their Breaking Points"

"68 Percent Of Americans Consider The Condition Of The Economy

 To Be “Poor” As Millions Of U.S. Consumers Reach Their Breaking Points"

by Michael Snyder

"Millions of Americans are discovering that at some point the money runs out and the party is over. Vehicles are being repossessed at the fastest pace since the global financial crisis, foreclosure filings are up 18 percent compared to last year, and student loan delinquencies have soared into unprecedented territory. Nobody can deny that economic conditions are deteriorating rapidly, and this has pushed vast numbers of U.S. consumers past their breaking points. So what is going to happen if economic conditions continue to deteriorate rapidly in the months ahead?

The American people are not stupid. They clearly understand what is taking place, and they are not happy about it. According to a brand new AP-NORC survey that was just released, a staggering 68 percent of U.S. adults consider the condition of the economy to be “poor”…Some 68% of U.S. adults describe the U.S. economy these days as “poor,” while 32% say it’s “good.” That’s largely consistent with assessments of the economy over the past year.

For many years economic conditions in this country have been collapsing. Now we have finally reached a point where it cannot be denied any longer. Many Americans attempted to keep living a middle class lifestyle by going very deep into debt, but for millions of them a day of reckoning has finally arrived. If you doubt this, just consider the facts.

It is being projected that the number of vehicle repossessions in the U.S. this year will be the highest that we have seen since the global financial crisis…"Car repossessions are surging across the US, as an increasing number of Americans fall behind on their auto loans. According to data from the Recovery Database Network (RDN), analyzed by CURepossession, it is projected that over 3 million cars could be repossessed in 2025."

This would be the highest number since the financial crisis. Consumers will often keep making their vehicle payments even when they have gotten behind on everything else. So the fact that we are witnessing so many repossessions in 2025 is a very troubling sign. And a lot more repossessions are on the way, because subprime borrowers are falling behind on their payments at a rate that we have never seen before…"The percentage of subprime borrowers – those with poor or no credit – who are at least 60 days late on their loans was at 6.43 percent in August, according to Fitch Ratings. This figure has doubled since 2021, and is worse than during the dot-com recession, the Covid-19 pandemic and the financial crisis."

Economists are warning that this consumer weakness could be a warning sign about serious cracks in the US economy which could lead to financial meltdown. Meanwhile, millions of Americans are also getting behind on their mortgages, and foreclosure filings are 18 percent higher than they were last year…"As of August, foreclosure filings had risen six straights months year-over-year and were up 18% from the same period in 2024, according to property data firm ATTOM." If all of this is starting to sound a lot like 2008 to many of you, that is because it really is a lot like 2008.

Americans are rapidly getting behind on their student loans too. In fact, nearly 10 million Americans are either in default or “late-stage delinquency” at this point…"For months, experts have warned that student loan borrowers who are behind on their payments may trigger a “default cliff.” Recent reports show that cliff is now looming. The resumption of federal student loan delinquency reporting on consumers’ credit earlier this year caused a spike in the rate of severe delinquencies, which now near a record high, according to September’s Credit Insights report from credit score developer FICO.

Roughly 5.3 million borrowers are in default and another 4.3 million borrowers are in “late-stage delinquency,” or between 181 and 270 days late on their payments, according to a separate analysis last month by the Congressional Research Service based on data from the Education Department. Payments 270 days past due are considered in default."

What a colossal mess. Sadly, a lot more Americans will be reaching their breaking points in the months ahead because mass layoffs are occurring all over the nation. Earlier today, we learned that Meta will be laying off hundreds of very well paid employees that were working in its artificial intelligence unit…"Meta will lay off roughly 600 employees within its artificial intelligence unit as the company looks to reduce layers and operate more nimbly, a spokesperson confirmed to CNBC on Wednesday. The company announced the cuts in a memo from its chief AI officer, Alexandr Wang, who was hired in June as part of Meta’s $14.3 billion investment in Scale AI. Workers across Meta’s AI infrastructure units, Fundamental Artificial Intelligence Research unit and other product-related positions will be impacted." AI was supposed to be the future. But it appears that bubble is starting to burst too.

These days, it seems like almost everyone is struggling. One recent survey found that 67 percent of U.S. adults that are actually employed are living paycheck to paycheck. Most Americans are just barely scraping by in 2025, and now the current government shutdown threatens to take food stamp benefits away from 42 million Americans next month.

Needless to say, that has the potential to cause widespread chaos… A classic saying among preparedness experts in the US is that America is capable of weathering many crises, but when the food stamps shut down all bets are off. In other words, when the free stuff army loses their handouts, that’s when all hell breaks loose. The US government spends over $100 billion on SNAP programs every year; the largest single food welfare project in the world. It’s difficult to predict what an end to SNAP might look like.

One can assume the worst and be ready for a “Walking Dead” disaster in which angry mobs run rampant. Or, tensions might continue to simmer. Many people might be forced to simply get a job, and the welfare subset could decide to adapt. But they probably won’t. All of this lines up perfectly with the nightmare scenarios that so many of the experts have been warning us about.

Those at the top of the economic pyramid are still thriving for the moment, but those at the bottom of the economic pyramid are suffering very deeply and are becoming increasingly desperate. And desperate people do desperate things. The U.S. economy has been moving in a very clear direction for more than five years now, and at this stage what is in front of us should be quite obvious to everyone."

- https://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Peterborough, New Hampshire, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"The Great Replacement Is Underway, And It's Not The One You're Thinking About"

"The Great Replacement Is Underway, 

And It's Not The One You're Thinking About"

by Leo Hohmann

"A new report is out this week that shows Amazon is on a path to ramp up automation and drastically reduce its reliance on human beings, allowing it to avoid filling more than 160,000 jobs with actual human employees by 2027. That’s less than two years away. But if you take the numbers out to the year 2033, they are actually much worse, with Amazon slashing 600,000 jobs that would otherwise need to be filled. This is according to internal documents cited by the New York Times.

Using AI robots to replace human labor is part of a strategy that aims to double the company’s sales while reducing labor costs significantly. In short, AI robots are the key to padding Amazon’ bottom line like never before. The company aims to automate 75% of its operations while rebranding its robotics efforts as “advanced technology” and “cobots.” Sounds nice, eh?

If it were just Amazon doing this it would be concerning. Amazon is the nation’s third largest employer behind the federal government and Walmart. But what if all or most of America’s largest corporate employers were working on similar strategies on similar timelines? What if, in the age of AI and robots, they’re all planning to use this technology to its maximum potential over the next three to seven years? We’re talking about a job-killing juggernaut with massive implications for American society. Not only America but the entire world. What to do with tens of millions of human workers displaced by machines and AI-powered algorithms?

It’s a dilemma very few of our elected leaders wish to talk about. They would rather tout the wonders of AI and live in denial about the dark side of this tech. But lying about the true motives behind corporations adopting AI and shunning the conversation won’t solve the problem, now will it?

Where will all of the replaced and displaced workers go to earn a living? Everyone can’t be a carpenter, plumber or electrician, the type of skilled trades that still seem relatively safe from the great AI replacement strategy. Everyone can’t go into business for themselves, as that also requires some unique talents. This is why Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Larry Ellison and many other Tech Bros speak so often about Universal Basic Income, or UBI, where people rendered part of a new useless class are paid to sit home and do nothing.

Israeli historian and futurist Yuval Harari writes: “The most important question in 21st-century economics may well be: What should we do with all the superfluous people, once we have highly intelligent non-conscious algorithms that can do almost everything better than humans?” Harari adds that, “Most of what kids currently learn at school will probably be irrelevant by the time they are 40.” And he said this in 2017. Technology has sped up considerably since then.

Harari says the best scenario we can hope for with regard to these displaced and “useless” workers may be that they stay entertained with video games and made comfortably numb with some type of modern Soma. He admits that, for the human psyche, the only thing worse than feeling oppressed is to feel utterly useless and unneeded.

So, we have a moral dilemma being created by AI and advanced robotics, one that politicians refuse to talk about. All we hear from them is how wonderful AI is and how it must be mastered and exploited to its fullest or we will get left behind in the race to replace. After all, if we don’t do it, the Chinese will, they say, hoping to shut down the conversation with the mere mention of the Chinese boogyman. That’s not going to cut it when millions of Americans are thrown out of work and taking to the streets because they have no way to feed their families and no hope of a future.

Perhaps that explains why the globalists and technocrats are so eager to get everyone tagged and marked with a biometric digital ID, so they can ramp up their surveillance in a department of pre-crime scenario that helps them keep everyone in line. Or perhaps the globalist power elites plan to address society’s AI job-crushing dilemma through their long-held and highly developed depopulation schemes. It would certainly explain why these same power elites seem so eager to start World War III with Russia.

In the meantime, the corporate media will try to keep us distracted from what’s really happening for as long as possible. There will be bread and circuses aplenty. With a strong dose of political drama mixed in from the Entertainer in Chief. Hey, did you check out his latest AI video showing him dropping poop on his political opponents from an F-16 fighter jet? That was so cool wasn’t it? LOL.

It’s time to prepare ourselves mentally, physically and spiritually for great changes in our society that are taking shape in warp speed. The Great Replacement backed up with an AI-powered digital marking system is being erected before our very eyes. Those handing out the keys to entry will describe it as safe and secure, more convenient and inclusive, a veritable digital wonderland designed to make your life easier and happier. But once inside you will find it more resembles a prison. Will you walk inside voluntarily? Will you allow yourself to be bought off or incentivized to join? Coerced? Forced? All of these options are on the table."

- https://leohohmann.substack.com/

"Ten Commandments For Living From Philosopher Bertrand Russell"

"Ten Commandments For Living From

Philosopher Bertrand Russell"

"The Ten Commandments that, as a teacher, I should wish to promulgate, might be set forth as follows:

1. Do not feel absolutely certain of anything.

2. Do not think it worthwhile to proceed by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light.

3. Never try to discourage thinking for you are sure to succeed.

4. When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your husband or your children, endeavor to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.

5. Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found.

6. Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.

7. Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

8. Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.

9. Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.

10. Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool’s paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness."

"Three Passions" 

 "Three passions have governed my life:

The longings for love, the search for knowledge,

And unbearable pity for the suffering of humankind.

Love brings ecstasy and relieves loneliness.

In the union of love I have seen

In a mystic miniature the prefiguring vision

Of the heavens that saints and poets have imagined.

With equal passion I have sought knowledge.

I have wished to understand the hearts of people.

I have wished to know why the stars shine.

Love and knowledge led upwards to the heavens,

But always pity brought me back to earth;

Cries of pain reverberated in my heart,

Of children in famine, of victims tortured,

And of old people left helpless.

I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot,

And I too suffer.

This has been my life; I found it worth living." 

- Bertrand Russell

"If You Don't..."

 

Bill Bonner, "Paranormal Activity"

"Paranormal Activity"

by Bill Bonner

Baltimore, Maryland - "First, we need to tell you about an almost ‘para-normal’ experience we had last night. We had just arrived in Baltimore from New York. It was 11 p.m. when we headed to bed. And then, we looked out our front window...and there we saw the most remarkable display.

In two trees facing us, one directly in front of the window and the other in the park across the street, tiny blue lights danced, darted, and swirled. They looked like the tiny lights on a Christmas tree. But they were in motion. Too fast and bright to be animal. Too light and unattached to be mineral. Too intense and quick to be vegetable. What were they? We thought, at first, that our eyes must be playing tricks on us. But as we studied the lights, they became more real. They seemed to be moving about randomly, but there was a pattern...a whirling gyre in one tree...a sparkler of lights, as if the tree were on fire, in the other.

This was no random motion. In the smaller tree, three tiny blue lights, at the very top of the tree, lit up regularly, about once a second. And in the bigger tree, there were several fixed rows of blue light - unmoving - along with a few lights in red. There was no variation in the colors. They were either bright red...or light blue.

Could they have been some projection from across the street? Yes, that’s what we think they were. But no natural cause or source was visible. An alien invasion? Maybe. By 7 a.m. they had vanished, leaving no trace - no wires, no dust, no scorched leaves. Here’s a little of what we saw, video here: https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/

But let us return to business. The burthen of the last few days was merely that ‘mistakes’ have their place. As a society matures, its elites seek to get more and more of its surplus output for themselves. They ‘milk the system,’ becoming more corrupt over time. They get richer. But their mistakes - policy creep, debt, inflation, war, sanctions, tariffs, imperial over-reach - slow the economy. The poor get poorer. But the ‘mistakes’ turn out not to be mistakes at all; by comparison, the rich get even richer!

Self-dealing has always been a temptation in government. But it rose to a new level in the 21st century. Back in the 1960s, Dwight Eisenhower warned the nation that the ‘military-industrial complex’ was getting out of control. Then, he and Mamie retired to his family farm in Pennsylvania, where he lived on his federal pension. “Every other president since the civil war has avoided any significant financial conflicts of interest with their official duties,” says Richard Painter, former White House ethics lawyer.

But when the Obamas left Washington, they walked away with a $65 million book contract, the highest amount ever paid for a presidential memoir. And then, ‘Biden, Inc.’ went even further. Hunter Biden peddled access to the White House. His shameless hustling might have earned him a jail sentence, but for his father’s final act as president. With only 15 minutes to go, he gave a blanket pardon to all the members of his family who might be called to account.

Alas, with its typical bravado, the Trump Team builds on Biden’s tawdry legacy. Gone are the concerns about ‘cashing in’ on the presidency. Gone are worries about down-market advertising or cheap profiteering. Gone too are the old soucis about ‘conflicts of interest.’

The Financial Times is on the story: "After making millions of dollars selling branded bibles, cologne, sneakers and autographed guitars, the president has extracted tens of millions of dollars from social media and news companies who settled lawsuits brought by Trump that few legal experts believed had merit."

This is an entirely new and unexpected way to buy influence. Get sued by Trump. Then, ‘settle’ by giving him money. The FT continues: "But the heart of Trump’s newfound wealth is a rapidly growing cryptocurrency empire built by the president and his family. According to the Financial Times investigation, this business has already reaped more than $1 billion in pre-tax profits over the past year, in part thanks to a crypto boom fueled by the administration’s own industry-friendly policies."

A cryptocurrency empire? Trump told a crypto conference that “the rules will be written by people who love your industry.” He went on to say he intended to make the US the “crypto capital of the world.” But what ‘industry’ is it? What is its product? What is its service? What wealth does it create? We don’t know, but the Trump family has gotten a lot of it.

Whatever else it is, crypto is a great way to channel money to POTUS and his family...and perhaps gain ‘access’ to the White House. The Financial Times implies that ‘a Chinese born crypto billionaire’ may have dodged a fraud charge by putting $75 million into one of Trump’s crypto ventures. Then, he dined with the president in May and pledged to put in another $100 million.

Trump’s ‘super pac’ got at least $41 million from the crypto bros in the first six months of this year. The Abu Dhabi investment firm MGX bought $2 billion worth of a Trump stable coin. A Chinese company said it had raised $300 million for Trump-related crypto. And a fund from the UAE said it bought $100 million in tokens from a Trump-backed crypto investment group. And who can complain? Steve Witkoff’s family now is said to have more than half a billion dollars’ worth of crypto. And Eric Trump says bitcoin will eventually be worth as much as $1 billion each.

Let’s see, rather than bail out the farmers or try to bring back $25-an-hour factory jobs...why not just give everyone a single Trump crypto coin, now? They cost nothing to produce. And then, when they are worth $1 billion each, we’ll be a nation of billionaires. And with a billion-dollar Trump coin, maybe you’ll be able to buy a cup of coffee.

But wait. Is the ‘crypto’ industry just another ‘mistake’ - ‘creating wealth’ while producing nothing…gobbling up huge amounts of time and money, and ultimately reducing the amount of capital available for producing real wealth? Will it actually make most people poorer, not richer? We’ll see."

- https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/

"A Musical How It Really Is, And It Is"

Full screen recommended.

The Temptations, "Ball of Confusion" (1970)

Prophetic...

"WW3 Update: Peace Proposal Designed To Fail, Prepare For Escalation"

Prepper News, 10/22/25

"WW3 Update: Peace Proposal Designed 

To Fail, Prepare For Escalation"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Social Security and Medicare: Will Shutdown End Programs?"

Full screen recommended.

Snyder Reports, 10/22/25

"Social Security and Medicare:

 Will Shutdown End Programs?"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

Snyder Reports, 10/21/25

"Warning: 46 States Ready To Cut SNAP Benefits"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

Finance Economist, 10/21/25

"Americans Can't Afford Food and Are Getting Desperate - 

It’s Worse Than Anyone Realizes"

"Millions of Americans are struggling to afford basic groceries as prices skyrocket across the country. From food shortages to record-high inflation, the reality is far worse than anyone’s admitting. This video breaks down the truth behind the numbers and why survival is becoming harder by the day."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

If people will do this over a TV, what happens when there's no food?

"What's New At Sam's Club!? New Arrivals & Some Amazing Deals!"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures with Danno, 10/22/25

"What's New At Sam's Club!? 

New Arrivals & Some Amazing Deals!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Dan, I Allegedly, "Experts Predict a Massive Crash!"

Dan, I Allegedly, 10/22/25

"Experts Predict a Massive Crash!"

"Gold just hit $4,200 an ounce - what’s next? Could gold actually soar to $10K like some experts are predicting? In today’s video, I sit down with Jack Hanney, CEO of Patriot Gold, to dig into the booming gold and silver markets and what the future might hold. With forecasts from major players like JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and Bank of America pointing to gold reaching $5,000 by 2026, we’re talking big opportunities in precious metals. Plus, we discuss the potential for silver to follow suit with skyrocketing gains - this is your PSA to start preparing before it’s too late! We explore how central banks are stockpiling gold, the possibility of the U.S. revaluing its gold reserves to tackle the deficit, and what that could mean for prices. If you've ever wondered how inflation, rate cuts, or even global tensions impact gold and silver, this is the conversation for you. And for anyone looking to protect their purchasing power, Jack shares insights on why now is the time to invest in precious metals."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Jim Kunstler, "Enserfification, It’s No Accident"

"Enserfification, It’s No Accident"

by Jim Kunstler

“Oh my God! Movable printed type! We must keep this from

the serfs lest they gain literacy and threaten the landed gentry!”

– "Family Guy"

“The moral and Constitutional obligations of our representatives in Washington are to protect our liberty, not coddle the world, precipitating no-win wars, while bringing bankruptcy to our people.” – Ron Paul. Okay, maybe Ron was a bit of a downer, but if he could see the average millennial staring at blankly at their TikTok® feed while wondering if ramen counts as a vegetable, he’d probably nod and say: “Told ya so.”

America isn’t only circling the drain, it’s installing a fancy gold-plated one, imported from China, because why not add insult to bankruptcy? Let’s talk about “Enserfification.” While I cannot find any reference to this word (I did find “enserfify”) on the Internet, A.I. claims that it’s okay, so that’s good enough for me even though Word™ draws an angry, squiggly line under it.

Enserfification is not quite feudalism, where the lord hands you a pitchfork and a plot of mud and some ugly facial moles in exchange for your firstborn. Nope, it’s sneakier. It’s the slow, corporate/bureaucratic boil where the middle class gets squeezed until the middle class plops, slowly mind you, into the ranks of a serf. Let’s face it, the middle class is shrinking, and those that are in it are not building dreams anymore. They’re just trying not to default on the electric bill for their bread and circuses Netflix™ indoctrination videos. And the statistics? They are brutal.

Those under 40 with a STEM degree and a car payment, life is hitting them like a tax audit from the IRS’s agent that they hired directly from the DMV because she regularly made Marine Drill Instructors cry. Let’s start with jobs.

Remember when Mom and Dad said, “Get a degree in engineering or computers, kid, and you’ll be set for life”? Yeah, that was before the H-1B visa tsunami turned Silicon Valley into a global import mall with accents thicker than a deaf Russian that learned English in South Carolina. In 2024 alone, the U.S. approved a whopping 399,395 H-1B petitions - basically a free-for-all green light for companies to hire cheaper talent from abroad instead of the fresh-faced Americans they just saddled with $100k in student debt. Oh, and did anyone mention that these invaders can bring their spouses, and that they can work, too? That 400,000 number is up 3% from the year before, because nothing says “meritocracy” like importing coders who mainly lie about their degree and qualifications.

Recent American college grads with physics degrees are sitting at a 7.8% unemployment rate, second-worst among majors. Computer engineering? 7.5%. Computer science? 6.1%.

These aren’t lazy trust-funders: these are they (mainly) guys who aced calculus while discovering new an unique ways to self-administer caffeine, only to hit the job market and find a “park’s closed, moose out front should have told you” meme. Why hire Johnny from Boston when you can snag Judgish from Bangalore for 30% less, besides, he’s the nephew of the HR lady?

Enserfification Step One: Lock the gates on opportunity, import infinity Indians, then blame the peasants for not climbing the walls.

Let’s move to step two... Cars are the great American symbol of freedom in the postwar era: cruising the open road with the wind in your hair and AC/DC® describing how to Shoot to Thrill. Me? Back then when I listened to AC/DC™, the neighbors did, too. Except now, that freedom costs more than a down payment on a small ranch would have in the 1980s, and I’m not exaggerating: the average new car price in 2025 is now solidly over $50,000. I have no idea who is buying cars at these prices, outside of federal governments, state governments, local governments and corporations.

Back in 2000, you could snag a reliable sedan for under $20,000. Oh, and that number is adjusted for inflation. But now, most people don’t buy cars with any view towards the price, they look at the monthly payment, so adding leather seats on a... pickup... becomes the norm.

Today? Forget it. Folks are hanging onto their rustbuckets like they’re family heirlooms, because the average age of vehicles on U.S. roads hit a record 12.8 years in 2025. The newest Wilder family vehicle is nearly a decade old. Why the delay? First, value. Most of the new cars are loaded with crap that I don’t value. Heated seats? A.I.-enabled cup holders? Sound systems that have monthly fees.?

The idea is to turn a “here, you bought a car, it’s yours” to “here, you bought a limited-term license to have title to a car that will require $47.50 monthly so it will report your driving habits and destinations to your insurance company without your consent”. Me? I’d much rather own a 2012 Civic™ with rubber floormats and a passenger-side electric mirror that doesn’t work.

This is Enserfification Step Two: Make mobility a luxury, so you’re stuck in your 30-minute commute hell, pondering if that cheap Prius® with just one dead owner from Craigslist© is haunted. (Spoiler alert: it is.) Just like the meme says: in 2030 you’ll own nothing, but you will represent a reliable monthly income stream because to the corporations and governmental entities, that’s what you are. Which is? A serf.

I could go on and on, but I’ve been wordy recently, and you get the picture. I detail housing and our lack of choices there (killed by legal and illegal immigration), federal, state, and local laws that never seem to get rolled back but keep moving in the direction where everything that isn’t mandatory will be prohibited and the other aspects of the subscription economy where a million companies want.

The middle class isn’t shrinking naturally. It is being pulverized into gig-economy paste on purpose on the twin altars of multiculturalism and corporate profits. Their solution: bread and circuses, updated for the smartphone age. How do they make the middle class go quietly onto that good night?

Cell phones that ping into dopamine oblivion,

YouTube® rabbit holes that make three hours vanish like your savings, and

Netflix queues longer than the line at the DMV.

It’s genius, really. Why allow the serfs to revolt when they can be made to doomscroll through cat videos and true crime docs that make their problems seem quaint? Distract the serfs and they’ll never notice the chains.

Enserfification isn’t inevitable. It’s engineered, and requires our consent to win. Don’t patronize businesses that use H-1B employees. Don’t patronize businesses that are owned by foreigners. And, yes, ramen is a vegetable."

- https://wilderwealthywise.com/

"Gigantic CME Was Just Blasted Straight To 3I/ATLAS, The Activation Has Begun"

Full screen recommended.

Stefan Burns, 10/21/25

"Gigantic CME Was Just Blasted Straight To 3I/ATLAS,

 The Activation Has Begun"

"As forecasted months in advance by geophysicist Stefan Burns, solar activity has increased in a massive way with a gigantic coronal mass ejection just launching from the farside of the Sun straight towards 3I/ATLAS! This could be the first of MANY intense solar storms launched to 3I/ATLAS during it's perihelion (closest approached to the Sun), and perhaps a larger solar system wide increase of solar activity is to follow. A powerful radiation storm is likely to begin on Earth imminently as well. Full report by space weather man Stefan Burns"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Jeremiah Babe, "Prepare For The Purge, This Could Get Bad"

Jeremiah Babe, 10/21/25

"Prepare For The Purge, This Could Get Bad"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Mass Layoffs Of Older Workers Are Getting Worse As They Can’t Retire"

Full screen recommended.

Epic Economist, 10/21/25

"Mass Layoffs Of Older Workers

 Are Getting Worse As They Can’t Retire"

"So the job market in 2025 is an absolute mess, and the layoffs just aren't slowing down at all. But there's one angle I really want to dig into today, and that's what's happening to older workers specifically. Now look, I'm not saying younger people have it easy right now—everybody's struggling in this climate. But what I'm seeing is that companies are looking for any excuse to trim costs, and the easiest targets are the people who've been there the longest, making the highest salaries. Then once they're out, trying to get back in becomes this nightmare because you're competing against everyone, algorithms are screening you out, and on top of that, most of these folks can't just retire early. They need to work for another decade or more. The whole thing is honestly a disaster. I've got a ton of examples to show you today, so if you've experienced this yourself and want to share your story, drop it in the comments below. But let's just get right into it."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Gerald Celente, "No King Trump? OK! But We Love Genocide Joe Who Stole Billions For Ukraine; We Are Hypocrites"

Strong language alert!

Gerald Celente, 10/21/25

"No King Trump? OK! But We Love Genocide Joe 

Who Stole Billions For Ukraine; We Are Hypocrites"

"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/

Musical Interlude: 2002, "Realms Of Splendor"

Full screen recommended.

2002, "Realms Of Splendor"

"This song is from our album "Land of Forever." The Tuatha Dé Danann (people of the goddess Danu), were one of the ancient, mythical races of Ireland. They were skilled in architecture, art, science, poetry and magic. The Milesians (ancestors of the Gaels) arrived from the Iberian Peninsula and defeated them in battle around 600 BC, sending the Tuatha Dé Danann to live underground. They were each assigned a sidhe, or hillock. Each sidhe was a door to an underground realm of splendor."  

"A Look to the Heavens"

"What's happening at the center of the Trifid Nebula? Three prominent dust lanes that give the Trifid its name all come together. Mountains of opaque dust appear near the bottom, while other dark filaments of dust are visible threaded throughout the nebula. A single massive star visible near the center causes much of the Trifid's glow. The Trifid, cataloged as M20, is only about 300,000 years old, making it among the youngest emission nebulas known. 

The star forming nebula lies about 9,000 light years away toward the constellation of the Archer (Sagittarius). The region pictured here spans about 10 light years. The featured image is a composite with luminance taken from an image by the 8.2-m ground-based Subaru Telescope, detail provided by the 2.4-m orbiting Hubble Space Telescope, color data provided by Martin Pugh and image assembly and processing provided by Robert Gendler."

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

The Poet: Robert Service, "Prelude"

"Prelude"

"In youth I gnawed life's bitter rind

And shared the rugged lot

Of fellows rude and unrefined,

Frustrated and forgot;

And now alas! it is too late

My sorry ways to mend,

So sadly I accept my fate,

A Roughneck to the end.

Profanity is in my voice

And slag is in my rhyme,

For I have mucked with men who curse

And grovel in the grime;

My fingers were not formed, I fear,

To frame a pretty pen,

So please forgive me if I veer

From Virtue now and then.

For I would be the living voice,

Though raucous is its tone,

Of men who rarely may rejoice,

Yet barely ever moan:

The rovers of the raw-ribbed lands,

The lads of lowly worth,

The scallywags with scaley hands

Who weld the ends of earth."

- Robert Service

"It's Official: SNAP Benefits Delayed For Millions"

Full screen recommended.

Snyder Reports, 10/21/25

"It's Official: SNAP Benefits Delayed For Millions"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/